"How much do you already know about our afterlife system?"

"Cam said that people who die here become 'stars' except they aren't like our stars, and can merge, and that you're a merged group of stars, and you're occupying a lot of bodies and know what all of them are doing all the time. I'm mostly wondering about whatever would make a baby cloud different from a baby singlet such that you could get them to incarnate in the first place."

"I'm not certain that it would work, but there's a chance that just having more processing power would be enough, even if it was still baby-shaped processing power.  If you would be very upset if we tried it and it didn't work I don't think we should try it."

"...I'd rather not see the basement dweller babies till they're awake and I'm not sure I can juggle more than three but I would try if there is a cloud of three."

"We can try with three.  Should I assume you've already considered and rejected the idea of enlisting a coparent?  I would expect the chance it works to go up the bigger the cloud, although there are some limits on what clouds can currently be instantiated and many babies just merge with the One straight away."

"I had a - wistful coparent - for a while but not in the last several years."

"Well, we can try with three.  I'm looking around for a good candidate presently."

"- I'm assuming here that all the, the enslaved babies, will have someone ready to adopt them presently even if it's not me."

"I suspect many of the parents will want theirs back given sufficient financial stability.  And it's my understanding that there are plenty of other daeva in line behind you for the ones who don't."

"Yes, I just wanted to make sure you were in fact planning to summon more."

"I think we are?"  She turns to Cam.

"I see no reason why not!"

"Great!"

There's a sniffle from just inside the open door of Ethan's apartment.

Cam sticks his head in. "You need anything, kiddo?"

"No."  Snifl.  ". . . I wanna watch a movie.  And I want a drink, but I can't stand up yet - to get one - "

Cam puts a bottle of water in the wheelchair cupholder and queues up Catastrophe Ann on the TV for him. "Could one of you help him back into the chair, I'd probably drop him -"

" - No.  No thank you."

"- okay." Cam puts the water on the floor next to him instead.

Ethan picks it up but doesn't drink it.  After a moment of consideration he starts scooting over to the floor in front of the TV.

"Last minute requests?"

". . . I don't really understand how movie book reports are supposed to help me pick a magic person."

"I mean, you could wait till we summon a bunch of them and meet them in person but I imagine that might be kind of overwhelming."

"But if it'll be a while before I have a magic person then I should think harder about things to ask you for."

"I will be gone for a few hours, not days."