" - that's a good point.  We might not be able to avoid some level of - that - for the backlog of people who're already dead - but we already said we can't build that system before we unpause time, we might need actual experience using this level of magic before we can plan what to do there effectively.  So we want a system where anyone who dies going forward gets put back where they are by default, but anyone who would prefer relocating to... Salk-Whitlock-Topia?... can do so..."

He smiles at Salt-Whitlock-Topia.  "Leskawland."

"Might be better to give them more options than just relocating.  Way back when, you mentioned something like giving everyone a trinket that unfolds into a house.  If everyone had one of those, and they were stocked with food, and they were magically keyed to their owners who could decide who gets to go in and out - not out," he corrects himself, "you should be able to get out easily no matter who you are.  Just in.  And suppose they could... fly around, or teleport, too.  That would do a whole lotta good without us needing to found a country at all."

" - Yeah.  That's true.  And I think I feel better about it, as a first-pass thing to do when we unstop time.  That and something to heal everyone who's terminally sick and something that will resurrect anyone who dies after we hit play.  Assuming we can manage that much magic throughput?"

"I bet I can work up to it.  But there's a lot of details we probably want to work out about this in the meantime anyway."

She nods seriously.  "Absolutely.  This is a first pass."  But she writes it down on the whiteboard, Leo's floating unfolding home idea and RESURRECT EVERYONE WHERE THEY ARE GOING FORWARD.

"...Once upon a time we were talking about bringing more people in," says Leo.  "You wanted to pause time for them and talk to them, but were worried about putting them on the spot, so we decided to test how resurrection works on me so we could decide if we wanted to unpause time before we brought them in.  Do we want to try to work out this whole thing just the two of us, before we unpause time, now that we know how we can resurrect people?"

She - sighs.

"No.  No, I don't think I do.  I think this should have more than two people on it.  Even if more than two is just five, for now, us and my family... of course if there's anyone you want to bring in?"

"I'll think about it.  But honestly I wasn't sanguine about doing this just the two of us either.  Hell of a pitch, though."

"Yeah."

She sighs.

"I should start working it out.  Who to talk to first, how to approach this."

"Want help?"

"Maybe sanity-check me in a bit?  But - I think I'll brainstorm on my own."

"All right.  I'll go catch up my forks, check out our coin reserves."

With a sort of fizzling pop and a brief shower of blue sparks, an envelope appears in midair in front of her, and lands on her desk.  She startles.

In pretty blue cursive, where the address label should be, it says:

To: Mom
From: Santa (Kaylee)

Blink.

"To: Mom, From: Santa (Kaylee)" is how Kaylee always addressed Christmas gifts to her, when Kaylee was little.  She liked playing along with the game of giving-gifts-as-Santa-Claus but felt bad about lying.  And the ink, and the... magic... sparkles... were both in her daughter's favorite shade of blue.

Well.

She flips the envelope over, and opens it.

Mom,

I'm sorry if this is alarming.  Everything is fine, nobody's hurt or in danger.  I have something I want to ask of you, though, you and Dad and Aunt Sophie.  After you've read this letter, you'll have a chance to talk it over with both of them, and with me - and my friend Leo Salk, who is also involved in all this, if you want.  It's a really big choice, and in a way it's kind of a really awful and sad one, too, and I'm sorry.  But I'm not in trouble, and no one's going to be in trouble no matter what you choose.  In fact, everything's going to be a lot better than we ever thought it would be.

Executive summary: My friend Leo Salk and I both just gained access to a source of magical powers.  He's helping me produce it and make good use of it.  It's very powerful and versatile, and we think that if we think it through and leverage it properly we can cure basically all diseases, give everyone on Earth a safe home and enough food to eat, push out human life expectancy as far as people want it to go, and even resurrect the dead, maybe everyone who's ever died in all of history.  But we want to do it right, and every second that goes by, people are suffering and dying.  Think about all the most horrible, unspeakable things that are happening in the world right now, everything we have to just not think about because we can't do anything about them.  I could stop all of them in an instant, if I do this right, and I don't want to allow any of them to go on a second longer than I have to.

That's why one of the first things Leo and I did with our magic is use it to stop time.  We're hiding out in a sort of secret lair that Leo used our magic to conjure; time's passing for us, and now for you, but not for anyone else in the universe.  Leo and I have been in stopped time for a few days, mostly experimenting with magic and thinking about plans for what to do with it.

This is the really awful part.  If I can possibly avoid it, I don't want to restart time until we're ready to deploy our plans for distributing magic food-and-safety to as many people as we can, and we've only just started making those plans.  I'd like more people's help planning.  The really awful sad choice that I'm going to ask you to make, you and Dad and Aunt Sophie, and maybe a few other people, is whether to come join us in our lair, inside the stopped time, and live with us for as long as it takes us to work out what the best thing to do is; or else go back out of stopped time, and let me and Leo make our plans on our own.  If you say no, then after we're done saying goodbye, it will seem like an instant for you until you see me again, but a lot of time will have passed for me - probably months, maybe years.  If you say yes, you'll get to come into the lair, and help us plan, and all the time that passes for us will pass for you too; for everyone else, outside the lair, it will seem like an instant before you can see them again, but time will have passed for you that didn't pass for them.

You can take time to talk it over with Dad and Aunt Sophie, once you're ready, but I'm not going to unpause time in general until it's time to save everyone.  That's part of what makes it awful and unfair to you, and I'm sorry.

I sent you this letter because I worried that if I tried to just walk into your office and explain everything, it would be confusing and alarming in the wrong ways, but I'm actually right outside your office door,

She puts down the letter.  "Oh, for goodness' sake," she says, voice exasperated and fond.  She stands up from her desk and strides to her door and pulls it open.

"Hey," she says, apologetically.

She pulls her daughter into a hug.

Hug.

"Hey, Kay."

Quietly, and with the barest suggestion of impishness, she says: "Did you stop reading and let me in as soon as you got to the part about me being outside your door?"

She de-hugs just enough to look her daughter in the eye.  "Yes, I did."

"It was toward the end anyway," she says.