"I can't. We have wizards who can, one of them brought me here. And I have boots that can take us back."

Iomedae nods seriously. ...they really know almost nothing, don't they. She assumed they'd be waking up in Oppara and she at least had vague ideas about Oppara and instead they are - important out of all proportion to their ability to figure out what's going on, and Teleports can be ordered for them in the blink of an eye.

She is terrified and she is not going to let that get in the way of making the world rich and fixing all its problems. "Well, if Vigil is the place to fix everything then I guess we should go there right away." And she takes Alfirin's hand.

Cansellarion pays Nefreti for her spellcasting and the magic robes and takes the girls' hands and teleports them all to Vigil.

Iomedae is not very impressed by Vigil, at a first glance. America is good at big impressive cities, and she is on the whole not even all that impressed with America. She would've been impressed if she'd come here before America; the streets are paved and clean and the buildings well-maintained and the walls in the distance are thick and tall. It is the biggest Golarion city she has ever seen, and it was supposedly founded by her.

But that was a version of her that did not know how to build skyscrapers and may only have possessed a shaky grasp on sewers. She clings to Alfirin's hand and thinks about how they were right they did the right thing it worked, but it feels kind of hollow since - she did it out of trust in Aroden, and Aroden is dead.

Alfirin is still kind of processing the thing where instead of going back to the Golarion that they left they went to a Golarion that's had another thousand years pass and also where Iomedae at least never left and instead became a god. Maybe that means they never left and they're just copies that got made and put on Earth? That doesn't really explain the thing where Iomedae's a god, though. Iomedae is very impressive as a person and has an intensity to her that very few people do but - very few isn't none, and most of them don't become gods. (It's not at all weird that the original Alfirin isn't a god, she probably got eaten by a bear or something. Most people don't become gods.)

As for how it's been a thousand years here - Well, maybe it's been a thousand years on Earth too, and they just weren't conscious for it - maybe it took them a thousand years to get here, if their souls were traveling at light-speed or slower. Or, speaking of light-speed, maybe Golarion is moving very fast? Or next to a black hole? She doesn't know if that's the direction that works because relativity isn't very useful for industrializing a planet and is complicated besides.

This city is definitely smaller than American cities, and worse, and also, she notices, much colder than the city in which they were revived. She makes her shirt into a sweater because it is admittedly very cool that it can do that, and clings to Iomedae.

Iomedae is clinging right back. The onlookers (there are quite a few, in uniforms) look a bit confused, she thinks. Probably the important paladin of Iomedae does not usually tow around teenage girls by Teleport. "You know," she says in English, "I might have expected if I'd known a thousand years would pass that there wouldn't be anything for us to do. The Industrial Revolution didn't take a thousand years on Earth."

"Depends when you're counting from, doesn't it? It took a thousand years starting from 800. I don't really know why it happened on Earth when it did, but it wasn't anything as simple as 'one thousand years after the fall of Rome'."

"I guess. And even if Aroden was trying to make it happen faster, He's - dead. So." Does the paladin of Iomedae seem to want them to do anything? Iomedae is honestly fairly intimidated by the paladin of Iomedae. He is the second real paladin she's met not counting herself and he's armored and taller than her and watching her like - like she became a god in this world, only she's not actually sure she is qualified. 

He mostly seems to want them to follow him through the city's citadel to a room with tables and chairs and maps - He kicks out the people who were using it already, apologetically. They don't question it. "Is there anything you need? Should I send for the other people you should meet now, or do you have more questions for me or other things you want to address first?"

Iomedae has seen satellite imagery and cannot be intimidated by a room full of maps. She feels a little better. She can't think of more questions but looks inquiringly at Alfirin.

"We're going to need a lot of paper and - probably someone to take dictation." Alfirin's handwriting is not great and it's going to be worse without ballpoints. "But I can't think of anything else right now. Except a round map but that's less important."

They did a practice of this two weeks ago. It isn't easy to know if it'll work the same for real - they could hardly bring in someone who'd pretend to be from Golarion and relevantly ignorant - but they know the first two days of what they want to say, at least. "I can't think of anything else either."

"So send for the people now. And paper."

Cansellarion does so. He introduces the others as they arrive. Jan Zima, Lord-Watcher - that's the title for the leader of their country, he's not a king and got his position by merit not blood - Veena Heliu, precentor-martial for magic, and… a bunch of researchers who Veena will introduce because Cansellarion doesn't know their names. And some secretaries. Veena and Jan are shooting Cansellarion questioning looks. The researchers seem mildly curious.

Iomedae was not expecting to meet the rulers of any countries. At least, certainly not out of the blue like that, with them walking into the conference room; she had expected that once they'd accomplished some things they might get presented to the Emperor, like people sometimes are in legends.

But no, here he is. It's terrifying. She's suddenly deeply curious how they define merit but it - doesn't matter. She's not going to be any good at politics. The thing she and Alfirin have spent four years studying and planning for is bringing technology here, and she'll just have to hope that Evil gods can't pick paladins and that if she's doing Evil in helping these people her god will renounce her. …possibly there are other things she could do but she doesn't know what they are.

Are these people waiting for her to speak. Oh no. Her stomach is doing somersaults.

 "Almost five years ago Alfirin and I were transported in some kind of accident to another world," she says. "It has almost eight billion humans living on it, and no magic that they know of, and rumors of things the gods did a long time ago but no empowered priests anymore. They are very very rich. Only one person in a hundred works on a farm, but they can feed all the rest, and clothes and books are so cheap that they are thrown away, and it is very rare for anyone to die of disease or of monsters, though also none of them are heroes out of legend. Any person can talk to any other person, anywhere on the world, with a nonmagical device they can buy for two weeks' wages in America. They have horseless carriages that go on great paved roads around the land, and they have flying ones that take millions of people every day to any big city in the world. The big cities are very big, they know how to build buildings a hundred stories tall. 

They have weapons that can kill a man from a mile away, without magic, at not much expense, and weapons that do not take much training to use but that can kill a bear, or shoot through armor. They have weapons that are scarier than those, that can burn whole cities and poison the ground where they stood, but I am probably not going to teach you how to build them because I think it might be better not to have them here.

So Alfirin and I figured, we would learn all of the things they know how to do on Earth, and we would commit them to memory, and practice teaching them, and then we would take our own lives and if my god saw fit He'd direct His church to bring us back so we could tell you everything and make this world rich and also beat Tar-Baphon. Only apparently it's too late for that, and my god is dead, and Asmodeus rules the Empire where I was born. I still think the things we taught ourselves will probably help, though. 

…I'm Iomedae. Sir Cansellarion said that this world has an Iomedae who became a god but I - if there'd been a book in the libraries of Earth about how to become a god I'd only have read it in my free time, probably, because this was our best guess about what needed doing. And there wasn't such a book, and I really don't know anything about being a god, and I wouldn't want anyone to imagine I did. Alfirin's actually the one with the better memory for all the tricky engineering processes."

Alfirin swallows, and gets down from the table where she was sitting. "Are there any questions about that or should we start explaining technology?" she asks, nervously. Somehow this is scarier than pulling the trigger was, which is objectively ridiculous and insane of her.

The Lastwall researchers have a ton of questions but recognize that it's not actually their job to ask or know about this part. They keep them to themselves.

(Lastwall's leadership also has questions about this part, but not ones they think the girls know the answers to.) "Just start with the technology," says Jan. He's trying to be reassuring with his tone but when speaking to disoriented teenage girls he's really not any good at it.

"Okay. Iomedae and I don't know what you already know, because we're from eight hundred years ago, so if I'm explaining something that's not new you should tell me and I'll skip to the next thing. The first thing is that you need lots and lots of steel, for making the machines for making everything else. That means lots of iron and coal mines and - I don't know the Taldane word. Are there wizards here who can cast the spell to make us know modern Taldane?"

Heliu can call someone in who prepared share language.

"Limestone," Alfirin says, once she has the vocabulary. "Iron and coal and limestone. The limestone is - it removes the bad parts of rock coal, so that you can use rock coal and not charcoal, because it's easier to get lots of rock coal. I'm going to explain how to make a Watt engine, which is a type of machine that can operate a pump by burning coal, because a pump to get water out and air in is important for making deeper mines and you can start building them before you have a whole steel manufacturing chain set up…"

They can keep going in this vein for a very long time. Iomedae expected the nervousness to get better by a few hours in, but it actually doesn't; it's just unbearably stressful the whole way through. It doesn't help that she now has a language in her head that is the Taldane of 900 years in the future, crisper and cleaner and with wildly more vocabulary than she ever had with the Taldane she spoke growing up. It feels like it's crowding it out, like she can't remember how to speak her own Taldane anymore. Which is fine since no one speaks it anymore except her, except that itself hurts, though it seems like it really ought to be a very small hurt alongside everyone she knew being dead and Aroden being gone and her homeland being ruled by Hell. 

For the most part it's not worth trying to cheat with magic at precision manufacture, which you're going to need to master the slow way, but there are various things that would be really nice to have a little earlier than you'd otherwise get them, such as radio, so they have those presented a little early in the logical progression because they're probably not that hard for a determined tinkering wizard to iron out. 

After …some number of hours…Iomedae doesn't think it's a small number of hours…Alfirin looks like she's flagging a little bit, and Iomedae herself feels like she is made of paper. "Maybe we could take a break?" she says hopefully. Is it rude to suggest this in front of the President/Emperor of an entire country? Probably.

The researchers, who are trying to learn and take notes and not just lecture, would also kind of like a break.

"Of course," says Zima, "How long do you need - oh, of course, you were just raised, you don't have rings. Let's adjourn for dinner and resume tomorrow morning." He directs an aide to find two rings of sustenance if they're going spare or even if they aren't, and another to reserve a couple of guest suites and then make sure some food is brought to them - real food, for people who eat.