Well, some of those things can be fixed, but most of them would require invasive surgery for marginal benefit. "No acute issues," he reports. "Let me know if - actually, this goes for all of you: let me know if you ever feel particularly under the weather, and I'll take a look and see what I can do. I can cure rather a lot of illnesses."

"—can you share? I mean, can you—teach other people to cure illnesses?"

Taharqi had found Tintin's not-magic interesting enough, sort of, something between a cool party trick and an interesting way to be more efficient about resources, but at that he sounds much more interested. Intense, even.

"...to an extent. I can't make another omni-tool, not without a lot of resources I don't have, but I could print you a field medicine guide. ...and teach you about germ theory - disease is caused by tiny animals, too small to see, they can't survive boiling water and that's why you boil water before you drink it but there's actually a lot more implications of it than that, I should - do you have paper, or papyrus or parchment or anything like that -"

"—I do but it's not urgent. Or any more urgent than anything else. Sorry if I came off—it's just, I'm—somewhat very closely acquainted with just how many people die of things we have no idea how to deal with."

"I know. It's - you know, I had fantasies, as a child, about going back in time and teaching Aristotle about orbital mechanics, Hippocrates germ theory. I think everyone back home does, honestly, or everyone with a certain mindset. Now I'm here and it all just feels... overwhelming. Like if I don't teach you everything I know I'll be failing you and everyone else on this planet."

Wow that's a level of taking responsibility even greater than Taharqi's, he's impressed.

"Well, perhaps what we should do is prioritise? As in, create a priority list."

"...not a bad idea. Probably germ theory is relatively high on the priority list... also, morbid as it may seem, I might want to reprogram my omni-tool so that if I die it will teach someone else to use it."

"...right, you could die. I was so caught up in thinking of you as a nigh-omnipotent sorcerer I forgot."

"Could always try to get him a bracelet," Sendhei suggests.

"One, he'd be trapped here with us, and two, where would you even find one, they go inert after their bearer dies."

"...I mean, where did the Kushites get yours? You're right that it'd be inconvenient to be trapped here, though..."

"No idea! My best guess had been that they were a myth to scare people right up until I woke up nailed to a cross in the desert bearing one. Sorcery is rare enough that I'd never heard of anyone using it, and I'm the kind of person who would have. Given what the staff said, they probably just have a stash of these for whenever they need it, since the artefacts needed to create them are all here in the Exiled Lands."

"Huh. - and you don't count gods turning sticks into serpents as sorcery, right."

"—no. Those are miracles. I imagine there might be sorceries that can do that? I'm not sure, there is not a lot of knowledge to be found on the subject and it is very taboo most everywhere."

"Right. So... God, now I'm wondering if I should have some kind of password for the omni, so that you could use it if it passes on to you but some random would-be tyrant can't use it to conquer the world in a few centuries if we fail. But maybe a tyrant who raises the tech level sufficiently would be better than the natural evolution of human civilization? The natural evolution of human civilization sucked."

"It's still wild that you're from the future. How did it suck?"

"Most ways. War, famine, the unrelenting oppression of everyone by everyone else whose boot could reach their faces. Right now, the most relevant is the usual refrain of cholera, malaria, smallpox... Smallpox was the first disease we eradicated. And good fucking riddance."

"...I don't know what those are but the translation magic is rendering that last one as... the pustule plague? I thought that was sent by the gods."

"Well, fuck the gods if it is, but ours wasn't, because we have no gods, so it probably isn't their work. Or if it is, they're stealing our notes."

"I would have kind liked it if the gods stole the kinds of notes that let your omni tool work and not the kinds that involves plagues, personally," opines Sendhei.

He belatedly starts serving everyone food. "Dried nuts and berries with cactus fruit sap," he says, though Tintin is probably used by now to the food Taharqi makes being a lot tastier than it sounds like it should be.

Tintin eats with the undiscriminating biotic hunger that his companions are also probably, by now, used to.

"I already have a large number of extremely pointed questions for your gods," he agrees with Sendhei. "Perhaps I will become so great a sorcerer as to topple their thrones and demand answers at gunpoint. Or perhaps I will delegate the sorcery to Taharqi; I have an intuition it may be more his wheelhouse."

"I'm not so sure it agrees with my constitution; I like all of my blood being where it is."

("Coulda fooled me...")

"The reason I say so is... mm. The concept of comparative advantage, you will not know it by name but – if in your city you have a man who has a natural talent for everything, one who can do anything better than anyone around him, what should he do?"