He's... alive?

...this is not a hospital room. Or a hospital gown. Or a hospital smell. Or a hospital headache, he has no headache at all.

Weird coma dream? Seems likeliest. He sits up. Looks in the direction of the window in case the curtains are about to swoosh aside to reveal something.

Nope!  They do look plenty movable, if he feels like getting up.

Sure, why not. He gets up and heads for the window. What's out there, coma dream?

White void!  He can't spot any imperfections showing it to be made of a specific material, but whatever building he's in is casting a diffuse shadow on the.... ground?  Floor?  Bottom - of it.

Wow that's such a boring choice, His Subconscious. If he sticks his head out can he see adjacent windows or anything?

Well, there's a screen in the way.  (Made of tiny hexagons instead of squares.)

To keep out all the many bugs in the white void, he presumes.

Okay. Does the door also lead to a white void?

Nope!  It leads to a living room with a similar but not identical decor scheme.  Couches, coffee table, another guy in a suit.

He waves.  "Hi, Cam.  How are you feeling?"

"Comatose. And you are?

"No, that was a few minutes ago.  Journey Carison, pleased to make your acquaintance."  He holds out his hand for a shake.

Sure, Cam will shake. "And you clearly already know who I am." Because of being a figment of his imagination.

"Mm-hm.  Care for anything to drink, or should I cut right to the explanations?"

"You wanna conjure up a pineapple juice out of nowhere?"

"Not quite out of nowhere."  He holds out a hand and a glass appears in it, slower and with more sparkles than demon conjurations tend to have.  Cam can watch the material spiral up into solidity and then fill with, presumably, pineapple juice.

Journey passes it to him.  "Production's just prepping it in time dilation and beaming it in.  - Perhaps you'd like to sit down."

Sure. He will sit down. "Sparkles. Really."

"Really.  That's the teleportation mechanic we've got a sponsorship deal with this season; you don't get to pick something else even though you do have a fair amount of steering power over some aspects of the aesthetics."

"I am not optimistic that staring at a notebook for three hours will explain the symbology here."

"No, probably not at this stage.  Would you prefer I start with the historical, cultural, or cosmological explanation?"

"The historical cultural or cosmological explanation of what."

"What you're doing here."

"Hit me with the cosmos."

"So, you died.  Condolences.  But, good news!  My employers nabbed you out of the hands of death - not literally, there's no such entity as Death, where you're from - and brought you to this pocket dimension.  It's associated with the Cypress Realitary Coalition, which is an organization that facilitates trade and travel between several hundred universes.  Lotta different kinds of magic and technology at play, here.  If things go as planned, you'll leave here with access to substantial power in both."

"This recasts some of your earlier remarks in a more ominous light."

"Oh, which?"

"'Production' and 'sponsorship' in particular."

"Let's do cultural next, then.  Have you heard of The Bachelor?"

"The... Bachelor.

"The reality show about marrying a stranger under performative conditions."

"That's the one!"

"I'm not going to like where you're going with this."

"You might like it more than going back to being dead."

"I like a lot of things more than being dead, and yet."

"Quite.  Anyway, it's called the Bacheloret now," (pronounced with an 'ay' sound) "that's E-T at the end - ever since they stopped keeping strict contestant gender sorting.  You're slated for season ten-twenty.  Not that the CRC's anywhere close to a thousand years old, but we're popular enough to get the resources to really pump out the seasons.  Time dilation, like I said, that sort of thing."

"What possible kind of viewer demographic is implied here?"

"More women than men; more people who were middle-aged when their 'verses joined the CRC, or who continued to age that far, than young or psychologically-young people; much more lasting viewers from universes with an existing cultural niche for reality TV than those from lower tech levels, although we do have a sizable minority of people who watch a few seasons when it's recommended to them by new CRC friends as cultural onboarding."

"For comparison would you say that daeva tend to remain 'psychologically young'?"

"I would."

"And none of these people think it's sketch to recruit this way? - what is 'this way', people die all the time, there's more than a thousand and twenty of them to sift through even if you prefer twentysomething singles."

"One, we're a television show, not a charitable organization.  There are a lot of organizations working to save people; we're here to create entertainment.  You're welcome to go back home and try your chances that someone else will come for you later; we're not going to stop them, although my employers did pick a 'verse cluster that's a bit off the beaten path.  Two, the contestant pool is all people from the brink of death, so it'd be a lot more than a thousand and twenty except that, two and a half, this season's unusual for selecting its participants in this way.  It's being styled 'Swansong'; it's funny, see.  And three, there are many more dead people than there are dead people who've done anything as bombastic as revelation."

"That was anonymous."

"Not sufficiently so to keep that guy from shooting you about it."

"Touché. Circling back to the sketchiness, I think that, under the prevailing moral and legal regime I'm familiar with which obviously needn't much resemble this one, there would be some pressure to avoid anything structurally shaped like obliging people to work for you under threat of death, even if you weren't behind the original trigger? Like, someone would make a fuss about it if reality shows on my planet were populated with impoverished diabetics from rural India who had to show up and please the studio to get insulin, or whatever, even if nobody would have batted an eye about leaving them whence they came and even if there was no realistic prospect of Doctors Without Borders showing up to save the day. Is this just a really different PR situation or what?"

"Mm."  He clears his throat and holds out his hand; a teacup manifests the same way Cam's juice did.  He takes a sip.  "I would argue there's a continuous scale from, say, gladiatorial combat, to what you describe, to what's going on here - strictly in terms of optics and aesthetics, you understand - to contestants on regular game shows who need to win large amounts of money to pay for care for some large medical expense, to those who want money to build a better life for their children - all the way up to shows about people with lives of privilege and no real problems."  Sip.  "I think your society is closer to something that would largely enjoy this sort of programming than you seem to believe.  ...But also there are networks which do just air gladiatorial combat.  One imagines that tips the balance some."

"Oh, I'm sure people would watch this, I just think there are also people who'd fuss and anyone who hadn't bought enough Girl Scout cookies recently to feel like a good person would sign their petition." He swigs his juice. "I assume the gladiators come up not because you're about to tell me that in this amazing resurrection-capable multiverse some people just really like being gladiators and sign right up and plan to be home in time for dinner after dying twice? They're snatching 'em?"

"Without behind-the-scenes knowledge of the practices of these shows beyond what they release as bonus content, I think most contestants are either resurrected or suicidal.  And more often in some sort of dire strait than kidnapped per se."

"Uh-huh. So what is the minimum viable amount of bachelor-ing demanded of me for Not Dying."

"Why don't you start by telling us a bit about what qualities you'd like in a partner?"

"That's not really an answer to the question I asked, and I would prefer to answer it while equipped with an answer to the question I asked."

"Sure.  It doesn't matter how much you snark to us; none of that has to make it into the final show.  It gets a little complicated if you get snide in front of the contestants and we'd really prefer you didn't.  But as long as there's enough footage to cut together into a proper narrative, you're pretty much fine.  And we're very willing to work with you on that!  As long as you're notionally on board and cooperating, we're not going to chuck you back into the void."

"Do the contestants wake up in places like this, get explanations like this?"

"Approximately.  So far the information you're getting has not diverged very far from what they will, accounting for the inherent differences in being a protagonist versus a contestant and that I generally let people guide the conversation rather than laying everything out in one overwhelming initial package."

"A 'protagonist'."

"Central character.  Harem holder.  Bacheloret.  The guy everyone's rooting for."

"But like, rooting for in the sense that they are excited for me to marry my very favorite stranger."

"They won't be strangers by the time you're marrying one!"

"I suppose in the optimistic case it is not completely out of the question that you could find me a prospective spouse I can, somehow, get to know to an adequate standard, within the confines of the television show, while not allowed to be too sarcastic in front of them, but that last thing is a stretch even if I make very generous assumptions about how you find people."

"...Perhaps this is where I introduce the concept of alts.  Alternate universe versions of the same people."

"...okay, I guess if you're - descended from a show like the Bachelor that exists on my planet then that implies a lot of other similarities hold some of which would be hard to keep constant without duplicate, uh, Noahs Webster and Georges Washington? What does that have to do with - I guess you can set me up with another one of me, the rigmarole of the TV show remains annoying but sure, I'll marry me."

"We haven't been cleared for any other Bells, it'd make things too complicated.  But their existence does mean we can know a fair bit about you without having violated your privacy, and that includes what sort of people you might do well with."

"Other... Bells. There's a name for mes, and it isn't 'Cams', and you know this name. What are they up to?"

"A couple of them are empresses of a or a couple planets.  Some of them are probably trying to bootstrap themselves into power.  More are probably somewhere in between those."

"Uh... huh. And these people have partners they're fond of and your plan is to dig up their 'alts' and present them to me via this show?"

"For at least some of the pool, yes."

"What, then, is the object of asking me what I'd be looking for?"

"Well as I said, that's only some of them.  And even if it were all of them, there are more potentials than slots.  ...And it's polite."

"It's sort of strange to be worrying about what's polite in this context but okay. - what is going to happen to the ones I do not wind up marrying? Actually, do I in fact have to marry one, or can I just declare someone the winner at the appropriate time and let the audience draw their own conclusions."

"The finale involves a proposal; about a quarter of seasons lead to wedding specials.  Rejected contestants are generally kept in stasis until the season airs, then released into the CRC with enough resources to keep them comfortable until they can get their feet under them.  And they keep any power upgrades they received over the course of the season."

"There are... power upgrades? This is a combination courtship and video game levelup simulation show?"

"Well, usually.  The normal mechanism has it paired with mind control, though, so we're still working out something for this season."

"Are you. How's that going."

"Still working out the balancing, but I think it'll go fine."

"I would like more details."

"Normally, the roses given out at the end of the episode - except Clarity Roses, which are how the protagonist signals rejection - give the recipient some sort of power boost and also enforce them falling more deeply in love with the Bacheloret."

"The standard of care here is to make people, plural, who are participating under threat of death, fall in love with me artificially, to make it more fun for your morally bankrupt viewers to watch me settle on only one of them, and then get ostensibly engaged and plausibly also not marry them either."

"This is the only season where we're selecting contestants in this way, I reiterate."

"Oh, what do you usually threaten 'em with?"

"Oh, nothing!  The mind control is sufficient."

"Does that come before or after they are recruited and with or without informed consent?"

"Varies."

"Charming."

"Mm-hm.  I would presumably mind this if I," he clicks his tongue, "could."

"Nobody above you in the org chart is worried about Empress Belladonna or whatever coming after their ass?"

"Ehn.  Yous are pretty nice even to people they're stopping."

"...so they're fine with it because it will not involve a thousand years in an oubliette?"

"I was being flippant; I'm not actually a party to those sorts of decisions."

"Uh-huh. What are the inputs into how this season is conducted?"

"I confess to having done a substantial amount of the steering, here.  With oversight."

"And?"

"I shouldn't share too many details."

"My willingness to do this instead of being dead and waiting for the tender mercies of Empress Belladonna may, actually, hinge on assurances to the effect that I am not personally selecting mind control victims for Those Assholes. Like there are other factors here but it is the sort of thing that could tip the balance."

"Does this include mind control put in place to counteract peripheral effects of previous, fatal mind control?"

"Maybe not if you explain it."

"Maybe later, if we in fact decide to cast him."  Shrug.  "And if we promise not to mind control contestants that were chosen based on speaking with you?"

"Like, anybody you're throwing in because they come with a sweet advertising deal or because you do not fear Empress Belladonna getting your ass for fucking with her husband's alt is still fair game, but anyone you put in because they might get along with me based on things I say here and now would be immune? That's not really what I meant, my understanding of the structure of the show - though correct me if I'm wrong, since I cannot understate how very, very much I have never watched The fucking Bachelor - is that I get to screen people, like a, I don't know how exactly, a bracket tournament or something. And I do not really care for a situation wherein, and think it will in fact make your show worse at its ostensible purpose if, I have to balance who I would want to win on their merits - maybe Empress Belladonna's husband's alt is great - versus who I most especially emphatically want you to leave the fuck alone."

"...Let's pick things apart, here.  Normally, there's a starting set of contestants.  You have some influence over this, although the producers will still be picking out, for example: people who have traits they expect you to like but which you didn't mention, gold diggers, people into being here for the fame or the power, villains, and audience surrogates.  You will learn the identities of these people when they emerge from their limousines in the first episode of the show, and not before.  With me so far?"

"I follow, yeah."

"The pace of the show is dictated through rose ceremonies, where you'll receive a number of roses that match the number of remaining contestants, and allocate them.  They have different effects depending on their color.  Clear ones eliminate a contestant from the show, as I said before.  Normally, the majority are Red Roses, which give both a power increase and a psychological effect, or other colors which work similarly.  But!  Crucially, I've already gotten the producers to agree that that style isn't in theme with this season.  New set of mind-control-free roses, in the process of being designed."

"It must be so hard to design mind-control-free roses since the common or garden variety is so insidious in this way."

"You'd be surprised!  - Kidding, I'm kidding.  Anyway, producers are not very sold on leaving out all forms of initial brain tweaking, even if they abstain from it once things get rolling.  Care to elaborate on the nature and level of your objections there?"

"What, has Empress Belladonna not published a manifesto, shape up, Empress Belladonna - okay. If somebody is assenting to appear on the show because that is how they can afford your miracle cure for the depression that attempted to end their life, and they get it gratis for agreeing to appear, in the form and manner they expect, that's chill, or, like, as chill as any form of operating this exploitative foolishness was ever likely to be. If somebody is... a lesbian, and would therefore not normally suit the conceit of the season, but you really want her on there for stupid television reasons, so you apply magic conversion therapy, I could imagine my reaction to this depending a lot on her relationship to her original sexuality such that by default it would be a no-go-fuck-you-all sort of deal, but you could conceivably find the exact most mollifying lesbian in the multiverse to do this to if I had enough of her story to be reasonably confident of that. If you do something more gratuitous than that, like making people fall in love with me or bark like a chicken whenever they see a banana or - I do not know what reality TV consumers think is fun when there's magic available, hopefully I have defined a couple corners of this doubtless multidimensional region of horrors? - then no go. I'm being fairly strict here because I'm not aware of any specific reason you couldn't be mind-controlling me so in the world where that has been ruled out I wish to play for something loosely resembling a Halloween costume that was intended to represent the concept of adequacy rather than fall over myself to compromise prematurely."

Journey nods.  "How do you feel about uncoerced alt permission as a standard for things you haven't ruled out?"

"My alts or theirs?"

"Theirs."

"See, I feel like I'm able to extrapolate quite a lot about how the benevolent Empress and I would get along if we met, but I could be wrong about that, let alone about whether it's remotely normal if accurate."

"We'll check whether we can scrounge one up for you to have a chat with, shall we?"  He snaps his fingers in signal to the room.

"Again, mine or somebody else's."

"Yours, this time, for calibration.  Many people are pretty dissimilar from some of their alts, but it would be good to know whether you thought it might ever be sufficient."

"I would be delighted to meet one of my alts; it would help a lot if they are themself background aware of alts existing and can be expected to have more than wild fabrications on how that works."

"I know you would; I'll see what I can do.  Care to elaborate on the sexuality-adjusting standards?  Does it matter to you if we're making them bisexual instead, if we're expanding their gender-based attraction in a direction with less baggage than ones conversion therapy was typically used for, if we're narrowing it instead, if we're decreasing their inclination toward polyamory, if we're adjusting it along lines that are not so broad as gender..."

"Making them strictly more - I'm not coming up with a better word than 'permissive' but it doesn't have the right connotations - is better than doing anything that would, like, replace or recontextualize their past attraction, but still sketch. I have no idea what the cultures you're drawing from look like, baggage-wise, the tradition on my planet of attempted conversion therapy informs but does not constrain my outlook here. I... don't have a cached opinion on how strongly exactly I feel about leaving people's inclinations to polyamory alone... but the 'it's worse if it replaces or recontextualizes something that has actually come up for the person in the past' thing remains, like, if you're kidnapping people with three girlfriends that's worse both because they're being kidnapped away from more preexisting attachments and because they will be less able to cleanly reintegrate therewith after we all go home. If you have people who... dislike my eye color, or who are... taller than me and really do not want to date people shorter than them, or something... that seems probably less sensitive than either the gender or the polyamory thing but I reiterate that I really do not like any of what is going on here besides the part where I am not dead."

"It may reassure you to know that for narrative reasons we don't ever break up existing relationships to bring people on the show.  Though sometimes people have left their partners and signed up when they saw the bacheloret; that happened even back when we were constrained to one planet."

"Can you put out a PSA that I find that really unattractive."

"Absolutely.  How do you feel about personalities constructed from the ground up without altering any existing person?"

"That's the sort of thing I would probably trust a really careful non-sketchy person with doing!"

"If one had already been created, would you object to her being on your season?"

"This seems like it probably has weird incentive implications but I am probably not in a good enough negotiating position to play hardball about those so I guess y'all can go for it."

"Anything else you feel like mentioning at this time that you find unattractive?"

"Uh, contestants should be psychologically of age, I can get over it if your created person was created last June as long as she doesn't act like it. Full-throated naturally-occurring defense of this operation is disqualifying. I assume you pick generally telegenic people and I don't think I have weird appearance preferences particularly..."

"Upper limit on age?"  But he sounds weirdly like he's telling a joke.

"...not inherently?"

"Got it."

- He puts a hand to the side of his head as if to touch an earpiece, but there's not one visible there.  "Oh, they found an alt for you to consult with."

"That was either fast or agonizingly slow, I'm not sure what dilation factor they're working with here."

"Fast, I think."  He looks to the hallway Cam came out of.

She looks about thirteen and malnourished and not particularly well-dressed, but she does pretty strongly resemble Renée apart from how she's making Cam's facial expressions! "Hi! I'm Shell Bell."

"It rhymes," he says, nonplussed. "I'm Cam."

"Shells count as currency in this interdimensional bar that sometimes lets me into it so I act weird and superstitious about leaving huge bags of shells near any door I regularly use and it stuck. This is actually the first time I've met one of my alts but I've been recognized before, in the bar."

"As - one who looks like you instead of like me?"

"Yeah, exactly. Anyway these folks are paying me to explain alts to you."

"Yeah, what are they paying?"

"They put an amount on my interdimensional bar tab which will cover my meals for about six months. I don't eat great when I'm at home and I'm concerned that if I rack up debt at the bar the doors may stop appearing."

"They're lowballing the shit out of you."

"That's not terribly surprising, they also didn't wanna put me on another planet instead of back where they found me, it's still something and this is not an onerous task."

"So alts."

"Alts! That thing that means once in a while somebody will spot me and call me 'your majesty'! Different for different people but insofar as this is the thing I do reading on - it's not my only focus, my general education at home is also bad - it's pretty much like you'd expect for us."

"I have been asked how usefully I will interpret alt consent to mental alterations that the powers that be want to impose on some people to put on a television show th- you have a television related problem?"

"I have a television related problem, come get me when you're done with whatever this is."

"I am become Empress Belladonna," he mutters. "Yeah. Consider it on the to-do list if I can find you. This shitty but not, apparently, that shitty, television show, which is about people competing to marry me, because for some reason people's taste in entertainment defies rational explanation. How useful is it if they don't wanna warn the principal but can find an alt of the principal who says 'go nuts'?"

"It's better than nothing. It is not amazing. What kind of mental alterations are we talking about?"

"Troublingly nonspecific ones, most of the really detailed examples have come from my end." He looks at Journey.

"Well, there's the guy who's going to die as a result of separate mind control.  He's from a world where people get powers that come with horrible side effects, with a week of the side effects frontloaded.  Got too paranoid, thinks he's in a simulation and all forms of sustenance available to him are poisonous.  Even if we paused the effect, he'd get caught in some nasty spirals unless we beamed direct assurance into his brain that things here are as real as they are."

"I can see why you would have that problem with your credibility as a sketchy kidnappy mind-control-supported reality show, I am still considering the 'coma dream' hypothesis personally. How do you know he'd get into non-horrible-side-effect based spirals without additional pushing?"

"Oh, I'm one of him.  Don't worry, we're not counting me for uncoerced alt consent."

"Good, that would call the standards for that into serious question."

"...what'd they do to you?"

"I have had substantially more mental alteration than Cam would prefer in his suitors."

"The amount of mental alteration I would prefer in my suitors is zero by default but apparently there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy, so. You are allowed to cure exogenous magical paranoia in approximately the same spirit you are allowed to snatch people from the jaws of death wherein I mistrust the hell out of your motives and spin but cannot fault the object level fact of the matter. Can you like, ask this guy, after you cure the exogenous magical paranoia, if he is okay with the anti-spiral thing you have in mind."

"I'm not sure it'll help?  If he's at any point in a spiral he's going to go fawningly along with whatever he thinks will leave him untortured, I expect."

"Observing the form is still - polite, and can be observed to have been polite in retrospect, even if it doesn't make a practical difference and even if you know that because he's a you."

"Sure.  It seems crueler than letting him wake up with it already in place, but if you really want that I don't expect it to much affect the show."

"Can you explain how from a you's perspective it seems crueler? Like, long term. I do note that you have suggested it involves him spending some period of time thinking he's in a torture-enabled situation."

"The planned adjustment doesn't protect him from considering whether he might be in a torture simulation, just from believing it on an emotional level.  And given that he's reasonably likely to keep coming back to the question for a long time, it seems like letting him experience a difference in what he's capable of believing might push him further into doubt and - prolong his recovery.  ...Mm, and - I expect he'd find it reassuring to be presented up front with something claiming to be as 'sketchy' as we are, rather than something superficially nicer that still has underlying sketchy aspects and might, in his mind, get worse at any time.  If there's a discrete set of alterations that all happened before he woke up, it's more believable that we won't be asking him for additional changes later."

"...I guess I can see that..." He glances at Shell Bell.

"You have a third template member lined up to confirm? - how are you finding them, how did you find me -"

"Eliding over some details for spoilers reasons, there exist some of me who are extremely powerful though strangely-targeted psychics.  But part of that strangeness is that they're especially powerful and knowledgeable when it comes to things like certain sets of alts."

"Spoilers reasons. Is that the kind of thing that sounds like it might as well happen, Shell Bell?"

"It's not unheard of for there to be particular common exotic powers in a template - we have those, actually, though I don't have my own and I think neither have you, but lots of us wind up immune to sketchy brain stuff one way or another. So yeah, that might as well happen."

"I do not have my own of that. I am relying on the spotty and irregular goodness of my benefactors' hearts. I think that described example meets my slightly compromised standards and you can do the alt consent thing for that guy. Is that the only one you have in mind?"

"It isn't.  But first: Shell Bell, can I get you anything?  Food or drink?"

"Love some, whatever the house recommends," she says with an ironic little gesture.

Fingersnap, and the coffee table starts (sparkily) filling with dishes.  She has her pick of fancily-presented chicken and pasta and fish and pie, a few bottles of liquids, and a stack of plates and glasses to serve them with.

Not fish, thanks. Omnomnomnom.

"Second, there's a set of alts who are really into, let's say, beings different from themselves and becoming different from how they started.  Xenophilia.  If we brought any on, by default they'd fall in love with the entire contestant pool simultaneously."

"...is this one going to be an alien? So as to be a different species from me and the entire rest of the contestant pool."

"Certainly we're not going to apply useless mental constraints," he smiles.  "This season.  Anyway, if you were to ask pretty much any one of them, 'Should we temporarily limit your alt's attraction in order to set them up with someone above this threshold of alienness to them?', they would say yes basically immediately."

"That doesn't actually explain how Cam and the entire contestant pool go about being alien enough."

"It really doesn't! And you can't guarantee the setup because I get to hand out the roses and have no idea if I like this sort of person upon getting to know them. In this deranged performative social context which I think will probably warp my opinion on everyone I meet in it."

"Well, if it's temporary they could run off with another contestant afterwards, maybe?"

"I didn't say 'set stably up'.  And yes, in the past their eliminated members have been fairly ecstatic to have access to the multiverse afterwards, whether or not they then get together with other people from the show."

"Do any of these people write, like, retrospectives, I didn't realize you were re-using specific templates as contestants though now that you mention it it does make sense."

"Retrospectives exist, though more often in audiovisual formats than written ones.  The vast majority of people in the multiverse aren't members of any template, and alts tend to be much more popular here than singlets, so yes, we tend to cast mostly those."

"A retrospective, maybe a couple from the same template, would help me feel more confident here, but it seems plausible that this example too is all right considering."

"There's also the matter of one who suffered from a prolonged decline before his death, though that's a question more of brain alteration than mind."

"I think I'm okay with youthening people including when they had age-related brain problems without even particularly many caveats."

"No, he died when he was 17; nanos shenanigans.  And we can't per se roll him back to before the brain damage without losing the memories from everything after that point."

"That is a weird limitation for you to have but I guess it's not impossible. If his alts do not expect him to be really attached to his nanobot related issues or something I think I am okay with you fixing them. ...seventeen is a little young for me. Only a little, but, like, flagging that."

"Well, we could also convert him to a species that relies less on its brain to function, or we could pop in a bunch of fresh neurons and give him a couple months of physical therapy and general recovery time."

"The snippets I'm getting of the available capabilities here are fascinating. Do I have to be on for the camera like all my waking hours just in case the producers want to cut together some kind of montage about my downtime, or do I get to investigate your internet... I am willing to go with alt consent for which of those two things you do but do not guarantee this extends to other things that have gone unmentioned."

"Convenient you should mention that.  You should assume that every space is to some degree nonprivate except," he points to a door and it opens, revealing an opaque field of gently-swirling purple, "ones that look like that."

"It's so purple. Is it also purple inside? Seems like it'd obstruct visibility."

"You can go check, if you'd like."

"Are you always like this about being asked straightforward questions or is that a mind control thing?" Cam asks, but he gets up and goes to have a look.

If there's a response, he can't make it out from the other side of the barrier.

He's in a comfortably furnished small room.  Desk, chair, daybed, empty bookshelf, fireplace.  There's a cordless lamp, a stack of slightly fancy notebooks, and a cup with writing utensils on the desk.  Indeed pretty purple, but in a normal decoration way, with gold and silver accents.

He doesn't really like purple but he has other shit to quibble about.

They have obviously been stalking him. The notebooks being froofy could mean that they have been slightly less thorough about stalking him, or that they've been very thorough about stalking him and also Empress Belladonna. ...or just Shell Bell, who has less she can do about being stalked.

He comes back out again. "Cool. Someone's gonna need to tell me how to work the fireplace."

"The fireplace?"

"The room is supposed to be private but things, such as me, can exit it, so I'm gonna wanna periodically set my notes on fire."

"- oh, you do them in writing, that makes sense. I've got an audio recorder doodad, I spend a lot of time near water and stuff and it's waterproof and locked to just me."

"...huh! Do you know which is commoner?"

"Does not tend to be enough of a public feature to make it into biographies, but I'm guessing you're the normal one."

"Mm, so actually, you're the only one who can go in there.  I think the fireplace was a holdover from before we had an expected way to verify this to you, though my understanding now is that Shell Bell might be willing to help us with that?  - To answer your previous question, I don't have any memories from before this job.  Probably I was somewhat inclined toward answering questions like this but then got moreso."

"Jesus Christ, man. Empress Belladonna had better clear her schedule or have a very compelling Powerpoint presentation," mutters Cam. "Shell Bell, you have some kind of... verificationy thing?"

"Yeah - sometimes people pay me in stuff like my audio recorder instead of or in addition to money for my consulting services. I have a doodad that... has limited charges, it recharges on its own but we can't do more than one or maybe two things soon, but if somebody tells it something, and they ought to know and they're telling the truth, it'll repeat it back, and if they're lying or could easily be wrong it'll just kinda eat it. Which unfortunately does not make it recharge any faster, maybe 'eat' is the wrong word."

"And I expect the show to be much better if you have the chance to do proper processing, so I'm invested in you having correct beliefs about the security here."

"Sounds like if it's not the case that you ought reasonably to know, such as because you have been horrifically mind controlled, the doodad will not be reassuring about what you have to say, is there someone else we should be introduced to here?"

"We can get someone else if you'd like, but that's not really the flavor going on here."

"The flavor."

"My ends are the production's.  I'm not being deceived about things that would make me worse at pursuing those."

"And they know how her doodad works?"

"Apparently."

"Well, it would sure be inconvenient if it turns out they don't know what they're doing and being comprehensively mentally tampered with about too many things makes you incapable of saying stuff the doodad likes, but if you're sure! What are you going to tell it? It's no good if you say something and then we're like 'hey wait a second there's a loophole' and it turns out it doesn't recharge faster in dilation."

"'There is a magical effect which can be applied to a space.  This effect prevents anyone except people designated at its creation from entering that space, and renders the space safe from all known forms of scrying and observation.  The number of people designated as being able to enter the space is obvious from the number of main, distinct colors making up the border of the effect, up to a maximum of six.  When the effect is dismissed, it annihilates all nonliving contents beyond any known form of retrieval.  No one involved in this production is known to be searching for forms of scrying or observation that could bypass this effect, and there is intent not to hire people of whom this is true.  If anyone on the staff was found to be searching for ways to disrupt the integrity of the privacy within rooms with this effect, they would be fired and face legal consequences.  We will not cast contestants capable of bypassing the effect.  We will never deceive you or intentionally allow you to be deceived about whether the effect is in place'?"

Cam inspects that for defects. "...the notebooks aren't secretly alive?"

"Not these ones."

"I haven't tested the doodad on anything quite that long."

"I can repeat it within a designation and then magically attest that the content of the designation is true?"

"That probably works, in the sense that the ways I can think of for it to not work all require you to be more emphatically fucking with me than I am presently assuming."

"I suppose that's all I can ask for."

Shell Bell's doodad looks like a puck of white ceramic with four holes scooped out of its edges equidistantly; one hole currently has a blue glow emanating from it.

Journey bookends the amended statement with 'chandelier', then addresses the puck:  "Everything I claimed between the last two times I said 'chandelier' is true."

The doodad agrees.

"Cool. I appreciate your investment in my sanity."

"Mmhm.  I realize the 'stick' part of the motivation scheme here is probably more salient, but in the long run I do hope the carrots will eclipse it."

"They seem like probably really nice carrots, just, uh, in a way where the tension with the sticks calls into question the adequacy of the involved carrot-selection-and-design skills, in the same way that I would not expect a dog trained to fetch slippers to successfully retrieve the international space station even if it sounded like it was dragging something really big and I heard yelling in Russian."

"See, the fact that you say things like that is part of what makes you such an enticing casting choice."

"But you don't want me to be sarcastic in front of the contestants!"

"Was that sarcasm?  But I did speak imprecisely, then.  It's not that all forms of sarcasm are banned, it's that... this is a show with a narrative, a fantasy, for both the viewers and the contestants, and there's a certain amount of going along with the premise necessary for that to work."

"It was generated by the same general process that produces sarcasm and will be difficult to suppress one without the other."

"Mm, I mean something like..."  He sips contemplatively at his teacup.  "You may understandably dislike the situation here, but it is completely within your power to come out of it with a lasting, happy marriage.  This despite the show ending by default at the proposal and divorce being legal most places within the CRC.  But you're not going to accomplish that if you don't take the actual dating a certain amount seriously.  There are going to be villains, and people you could spend loyal centuries with, and the only way for you to tell those apart is to genuinely get to know them.  And there's a difference between clever quips and being dismissive of people who are here through no fault of their own, and indeed between clever quips and using those quips to distance yourself from something that could instead be a chance to really connect with someone."

"People play out romance plots on my television-related problem too to placate the showrunners but I suppose the incentives are different because the participants are never both alive at the end."

"I am getting such a concerning picture of your television-related problem but I suppose it does sound a lot worse than mine and I should be appropriately calibrated for that," Cam tells her, and to Journey, "Can you like, paint me a picture of how I get to know these people in the proposed - so to speak - setup, I reiterate that I've never watched anything like it."

"Of course!  It starts with the limo exits, during which you have a few minutes to meet each suitor one at a time on their way inside the mansion.  You'll receive one First-Impression Rose to give out to the person with the most strikingly positive introduction once everyone is inside.  Then there's a cocktail party where everyone mingles and people may 'steal you away' from each other for one-on-one conversations.  You'll have some time to deliberate suitorless before the rose ceremony, where you'll be given a set number of Clarity and other Roses to distribute to the contestants.  We'll work with you during deliberation to come up with an order to present the roses that's appropriately dramatic.

"From there, it'll be a combination of unstructured time, where people can roam freely around the Bacheloret Dimansion; group dates, where you and all the suitors participate in some sort of planned activity together; one-on-one dates, where you pick a single contestant to whisk away to same; two-on-one dates, which are like that but with more narrative tension; and cocktail parties and rose ceremonies.

"Normally many of the dates would involve real travel to actual destinations, but since the security measures are a bit nonstandard this season, we're instead going to have your 'home base' be on a planetoid within this dimension and bring in replica locations on separate planetoids.  We'll have our two establishing episodes here, then a string of 'destinations' until we're down to the final four, when you start eliminating only one contestant per episode.  From there, it's Hometowns - or, facsimile Hometowns, for the aforementioned reason - Fantasy Suites, and the Finale."

"...I suppose I don't know if I would have resisted the temptation to name something a Dimansion or not," Cam muses. "Why is it necessary to present roses in a dramatic order instead of just cutting it to look like I did, do people have very dramatic reactions to it - they probably do, ugh. Do you have an example of forbidden dismissiveness you expect me to produce without guidelines against it?"

"They'll also be holding the rose after you give it to them, even if they were all completely stoic.  Examples are, hm, we've had this alt of yours in the audience reaction department for a century or so.  Nabbed him out of a torture fortress that uses... well, you know how I said the one guy thought everything was a simulation designed to torment him?  That but for real, lot of memory erasing and running scenarios over and over with slight variations, lots of rescues that turn out to lead right back into torture - these are the levers I have for helping with this sort of thing, putting him in the audience - anyway.

"His comments, when we can get him to make them, are biting sarcasm over every aspect of everything.  This is fine, some of them add an acidic bit of lightness to the dish we're trying to make here, and we can cut everything else: this is less true of a protagonist.  If something goes obviously wrong with something we've set up, it's fine to poke fun at that; it would be obviously inauthentic if you didn't.  If you catch someone egregiously lying for drama, it's obviously fine to eliminate them.  But sketchy though we may be, we are not torture simulators, and I hope that you can cultivate an amount of buy-in to the premise that doesn't involve going, 'wow, a romantic boat ride on the romance show, how original,' every fifteen minutes.  And similarly, that you'll be aware that the drama between contestants is very serious and high-stakes to them, and that if you take pot shots at someone you consider to be an obvious bad actor, you're more likely to harm someone who's trying to care about you than you are the villain."

"How did our alt get into the torture fortress??"

"I also have that question but - hm - okay, not 'how original' about the boat ride, but what about 'you'd think they'd have stalked me effectively enough to know I'd have trouble getting into the boat without falling in the water' -"

"Oh, we're going to fix that, with your permission.  Carrots."

"Carrots," agrees Cam. "...can I make references to carrots as a running gag, I might want to do that."

"If you have found my assistance useful and you feel like not hilariously lowballing me I would also like one of those."

"That seems most likely fine.  You want this more than anything else that might come up later in conversation, Shell Bell?"

"I'm sort of confused why I haven't been escorted out yet but if you are letting me stay for the whole conversation then not necessarily."

"Cam, do you feel like you've been successfully onboarded about the existence of alts and the state of things in the multiverse?"

"I mean, I think there are probably many things left to know but I do not have immediately applicable, burning questions about these matters."

"Alright then."  He snaps his fingers.  "Anti-clumsiness installation.  Works except when it would be romantic for it to not.  Sorry, Shell Bell, that's what we have on tap."  It doesn't feel like anything.

"Well, that'll cover me for at least a year and then most of the rest of the time, hopefully."

"Mmhm.  Thanks for your time, go ahead and ask the producers about a goodie bag on the way out."

"Thank you!" She gives Cam a hug, and makes sure she has her doodad, and she heads out.

Once she's gone:

"You were right about the boat stalking comment being the sort of thing I'd generally prefer you avoid in front of suitors.  Do you think that's going to be a problem, either in terms of not being able to refrain or in feeling stifled in self-expression?"

"It doesn't seem like it obviously pokes at the contestants at all, they didn't stalk me - presumably - or is this a situation where the boat ride is their idea and not the producer's?"

"It's that if you're frequently commenting on how much we did or didn't stalk you, to the exclusion of focusing on the contestants, that creates an environment where you're less likely to succeed at the premise.  We had a notorious season with bad loops where the batch would make these sorts of comments, then the contestants in trying to please her would look for chances to make similar ones, and then they'd go back and forth with that and that was about as deep as their relationship ever got, because they weren't actually getting to know each other.  She and the winner broke up almost immediately after the finale, because the only thing they had in common was snarking about a show they were no longer on."

"So basically the thing you are looking for, here, is for me to be the bigger person about having been kidnapped and cast on The Bachelor: Gender Neutral Space Edition, and permit this to succeed insofar as you have successfully also, in addition to doing that, gathered the resources for me to accomplish this."

"Yes!  If you please."

"Just till the end of the season."

"Being the bigger person?  Yes.  We can't release you into the multiverse until the season's done airing, but: eight episodes, then a few months with you and the winner and up to a few thousand people with ironclad NDAs living in relatively isolated luxury with no cameras not owned by the two of you - or you can skip it, if you'd rather; time dilation goes the other way too - then a wedding special if you want it and we turn you loose."

"How long does each episode represent in experienced time?"

"Traditionally a week.  Sometimes things get a bit flexed what with all the timeflow differences, but if you're not asking for bonus time for deliberation or spending with contestants it's not likely to be off that by more than a half."

"I do sort of worry that I am contributing to the moral turpitude of your voluntary audience but I guess you've done more than a thousand seasons' worth of damage without my help."

"Quite."

"What is a 'fantasy suite'."

"A place with an effect like the one in your notetaking room, except that two people can enter it.  For you and each of the remaining three suitors to spend the night in as a couple, if both involved parties want that."

"Just to get it out of my system: let me guess, there is only one bed."

"It's a large bed."

"If you can't get a camera in there why set it up with even a very large one bed? Like, if you could get inside for an establishing shot even if you then politely withdrew maybe it'd be a good balance of signaling to the audience and to the participants but if you can't..."

"That's what reenactments with duplicate environments are for."

"Am I also supposed to participate in reenactments? I am not an actor, I'm an academic."

"We're perfectly willing to take the time to coach you through how to help us get a usable shot.  There will be a lot of chances to practice: if you stumble over your words, or if a contestant does, we'll sometimes ask you to take a few lines again, that sort of thing.  It's just repeating yourself, not coming up with a completely novel character."

"Well that sounds really tedious and will kind of discourage me from doing things that call for it."

"We'll try and keep the levels low enough that you don't feel like trying to spend any of your negotiation room on it."

"Oh, I don't feel the need to negotiate about it particularly, I'm just noting that if I go have a private conversation with somebody and then this results in four hours of headache I will have those in mind the next time I consider having a private conversation."

"Mm-hm.  Care for some more carrots?"

"I love carrots."

"So, contestants in general will heal much more rapidly here, and if any of them manage to kill each other we'll bring them back, but you we're giving a protective force field that'll keep you from getting injured in the first place."

"How likely is it that they will even attempt to kill each other?"

"Most seasons don't have any incidents but some have lots.  It will almost certainly not turn into lots if you eliminate the ones who've killed people and are competent at playing whodunnit."

"I am not a detective!"

"Pardon me, I should have said, 'not incompetent'.  If it gets to be a huge problem we have the ability to implement more safety features, given that you aren't an active fan of people killing each other over you.  Really, it happens rarely, and almost never happens more than once or twice, and among the cases where it happens at all it's rare for it the whodunnit to be very mysterious, especially given that the victim is shortly resurrected.  ...Though sometimes the victims turn out to be attempting to manufacture sympathy or are trying to frame someone."

"How are you pitching any of this to these people, you're making it sound like they will all be remarkably invested not just in showing up and playing along but also in landing me specifically."

"Well, normally we apply psychological alterations about that.  This time, we're trying to do a lot with selection?  And we're casting more than zero people who are not necessarily, we may say, here for the 'right reasons', and of course anyone who's here for drama is going to be more likely to kill others than those who are sincerely trying to win affection."

"But like, selection for what. Selection for being delighted about learning that they are Empress Belladonna's husband's alt and that there's a me up for grabs?"

"No, everyone except the constructed personality is from previously-uncontacted 'verses.  Selection for willingness to authentically go along with the premise when the alternative is going back to being dead.  Where applicable."

"Are you even telling Empress Belladonna's husband's alt or whoever most closely matches that description about that? I suppose this would deprive some terrible people of their fun."

"Not by default, no."

"Is it cheating to ask everybody early about how they were recruited?"

"Nope!"

"Oh okay cool neat I was super expecting that to be cheating."

"Why?"

"It seems like it trivializes a lot of the intentionally placed challenge! Like, I assume they can lie, but unless you're giving them my stalking dossier and you're picking good actors, what you had to tell them to get them on board and how they relate to that is big."

"Putting a blanket ban on you asking important compatibility questions is not the best way to achieve our goals."

"I mean, I was assuming I was allowed to ask them what they like to do in their spare time and see how they react to me bragging about my apparently-fruitlessly-anonymous life accomplishment and stuff, the inner workings of the recruitment process just seemed different in kind. I am pleasantly surprised."

"It's getting meta in ways that distance you from the suitors that bothers us, not doing it in ways that bring you closer together.  And we're threatening all of them with death; it's not like any of them will have an egregiously wrong-reasons answer."

"Gotcha. I think. Your manner of thinking is twisty and I do not vouch that I definitely understand it in all particulars."

"I apologize for that, to the extent that it's under my control.  Demonstration?"

"Demonstration of what?"

"The force field."  He picks up an adjacent paperweight sculpture thing and tosses it hand to hand.

"...ssssssure."

Journey chucks it at Cam's chest and a pale blue barrier appears an inch or so out from his lapel, warbling as it catches and then drops the metal ball.  Which tries to land on his lap, but gets caught there too before flomphing off the side of his leg onto the couch.

"How does it decide what gets through, I'm still successfully contacting the cushion I'm sitting on."

"It's fairly sophisticated on filtering things that would harm the person inside.  If you put it in a very confusing situation with a lot of inputs it might stutter on safe things for a split second."

"Nifty. - hey, speaking of things I may have erroneously suspected I wasn't allowed to do, summoning yes or no?"

"You're welcome to take actions that would normally lead to summoning, but they won't work here.  It's very secure and there's a strict whitelist of allowed entities."

"Alas. ...about how much time is passing in my world while we're at this?"

"Twenty-some seconds per year, though it got somewhat of a head start while we were collecting you.  Your parents heard you died about an hour ago, if that's what you're asking."

"I assume there's no cute 'meet each other's families and incidentally reassure them that we're not dead' episode, you didn't mention one."

"No, that's what Hometowns are!  Episode six.  And as the protagonist you can bring them in for establishing your background in the first episode and occasional advisory phone calls after that; we'll keep them comfortable."

"Do you make ominous choices about how to phrase your reassurances on purpose?"

"Only sometimes!  We will not mind control them; we will put them in a setup similar to your luxurious after-season deal where they are distantly accessible to provide heartwarming advice but don't take up too much screentime.  If you consent that we should grab them."

"And they can go home, thoroughly alive, whenever they want, and are not in solitary confinement whenever I'm not personally paying attention to them...?"

"Thoroughly alive, yes; solitary confinement, no; going home, also no.  Luxury pocket dimension with plenty of ambient vacationing people and a city with lots of exciting activities for Renée and a fishing hole for Charlie."

"Ambient vacationing people of what ilk?"

"Those from within the CRC who will abide by their NDAs and we think will make good neighbors; often this means people who care about the show very little.  If you have additional specifications we might be able to meet them."

"And if I don't call them in early, they show up in episode six anyway."

"It's been done more than zero times, to skip them - some people don't have parents, for example - but it would eat a lot of your negotiation budget."

"Well then might as well grab them ahead of time I guess."

"Noted.  Let's see, what's next... would you like to no longer need sleep?"

"Will I still, like, be able to if I feel like it?"

"Mm-hm!"

"Sure sounds keen."

Fingersnap.  This one doesn't feel like anything either.  "Sometimes filming goes pretty long, and we don't want you overtired.  Though like I said, we'll try not to let it get too tedious."

"Thanks."

"Do you have any carrots you'd like to request?  I certainly can't guarantee we'll be able to get them, but I can try."

"The alt of me you have trapped in a less tortuous than his previous digs but still unpleasant permanent studio audience membership, is he - improvable."

"...I've tried a lot of things.  You can talk to him, if you'd like.  I don't know whether it'd help."

"Is that a thing you've tried, having an alt talk to him?"

"No.  ...I could ask the psychic about it, I suppose."

"Sounds like the kind of thing that could help if you have him on tap."

A notecard sparkles into place.

"Hm."  He passes it to Cam.

Hi again, Cam.  You've definitely snapped at least one or two instances of Kib out of the no-thinking thing he does in order to prevent torture guys from getting at his thoughts before, but this one has already done that.  I have no idea what method the guy with my face used to accomplish that, to be honest, and very little idea whether you're likely to help at this stage, although I admit I would enjoy seeing you try.  Take the out if you need it, though; cheers.

- Nudge

"So when you say he's a powerful psychic..."

"Powerful and strangely targeted."

"What does he mean by 'take the out'?"

Second notecard!

You know, if you don't feel like experiencing a bummer and/or doing a lot of talking to yourself.

"What kinds of things have you already tried?"

"Increasing his attentional capacity, at first, talking to him, playing various sorts of media around him, offering him things - ultimately what worked as much as it did was leaving him basically alone for a very long time - he dreams back any lost memories, which he knew from before the torture fortress because he was reincarnated - and after everything was in place he eventually got bored enough to - wake up."

"Wow. Okay, I'll... mull on that on the backburner, I guess."

"There are some pretty bad universes.  That specific kind mostly isn't around here, though; I had to go pretty far afield to fetch him."

"How did you know to do that?"

"I am more than zero psychic, just much less so."

"...how's yours work?"

"Sometimes I just know things.  Usually things that would help the production in some way, even when my superiors disagree."

"What kinds of things? How are those disagreements resolved?"

"These days they mostly just listen to me.  For example - well, everything about how we're handling you, but for a different example, the season with all the murders, 752, was outstandingly popular compared to others around it, and some higher-ups wanted to do a slow pivot into more violence-based setup.  But I felt, not just in a moral sense but, you know, psychically, that this would decrease our ratings dramatically below that of gladiator shows with equivalent budgets, which were already lower than our usual ones.  And we don't get to find out how things would have shaken out in a multiverse where we did something else, but we've continued to grow in popularity since then, on the whole.  Back at the start it was much smaller things: advising a batch to wear this outfit, revealing that information to a contestant at this time, saying these words to comfort someone just eliminated.  And the rest of production got more and more willing to trust me with these things over time."

"Huh. I guess that goes a long way to why someone might do mind control slavery to a psychic guy."

"I do get paid."

"Mind-control serfdom where instead of the land you are tied to the show? Mind-control indefinite indenture?"

"Something like that."

"Do you have opportunities to spend your pay or does it just notionally accumulate somewhere?"

"There are opportunities, though I don't normally use many of them.  I donate much of it."

"Cool." Sigh. "Why can't my parents go home if they want?"

"One, it's somewhat expensive to travel to and from non-CRC 'verses, so we'd rather keep them around for whenever you'd like to call them.  Two, risk of spoilers to gossip publications; someone else might track them down back to your world and ask them questions, and it's much cheaper to hole them up somewhere safe and nice, which we've already got set up, than it is to pay a novel security detail for them for the whole time.  Three, it in various ways does not always go super great when one drops people off outside of the connected multiverse and back into their normal lives without immediately also doing a proper first contact."

"...what form does a 'proper' first contact take?"

"Varies substantially.  But, some sort of official group trying to onboard the whole world, rather than individuals with no special evidence that what they say is true, no power to introduce communication, and a very narrow slice of an idea of what the multiverse holds, talking to their friends or the local authorities."

"I resemble that remark. Albeit incompletely."

Journey smiles.  "Mmhm.  But your parents..."

"Well, what happens if they try demonic forensics on any of this?"

"I'm not sure of the exact mechanism by which it wouldn't work, but I'm confident it wouldn't for things here.  Too magic, too far away, our specific shielding blocks it, a combination...  They could probably get a lot of other places in the multiverse fine, but not this one.  But also, this is not the tack most likely to convince me to throw them back into your pond, as it were."

"Do I get to go home, when I'm done?"

"If you want."

"Again, the ominous reassurances..."

"We aren't going to mind control you about it.  It's a big multiverse.  If you are become Empress Belladonna, savior of worlds, who knows what your ideal base of operations will look like?"

"Okay but there's base of operations and there's can I go check on the place and then dip out again and your ominousness made it kind of sound like, sure, I could go home, one way trip though."