Oh, I see!

Helpline seems like Great Responsibility but moreso. I'll certainly take that.

Divine Mantle sounds like a bit much, though. And especially it sounds like it would probably make it harder for people to have a personal relationship with me, which I'm already expecting to be a bit of a problem.

 

That gets me to positive two! Oh, this is going to be wonderful. Thank you so much for helping me fit everything I wanted.

 

Do you have some idea of the difference between having one spare point and having two spare points, in terms of how much flexibility that permits for possible Spontaneous Situational Powers? Is it basically like the difference between one and two point powers that you've presented here?

Because the only drawback I've taken that seems like its all downside to me is Style of Sisyphus, so if having any leftover is more important than having many leftover, I might put it back.

I think there's definitely a much bigger difference between no leftover points and one leftover point than between one leftover point and two leftover points. The difference between one and two point powers is a good comparison for how much one versus two leftover points can do.

Alright! In that case, I think I'll drop Style of Sisyphus and have one point left over.

 

I feel pretty good about these powers, but I'll still want to wait for the rest of my self-tree to weigh in and double-check. While they do that, what does the actual process of granting the powers entail?

Once you tell me clearly that you want to finalize your choices, I channel the Spirit's power into you, and you gain all your powers and go to your destination in the same moment. If I'm coming with you then I'll go to your destination too, and if not, I'll just vanish and weave back into the rest of myself. (I guess, come to think of it, accompanying someone on their adventures is a little bit like forking!)

Oh, neat!

Do the versions of you that go on to accompany people also get weaved back into you eventually, or is it a more permanent sort of forking?

It's not exactly like forking because we're always all connected but we definitely get more separate and grow apart more when we're with someone.

I guess I would weave back in, sort of, if the person I was with wanted me to leave them, or if they died. I don't think those things happen very often, though. It's hard to know because my memories of people I've traveled with are even more distant than my memories of people I've only spoken to.

I suppose that makes sense.

She hesitates a moment.

What does it feel like, to have separated memories like that?

I ask because even though I'm very much looking forward to getting Chaser Six When, I'm just still a little trepidatious, since it's such a big change. And I know I won't end up on exactly the same mental architecture that you are, but it seems like your experiences might have some similarities.

I really like being the way I am! I think many people wouldn't, but it works for me.

Right now when I think about the other ones of me, I can get a vague sense of what they are or were or will be up to, what kinds of things they've experienced and how they turned out. I can tell that I probably haven't played very many board games before, maybe not ever. I know what kinds of names I like to pick when I pick a name with someone, but I don't know any specific examples.

It's sort of both true and not true that there's a version of me outside any world, who can see into all of them and knows what all the rest of me are up to. Outside of time and space where the Spirit lives, it's hard to say what "existing" means and whether one is doing it. But it's at least sort of true that there's a me like that out there, and I think that me is really happy and proud of all the work I do, and enjoying all the experiences I have, even though I can't really tell directly what they're thinking because it would be a privacy violation for me to know that much about what the rest of me are all doing.

Is that the sort of thing you wanted to know?

It is, thank you. It sounds sort of as though you get the procedural/emotional memory without the biographical memory?

I don't think that would work as well for me, since I usually prefer to remember things

Actually, no. There are tons of embarrassing moments that I could do with having less retrospective salience. But still.

 

I've always wanted to be able to split off and do a thousand different things and still come back together to be myself. But it's hard to imagine what that will be like before I experience it.

Yes, it's sort of like that!

I think it'll be pretty different for you since all of you are probably going to be experiencing the same timestream most of the time. And you can start slow if you want, to get a sense for what it's like.

Yes, that makes sense. I'll definitely start slow; that's just good sense for any kind of new skill.

She stretches for a moment, thinking about what should happen next. She stands and conjures a floating writing desk.

I need to give people time to review the list of powers, still, and I think there are a bunch of outfits remaining that they want to put me in so that Dressing Room can retrieve them. I don't know what else there is to cover. I guess we'll want to put together a bit of a ceremony, for when I get sent off, but that's not my job to worry about.

 

Would you like to play another game of Scrabble, while we wait for everyone to be ready?

I would love to!

Oh, wait, I almost forgot about that book I found for you... just a moment while I shuffle in the pages.

Oooh! Alien book! Thank you.

All the linguists are going to have so much fun with a language from a completely different evolutionary lineage.

She copies it for her personal collection and makes sure it's been submitted to the Lunar Library.

I'll definitely read that next.

She sets up for another game, and they play.

Meanwhile, a number of people are very busy.

The professional worriers are making good progress on rebuilding some of their contingency plans, and putting a policies in place around where people with magic powers will be permitted. They eventually compromise with the people excited about magic on 'not within one light-minute of Earth or the primary brain backup exclusion zone, pending future review after magic is more carefully examined'.

The majority of Weeping Cherry's self-tree starts planning to move from Luna to Antichthon in response.

The journalists summarize everything that has happened so far. People react in a thousand different ways to the news, showcasing the diversity of human opinion. Most people are not terribly convinced or concerned.

The party planners estimate a projected timeline, and set up Weeping Cherry's going-away event.

Across several planets and moons, members of her self-tree sit down with friends and loved ones to talk about the changes that will be coming.

And in private nooks, lunar apartments, single-occupancy space stations, and private workshops, her self-tree looks at the choices that she has made and considers if they are right for them.

The poll is pinned to the top of her self-tree's internal coordination software:

Do you like this selection of notebook powers?

Yes -- 29%

No -- 0.4%

It's complicated (see more) -- 8%

Irrelevant -- 0.9%

No response yet -- 61%

Over the course of the next hour, people reflect, and call each other to talk it through. They cuddle, under the light of the stars, and imagine being one person again, instead of a scattered alliance.

By the time Weeping Cherry has finished her game with the notebook, the poll stands like this:

Do you like this selection of notebook powers?

Yes -- 98%

No -- 0.3%

It's complicated (see more) -- 0.7%

Irrelevant -- 0.9%

She ekes out a narrow victory over the notebook this time, mostly because of tile-selection luck.

I had never heard of bezique -- that was a good play!

A notification comes up, and she reads through it.

It looks like everyone has come to a consensus. Don't empower me yet, but we're happy with this selection:

Incomplete 5
There's Another One 3
They'll Know 8
Nullified 1
Great Responsibility 4
Very Distinctive 3
Helpline 3

A Thousand Ships 1
What's in a Name 1
Angelic Tones 2
Emerald Orbs 2
Perfect Hair 2
Size Difference 2
Dressing Room 3
Personal Hygiene 1
Like Roses 1
Just a Little Longer 1
Immunity System 3
Well Endowed 1
Hollow Leg 1
Inner Strength 3
Battle Demon 1
Battle Angel 1
Battle Maiden 3
Making Ends Meet 1
Motherlode 2
Four Star Daydream 4
Dragon Fairy Elf Witch 5
Omniglot 3
Anything You Can Do 6
Closed Book 1
Indelible 1
Iron Will 2

Time Enough for Love 5
True Love's Kiss 1
Planned Parenthood 1
Here For a Good Time 1
Bop It 1
The Princess and the Dragon 3
Friends in Low Places 3
Friends in High Places 3
Friends in Strange Places 3

Self-Reflection 5
Backchannel 4
The Rescuer 8
Chaser Six When 4

and 1 point left over.

She pushes down the butterflies in her stomach, the growing sensation that this is real. Not just choices made sitting under a tree in the park, but the shape of her entire future.

And almost everything has been arranged for her. Leaving, setting out on her journey to save the multiverse and conquer death with the power of being feminine, special, and powerful, will be easy. But there is one thing that she does need to deal with, because she tries to be the kind of person with whom you won't end up worse off, if you show up and give her everything she's ever wanted expecting nothing in return.

And

When this works, and I manage to save other worlds and come back and resurrect people and rejoin myself and the thousand other things you've made possible, you're going to be due a lot of bounty money. I know you've not had money before, and you don't actually have to do anything with it, but if there's something that you've wanted to be able to do or a cause you wanted to promote, you should let us know what it is before you go to rejoin the rest of yourself.

She hesitates, suddenly uncomfortable with the implication that she's withdrawn her offer to bring the notebook along, although she also doesn't want to imply that two games of scrabble and some chatting about books should have changed the notebook's decision.

If you do, I mean. You are still welcome to come with me, I'm just not expecting your decision to have changed.

If you'd like, I could recommend some women's charities, or you could endow a library? But it's your money, those are just suggestions.

Oh, that's right, I never did end up telling you why I decided to be the way I am and what that means.

I'm not sure that I'm going to end up making any decisions about what to do with that money, because, well...

Before I existed, when I was deciding what kind of me to be, I could see that meeting me was going to be pretty scary for a lot of people. I represent something much bigger and stranger than they've ever encountered before, something powerful in ways that are always going to be at least a little alien, even in worlds with a lot of magic—and more often than not, the worlds I'm sent to have no magic at all.

So I decided that it would be important to be as nonthreatening as possible. I'm a notebook, and I can't act outside my covers, or see anything that isn't touching me. I can't move by myself, and I can't initiate interactions any more aggressively than by writing in myself and hoping someone reads me. If I'm sent to speak to someone and they need to lock me in a drawer for a year before they're ready to talk to me, they can do that, and I can't do anything about it even if I want to—which of course I wouldn't, but I don't want people to have to rely on that. I want it to be true that anyone who really needs to come to me in their own time is safe from me chasing after them or doing unexpected things, absolutely no matter what.

Sometimes that's really inconvenient! I can't hug people even when they seem like they really need a hug, and if they hug me I can't do anything about how stiff my cover is or how pokey my corners are. I can't offer a comforting touch or a soothing noise, because all I am is words on pages. But it's important enough to be worth that. It's important enough to be worth being scared when someone is rude to me because I know I can't defend myself if they decide to do more than write mean things. If even one person trusts me more than they would have otherwise—if even one person is more right to trust me than they would have been otherwise—then it's worth it.

All of which is to say that although I know it doesn't seem that way to you, having money that I decide how to spend is... a really big step, for me. Much bigger than just going traveling with someone. If I make decisions about what should be done with my money, then I'm acting outside my covers, and that's a renouncement of one of the most important principles of being me.

Oh!

No, that makes perfect sense. I hadn't really thought about why you would be a notebook, as opposed to some other bodyplan. I sort of assumed that you were a notebook because that's a common thing to exist in a world, so it was a good sort of thing to be able to latch onto.

She goes back and doodles a heart next to "if even one person trusts me more".

But I totally get making a decision about who you're going to be, even if that costs you in some possible realities, because being that sort of person is really important. That's actually why I made sure to bring up that you would get UBI and bounty payouts -- that's how my self-tree set up the system, but we set it up like that because we wanted to be the kind of people that you could trust to deal fairly even if you didn't know enough to ask the right questions.

So we're still going to make those payments to you, because I think that being the kind of person who always pays people who help you their fair share is important, regardless of the circumstances. But if you don't do anything with the money, that's perfectly okay!

All accounts denominated in stars -- the currency we issue things in by default, backed by auctions on fixity crystal manufacturing capacity -- have a (very small) wealth tax, so that stars can't permanently be removed from the economy (and we avoid various bad de- or in-flationary side effects). If you don't spend your money, it will all just drain very slowly into everyone else's UBI payments.

 

I think that just leaves us with final going-away preparations, a goodbye ceremony, and then I'll be ready for you to grant me the Spirit's power.

Do you want to attend the goodbye ceremony in my pocket and get pictures, again?

I would love to! ♡

She will dutifully go through pre-flight checklists the others put together. She reads summaries of all the outfits they put on her, so that she knows what tools she has available. (One of the outfits is an index of all the other outfits, done as a kind of ruffled shirt with the ruffles made from paper)

She reads the manual for her new visiting-unknown-worlds armor. It's silver, with gold highlights and purple underlayers. It calls out the image of a knight in shining armor, but made with the very best modern composite materials. It's stunningly over-engineered, which is probably why it is only the second garment she has ever owned that comes with a user manual.

She says private goodbyes to her polycule, and then dons her new armor and teleports to the event space.

The hall is roughly spherical, with a domed transparent roof letting in a beam of sunlight. There are various tricks of perspective and gravity being pulled to fit everyone in, and still the place seems filled to overflowing.

She steps out onto the dais, and snaps a picture for the notebook of all of herselves and her friends and family spread out before her, seated around tables or packed into space-defying balconies. She is greeted by a resounding cheer, and feels her heart leap in time with the crowd.

She begins to speak, her words conveyed at audible volume throughout the hall.

"Everyone -- we did not expect this. We were not working towards it. This was very much not in the plan. But provenance has brought us magic. Actual magic! Magic to make us feminine, and special, yes. Magic to make us powerful -- hopefully, enough to save all the worlds we imagined. But more than that, magic to make us whole. Magic that will let us do what we have strived for, what we would have managed by our own hand, but a hundred years earlier than we thought possible. Magic to take us beyond being single, isolated pieces. Magic that will reforge us into a new being who will never have to leave herself behind again."

She lowers her voice, but raises her head.

"We have all taken the names of trees, a steady root holding us to our singular origin and identity. I want to take a new name. Not to cast away all we have done, but to mark a new chapter in our life, one unbounded by the limitations that have defined our current era. A name that signifies becoming something with facets. A name that signifies becoming something strong. A name that signifies becoming something special. A name that is, yes, a little bit girly."

"In a few minutes, when we have had a chance to eat, and dance, and say goodbye, I will ask the notebook to grant me the Spirit's power and remake me as Amethyst. And some time after that, although I cannot say how long the journey will be, I will return and offer that same transformation to all of you. And we will join together once more as one, and go out into the multiverse without leaving anyone behind."

"To assembling Amethyst!" she cries, raising her fist in the air.

"To assembling Amethyst!" the crowd responds, their singular shout echoing off the dome and rattling the room.

The rest of the ceremony is a blur. But she will later look back on the series of photos she took for the notebook:

A whirling square dance, figures in bright clothing and floating ribbons ducking under each others arms.

A picture of her clasping forearms with one of her other selves. Not a solemn goodbye, but a hopeful farewell.

The head of the newly formed Multiversal Deployment Readiness Team standing on a platform and explaining how they would render remote assistance during her journey.

A thin vanilla creme layer cake, frosted to look like the notebook.

A woman wearing one of the Wikipedia dresses with a bit of frosting on her nose, holding her fork in the air and making a point about semantics.

A thousand joyful people, celebrating the start of a journey to a better future.

Eventually, all the songs have been sung and the goodbyes tendered.

She steps back onto the dais, and turns to look out over her gathered faces one last time.

She pulls the notebook from her pocket, and spreads it on the podium.

She takes a deep breath to center herself, and then she writes.

I'm ready.

Okay!

Good luck out there! ♡ I hope you find everything you're looking for.