each of them one more reason to wonder

"Sure, but that doesn't help your great great great grandparents."

"Huh. Well, but you care what they want, and it's not impossible that a structure mage could someday rebuild someone - maybe it will be impossible if we make a wish, but no one knew that might happen - and people in the past went around hiding their brains too. Admittedly they wouldn't've been picturing a peaceful empire that cared about them getting to be alive and happy, when they pictured people who might bring them back."

"Well, we're a peaceful federation and we care about them getting to be alive and happy."

"Is there a manageable number to do today - you won't be able to find a lot of people who would have strong feelings about them getting to be alive and happy, you could find, like, historians who want to spy on them and I don't think that's what you want here."

"A manageable number of - what, resurrections? Uh, let me get a ballpark estimate how many people have died on this planet." One water molecule per and a scale, whaddawegot.

Lots. Not as many as most Earths, but still, lots.

"- yeah, this would be an absolutely massive undertaking just to resurrect, let alone the logistics to rehome and bring back up to speed," says the demon, shaking her head. "We don't need strong feelings for standard resurrections, strong feelings are for wishes and resurrections we can do in large amounts, but we can't do it all this week."

"Then they're going to stay dead."

"- maybe we could conjure the bodies in advance, and then keep them in stasis till we're ready to complete the resurrections," suggests the demon. "Since only the conjuration will be blocked by the protective wish."

"That might work! We can keep things in stasis pretty easily."

"I was imagining covering it with another wish and leaving them in Mîr but it's possible your solution is better, how does it scale and how reversible is it?"

"Off the top of my head I don't have specifics but it's worked in the past sometimes and in the past it's also resulted in a lot of statues we don't know what to do with that can no longer be restored - unless we resurrect a particular person who could bring them back - and which we also can't destroy. Probably doing it over a shorter timescale would be fine."

"...I think probably we'll go with the wish in that case. I hope we can figure out something to do with your statues but it sounds like they'll keep." Deep breath. "Okay. Do you need to consult anyone else about going ahead with prepping for the Mîr plan?"

"Yeah, that's the kind of thing that's... probably Minister Seihra's job to sign off on, I think, although it might end up needing everyone because it's going to make so much more work for the judiciary rounding up records of which people were executed on purpose."

"We don't need those records now, we aren't going to complete any resurrections today, we're just going to conjure bodies to maintain option value."

"Okay. And, uh, is this going to involve us needing to store a lot of frozen bodies, is it going to involve telling a bunch of demons about us before we can prevent them conjuring everything we've ever made..."

"We can store them, and we can keep it to just the demons on the crew till the wish is made."

"Sounds good to me. Run it by Minister Seihra, who'll be the one rounding up people with strong feelings about privacy and explaining the situation to the public anyway. Come with me, there are phones for the ministers' secretaries in another room."

The demon follows.

The thing that is translating as "phones" is actually a type of paired illusion-and-scrying device. The fearless and slightly edgelordy belul gets hold of the minister's secretary, explains the urgency, gets hold of the minister, and explains the situation.

"Yes, we'll do that," the minister answers. "While we're working on transit and finding people with strong emotions, someone who knows how Mîr's magic works should speak with a spell designer about what exactly we want - maybe Exav, a belul force mage who does command design for the empire and shouldn't be doing anything urgent today. Make that happen. And are there requirements beyond strong emotions? I expect we can filter for something else at very little cost."

"I'll call in a liaison from Mîr. The strong emotion needs to be related to the subject of the wish, but it can be positive or negative - both is even better - and they need to be trustworthy to make only the agreed-on wish. Plus they'll be going to Mîr, but all of you will be going to Mîr, so -

- oh, hm. Some magic systems are by planet but some are by world. If any babies are being born, or conceived, or hatched, or whatever the critical point in your magic system is, it's possible being in Mîr would interfere with them getting magic."

"I can have the person placed under a temporary command not to make any unapproved wish - finding someone who'll accept may still not narrow it down to a manageable number of candidates. I'll announce the other potential problem in case any soon-to-be mothers hear about it and want to have a defense mage freeze them for the trip, and it sounds like if anyone does miss the announcement we have several options for fixing any problems that might result."

"Okay, that sounds good. Uh, let's see, anything else... there's a species that requires a particular kind of solar radiation but we're bringing your sun with you... getting to Mîr from here via known worlds requires going through a world where gravity works differently, possibly we should do a test planet or go on a quick shortcut-hunt to make sure being there for a fraction of a second won't be an issue... you'll also be passing through some planets with inborn magic features of their own, which should be mentioned to soon-to-be-mothers too..."

"There are many uninhabited planets in this universe that you may use for your test. I can include information about other worlds' magics in the announcement. Do you have a list of them?"