"Maybe we should show her The Matrix." 

"No we shouldn't, it's a bunch of bullpuckey. Ah, if any of you object to the swearing I can stop. Anyway, there shouldn't be any trouble loading your magic system into it or giving you a human body or anything. Is it within the rules?"

"Yes, although it isn't, actually, true that there's nothing sidereal to compare it to," the angel says wryly. "Not if you ever want to interact with the wider multiverse."

"Oh wow, that's an option? And it's not like Narnia time where the sidereal universes end up wildly out of sync with each other no matter what's going on up the stack?"

"In that case the hardware should be continuously expanding to keep up with population; there's got to be some physics that supports enough computer even if it doesn't look like solar systems and stuff."

(Bruce has a useless but amusing mental image of an infinite plane of algae implementing Conway's Game of Life implementing their planned universe.)

"Yes...hm. I'm not the most computer-expert, but--hm. Hmm...setting things up so abilities that result from computer physics transfer into sidereal universes would be tricky..."

"You mean we would lose our magic if we went elsewhere?"

"I think we'd also need bodies, if you're saying there's some sort of matter transmission between universes instead of instantiating our minds in new bodies every time we traveled." Wouldn't a body running on one physics just cease to exist as organized matter if you tried to chuck it directly into another physics? Wouldn't it be so much easier to paste data hither and yon? Ah, what does he know about it, it's not like his previous beliefs predicted any of this.

"If you run everything on a computer, then leaving the computer will make a lot of things stop working. Making things actually magic has a much higher compatibility rate. That doesn't mean everything will work everywhere, but nothing works everywhere. For example, the worlds where science doesn't work. Not much works there. They're not good." She has a deeply annoyed expression. "--Anyway, if you want to run on a computer," she tells Margaret, "I have every interest in enabling this, but I don't think it's a good idea to make everyone have to."

"Yeah, no, it sounds like we want a regular world of human wizards and robots who ideally are also wizards. And vague legends about the world having been created when it was created and being the afterlife of another world."

"I would be very curious whether a robot could have a magical core. If it had a soul, and you clearly do have a soul, and some sort of body that can hold accumulate magical energy and channel it into a wand . . . Ollivander would either have a fit or dance a jig."

"Based on what I know about your magic system, it seems like it would be necessary or at least felicitous for magic to be involved in the construction, and/or magical materials incorporated in some way. But I fully expect it to be doable."

"There's probably at least some people who would build and enchant a kid rather than give birth to one if they were both options."

"It's certainly possible to animate various materials, including metal, and even imbue them with the power of speech and a limited intelligence. I think it should be possible to enchant, for example, a suit of armour to be able to support a soul."

"I think probably a form more optimized for being a body rather than around a body can be devised. Professor, in your expert opinion, as the magic system currently stands, would it be easier to enchant a construct to sapience, or to transfer a consciousness into one."

"Well, a true constructed consciousness has never been achieved, and a transferred one has, but it involved exceedingly dark magic--and by all accounts the transferred consciousness was distorted."

She consults her notes. "Is that this Horcrux thing?"

She nods. "Specifically, Riddle's diary. The consciousness in the diary was able to remember, think, plan, and take control of human bodies."

"Just to be totally clear: I am not interested in taking control of people!"

"My notes say the Horcrux thing involves violently tearing a piece off of the soul," she says. "Surely transferring an intact soul would be less problematic."

"I would certainly expect so," she says emphatically.

"'Some kind of magic method for getting a soul into an artifact' is probably enough of a start that we can move on to the next thing; I don't want to tie up the conversation forever and future choices could affect the details."

"Is there a time limit before which we have to make all the choices? You didn't mention one but I don't think we asked."

"No, I was created to have vastly superhuman patience, and we're time-dilated. You have as long as you need."