"Your magic seems really poorly understood for being common knowledge."

"Yeah, it kind of doesn't make much sense to science? At least, not the underlying source. Science did a good job looking at monster trends and kinds of powers spirit bearers get most often and stuff like that."

"Make much sense -?"

"Felix complains about it a lot. 'Not friendly to experiments'. 'Tiny sample size.' 'Animals don't actively undermine biologists'."

"Actively undermining? How d'you figure?"

"He claims the monsters he studies are actively deceiving him about their behavior and true nature. If his Em-Dar ever works it'll be revolutionary though. Like RADAR but for magic."

"Is emdar itself magical?"

"I think so, but only in a very-technically-slightly way. He can make it react to a spirit bearer walking near a lot of big equipment - but it's no good even as a security door type thing yet. Too big. And I don't know the science behind it all."

"I don't know if my kind of magic is in principle detectable."

"Took him four decades to even get that far! I'll have to bargain with a genie to let him keep going in another two or three."

"How'll you do that?"

"Talk to a lot of them, figure out what random stuff they've fixated on recently, and find one who wants something I can help with."

"Like what?"

"Maybe it wants to see a certain kind of monster. Maybe it wants to experience the mysterious joys of electronic banking. Maybe it wants me to collect a bunch of a certain kind of insect. Maybe it wants to design a huge fireworks show. Maybe it wants to talk to Borbados and needs an introduction to not get smushed."

"Genies are sorta random. Where do they come from?"

"They just happen, like spirits. They wander so much and have such weird conversation patterns that it's nearly impossible to get good statistics on where they appear, though."

"What's weird about their conversations?"

"I really can't put it into words. But 'random' is definitely right. And they don't seem to have very good memories."

"Sucks to be them. Doesn't admit of magical help? They can't write things down?"

"Also mostly don't seem to care about past events. Only enough to decide 'oh, that spirit hates me I'd better stay away from his mountain'. Writing and reading is one of the things they fixate on, occasionally. Doesn't seem to do them any good."

"Howso?"

"Well, once they're satisfied with their library... Excursion, they fixate on something else and don't bother reading anything basically ever again."

"And they don't take notes about their own lives or anything? They don't have zero continuity, right -?"

"No notes. They'll write things if it happens to be convenient later or excessive notes about their current obsession that get forgotten just as soon as they finish again, and they do have a little continuity. Especially for deals they've agreed to. And they can learn procedural stuff, and their personalities can change over time."

"Gradually? I'm just sort of wondering if they get a new personal identity now and then."