"Not picky on the floor plan, but - arbitrarily? Okay, narrow down 'arbitrarily' for me, I already know I'm ages behind everybody else, but like, I am skeptical about literally arbitrary levels of technology."

"Our - plane? Group of planes? Whatever - has the highest technology we've discovered so far. But not literally arbitrary."

"I want that. I want instruction manuals for that, I want - I want things that are progressively more complicated for me to take apart and understand and then put back together again, I'm not picky on what I'm aiming at but I want to be on the cutting edge, damn it, and just because I have the rest of forever doesn't mean I am going to slack on getting started. I want to learn it, I want to have learned it yesterday, and I would like lots of equipment to learn all of it as fast as possible."

"You're still going to have to be more specific. What I meant by arbitrarily was that the limits on what I can make, tech-wise, are limits on what I can suggest and you can ask for, not limits on what the magic'll do. As far as I know."

"Okay, um - uh - crap, I don't know anything about any of your technology - what is a useful thing that involves doing cool things?"

"That's... very... vague. What cool things do you want to do?"

"I - don't know? Anything I do know is dwarfed in comparison to your technology levels, so I am considering myself a glorified baseline, except for the things I've figured out about how mage-magic works with acolytehood. But I can really only cajole my boyfriend into testing things so often, because, stupid mana regeneration. Uh - quick, what's a thing that you do not know a lot about but want to learn about?"

"I have gotten all my serious priorities on that front handled. I think next on my list was, ah, updating my astrogation knowhow."

"Hmmm. What baseline does that require to get a helpful understanding of it? How useful is it to do? Actually - is anything in magic undiscovered, I can do magic, that probably requires me to learn less about the mechanisms behind things happening in order to make actual breakthroughs for stuff. But I'll be doing that, too, bet I can combine things," she half-mutters. "I can keep doing the mage thing by proxy, the multi-portal necklace thing was my idea, obviously I can manage things there, even if the wait time's a pain..."

"I know Max and - uh, I forget his Bell's name. Her, anyway - have a magic system that's transferable but requires a lot of study and they're working from self-teaching?"

"I'll mention it to Phix next time I talk to her."

"Also, do you understand what the words 'too vague' mean, what in the world do you think I'm going to conjure up for you when you say 'basic technology'...?"

"I - don't know? I have zero baseline to work off of, you realize. Basic technology that you have that is normal and ordinary for you to have around, like - like - I looked up things on Wikipedia, like a toaster? Or something? And either the promise that it is definitely safe for me to take apart or books on how it works. I need to understand what level I am working with, I am literally just sort of - floating off of the idea that everything is run off of magic and that is so not true, I know it, there's magic and then there's technology that looks like magic, and I need to build some sort of comparison point to figure out which is which and work from there. I like understanding how things work. And I don't, I am absurdly far behind through no fault of my own, and I don't know where to start."

"Okay, look, if you're working from Wikipedia you're thinking - early twenty-first century stuff. How about I outfit you with toasterlike kitchen appliances when I make your house, and as long as they aren't plugged in you can pretty much take those apart however you like, and I'll give you their instruction and spec manuals too? And from there you can make more informed requests and we can ratchet you up to our time."

"Sure. That, let's do that. Uh - copies of all of the toasterlike appliances so I don't lose out on useful things while I'm taking them apart for their secrets like some kind of freaky electronic torturer technician?"

"Yeah, I'll give you a slew of them to actually use and put dupes in a closet?"

"Sure. Actually, just - a room for them, instead of a closet. So I don't have to mess with the ones I'm using and break them."

"Basement workshop? And I'll give you a computer. Nice intuitive 2050 model, I think, they did good UI in 2050 even for people who didn't know what they were picking up and it got more abstruse from there."

"Basement workshop sounds good. Along with the computer. Thank you, you are a wonderful - wait, are you a human being? You are a wonderful whatever you are."

"I no longer consider myself a human, but thanks."

"You're welcome." Pause. "... Iiii need to start planning a house, do you mind if I take like - an hour to go do that?"

"Have fun."

Cam and Aya work out what kind of house she wants while she collects things she wants to keep in their current forms out of her existing residence and Adana gets rid of it, and then Cam puts the new house for her in place, and then he and Adana go and make one elsewhere on the mountainside for themselves. All this takes more than an hour, after which they do Idania's too.