whose kingdom shall have no end | Glowfic Constellation

"I would love to see your magic powers."

Natsuko lifts into the air and spins around there, hovering. And produces some sourceless music.

"Well, I do see you have abilities beyond the norm." Cool antigravity, cool hidden speaker, cool foreign music, not really evidence of interdimensional anything. "And this is your first time in Linver?"

Natsuko settles on the ground. "That's right."

"I can find someone who can see you shortly and has participated in drafting some of our tentative plans for meeting further aliens."

"Great, thanks! I arrived with four colleagues, do they need to teleport here right now or can I handle the preliminaries?"

" - It would certainly be fascinating to see people teleport although you can probably handle some of their paperwork for them."

"I can teleport, it's just cheaper under one of their magic systems compared to mine. How about I get underway and call them over when it looks like they'll need to be here."

"I'm sure that's fine." This does not, in fact, cause anyone to know that teleportation is actually on the table, and also if it were it would still not prove that this human is from another universe, but no sense in being rude about it. The secretary passes the relevant information on and then points Natsuko at the correct door to go through.

Natsuko goes through the door!

And she is promptly greeted by a man at a desk, wearing a black mask with stylized green ferns on it and a pair of glasses. He has a cup packed densely full of writing implements and a calculator sitting in plain view.

"Hello! You're Tanaka Natsuko, right? Here to wager on your stay in Linver and whether there'll be any trouble establishing contact between your interdimensional coalition Vanda Nossëo and Linver? I'm Verret and I can help you with that. You can have a seat if you like."

"Thank you!" Natsuko sits. "I'm an envoy from Vanda Nossëo, interdimensional coalition for free movement and exchange, and I'm not actually sure what the wagers are for or what currency I'd need for them, but I was directed here pretty emphatically and will bring in my colleagues if we all need to be here."

"We can take stavrata, Sfil crowns, Thjefljen crowns, Marya pence, austers, and in a pinch we can take other coins for the value of the metal or I can call someone in to assess jewelry or - the weirdest thing I know we've ever accepted is a music box. If you want to rent a room at a hotel, let alone an apartment, or buy a weapon construed broadly to include a knife or a lighter, or start a business, or in some cases pseudo-randomly if you just happen to be in public, you'll need to have made a bet against - the standard version is whether an arbiter will find that you killed someone without reasonable provocation, committed theft, or injured someone broadly construed where poisoning someone or forcibly having sex can count - you can read the full text of any proposition or have me read it to you, that's a summary - or else people will generally not want you around or want to do business with you. To a first approximation you'll be more trusted if you pay more. And as an envoy from elsewhere, you also - so the government of Linver isn't in control of all the resources that could be used to engage in a war. And it isn't very good at explaining itself or telegraphing its decisions. And it can't meaningfully implement a lot of important international treaties, and refuses on principle to become a signatory to some that it would be - very useful to be a signatory to. It helps to have public records of how much money changed hands at what odds on what propositions - concrete example: the Aurora's management placed a hundred thousand stavrata bet against Linver or a statelike organization primarily based in Linver being found in the next decade to have engaged in conduct that would violate the Blue Peak Accords on the treatment of prisoners of war if the party in question were a signatory, and we have similar bets from people representing signatories that nothing like that will be done to any of our people. That is almost as good as having a central government that's willing to commit to not mistreating prisoners of war. Make sense?"

"Yes, actually, it reminds me of Dwarves, they're one of the peoples in Vanda Nossëo and they do a lot of things like this but they tend to construe it as insurance rather than betting. I don't have any of those fiat currencies; I can get metal or jewelry but you should probably know that they're both almost totally worthless in the Vanda Nossëo economy. However, we will buy them from you if you wind up having enough economic interface with us for that to be a problem, so you might choose to take them from me anyway."

"Hm. Got any intrinsically valuable things to sell? Not food but something like - uh - you know, I think the central example of a thing that doesn't require trusting you would be math but I'd have to call someone else in for that - I heard you have really spectacularly high-quality speakers? I don't know, maybe metal is the best option."

"- how would you have heard specifically about speakers - anyway, yeah, I can get stuff including speakers if those will move well enough to suit you." She pulls out her computer and starts typing up a request to Procurement.

"I don't know how much you want for them or anything but we'd at least like a couple, probably. - I suppose you also don't know how much you want for them and if I quote you a price in stavrata you won't have any grounds to argue about it. What other sorts of cool gadgets have you got?"

"Oh, lots, I'm just going to have the guy pop down a whole gadget basket." She sends the message.

"Sounds good. I'll page someone who can appraise them."