'In my realm of origin I almost exclusively directed my efforts towards concrete and physical projects in order to increase my health, power, and fulfillment.'

"Sounds like fun! At least the fulfillment part; doing stuff for my health is generally boring."

"I'm telling you, Kara, you have got to get into rock climbing. You will get so much muscle." Neren makes a flexing gesture, its ostensible purpose rather defeated by Neren's loose drapey sleeves.

'Health, fulfillment, and' pause 'muscle are separate, for humans.  They are not for my species.'

"Can you go into more detail? What things are good for your overall well-being?"

'Portions of existence being in line with my sense of aesthetics, and more of them becoming so by my action.'

"Either I am misunderstanding you," says Tona, "or that is the coolest thing I have heard all year. Are you saying that you never have to do anything other than make art?"

'Yes.'

"That's ultrashiny! What media do you do, usually? I bet you have media nobody on Firstplanet has ever heard of! Do your species usually specialize in one to three things, or are you generalists, or are you serial specialists, or other?"

'Most members of my species specialize in natural design.  Previously I made a magic system.'

Mark grins. "In words, or a computer simulation, or as pure math/theoretical physics, or other?" 

'In magic.'

Tren makes the syllable for "my interpretation of that was ambiguous or low-prior in a way I cannot easily phrase a clarifying question about"! 

Mark essays a clarifying question: "You can locally alter physics?!?"

'If I understand you correctly.'

Neren says "Well don't do it here, we're using the physics we've got!" at the exact same moment that Kara says "Ooooh I wanna see!"

'I am an inherently magical being.'

"Okay, well, whatever you're doing now is pretty clearly compatible with being here safely, at least in the medium term. I don't know much physics, I guess you could have reduced the half-life of protons by a factor of a thousand or something else nobody would notice. Actually I don't think we ever got clarity on whether you're from another planet or another universe? If it's the former then I bet there's nothing to worry about just from you passively being around."

'Another universe.  Though I stayed on another human planet for some time without.  Thinking.

Without issues of the sort which I understand to be of current concern.'

"There are other human planets?!"

"Where are they? What are they like? Are they in this universe or a third one?"

"Maybe it's alternate timelines instead of alternate inflationary regions and that's why they got humans twice?"

"The physicists are all going to love you so much!"

'They were in a third universe.  I lack sufficient exposure to you to be certain in accurately conveying differences and similarities between them and you.'

"Did you see a map of their planet such that you'd recognize whether our continents are the same?"

"You acted like you hadn't seen a screen with pixels before, so I'm guessing they didn't have those?"

"How long were you there? What experiments did you do?"

'I a few times teleported high enough that I could see the shapes of the continents.  They had no handcomps or other screens of that kind which I was exposed to.  I remained there for longer than one decade but likely shorter than two, and during that time experimented with my magic system.'

"Ooooh, you can teleport? What do you need to know about a place to teleport there?"

"How do you handle clipping and velocity-matching? Is it FTL?"

"Can you take cargo? Passengers?"

"Is the teleportation part of your magic system?"

"What were their most recent inventions? Did they have trains, the printing press, agriculture?"

'I need to be able to uniquely identify a place in some way, or specify parameters and rely on random chance within those.  If I begin emulating physical matter within other physical matter for any reason, they are thrust apart before mine is instantiated there.  With enough magical power I can traverse greater distances than light could in that time span.  I can select matter to accompany me.  Yes, I integrated it.  I recall the invention of the soundkeeper.'

"Star travel star travel!" Kara is literally bouncing up and down. So is Tona. It is a party in this train car tonight.

"This is the highest-branchingfactor fractalquestionssituation I have ever been in. What's the farthest you've gone in one go within a universe? Does bringing more cargo trade off against distance? Can you go off latitude and longitude? How about a photograph? How about 'my apartment'? Unrelatedly I know it's probably too early right now but if you see any conspicuous absences of good things the other humans had you should tell us so we can copy off them."

'I do not know.  Yes, though not by much.  All of those are acceptably specific.  I will say so if I observe any.'  (One of the fidgets they copy, briefly, is the bouncing.)