"Would it be abusing their positions if, for example, they said something like 'speaking with the authority vested in me by Bar as a member of the infirmary staff I swear that...' something false?"

Another napkin. "I do not have access to the resources necessary to provide that kind of verification as a service, and thus I would, I suppose, consider it an abuse of their position if an employee of mine acted as though I had granted them authority to swear on at all, even if they subsequently made true statements."

Ugh.

"Do you at least have information corroborating other people's claims, like, that Griffie is the Griffith of Erlonn from the report, or anything about Jim...?"

"My infirmary employee Griffie, whom you've met, is the same 'template' as the Griffith of Erlonn from the report, and from the same world as that report, so I believe that the two are one and the same, usually worlds don't have more than one of the same 'template'. There aren't, actually, any employees who have recently been on staff who described themselves as being named 'Jim' in their applications, though I don't actually require names."

"...Who is the person I let into my world?"

Bar can provide Saira with his publications!

She skims them. They're mostly about ethics, botany, mammalian microanatomy, and torture. So... nothing really surprising there, other than how unappealing goodness is. Sounded better when Griffie was describing it. Well, probably if Jim thought it was appealing, he would do it, instead of not doing it.

If it's all unsurprising, then... how long has he been maintaining a fake persona? Jim seems like he's about how he presents himself if Bar is honest, or at least, Jim seems like he's been presenting himself as a plausible and normal kind of person for a really long time without slipping.

Not likely Bar is honest and Jim and Griffie aren't also both honest. And Cinlirina... could in fact be unrelatedly fucking with her, but Saira doubts that; if she didn't doubt that she'd've hired someone else. And if Cinlirina could be replaced, then she's back to the all-encompassing deception theory that she can't do anything with.

So if Cinlirina's still herself and has not betrayed Saira, then she knows... what, exactly? That Bar didn't poison her, that Griffie has spent some time in here doing nice things for people and occasionally doing a mind-affecting thing... which Griffie says is just informative... and which rhymes with Jim's kind of skin-crawling descriptions of goodness and evil...

They could also all be telling slightly smaller lies, about whether their mind-affecting goodness spells are mind control or just some other kind of mind-affecting spell... which, yeah, that seems like a thing that could happen, with groups of people who aren't selling things and aren't used to selling things and aren't totally sure how much anyone else can check up on them and... also they could just be wrong... or Griffe's world and Jim's could have slightly different mind-affecting goodness spells... or all of those things about different topics.

There's not really a useful thing to do with utter Cartesian doubt here, she thinks. Probably. Which... means it's time to read more, except that it totally doesn't mean that, because her brain is a little fried now.

"You could let Griffie know I'm ready to talk whenever. Also you could give me a book about technology my world doesn't have from a world that previously published works making claims about physics consistent with my world's claims, if you have one of those."

Bar gets Saira a nutrition textbook! It turns out there are lots of chemicals in various foods which the human body uses, not just the obvious ones, and having too much or too little of a long list of molecules (with diagrams Saira can copy) causes problems, which can conveniently often be remedied by dietary changes.

Griffie gets a text message during eir biomancy lecture, checks it, finishes up eir current topic, tells Jim ey's going to go check in on Saira, and heads over.

"Hey there."

By the time Griffie gets there Saira is taking sparse neat notes on human nutrition.

"Greetings again. I've been looking into selling Jim a plant body of the broad category that this one" ey gestures at emself "is in, how are you doing?"

"Researching science from other worlds, but I'm feeling like I've absorbed new information for too long again."

"Yeah, that can happen. You could pay your employee to copy out books into Hari for you, maybe? If you'd like to do social things, care for another game of Garden of Seihra-Gara?"

"Yes!"

Then Garden of Seihra-Gara can happen! It's a good game.

She gives Griffie a couple of tips, and asks if they'd like to invite Cinlirina next time. And maybe Jim.

"Sure, though we'd need to relocate to the infirmary if we're including Jim. Or if we wait long enough, if we're including me, I have a shift when he's done. I guess you do need to include me unless you're borrowing another board setup from Bar, though she can loan things out in protective cases and doesn't charge rental fees."

"Yours is nice. And weird. Why does that exist... what's the most recent publication from the world that version of Seihra-Gara comes from?"

The most recent publication from that world is currently a negative business review.

I ordered a tapestry from Heisra and said it should be like the night sky. It came out all dark grey. "It looks like a cloudy night sky," Heisra said. I'm not amused.

"...That doesn't really explain what I wanted to know at all. It's the kind of thing you'd see at home - this isn't my world, right?"

"This is not your world, but it is another instance of the Hari Empire."

"How many Hari Empires are there and what years are they experiencing right now?"

"Hari Empires have varying levels of existing. Depending on what threshold I used, I could say there's infinitely many, or I could say there's 25 or 19 or 12, all of which are meaningful nonarbitrary numbers. There are three in 'range' of me, one of which is yours." Bar lists the dates for the last three. Both of the other Hari Empires are within a few years of Saira's.

"What?"

"The multiverse is a weird place, dear. I'm sorry if that was too much physics. For your purposes, there are three of your empire."