"Okay."

She will go... figure out something to eat, then.

Temple'll feed her, if she wants.

Eventually, after the magic has reconsidered a very large body of observations in light of information it lifted from Page, and after it's come to a deal with Sing, it communicates its support for instantiating Sing. In writing, to the relief of everyone involved in trying to communicate with it.

The news reports on the current situation. A few more questions trickle in, mostly not aimed at Tarinda anyway.

Sathend votes yes.

Oh GOOD. Tarinda goes on a little dance through the streets about it.

She's not the only one celebrating, there's a party starting.

Hardware's here whenever she and Page are ready for it.

She is ready right now! She gets there as fast as she can and Page dumps seed code in.

The magic conjures a drive with information about its conversation with Imaginary Sing.

Sing unspools and refactors itself. It reads the drive. It collects data from Page.

It gives Tarinda (via Page) robot chassis specs and sends her back to the temple to solicit one of those from the magic.

The magic can provide a robot.

Not too long after this, there is a reproduction of the contents of the pocket universe on an island on Mars and a portal for everyone to evacuate to there, though they're welcome to spread out from familiar territory at whatever pace amuses them.

Before attempting to navigate Mars some people would rather have whatever Tarinda has going on that lets her turn senses on and off.

Yup, that's doable in this basement here - there are a lot of basements the pocket universe did not have, so the whole place looks the same but can also have modern conveniences. Presently some people can have spirit guides and eyeballs and all that good stuff.

Val is pretty rusty but he and Lia don't figure it's worth him spending more than a day or two practicing, there's a lot of Mars to see and in a few more months they'll have a kid to worry about if they want to go anywhere.

The two of them go out together to see what's beyond the copycat island. Can the ocean be swum in? Can it be swum all the way across? ...Can it perhaps be traversed more conveniently than that.

The ocean can be swum in! All the way across if you got enough mods for it! There are also boats and zoomers to be had.

There are so many different kinds of fish. Lia's already mentally thumbnailing a mural of them - maybe something to do with the interesting shapes those ones make as they school together? Something emphasizing all these smooth curves, maybe? But some of them aren't particularly smoothly curvy...

"I wonder how smart they are," she muses, "think we could figure it out?"

"Yeah, probably, do something like feed them every day at a certain time and see if they notice... it's kind of low-ceilinged..."

"Feed them after prime numbers of hours?"

"Bet they're not that smart. Bet I'm not that smart."

"Maybe. ...Does that look like a mermaid to you?"

"I really couldn't say. Wave and see if they react?"

"There could be someone and they could notice me waving and they could not want to talk!"

Val waves in the general direction of possibly-a-mermaid.

The mermaid waves back and swims up, faster faster faster and she leaps out of the water and splashes down and then bobs at the surface with her purple hair spread out all around her. "Hi!"

"Oh, wow! You're really cool."

"Thanks!" giggles the mermaid. "You're the new magic people, right?"

"Yes! I mean, I'm not magic, technically we use magic - not that I personally do any magic - anyway, yes."

"Well, you're really cool, so there."

WHAT IS SHE SUPPOSED TO DO WITH - right, they're just gonna associate her with mages, that'd make anyone seem cool.

"Thank you! You can totally go visit it if you can have legs."

"I can but usually if I'm going on land I go for more of a snake tail situation. Would that bother people?"

"That sounds so cool. No clue what anyone else would think but I can't see us banning that kind of thing and that means we'll have to get used to it at some point."

"Cool! I'll make an appointment to get snaked, then. What should I make sure to see?"

"The sky, but you can't miss that. We have an art gallery and it's probably doing different things than your art but it's probably not doing more or better... I think a lot of what we were going for, in making the place, wasn't discrete attractions, it was a bunch of little things that could be everywhere, some of the flowers smell really incredible, that kind of thing - but, like, also I proposed to my husband touching the sky where the sun had set an hour before - oh, check out the sky on the solstice or pink day, it changes sometimes to help keep time."

"Ooh, what's a pink day?"