"I don't know what a genie is. It seems to be its own thing." The girl is examining a heap of napkins. "Interdimensional bar."

"Huh. Interdimensional. Genies are wandering spirits. Big magic, really weird personalities." She peers at one of the napkins.

Nonmagical, medium-sized, nonliving nonweapons, reads the napkin.

"I don't think we have those."

"Well, you don't have genies, but you do look magic. Unless that's different too."

"I'm magic, I don't dress like this recreationally. I mean, I could change the outfit, but I haven't."

"Oh, the outfit comes with the magic for us, too. You can aim yours?"

"Start with a default, can change it by magic if I want."

"We don't get to edit our outfits, or at least it's less common, just our arma. I'm guessing there's a no-weapons-or-general-threatening-or-destructive-stuff policy in here?"

"What's arma? And no, you can have weapons, the bar can't sell them. No violence in the main bar area, backyard or upstairs is not Security-monitored though."

"Arma are our weapons! Every Spirit Bearer gets one. The best focus of power we have, cuts through monsters like nothing else. It starts as a spear, and if you get strong enough and want to devote the effort, you can pivot."

She steps back a bit and with a bit of a glow, she's holding a short sword made of lots of tiny pieces, which bends and flexes. "Behold! The whipsword! It plays into my fighting style really well." It goes away with another glow after a second of showing off.

"Huh, we get signature weapons but they all start out different and don't really change. I just got a shield but it suits my style fine."

"Neat. How does an interdimensional bar get away with not being common knowledge, though? Not that I'm complaining, it's a fun surprise!"

"It only appears at, like, whim, you might be the only person ever from your world to get a door to it or something."

"Well that's not very polite of it. You'd think they'd want more business."

"Not exactly, it's magic and seems to have infinity of everything and can access, quote, 'more than an octillion' worlds."

"...I remember science teachers hammering orders of magnitude into my head and that is a big number wow."

"Yeah I stopped asking when I got that high."

"I mean, that's like as many stars as there are in the universe... My universe. Well, maybe, I don't know stars." She sits down. "...You guys have a monster problem, like my world does?"

"I assume not exactly like, but yeah, we have a monster problem."

"Monsters. If they work differently this is probably moot, but maybe sharing tactics could help each other?" 

"Are your monsters magical girls who run out of emotional and magical energy and then turn into despair creatures that spread mental illness among normals wherever they go as part of a magical ecosystem being siphoned from and perpetuated by evil aliens?"

"Uh. No. They just... Happen. Holy shit that's nasty. Wraiths are kind of like that, spirit bearers who ran out of magic and were in a bad place emotionally, turned into revenge monsters. Hot damn. If the aliens story checks out I'd be willing to lend some firepower."

"Firepower isn't the problem. If the witches went extinct the magical girls would run out of recharges and there's be more overnight. If you killed all of us too the aliens can just make more. I think the aliens could be appeased but I need a good free energy hack."

"...There's this guy whose job is basically 'power plant'."

"What's his output and how's he feel about working for evil aliens?"

"Something like a few hundred megawatts and I have no clue."

"Not gonna cut it."

"I mean, maybe you could convince a genie to make an infinite energy thing, but it'd probably be way smaller than Transistor's output. Gaah. This ticks me off. Can only imagine you you feel about it."

"Oh, it gets worse."

"Evil aliens making monsters. Making monsters! And magical girls who turn into monsters if they don't keep fighting. What else?"

"I'm stuck in a time loop. It has been late January and February for years now and I still don't know how to stop the world from ending."

"Ouch."

"There's a witch that gets big enough by the end of February to eat the entire world. The evil aliens let her do it; she's some kinda feedback-loopy witch that they can use just as well as they can the current status quo."

"So the end of the world is fine is it, because we're still getting our profit out. I swear it's like the damn mining companies all over again and augh I'm going to go outside for a minute and vent so I don't explode something in here."

"...okay. Back door over there, if you let the front one close with you in your world it's gone."

"I'll be back. Got a couple of ideas. But yeah, bye for a minute."

She takes to the air with a burst of fire as soon as she's out the back door.

Nobody will mind a crater or two out here, hopefully.

And then she comes back in and looks for her magic acquaintance again.

Still by the bar, reading new napkins and drinking a milkshake.

"Hello again. I just realized I never introduced myself - Selene Cortez, Windfury if you wanna use my stage name."

"Bella Swan."

"Nice to meet you. Nice as it can be. So, ideas, you said 'emotional energy'. Is your sort of magic closely tied to your emotions?"

"Not exactly. We sorta run on magic batteries. We get a charge capacity, which starts at 100%, based on how happy we are to get the wish that turns us magic. The wishes are legit, as far as they go, with some power limitations that vary per person. The capacity runs down with magic use and acts as a ratchet on mood, and at low levels negative emotions also drain it. Run out, turn into a witch. Recharge by taking dead witch byproducts and offloading drain onto them."

"I was thinking we could try some projective empathy. See if that recharges you."

"Well that's terrifying but if it works..."

"Lots of people are dubious about it, yeah. Rosa's trustworthy with that power, as far as my word goes. She's a therapist."

"The evil aliens are fond of bipolar girls and I've met a few who have nasty things to say about therapists."

"How about the fact that I'd punch her in the face if I thought she was screwing with people's heads, and so would most every other Spirit Bearer I know?"

"Well, the thing about anything mind-control flavored is you not thinking so is even less of a guarantee than it would be by default."

"Mind control is an occasional thing and there's a longstanding tradition of lynching, not that I approve of lynching, anyone who's not scrupulously harmless with their mental powers. But if you don't want to believe it I can't convince you."

"If I walk out of here with a solution at all it'll probably look like mind control, considering, it'd be irresponsible to turn you down, but I'm not gonna be super comfy with it."

"This is assuming I can get Rosa here at all without going away from the door. Don't honestly know if I have cell phone reception where the other side is. I'll go check."

She doesn't have reception. "...Dammit."

"You might be able to get some kind of signal booster from the bar. She takes counterfeit and I have magic counterfeit powers."

"From the bartender? I haven't seen one."

"From the bar. She's a magical sapient bar." Pat pat.

"Ooh! I didn't even notice, sorry Bar."

It's quite all right. Can I interest you in a drink? First one's free.

"Sure, thanks. Something sweet and big, no alcohol. Clear heads needed today."

Juice!

It's good juice! "So I hear you might be able to sell a phone signal booster?" She reveals her phone, an old and simple thing. 2002 or something.

Yes, I can. How far do you need to boost signal?

"Thirty kilometers should do it. I know there's a train station at least that close, and I had signal there."

Bar produces an object.

She attempts to use it to make a call... Success! 

Rosa is wondering why she has to go to a middle of nowhere village, and shouldn't you be coming back by now, you said you'd killed the monster?

"Bella... Can I bribe Rosa and a driver with your counterfeit?"

"I have no idea if my currency'll be valuable in your world but I have some jewelry and stuff and Bar can do currency exchange, sure."

She talks some more. Rosa is eventually convinced to come out here with a combination of promises of money and insistence that she might be helping a lot of people. It'll take a few hours.

"Even if Rosa can recharge you, you still need to save the world, though. It just makes the end game not a vicious cycle."

"Yeah, I'm going to just park here till I have a complete solution. Rosa probably isn't even part of one but it'd be a useful demonstration in principle."

"...I. Hm. It's probably an unacceptably dangerous experiment to get you our kind of magic. I don't know if it would even be possible."

"What's involved?"

"You find a fade - a ghost that was a spirit bearer - who has a compatible personality and they give you magic. Or you make a deal with a genie or nature spirit and they give you magic and then hold you to the deal. Or you be evil enough that a monster forces magic on you without even asking because it thinks you'll do harm with it. The transformation itself is very, intense. And technically I am now a magical creature that happens to look and think a lot like a human."

"Eh, that's nothing, I'm technically this rock." She taps the back of her hand. "They don't even tell you that part up front, it's a surprise! But yeah, seems hard to coordinate a fade hunt without losing the door."

"Actually, Borbados, the mountain spirit, owes me a lot of favors. I might be able to convince him to activate you, if Rosa or someone else will hold the door for an hour."

"Ooh."

"Yeah. I'm just not sure if it'll interact badly, or if it's even possible, given that you're apparently a rock."

"Yeah, there's risk. Anything that might work has risk, probably. Are there, like, advance diagnostics that may help?"

"...If I call in a lot of favors, I might be able to get one question from this short-term precog up in New York."

"I am happy to compensate these favors with any material object that I have or the bar can sell."

"Yeah, I'm kind of set for material possessions? It's not that I don't care about that stuff at all, so I'll take some gold or whatever, but it's not a condition here."

"Well, Bar sells otherworldly material possessions."

"Hmm... Like, crazy fancy tech? Your napkin earlier said no magic and no weapons."

"Yeah, like crazy fancy tech or books or whatever."

"I could use some crazy fancy tech. Especially if it comes with books on how to make it. I've got a friend who'll eat that stuff up like crazy."

Bella gestures at the bar.

"So Bar... Any recommendations on where to start? Things useful in the wilderness generally - except not mobility, I've got that covered. Also, environmentally cooperative electricity."

You may need to be more specific about what things you find yourself in need of while about in the wilderness. But she can do nifty little solar panels, or if they don't need to be as portable tidecatchers and burrowing geothermal-differential poles and such.

"I don't really know where to start! The electrical stuff doesn't need to be portable, yeah. Those poles look neat. Indestructible binoculars?"

True indestructibility is the province of magic, but there are many extremely durable options.

"And with fancy tech for really good zoom and stabilization and thermal or UV maybe. And a rangefinder. 'Cause I'm getting the sense that what I consider science fiction might be accessible to you."

The bar offers up a set of binoculars in shiny enameled black casing.

She investigates them excitedly! The controls are clear enough, and the different modes work.

"Do I want to know how much these would have cost if Bella hadn't offered to cover it? ...Yeah, I think I do."

In its local currency, 350 primar. In the particularly dense currency she is spending due to the nature of her counterfeit, 6 century coins. In USD, $400 million.

"Ho-ly... Something. Do you have, like, a technology library? Books on how-to-do-x where x is saltwater purifying, or new cell phones, or medical stuff."

I have every book ever published.

Selene will spend a while browsing and choosing books on offer. 

After an hour or so she selects her choices to be sent to her shiny new Bar sourced laptop and turns to Bella, "If we're going to try to give you our magic I gotta tell you some more stuff. But some of it might be common knowledge to me and I won't even think to say it."

"You could tell me your life story and I will point out when things seem weird."

"Sure. So, I was growing up waay back when the Americans were trying to dig the canal - the Panama Canal, I'm originally from Panama - but they were being hugely wasteful. Blasting though rock, letting runoff go into the ocean, dumping dredging material into streams, that kind of thing. It ticked off the local nature spirits real bad, and nobody from the government really told them boo because they were paying huge amounts of money for the time in taxes."

"You can talk to nature spirits if you want, they just usually don't have much to say. Well, I went and talked to Borbados. Explained what was going on as best I could. Then around the area to talk to more spirits. They said a canal was not completely out of the question, it just had to be done more responsibly. So, Borbados offered me magic if I would spend twenty years in service to the balance of nature near him. And my first job was to talk some sense into the canal guys."

"We don't have nature spirits. Although we do have the Panama Canal. What do nature spirits do?"

"They care about the health of the natural world. They try to maintain it in the way they think is 'right'. Mountain spirits care about the streams flowing and the scrub that grows on slopes, and the foragers that eat it. Ocean spirits care about the currents and fish population. Marsh spirits care about their algae, insects, and pollution a lot more than average. Humans don't feature into this too much, though things like gathering firewood and light, responsible hunting is usually tolerable. Strip mining and slash-and-burn aren't. Human help with stuff like drought and flooding is welcome, though. Their bodies are not completely physical and can appear anywhere in their domain, usually some kind of fanciful creature-like thing. I'm not sure whether they can actually do less varied magic than genies - which is 'just about everything if they feel like it and have the juice' - or they just don't."

"I vaguely remember reading that in some ecosystems slash-and-burn is sustainable. How long have they existed? How do they feel about slow processes like desertification or things like beaver dams?"

"I don't know the origins so it might well be 'always'? At least a couple hundred years. Our history isn't too well documented - feels like monsters go for historical things specifically sometimes, it's very irritating. Beaver dams and so on, depends on the individual spirits a lot. I bet they'd tell beavers to stop expanding after a certain point and kill them if they didn't. I was referring to permanent land clearing with slash-and-burn, though."

"- do you have evolutionary theory -? It seems sort of implausible that you have beavers and also have nature spirits who used to be really attached to pristine vistas teeming with anaerobic bacteria. Do the spirits not answer if you ask how old they are - or is there spirit turnover -"

"We do have evolutionary theory. The nature spirits resist change, but not quite so punishingly on evolutionary timescales. I thought you meant, like, beavers invading a new area. They get pushed back, but not completely exterminated. And spirits can die or new ones form, yes."

"I wonder if they've had much macro effect on - things - is your world an Earth?"

"Yeah, that's what it's called?"

"About how many nature spirits are there?"

"Hm... I'd say, one every hundred or two kilometers? Much less dense in the ocean and a bit less dense in barren places like deserts or the arctic. Probably ten thousand is the right order of magnitude, at least."

"Do they jointly cover the planet or are there gaps?"

"There's some gaps, big gaps turn into a new spirit being born sooner or later, there's some overlapping claims too. There's a river spirit that claims half the rivers and streams in Central America, but the more local spirits also protect those rivers."

"What kills 'em when they die?"

"Too much change in too short a time, like big natural disasters or oil spills, can do it. Magical damage too. Other nature spirits who want to expand. Genies randomly deciding to take out a weak spirit. Monsters attack everything. Spirit bearers, sometimes."

"Is 'magical damage' a natural category?"

"Uh... It's pretty distinct from 'physical damage' if that's what you mean? There's things that only hurt magic and not physical objects?"

"What is magical damage?"

"It's magical damage. Being hit by some hurts like hell if you run on magic but isn't a big deal otherwise? I mean... What's space? It's space. Things can be in it. I don't know."

"Well, like, we don't have this, I'm magical because I can do magic and I can do magic bolt attacks but if I'm damaged it's damage to my body or the rock, or there's gem drain..."

"Well, I suppose you could say it's like pouring into a leaky bottle - the bottle is my total magical power and incoming water is magical damage. If it overflows, you die. If it gets near the top, you become highly emotional and kind of manic and unstable. We can take damage off someone else- Wait, want to try that?"

She holds out her gem.

She touches it with a pointed finger.

"...I can tell there's something there, but there's no damage to pull."

"Oh well."

"Magical damage really sucks, though. You heal best when you sleep, but it also makes for really vivid and memorable dreams. Not always pleasant. That reminds me. Damage to a spirit bearer's body is uncontrollably, rapidly regenerated, in exchange for some amount of magical damage. Can't suppress it."

"- and you'd want to because magical damage sucks so much?"

"Yeah. At least for a little while, to keep the pain managable. Or because you're close to your limit on damage and would rather be missing a hand for a few hours than die."

"I can regenerate from literally nothing left of my body if I have enough charge and my gem's intact."

"Good for you! We can regenerate from nothing too... It's just I wish choosing not to quite yet was an option."

"Well, it's not super optional for us either, if we don't we'll run out of charge. Is why it works that way known?"

"Nope. Monsters seem to work the same way, but nature spirits and genies don't."

"Is 'monster' a natural category?"

"A few - a very rare few - aren't particularly evil and aggressive, but anything that's magic, and not a nature spirit or genie or spirit bearer or an object or construct made by same, is a monster. Almost all of them rot human constructions near them, attack and kill anything that moves, spew toxic slime, or do other bad things like make people more violent and suspicious, kind of like your mental monsters."

"What makes the nonevil ones different?"

"They're more like wild animals. Keep to themselves, sit under bridges or act all territorial about a particular tree, and if one eats you it's probably because you provoked it."

"Okay, but why?"

"Who knows why small monsters act the way they do? Only Named Beasts talk."

"And a Named Beast is?"

"...A big monster. The kind that almost always refuses to properly die after a beatdown and runs away to attack somewhere else later. The kind that can ruin whole cities if left to rampage long enough. The Evertree. The Hydra. The Monster King. Abbadon. And the Miasmata. There's more, about four per continent, those are the ones whose ranges cover where I usually am..."

"Continent here defined such that Earth has seven of them?"

"Six? Unless Antarctica's your seventh. No monsters there for the most part. Because no humans there for the most part, is the going theory."

"Antarctica's seventh. Why do monsters go near humans?"

"It's just how they work. Monsters hate humans and do everything they can to destroy us for the most part. Some theories say we're creating them. That they're a gestalt of our fears and biases and violent tendencies. Can't rule it out, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence for it as opposed to other ideas, like pollution doing it, or them always being there and only attacking humans a lot more recently."

"Do you have that big patch of floating junk in the Pacific? If pollution did it..."

"I wouldn't know, to be honest."

"Possible I should be getting my information from Bar, I guess."

"You might be able to get encyclopedia-style stuff like that, but it'll probably miss a lot of the daily life of a Spirit Bearer."

"Yeah. Ideal would be getting encyclopedia overview first, but time's weird in here."

"I'm going to spend days in here. Not including when I get around to holding the door so time passes for Rosa, and making those calls to New York to hopefully secure precog time."

"Yeah, but it's weird as in inconsistent, if we aren't interacting your days could be my minutes."

"If I sit next to you and read another world's novels and drink interesting things for a few hours it probably won't, right?"

"Yeah."

"So I'll do that and you can read an encyclopedia and related works. I kind of want to spar, but since that drains your charge..."

"It actually doesn't do that here, or I'd be in a tearing hurry, which as you can see I'm not."

"Oh, huh, that's great news for you! Except it still doesn't sound like sparring is a particularly enthusing idea."

"Not especially. My fighting style is 'stop time, shoot at it'."

She giggles. "Well, that'd do it. Time stuff... I don't think I've ever even heard of a spirit bearer getting loops, and just slowing or stopping is both rare and exhausting. Dead useful during Named Beast fights though."

"I can do lots of stopping. Haven't actually tried slowing but I might be able to do it, it's on-theme, but I prefer not to be obvious about the theme because when the evil aliens notice me I have to reset. I only have the one reset point though."

"Can you bring folk along? Freeze something else in time?"

"Stuff, yes, if I have it on me when I start, people no."

"Clockwork, the most famous time guy on my side, is really good at bringing lots of allies into slowed time, and making monsters see time faster so they're dead slow to us."

"We don't do the code names thing."

"D'you do the cartel thing? Or unions or clans or guilds or holy orders or whatever else there are..."

"Uh, no. Small teams sometimes but magical girls wind up competing for territory more often than cooperating."

"Makes sense with the stiff competition for, well, survival... Spirit bearers only die if we get into a long-term depressive spiral. At least a month long. Or, like, completely stagnate and get stuck in a rut doing things we don't find satisfying."

"And magical damage, you mentioned."

"Yeah, or getting killed by a monster. On the note of terrible fates... If you take a lot of damage and get near your limit, I mentioned, you go all manic and unstable. If you have pent up emotional issues, sometimes 'almost dead' becomes 'effectively dead, transformed into something else'. If you were bored and kind of depressed, a golem. A magical robot that goes through the motions but doesn't really have thoughts anymore. If you had pent up anger and frustration, you might turn into a wraith. Singleminded violent revenge monster. If you're really a specially pent-up messed-up snowflake and were very powerful and one day just snap, you might turn into what we call an 'elemental'. Even if they're kind of just wraiths that are mad at everything and very powerful."

"Why are they called elementals?"

"Not sure. Maybe because they tend to focus on one 'element' for their fury? Tidal waves. Rivers of lava. Earthquakes. Tornadoes. Pools of all-consuming darkness."

"Is it known why these things happen to spiritbearers?"

"It's mostly to do with how we're technically made of magic now? I'm not sure of the details. Small children can't become spirit bearers either, they'll just go insane and turn into something that's not quite genie and not quite monster. Thirteen's the youngest I've heard of thriving afterward."

"- I was gonna read an encyclopedia -"

"Yeah sorry, I'll leave you to it now."

"You're a fun conversationalist and everything, I just like a more top-down understanding."

"Understandable. I'm sure I can pass the time."

And Bella solicits overview material from Bar.

The overview material suggests this Earth is relatively familiar.

There's one Korea, not two. Invasive species are less of a thing. Spearfighting is an important cultural touchstone, and European vs Asian style is a big debate.

Which Korea? What's the deal with the short historical memory?

Probably the 'north' Korea. And that's because monsters have an aura of rot and decay that especially likes written records. It'll fry your hard drive too.

Poor Koreans. Why does it target writing?

No conclusive answer, lots of theories.

Such as?

Writing, being information, is more prone to the small random changes monster auras seem to cause. Writing is the most pure expression of civilization, which is what monsters actually target. Monsters preferentially attack things that humans care about being destroyed, and important historical records are high on that list.

Now that they have computers are they having better luck with redundant copies? Did the printing press help? Or did the damage scale with the robustness of the record?

Well, the Great Depression was apparently caused by a monster nuking the New York Stock Exchange's records of the previous ten years. Backups are now considered an art and a science, and when robustly applied, seem to work pretty well. Hard to say if the printing press helped. Clay tablets suffered just as much as papyrus and so on.

Weird.

Okay, magic stuff besides data decay, what's to be known.

Genies: Don't piss one off. Very random. Tend not to do anything nonconsensual to humans only because Spirit Bearers by and large have sworn to hunt down and kill any who do. A lot of the random magic stuff you'll find (eternal waterspout, wooden bird that flies and sings anyway) probably originally came from a genie, as payment for whatever strange thing they wanted from humans.

Nature Spirits: Are a myth, claim a fringe group that sound a lot like Flat Earthers. Have attention spans measured in weeks or months and can squish most monsters that aren't Named Beasts, and most lone Spirit Bearers, say everyone else. Their powers tend to be nature-themed, but they sometimes do things outside of theme, so they might be as unlimited as genies and just really unimaginative.

Monsters: Are evil. Look at this long list of the different kinds of evil! Goblins will straightforwardly try to stab you. Gremlins will try to sabotage things in such a way that kills you. Gunkers will try to poison food and water supplies. Trolls like to collapse bridges and power lines. Lurkers seem to cause distrust and discontent around them. Rumples preferentially attack small children. And so on.

Are the monster categories natural categories or more like human criminal classifications?

Seems to be the former, at least for the weaker kinds. There are regional differences.

Regional differences?

For example, North American goblins have green skin, pointy ears, and boils. South American goblins have grey, stony skin, and are slower but stronger, but seem to have the same archetypal role.

Any guesses about that? They don't, like, conventionally evolve, right?

They don't seem to evolve. This is widely considered evidence for the 'gestalt of human fears and violent urges' theory.

Do largish expat communities have nonlocal monsters?

It's happened before, but not consistently. The mongols' monsters started plaguing everybody after their various invasions. German monsters showed up sometimes in the UK from 1942 to 1950 or so, what with all the refugees. Though consistent records are hard to come by even with Bar having access to destroyed ones - seems fewer people tried to thoroughly document history since it was such a fruitless exercise.

Huh.

"So while you're here you should get lots of lost books and take them home," she says to Selene.

"Hm? Oh, right, that's a great idea! I don't know what the most important lost books are but I'm sure Bar does."

Bella nods and goes back to quizzing Bar. So, all the refugees? What were the World Wars like here.

"Before I forget, if you somehow get in the mind to fight the Evertree, don't expect time pausing to work. It nullifies stuff."

The World Wars look the same overall, but had frequent ceasefires for battles against Named Beasts, and were overall less vicious and bloody. Spirit bearers, genies, and spirits mostly stayed out of direct combat. Submarine warfare: Not a thing. The second world war ended quicker, none of the Axis nations able to secure any decent number of resources. There's a famous story of German and British pilots working together to bomb the monster Red Rider into oblivion.

"...'Stuff'?" With airquotes. (Nukes y/n?)

"Most complicated magic. Most complicated tech. I can still fly, but I can't do flame constructs that act on their own like usual near it."

Nukes: No.

Nuclear anything never or nukes merely not on Japan in bomb form? "What does 'complicated' mean, here? Time stopping is conceptually simple."

"I mean, most 'advanced' stuff. Not necessarily complicated. It's hard to explain, but I could do examples? And time stopping feels like it would be blocked. But maybe only very close. It blocks more things the closer you get to it."

America's nuclear program did not reach completion before the war ended. The prototype bomb was never detonated, and the Manhattan Project abandoned. Nuclear power happened in the 70s, though.

"Your world is pretty similar in general arc to mine for all the differences."

"I asked Bar about that, actually, because the novels I was reading seemed awfully familiar in some ways. Apparently it happens a lot."

"Yeah, she mentioned. It's weird. I'd really expect systematic text decay and monsters all over the place to wrench things out of place."

"I bet the door puts a lot of similar-but-different worlds next to each other, for whatever reason it picks where it goes."

"Next-to-each-other-ness doesn't seem like a concept that's being used."

"Ah, no, weird turn of phrase. I meant how we're both here at the same time."

"Bar seems to think that's less to do with how similar our worlds are and more to do with how much we'd have to say to each other but she doesn't control the door so she's not sure."

"That does make a lot of sense. So, does this mean you're done with the encyclopedia-quizzing for now?"

"I'll probably still stop to look things up. What's it like when you're newly magic?"

"It's... You have new knowledge in the back of your head, sometimes new senses. At first, it's almost like your magic has a mind of its own, urging you to use it, to grow and flourish. That goes away after a while. You start off very weak, comparatively, and a few weeks of practicing on your own usually sends you to a more baseline level and gives you a couple of unique spells."

"Senses like -?"

"If it happens to fit whatever theme you get - which tend to suit your personality, but you don't get to pick - you might suddenly get an accurate internal clock, or know where any nearby fires are, or have a suddenly more acute awareness of wind's direction and speed."

"What's being urged to use the magic like?"

"It's like having a new toy or game you really want to try out in the back of your head. Thoughts about magic are a little more special. Little thrills when you do something interesting with magic or accomplish a small goal you set, feeling stale for lack of a better word if you don't use magic at all for a while. I hear lots of people mistake the whole thing for just being naturally excited about magic, about all the things they can now do, but there was this big study and the pushing is there, just kind of subtle."

"One study? Did it replicate?"

"Uh, ask Bar?"

There have been a few different studies on this matter, mostly relying on surveys since spirit bearer 'biology' doesn't cooperate with MRIs and other medical tech very well. At least four separate studies on three continents have found the same result. There are some case studies of people who personify their magic - as a playful puppy, as divine guidance, as their old imaginary friend, etc.

- why doesn't medical tech work?

Spirit Bearer bodies are made of magic! Is the going theory. The aggressive regeneration messes up things like blood tests. MRIs are murky and staticky. X-rays come out hopelessly muddled. The less invasive it is the more it seems to work, though - those electrode patches that go on skin work okay, for example. Ultrasounds work.

How does regen mess up investigation of blood outside the body? What's invasive about an MRI?

The blood disappears soon after it's taken. Very rapid attempts to test gave results that indicated it was plain water. What's so objectionable about an MRI to the magical body is an object of active medical debate.

Incidentally, children of Spirit Bearers (any combination of genders involved that's been successful) come out as completely mundane humans, and the various genetic and physical disorders infants tend to suffer from are completely unheard of in same.

- combination of genders?

Magic father and normal mother, vice versa, both magical, and a few inconsistent edge cases enabled by more magic - but apparently magical folks' fertility is super low, comparatively.

Oh, that kind of combination of gender. Why the low fertility?

Who knows? Hypotheses: Magic gametes are just as ephemeral as magic blood, fertilizations that would have resulted in some kind of disorder are rejected, it's already a compromise for children to be possible at all given their similar nature to monsters, genies, and spirits...

Those don't run around making little demimagicthings, right?

No - though genies have been known to try, no demi-magic-things are known to exist.

Try as in they don't know they can't?

Try as in have sex with people, animals, or things sometimes, and say they want children sometimes. Only very occasionally for both.

"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."

"Gradually, yeah. I've known a couple for over half a century, and they're basically the same even now. No sudden shifts. They're all kind of single-minded though."

"Weird."

"Genies are weird. Story of the century."

"And next century too after all the newspapers have tragic accidents."

"Newspapers are kind of dying, though. Internet's so much easier everywhere except way out in the sticks."

"Yeah, my world too, although for some reason it feels like there's been no progress for years."

"Time loop will do that. And you still look, like, sixteen. You have to try and save the world for however many effective-years alone, and not even look older to show for it. Talk about getting cheaped out by fate."

"Seventeen. Although actually that's not because of the time loop, aging is optional. I could look older too, if I wanted to use magic for it."

"Huh, neat."

"It is!"

"...I actually spend lots of time 'out in the sticks' as I put it. And I grew up when airplanes were a new thing. So I'm not as bothered by slow progress as others maybe. It's almost worrisome how fast everything changes now."

"What are you worried about?"

"I don't know. Being... So tracked by everything, mostly."

"Maybe all the data will have a horrible monster accident."

"Hm. Yeah, guess so. Part of it is 'the price of fame' though."

"'Cause you're magic?"

"Because I'm magic and pretty strong and there was a big thing with environmental regulations about fifteen years ago."

"A thing?"

"I, uh, destroyed a terrible terrible irresponsible coal mine, while fighting a monster as an excuse for the damage. And then got sued, and then counter-sued, and it was just... Such a huge thing."

"I guess environmentalism seems like more of a live issue when there are spirits everywhere yelling about it."

"Yeah. The local spirits were all up in arms, and trying to work inside the law wasn't working, and trying to get protesters and petitions on my side didn't do anything... I still regret I had to blow up the place, though. I made very sure to do it on an off-shift at least."

"Why didn't the spirits do it themselves?"

"They don't think like modern humans. They hold back their frustrations and grievances for decades, doing nothing more than saying warnings, and then there's the last straw that breaks their tolerance, and they go on rampages and wipe half a region of all human habitation. That's why Rangers like me are so important - intermediaries. To help the two sides understand each other."

"Under those conditions I'd expect better - civilian policing - what with the wiping out a region thing."

"Yeah, maybe when it's happened in the living memory of current government officials. Last time it happened in Central America was 1903."

"Huh. What happened then?"

"Overfishing for decades, and then massive waves destroying all the coastal towns, and storms over the whole area for months."

"How do nature spirits define overfishing?"

"When species start going extinct or nearly-so, though I don't talk to ocean spirits as much."

"Just in the area, or do they have the finesse to tell how salmon populations are doing worldwide?"

"Just in their area, I think. Though they do understand migration and how low populations might be a problem somewhere else."

"Be awkward if they freaked out whenever everything went south for the winter."

"Yeah. They know their domains though. Nature spirits are considered the best quality primary source for ecology and so on."

"I bet. You mentioned earlier they can do things like tell beavers to stop, how's that work?"

"To hear Borbados tell it, a combination of subtle cues like making something smell bad or look scary, and 'speaking to them' - some kind of telepathy that enables coherent communication with things only as intelligent as flying squirrels."

"So no telling, like, bugs to stop."

"Naw, just lots of squishing, or telling spiders and bats 'food here'."

"Ha. Do they ever help people out? Shoo swarms of locusts, deplague some rats?"

"Anuket keeps the Nile regular, and dutifully warns when there will be a drought or a flood. Spirits will give advice for living off the land without depleting it. They'll directly fight monsters sometimes, especially if they like whoever they're defending. Regular diseases are part of the natural order of things, apparently, but plagues are not and one can be deplagued by most spirits."

"Do you still have dodo birds?"

"Bar?"

Yes.

"Wooly mammoths?"

"That one I know is a 'no'. They're called Northern Elephants now, and they're reasonably different than mammoths."

"Now? What happened?"

"Evolution, is all. No more tusks, thinner fur."

"Ours're extinct."

"Overhunting? Bet it was overhunting."

"Yeah. Long, long time ago."

"Yeah, spirits don't like that much. Wonder what else we have that you don't? Or maybe you have and we don't. A lot of the touchstone animals seem the same..."

"Some things like pandas and tigers are endangered but not gone yet."

"Pandas are gone. Tigers are doing pretty well. This one sea turtle home to Australia went extinct and it was a big deal apparently."

"You don't have pandas? What happened to them?"

"The Red Army slash-and-burned huge tracts of their native habitat for farms, and had enough magic folk on board to kill the spirit who lived there..."

"Poor pandas. They're getting a lot of help from zoos and stuff, my world, even though they're fiendishly hard to captive-breed."

"Zoos try to repopulate endangered species? Huh. I guess if there's no spirits..."

"Zoos don't do that where you're from?"

"I mean, there's families of zoo animals, baby animals are cute. But trying to repopulate the species in captivity? It sounds absurd to me. The spirits are much better at that."

"They feed birds with hand puppets so they won't imprint on humans, and stuff."

"Well it sounds like your world's zoos have got things figured out."

"I bet the spirits would hate Sea World though. Do you have Sea World?"

"Sounds vaguely familiar. American? What malicious rumors about them are there?"

"They keep captive cetaceans, not super well."

"Hm, I bet spirits aren't super happy about it but it's not a massive trigger point unless they regularly capture more."

"I think they mostly just breed them?"

"Yeah, ocean spirits won't really care about dolphins or whatever that aren't in the ocean anymore. They'll probably be a little distressed but nowhere near as bitter as ocean dumping or oil spills make them. I don't talk to ocean spirits much though."

"Do you talk to other - land spirits? Besides yours?"

"Yep. Borbados is the only one I'm the designated mediator for but I know a dozen or so others, they'll give me ecology gossip or whatever."

"...ecology gossip?"

"Oh, that darn Yserat's pumas are eating too much again, I had to close a waterhole to drive them off. Stupid roads, they make my cliffsides itch, you should look out for erosion in such and such a place..."

"Cliffsides itch?"

"I was paraphrasing. He said that they 'tremble worryingly' and he would be 'much relieved if the source of distress were alleviated'. Heh, I actually got Borbados to testify before a traffic regulation court and they banned 18-wheelers on some roads, that was... Interesting."

"Nature spirits sound like hell on the global economy."

"I don't know about that. Probably, yeah. Mining is the single most debated issue in a lot of places, I'll say that much."

"I wonder if you're lower tech in general."

"That's kind of a hard question? It's 2012? This cell phone is kind of old because it's like the most durable cell phone ever manufactured?"

"What things were invented recently?"

"Hm... Lithium-ion batteries? Fiber optic cables? Bioplastic and biofuel became a big thing because there was nearly a spirit war over hydraulic fracturing?"

Bella looks up and compares dates.

The fiber optics are pretty late, but the other two are spot on. Decent biofuel might even be earlier.

"Maybe it's not as much of a delaying factor as I thought. You didn't have nuclear weapons in World War II but at least you have nuclear power for energy..."

"Nuclear weapons? Who in Christ's name... Augh."

"United States. Dropped two on Japan, that's it for nukes used in warfare."

Sigh. "I mean maybe it would have been cleaner than the invasion of Honshu was. But having things sitting around that can obliterate, and contaminate, whole regions when they go off would give me chills."

"Are you a nature-spirit-derived-spirit-bearer because you're fixated on environmentalism or is there an effect in the opposite direction or is it a coincidence?"

"First thing. I thought I told you my origin story. The Panama Canal project was... It was both uplifting and destroying my homeland. I don't think my concern for the environment is a product of where I got my magic."

"I could imagine the origin story leading to, I dunno, anti-colonialism opinions or patriotism or an interest in geopolitics or a hatred of anagrams, it didn't seem obvious that it had to be environmentalism generally construed."

"Nope. Colonialism was kiiind of on its way out already, it was the environment that had me all up in arms."

"You know what I bet you don't have, or have solved, is the honeybee thing."

"You're right that we don't have it, never heard of a honeybee thing, what's the honeybee thing?"

"Honeybees started having mysterious problems? Bar can I have something on mysterious honeybee problems -" She can. Here is a thing.

"...Hm, my intuition is on the pesticide overuse. But I'm not from your world. I hope they figure it out."

"Oh, now that I've thought of it I won't leave till I've got something to bring home that sorts it out."

"Don't forget about malaria, dengue fever, leprosy, smallpox, and so on. They become big problems anywhere that falls out of favor with spirits."

"A high but not unserious estimate suggests that malaria has been responsible for literally half of all human deaths." Pause. "Smallpox we eradicated though."

"Spirits won't eradicate malaria for us, but they did... Something to it, to make it not very deadly anymore. Before my time. And, of course, little record but stories of it."

"Leprosy's pretty uncommon these days. I don't know about dengue. But yeah, I will be coming home with lots of stuff. Magic could handle it but I don't know that I want to hold out for a solution that lets me scale that up to disease-eradication levels."

"Maybe we should talk to more people than each other? Since exploring other worlds' potential offerings is the idea here."

"I mean, I will probably be here for years. Don't let me monopolize you if you want to talk to other folks, I was just starting with Bar."

"Mm. Yeah, I probably will sooner or later. When I start itching to fight someone. You're interesting and Bar's interesting for now though."

"Itching to fight people is a problem you have?"

"I don't see it as a problem. The tournament leagues exist for a reason, it's a great way to vent..."

"If you say so."

"I do say so. Sparring is a pretty big cultural thing for spirit bearers. It's good practice for fighting monsters, and highly entertaining, and a big spectator sport. Judges determine an end, or until yield."

"I'm not sure I want to add this drive to my brain. The only things I routinely fight are witches and other magical girls and I'm really hoping to obviate both needs."

Shrug. "There's bearers who don't spar. It's just basically the football of our subculture."

"And they don't get antsy about it?"

"Not so I can tell. The whole antsiness effect is more aimed at 'use magic at all' not 'use magic to fight'."

"You don't have a finite supply, right?"

"More like a capacity? So much magic per hour."

"Sounds like a better deal than ours."

"I have to agree. Except maybe for the wishes, which you say are totally legit?"

"Yeah, they don't even do the exact words asshole thing, but they have power limits and stuff. Still good for, like, one resurrection a pop, stuff like that."

"Just one?"

"Yes, although you could in theory chain them if the people you resurrected also had enough oomph for a wish."

"And were all willing to turn into obligate monster hunters."

"Yeah."

"...I should probably go hold the door for Rosa and make calls for that precog now."

"Thanks."

"So yeah, I'll be right over there."

She goes over there and makes calls, or reads from her shiny new laptop, while holding the door for about three hours or until something interrupts.

Bella doesn't interrupt. Somebody else wants her out of the way so she can go home though.

She will drop her call, bow graciously, apologize, and let them pass before getting back to it.

There's just one of those, and then it's been three hours.

When Rosa is nearly in sight, she informs Bella, "So apparently my precog acquaintance only works in person. So that's a no-go. But Rosa is here if you still want to try her projection."