"Yeah, people do use that term, but sometimes they mean anyone who isn't a visitor so I prefer scenery."

"I guess that's a distinction you'd have to make if there's also some who have, like, feelings and stuff, yeah."

"Yeah, it probably doesn't help that my siblings and I made scenery that can stand in for us when we're busy with other things and that sometimes we take on other roles usually filled by scenery... people get pretty confused."

"- yeah, I guess that would look like the same person sometimes being livelier than other times?"

"Yep, pretty much. Anyway, I'm happy to keep talking about this if you like but we have gotten a bit distracted from the teleporters you sounded so interested in."

"Oh, right, I don't personally need them in my day to day but some people would love them. You're already going to Hereafter though and that's where all the businessy people are."

"I'll make sure to mention it then."

"They'll be thrilled. They'll all be able to go on day trips to music festivals and get home to get back to all their important work."

"The important work being concordances?"

"Well, not all the time, there isn't one most years. But setting up all the long term infrastructure stuff they're trying to build out with what's sent along with the public interest cargo, sure."

"Concordances and the things they make possible," she agrees.

"They also have stuff they can do with things you can get off of people's Limbo Things. Sometimes I brush Hal and somebody spins his fur, stuff like that."

"How creative. I guess that will be one unfortunate consequence of what I'm doing, less effort put into solutions like that."

"I guess, but it's still nice."

"I agree, and I'm excited to see everything people do and create with the new tools I'm making available. I'm just accustomed to celebrating uniqueness and it's a little sad that in some ways there will be less of it here than there was before."

"Enh, most of Limbo's very samey."

"Yeah, that's true, I guess with a few exceptions most people's one thing isn't too out there."

"Yeah. The older folks mostly got, like, trees. Still some of those in the modern day but fewer as we got more... stuff."

"That makes sense. Goodness, if your world has a true history there must be people who are millenia old here. Do people remember that far back?"

"I think not that well. I don't know any of them, I'm only a hundred and... nine? I think a hundred and nine but I'll do the math again next time I learn the Earth date."

"I'm not really sure how old I am either. Layered memories are weird like that."

"Layered, what's that mean?"

"I mentioned that sometimes my role is played by scenery. One of the things I can do is absorb something of a summary of what my stand-ins experienced. The resulting memories are very strange. They encompass a lot more time than I can really claim to have experienced."

"Huh, I can see why that would be confusing. What is your role, exactly, that the scenery does for you?"

"Oh, I give advice, sell summons for rare monsters and offer a challenging fight somewhere around the midpoint of my world's order of events."