The bar is quiet. Elves can be heard outside singing. And then the door opens.

And a Elf child - recognizably an Elf child by the robes, the unreasonable prettiness, and the carefully-braided hair - walks in. 

He blinks confusedly at Cam. "Wooooooowwww," he says, "you have pretty wings! Nice to meet you! I'm Nelyafinwë Maitimo."

...of course he is.

"Hi, I'm Cam."

"Did you come to see my daddy? He's busy. I can show you around but if you have - teck-nick-al - questions I will not be any help at all."

...Grownup Maitimo's forks are both in other worlds and Timothy is asleep. He sends Timothy a short email without looking anyway: tiny Elf you-alt too cute help. "No, this place is actually not even near your house."

He tugs on the doorknob. "The courtyard is right there behind us. I was just there! I was playing with clay but I can't get it to look like Mommy's. I have smaller hands, you would think it would be an - ad-van-tage."

"Yes, but that door doesn't usually lead here, right?"

"Nope, but you're a Maia so you can make things look like other things, right?"

"I'm not a Maia, I'm a thing from another world called a demon."

His lip trembles. "I'm sorry."

"- it's okay, I'm not offended."

Squint. "- you're sad, though."

"I'm sad a lot, it's not your fault."

"I'm the prince, all of the bad things are my - not fault. My - ree-spon-sib-ill- I lost track - reespibility - no, no, I lost track again. Anyway I shouldn't make you sad."

"It's about a thing that happened very far away."

"Like Rúmil? He's sad about a thing that happened in Endorë a long time ago. And that is still my respibility because he's one of my people."

"That..." is a fucked up thing for a small child to believe "is an interesting way of looking at it but I decided to be sad about this thing" before the blue-green sphere even crumpled "and it will not help anything if you are also bothered about it."

Forehead crease. "...okay. ...maybe the Valar could fix the thing?"

Nope they're dead. "I don't think so."

Lip definitely trembling. "No they're not dead they're not they can't die you might be mistaken."

"- what?"

He tugs desperately at the doorknob. "I'm going to go check -" Door opens -

"- if you let that door close while you're on the far side you can't come back here and it might be important please wait -"

"I'll come right back I need to check if they're dead I don't think they're dead someone would have said something -" he is tugging the door more open, he doesn't quite have the height for it -

"Not yours, yours are fine, other Valar far away."

He might be too upset to be parsing Cam properly! "Can't be dead, they can't die -"

"Your Valar are fine, I - were you reading my mind people where I'm from don't do that so I wasn't thinking - understandably -" Timothy wake the fuck up and read your messages which now include I SCARED THE TINY MINDREADING YOU AND HE IS TRYING TO LEAVE HELP

He is standing in the door looking very confused - "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't - I was just listening -"

"People where I am from can't listen like that please don't listen to me thinking. Your Valar are okay."

He leans against the doorframe and rubs his eyes. 

"I'm sorry. I won't. I'm sorry. If the Valar are okay then they can fix it, probably."

That would be. Interesting and possibly hazardous to Cam's health. "Maybe."

"- I'm trying not to listen but you could just keep your thoughts private if you don't want to share them? That would be easier than trying to not listen, it's not even like trying to not listen out loud where I can plug my ears."

"...I don't know how to do that because people where I'm from can't read minds at all."

"- but you have Valar -"

"I'm... not from the place with Valar" were they reading his mind what the fuck they probably were "originally and I didn't talk to them much."

"Okay. I'm not great at teaching how to do thoughts private but you pick a - way of separating thoughts you want to share and thoughts you want to keep secret, like, imagining that your secret thoughts are in your bed snuggled up cozy, and your not secret ones are standing on the windowsill playing? Or your secret ones are all wrapped up and your shared ones are open. Or your secret ones are under the water and your shared ones are above like an island...I really am sorry. Everyone learns how to do it so if someone is sharing thinking things it is always because they meant to be."

"That makes sense." Okay he will just metaphorically chiplock his entire brain how about that.

The tiny Maitimo does not comment on whether this worked. He is still rubbing his eyes and rocking back and forth anxiously.

"I'm sorry I scared you."

"I'm the one who did something wrong, I read your thoughts that were private!"

"Well. You didn't know."

"I want to run away and cry but you said it was important to stay and I should learn to fix it when I do things wrong but I really want to run away and cry."

"You can go anywhere as long as you don't go on the other side of that specific door and then let it close. But nobody else here knows about private thoughts either if you meet more people here."

He sits down. He curls up tightly in a ball. 

He starts singing.

Crisis averted probably but still help

Cam gives the tiny Elf some space.

And a while later a bewildered Timothy comes downstairs. 

Elves hear really well; Cam appears a note at him. Tiny Maitimo is over there upset because I freaked him out, he reads minds but in a weirdly polite way where if you metaphorically mark them private he doesn't hear them so he can't be the same kind as the previous Elves.

He pulls out a quill and writes back there are multiple kinds of Elves? He looks the same - Occlumency does that -

And over to the tiny Elf.

"- hi, I'm Nelyafinwë Maitimo -" snuffle -

"Timothy Way. What's the matter?"

" - I want my mommy and daddy but I can't leave and I can't talk to anybody ever again because I'll read their minds because they don't know how to keep their thoughts quiet -"

" - we can learn the thought privacy thing, it sounds like, and also I'm sure you can go home, it'd just be good if you could call over someone to hold the door, is there anyone who could do that? It's a magic door. You're being very brave."

"- there's no one around, my parents're working. Are the Valar going to die -"

"- I want to make sure no one dies. Do you happen to know if there's a Vala called Melkor -"

"Yeah."

"Do you happen to know where he is."

"He's in jail because he did something bad."

"Great. Okay. Cam, did the other one break out somehow or what -"

"Paroled."

" - well, fantastic, then we just have to. Tell them not to do that. Maitimo, Melkor really shouldn't get paroled, it's really awful if he does, we should probably talk to some people from your world about that. Cam knows - another world like yours except the Elves do not read unchipped peoples' minds - and they paroled their Melkor and it was a really really terrible idea."

Nodnod. "Unchipped people?"

"Yeah, they can always send thoughts to each other but they usually can't send them to people like us who are different, or read ours. If no one's in reach of your door we can maybe send them an owl, I guess. Cam's not mad at you, it's really good you came through here and you did the right thing staying."

"I did a bad thing."

"Yep, and I'm not going to be impressed with you for feeling guilty over it because that will give you unhealthy incentives down the road take my word for it."

"- huh?"

"You're really good at being what people need you to be and this is really good and it will let you accomplish a lot but there are a few respects in which it does not serve you and that is one of them so you're gonna stop. You didn't get it perfect. Even when you're big and unfairly smart because of future brain stuff you won't get it perfect. So, figure out what to do now and do that."

"I'm a little bit confused."

"Yeah, I bet." And to Cam, "when does he get paroled -"

"1400, but if these are different Elves they might have different timekeeping or something."

"Kiddo, what year were you born -"

"1219."

He looks questioningly at Cam.

"I don't have all of these dates memorized, hang on." Notes, notes. "...don't have the birthyear marked down but it's at least close."

"Are there some dates you do have which he might know -"

"...when did the Elves get to Valinor?"

"The Noldor and Vanyar got there in 1132 but the Teleri took until 1151."

"That's what I have too."

"So, there's Earth with demons, Earth with wizards, Arda with and without mindreading -"

"Arda with and without mindreading Elves, the Ainur don't have chips."

" - so were they probably just reading your mind -"

"Probably. Not necessarily but Huan's osanwë could reach me."

" - this world's set probably could do something but -"

"But?"

"But I am super unimpressed with them and don't necessarily want to let them in to do it, frankly."

"What is your competing idea?"

"Haven't got one yet, just - registering dislike of this one."

"- this is about -" he broadcasts the thought Cam had earlier, the planet, crumbling -

"- please don't do that."

"...sorry."

Curl-up.

"...but yes, loosely about that."

"I want to go home."

"- how about we tell everybody outside about the private thoughts thing and then you can go out and sing with them?"

He goes to the door to outside, opens it - "uh, guys? Someone just came through the door - he's a small version of your Maitimo - but he's got mindreading, you have to do this mental separation thing for privacy - Maitimo, can you read my thoughts?"

"No."

There are Elf volunteers and then fewer Elf volunteers when it is clarified that this Maitimo is, like, seven and that the concern is not thoughts-they-might-want-to-keep-private-from-their-crown-prince but thoughts-they-might-want-to-keep-private-from-a-toddler.

" - can't hear any of them, except when they're saying things at me -"

" - chips must count for the relevant distinction -"

"Great, thanks, can you look after him?"

" - his world has the Valar, they can fix everything -"

"Could be, yes."

"That would be nice."

"Either way, we're in no hurry, right, because we are Elves and ten years from now is as good as right this minute."

"- you're not an Elf, m'lord Timothy -"

"Yeah, I was - you know what, he will cheer up a lot if you go introduce him to everybody, please just do that -"

They do that.

"It's entirely possible they could not in fact squish me."

"Oh, good, 'entirely possible' is what I strive for in my odds of surviving when I wake up every morning."

"It's also possible they would not choose to squish me, or that they would not be really petty about it if I happened to be hiding in Hell at the time, so many layers of entire possibility."

"It is possible they'd try parole, apparently. Doesn't - I'm not chancing it -"

"There are a million people who are permanently dead because I killed them and if the extra Valar demand me on a platter with an apple in my mouth but they can fix it you produce another fix or you stand back."

"We've been here a month there is an entire multiverse -"

"I'm not saying you can't pull it off or that I wouldn't dearly prefer it. But if Tiny You can't get ahold of anyone to hold his door for him - we can't kidnap him to hold access to his world for however many more months, he's scared and little and - and we can't abandon his door without something better on tap either."

"If everyone tells him to stay he'll stay - my parents were not so negligent there'd be no one within Elven earshot -"

"Then we lean out the door and yell and there's no emergency."

"Yeah. Okay."

Sigh. Hug.

"Don't - make decisions without telling me, okay -"

"...Okay, but set your computer so it yells at you loud enough to wake you up when you have an email marked urgent, the intra-Milliways time mismatch is a thing."

"For sure - sorry - I'm really glad he didn't just run off -"

"I must've scared him really bad."

"You must have been really scared - mindreading -"

"Yes, well, fortunately it scared me enough that I was thinking about that and not reflexively trying not to think about my sex life?"

" - good point. I - ugh - I'd feel exactly the same about letting some fairly fucking evil gods into Milliways to possibly murder you if we weren't - so you know -"

"Thanks."

"What if people do daevafy when they're summoners and the Valar break summoning again, then what."

"Affects well over a million people in the long run."

"Yes, it does."

"Guess it depends on whether they'd agree not to do that."

"- are we at least in agreement it would be incredibly evil and unfair of them -"

"'Incredibly' is maybe pushing it... and 'unfair'... I'll give you 'evil' in a loose sense."

"We can start time running in Hogwarts again, figure out if summoners daevafy - not guaranteed to be the same result across worlds but it'd at least be more information than we currently have -"

Nod. Sigh. Hug.

Hug.

"Poppy Gardens people gotten back to you."

Check. "- yes. There's somebody down as volunteering for experiments even if they require some time spent awake."

"Then I'll go talk to them about finding out whether the Killing Curse kills them, why don't I."

"Name of Plez."

He goes back up to his room.

He takes a shower and enspells all the pillows to beat themselves violently against the wall and sets his computer to wake him up if he gets urgent messages from Cam.

He draws a circle.

Plez is a small androgynous demon in shades of amber wearing a white robe thing with a flower embroidered on it that looks like it might be some kind of poppy garden uniform. They don't say anything on arrival.

"Hi. My world has magic - different kind of magic than you're used to - and there's a spell called the Killing Curse. It kills people. We have no idea if it works on daeva. Complicating matters, it can only be cast for evil reasons - so, we can't just cast it on a consenting demon. I happen to know someone who is not a very good person and could be persuaded to try it, but - if you change your mind, there's a point at which it'd probably be too late, and it'd require being conscious for a while though I can use different magic on you in the meantime so you don't have to actually be doing anything."

Plez nods.

"My world's magic is pretty versatile, if there are instead conditions under which you'd want to be alive."

Headtilt.

"Like, if the problem is that you are not happy often enough, we can fix that, I don't know, I don't have a clear idea of why daeva who want to die mostly want that - do you prefer to communicate some other way, you can appear me notes or something -"

Plez thinks, and appears a little sheet of paper for Timothy to take.

It reads I just really hate the sound of my voice. How do you fix not being happy?

"There're charms for it, I can cast one of those now if you want to see what it feels like, and potions which last longer and which you could take home with you - you can't make them, they're magic, but a regular supply could definitely be arranged -"

Oh, that's not my problem. I was just curious.

"Okay. Do you - want to be a test subject for this?"

Nod.

"If I take you there under mind control you probably aren't going to have a chance to change your mind, and if you happen to throw it off and tell me you've changed your mind it's possible it'd be too late for me to get you out of there, is that okay?"

Nod.

"Okay. And I need you to not have wings, is that okay?"

Note. Now?

"If that works for you."

There is a brief delay and a spray of blood and the wings just - fall off.

He only flinches slightly. "Okay. Ah -" He is attempting to get this person murdered mostly because he wants to know exactly how invulnerable Cam is, is that fucking evil enough for you - "Imperio -"

And now he has Plez mind-controlled.

Yay.

Plez can wear 1800s Muggle clothes.

He heads back down to the main bar. 

There's Cam.

"Going to go check. Do you want - some way to track what's going on - I'm not afraid of him but -"

"...this going to be one of the places electricity doesn't work, or -?"

"We don't have them all mapped out, but it might be, would putting it in a wood box interfere?"

"I don't have that working yet. Would you expect to be able to do something, or stop doing something, if you were in distress?"

"Could have someone else on standby I could dismiss as a distress signal. The technologies might work, it's not Hogwarts and it's not a place like it..."

"Dismissal takes a minute. ...Snapping a binding is instant, if you'd trust any of your angels that far."

"...sure, Anglican church lady's a sweetheart - is snapping a binding externally visible -"

"Externally no but reportedly it feels like something even if the binding wasn't tight enough to feel like anything itself. Might make more sense to have your angel in range to rescue you if you snap her binding rather than here as a communication device."

"If I'm conscious at all I can solve most problems with the demon I have under my control, but all right, I'll go ahead and set up a fallback or two. Microphone in case it does happen to work?"

"It'd have to not only work but be able to send signal through Hogwarts, but all right."

"As long as it's creating a record at all, can't you conjure for it?"

"...yes. This is just a nonstandard way to bug someone. Apparatus amended." He waves his hand.

"Thank you. I feel very looked-after. And a circle for the angel -'

Circle!

He summons her once they're out of Hogwarts.

"Hello again!"

"Hi! I'm going to go meet somebody to run some experiments on the interactions of magic and daeva invulnerability. It's probably safe, but I would like to have a plan to leave if he decides he is disinclined to let me without a lesson in summoning. The fastest way of doing a distress signal we could think of was to have someone on hand and snap the binding if there's any kind of trouble. Can you, like, safely-for-the-inhabitants turn the roof of a house to air?"

"Sure, unless it's structurally important somehow..."

They have a demon. They can make a scale model of the house - "Unless structural importance wouldn't show up on a small model, somehow..."

"...not an architect..." She deroofs the model.

Nothing collapses. "I think in an emergency that'd be better than not doing that. ...assuming all goes well, I was thinking I could repay you with a trip to London, sightsee for a little while?"

"Ooh, that sounds fun - can I have a camera for it -"

"Sure - let's keep it a subtle camera, they don't exist yet - do you know a model -"

She does; it can be made to look like spectacles.

Then the demon can make it for her, and Timothy can make her invisible - "this won't fool wizards up close, but if you want to fly around somewhere you can drop into range, it'll be safe enough for that -"

She nods.

And he heads in.

 There are footsteps. There's a squeaky gate. The microphone continues to work fine.

             "Way. It really has been too long. You're all grown up."

"You said that last time, too."

             "I was lying to you."

"Yes, you were."

              "You always were a clever boy."

"That's how I remember it, too," Timothy says amiably. 

             "Who's your friend?"

"I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I claimed not to know his name."

              "I suppose I wouldn't."

"You don't need to know it, though. I want you to kill him for me."

               "Not all that grown up, then."

"Is that the mark of a man?"

               "It's an important milestone."

"I'm saving it for marriage."

              Laughter.

Timothy doesn't join in. 

               "It's the mark of a man to be willing to do his own work, at least." 

"I apparently don't want him dead evilly enough. I did try. It was embarrassing, or would have been if there'd been surviving witnesses."

               "- come on in and explain yourself."

"Gladly."

Shuffling and coughing and -

"He can't be damaged by conventional means. You can stun him, but he wakes up in forty seconds or so. You can deprive him of sleep but he doesn't get past mildly exhausted. You can starve him but he doesn't get very hungry. You can try to slit his throat, any kind of weapon, you'll get a shallow little cut.

The other Unforgivables work fine."

             "Who is he?"

"Muggle. The ritual does not have a very good success rate, yet, but this one was a success. Coloration changes aren't a consequence of the ritual, they're an adverse reaction to trying eighty times the lethal dose of the Draught of Living Death."

             "What happened to Azkaban?"

"It's on the Moon. Look with a good telescope."

              "Why?"

"I said I'd give you a location, not an explanation."

              "You didn't say you were asking for an Unforgivable."

"In the last few weeks I've cast dozens, and I've dismantled the prison you'd go to if you were ever convicted, and we both know you never would be. What, exactly, are you afraid of?"

              "Imperio."

"I'm all grown up," says Timothy irritably. "You want things from me, you'll have to ask." 

               "I want to know how to do it."

"No. Try again."

               "And if I said you aren't going to leave here without telling me how to do it."

And then a sharp crack, and a cry -

"That could've been your wand," Timothy observes mildly, "but I need you to kill someone for me. You wouldn't say something like that. It is unwise to threaten someone with capabilities you know you don't know."

               "All right, then, I want a promise."

"You have someone here to cast -"

               "No, no, no magic, just your promise as the man you're trying to grow into."

"I see."

              "I want you to remember me as a valued ally to whom you are much indebted."

"I do, and I am."

               "And when you take over the world, I do not want to die and I do not want to be imprisoned and I do not want to be deprived of my health, sanity, memories, or magic."

"Once I take over the world I will expect from all my subjects compliance with my laws. I will not hold against you anything you did before I took over the world, and if you break my rules I won't deprive you of anything more than what's necessary to ensure future law-abiding, how's that?"

                Laughter. "I'll take it." Pause, a sort of thudding sound -

"I told you that wouldn't work."

               "Yes, you did. I am entitled to attempt it myself. Shush." Another thudding sound. A crackling one. A swooshing one. And then - "Avada Kedavra."

"Fascinating," says Timothy neutrally. 

               "Avada Kedavra. Avada Kedavra."

"Thank you."

              "How is it done -"

 "Maybe later."

             "You're miscalculating, because you're a child. A world where people were safe like this would have fewer problems - people take drastic measures because they fear for their lives -"

"I don't want you to die. I don't want anything to die. I might tell you the ritual later, though it hasn't gotten any safer in the last five minutes. I am not going to tell you now."

            "All right, all right. Stay for tea?"

"I don't think so."

Timothy leaves. He dismisses the demon.

"So," he says, "London?"

"Okay... are we still indestructible -"

"Yep, it does absolutely nothing. Wizards who are trying to mess with you would try the mind-control thing, that works fine, but they can't do permanent damage any more than anything else can."

"Okay, good."

"Yeah. If you take my arm I can teleport us there -"

Elbow linkage.

London!

The angel is delighted by London and mostly wants to look at churches.

Of course she does. That's fine, he can take a day off to sort of calm down. And think of Vala-alternatives.

Eventually the angel is all Londoned out and is due at her friend's party soon.

Home she goes. 

Home he goes. 

Cam is in the main bar area. "I did not expect that guy to not be a creep, or anything," he says, "but wow that guy is a creep."

"Everything worked? Wasn't sure how to check. He's - possible to have positive-sum interactions with, lots of people are worse."

"Yeah, it worked. I didn't say he was the worst person ever he's just a creep and I want the world around him to become his moral superior until his entire mode of thought is beyond obsolete."

Kiss. "That sounds lovely."

Wing-wrap. "Thought so."

He leans in. "I didn't think of anything. If there's no one within shouting distance of the door what are you even planning to do -"

"I can make things farther away than shouting distance. It just becomes much harder to control who knows what's going on."

"Could get the kid to hold the door and have someone run and get people - and we should ask Maitimo, the adult one, how his parents at this point in the time period would take the news, they were really young themselves..."

"His world is running at a crawl, but maybe if I hold the door to Hell it'll pull Revelation along with it?"

"Maybe, yeah - there's obviously something enforcing consistency between the daeva realms and Revelation most of the time..."

"Worth a shot." He kisses and then unwraps Timothy and goes over to the door to do that.

They summon a fairy and ask for a ride out to somewhere near Jupiter. They are on their way to Jupiter when he gets the note.

That they'd disable summoning in their world and in mine - I guess we need disambiguating names, now - is a risk. No convenient way to check if summoning works in mindreading Arda at all in 1225 or thereabouts, you'd have to go over to Endorë and track down the Dwarves. Easy enough to check if it works in my world but it'd require sending a message to Endorë and then having the door open until someone dies. Vengeance-wise I don't actually think they'd kill you but they might Doom you, ask [a list of names] if they can figure out what if anything the Doom actually did. 

"...Doom?"

"Did the Doom not come up? The Valar were pissed off about the ship theft massacre, they cursed all the fleeing Noldor and all who followed them, I went and pointed out that this was very irresponsible if it could extend to other worlds, they narrowed it to a hereditary thing...?"

"Didn't come up. What was it supposed to do -"

Cam has the text of it, here it is! Thank you Milliways translation effect!

"What the fuck."

"Yeah, don't tell tiny you but my guilt is almost one hundred percent Maiar-based, the Valar sucked."

"And will probably go right back to sucking - is the Doom still in place, is there a way to check -"

"No idea, it didn't make them glow ominously or anything so obvious."

"Huh. Well, I'll go get the people he asked for -"

Cam steps away from the door but declines to follow Timothy into the yard.

Tiny Maitimo is sitting on adult Macalaurë's lap and gazing at him adoringly.

And the designated Elves come in to the bar. "The obvious way to check, I think, is to try to pull the data off a bunch of chips of doomed and non-doomed people, see if there's a difference -"

"Minds're big, you wouldn't be able to tell by looking, but you could probably run a machine learning algorithm on it -"

"With a couple hundred thousand people as samples -"

"Yeah, it won't run overnight -"

"- if you could get the same people, before and after the Doom, that's a simpler inference problem -"

Timothy looks very confused.

"I can do that if you think it would have directly affected the chips, yes - Timothy do you want me to explain or just round it all to 'magic'?"

"It seems like it might be a little high-context."

"If it affected our minds it affected the chips, and the 'bloodlines' thing suggests that it follows specific people, so it'd almost have to affect minds - instead of being some kind of ambient environmental effect -"

"Given certain assumptions about how magical curses work, sure it'd affect the chips - I'll run some machine learning on it and see what there is to see, anyway."

They will compare computing systems and methods of doing that while Timothy continues to blink confusedly in the background.

And eventually the chipreader and associated hardware is whirring away on that.

He goes to check on the small him. "Are you sure there's no one in yelling range?"

"There might be people on the road to the city but my parents' workshops are soundproofed so they don't get distracted."

"Maybe you can hold the door and someone can go interrupt them."

"It makes them sad when you interrupt them."

"I think in this case it'll make them happy." He takes his hand.

He goes back inside.

...Cam does not bother the tiny Maitimo.

The tiny Maitimo beams at him and waves. 

That is painfully adorable. Cam waves back.

"Timothy says my mommy and daddy will not be sad about being interrupted."

"...I speak seventy or so languages depending on how you count," Cam mentions.

" - he will probably find that interesting. And he will want to give me a hug because this place is weird and confusing and I wish I could go home."

"And you can, as soon as we find him, but you need to be really patient at holding the door, can't get distracted. All right?"

He nods solemnly.

And someone goes and fetches a Fëanáro and a Nerdanel.

They are visibly younger! The equivalent of a human eighteen or nineteen, maybe, definitely not the ambiguous-mid-twenties of their non-mindreading alts.

They look at the door. They blink.

Hugs!!!!!!!!

" - what's this -"

"This is a magical interdimensional bar."

" - interdimensional? There are other dimensions? How'd it end up here, who or what are you - you're not Quendi -"

"I'm a demon, my name is Cam, the door appropriates the locations of doors in other dimensions uncontrollably at random but given the presence of someone from the correct dimension in the bar can be maintained indefinitely. There are a lot of dimensions but we've been concerning ourselves with a handful so far."

"- I see." Blink.

"And some of them have alternate universe versions of the same personality." He inclines his head slightly Timothyward.

"I'm a different species but I'm your son. The Bar can notice when people are alternate universe versions of people and also we are acquainted with another Arda with an adult Nelyafinwë Maitimo who is an alternate universe version of me and also this guy is very much what I remember being like when I was four. - You can meet the my-universe version of yourself in a bit, I sent him a message but time runs strangely within the interdimensional bar."

"I'm seven."

"Humans - the kind of person I am - grow up faster."

"I used to be a human but became a demon when I died."

"Technically I think I'm significantly younger than your son."

" - huh. There's a world like ours but in the future? Can I see what we achieve -"

Cam rummages around for photos of Tirion.

He and Nerdanel both start cooing over it. "I need a physics textbook."

"I need a materials science textbook -"

"That's so so many people!"

"I assume your world is different in some ways since in this one Elves can't read minds except of each other and specific other species, so other things might be different too, but Quenya's pretty similar far as I can tell and so on... Uh, the bar over there is sapient and has all publications ever and is good at recommending books if you narrow it down well enough."

Both of his parents are kind of just standing there in shock. 

"Hi, Bar!"

Hello! Can I get you anything to drink?

"...for one thing the lighting is different..."

He picks up the napkin and frowns at it. What does it say? he asks the bar -

And then oooh, yes, I would like a drink, thank you!

"Can I have my complete publications in the universe that's hundreds of Years ahead of ours? And Fëanáro's -"

"And Rúmil's and Aulë's and Erulastëon -"

Some paper and some definitely not paper appears! Tiny Maitimo gets a white beverage in a mug!

They blink at it.

" - I guess you're not even ahead of us, yet - Cam, when do they get electricity - wow, my alt's life must have been fascinating - uh, those are computers, my father will tell you the things you need to know to make sense of computers from a not-yet-at-electricity standpoint -"

Looking... "Looks like 1310?"

"That's eighty-five Years from now - what's electricity -"

"I think I like Elves better when they're on even ground with us! Though wow this is so weird - wait, how do you have the chips and not know what electricity is -"

"Chips?"

"Non-cyborgness would explain the different mindreading, they might not have chips."

"- do you, like, die -"

"Very rarely."

"The Valar can reshape a body for a soul which has been dispossessed of one but they are not yet very good at it and not all prefer to return."

Cam checks - "No chips. So we've got cyborg Elves and soul Elves."

"And just like wizards and daeva weirdly fail to change much about history up through 1800 -"

"- dear, can you read these?"

" - I can - guess in most places..."

"...uh, maybe written Quenya is different, name me something written from your world and I'll have a look -"

He blinks at him. "I mean - my...notes?"

Cam conjures up the latest pageful. "...no this is totally legible without the bar translating it into my native language for me, and I only know cyborg-Quenya, is it a vocabulary problem -?"

"It's mostly a vocabulary problem -"

"And I'm just not very good with the letters yet, haven't had much time to practice since the baby was born..."

...blink. "Uh..."

"My fault," he says a little defensively of her, "I kept changing them around."

"...changing... them... around?"

" - the letters? I wanted to get it right but it made it hard for anyone else to learn - I wanted to have made up my mind before I tried teaching Nelyafinwë -"

"Are you saying you invented the alphabet."

"Yes. A couple Years ago, and I've been tweaking it since - I had you make my notes because they are as far as I know the only written works in the world -"

"I could be wrong but I think if your alt had invented the alphabet this would have come up at some point."

"They have writing, yes?"

"Yes, and the same letters."

" - well, that's strange. Anyway, it's a good thing you didn't find us a few years sooner or we'd be illiterate and that'd be very embarrassing. As it is we're just - still learning to read things, and don't know any of the vocabulary..."

"Well, you'll pick it up with more to practice on than whatever you happen to be taking notes about, I imagine."

He nods. "We have to hold this door open to continue having interdimensional bar access?"

" - yes and also there are a couple complications you should know about, though maybe they're not best for small ears -"

Having to have all your conversations out loud must be terribly inconvenient.

There are spells for it. Uh. Am I doing this right?

I can hear you fine but you're probably not including your friend, I don't know how that'd work - I can bounce things to him?

"I think I'd rather just use conversation privacy spells, if you don't mind? It's less weird. 

Um.

The Valar need to not parole Melkor. In the other Arda they parole him and he goes back to Endorë and starts a war and kills and tortures hundreds of millions of people."

"It might not actually be nearly as bad for you since you're not cyborgs, but that's just scope-limiting, not prohibitive."

...they look at each other confusedly. 

"Okay. We'll warn them."

"In the other timelines the Fëanáro and his children go off to Endorë to fight him. It's - there are no real prospects of winning. Maitimo is captured."

"The Valar -"

"All of this happened in less than a Year, the Valar had yet to decide what to do. Also they were angry with - there'd been a massacre over the lightleapers to get to Endorë -"

"Lightleapers?"

He looks helplessly at Cam.

"Vehicles that can go between planets in five days. Your alt invented the technology for that, that did come up."

"'planets' and 'vehicles' and 'technology' are all new vocabulary. Okay. Tell the Valar not to parole Melkor -"

"No, it's more complicated than that. The - alternate universe version of you - Melkor offered them a deal. He would - stop hurting people - and he was hurting so many people - he would swear never to do any of it again - does your kind of Elf have the oaths thing -"

" - yes -"

Cam considers leaving the room. He settles for appearing a cup of coffee and looking away, tail twitching.

"He swore very thoroughly to stop, forever. If we would destroy Valinor.

There was - a way to resurrect the Elves who'd die. So. Your alt decided it was worth it. And it worked. The war was over, Melkor can never do evil again. But the rest of the Valar and all of the Maiar who lived in Valinor are dead."

"You -"

He shivers violently.

Conversational privacy does not stop him from noticing this and looking alarmed!

"We are hoping your Valar might be able to fix it. But they made a lot of really terrible decisions, in the other Arda, and we'd harm lots of people by asking for their help if they're going to make the same bad decisions."

"They made bad decisions! 'Upset because of a massacre' - what massacre - how do you even do that -"

"You can go get the whole story from the alternate universe versions of you who were there. The you is in room 4230," he says to Nerdanel, "and there are ten of you in 113."

" - ten of me?"

"Chip thing. They wanted to invent a non-Milliways method of travelling between worlds and they thought they'd get it faster that way."

They look at each other and then take hands and head up the stairs.

He curls up in a ball against the bar and starts very quietly crying.

"Hey, it's okay, don't cry."

"Don't lie."

"I am not going to let things not be okay. You're - look, when you have as many people as there are in that picture of the city, you have to delegate some things, you can't be personally responsible for everything. I think you should delegate this particular thing."

"This is not a thing you are equipped to solve. You will be someday and you'll be so good at it but you don't need to be yet."

"...I want to solve it. Even if it wasn't my resonsility and it is because Valinor is my home and I have to keep it safe and these people are my people and they trust me -"

"There are lots and lots of worlds out there and lots of people who would be our people if we knew them and all of them need your help and there is only so much of you. Your Valinor's safe. It'll be safe forever. I promise. - want to help me interview demons who want to adopt children from 1802 orphanages?"

Aww.

"Orphanages?"

"- my world is not as nice as Valinor and some kids had both their parents die and they don't have anyone to take care of them, and there's another world that doesn't have kids at all but some of the people in it might want to be parents - Cam did we get any mail while Hell wasn't going at a crawl -"

"...form thank-you-note from the poppy gardens."

"I wanted to ask him why - there are a lot of things magic can help with - but it seemed - rude, like I'd be claiming I had the authority to decide if his reasons were good enough or not - anyway, it's good it didn't work but I felt badly for him."

Nod.

"Looks like there're no people to interview yet, kiddo. You want to go sing with the Elves some more?"

He scampers off. 

"Still need an answer on whether dead summoners daevafy outside Revelation before it's even worth considering bringing the Valar in."

"Yes, but at least now waiting for that information doesn't involve sequestering a little kid from his parents."

"Yeah." Sigh. "Any results on the mysterious not-magic thing that checks whether the Doom affects chips?"

Cam checks the report from his machine learning boxes upstairs. "...yes and it does."

" - so what does that imply -"

"It implies the Valar are big on mind control?"

"I don't think we should let them anywhere near a universe that has been rid of them."

"Maybe sense can be talked into them, maybe soul-Elves have a better class of Valar, maybe the New Valinor population would rather have them back anyway..."

"They didn't just block summoning on Valinor, though, right, they blocked it in the entire universe -"

"Yes. If they're going to do that they're unaffordable. But if they can be talked out of it..."

"Is there a way to tell what the mind control did -"

"Not without much better than state of the art chip code interpretation."

" - they deserve to know - we should write them -"

"First I should run another check, see if it's still in effect with the Valar gone."

Nod.

He can program that in remotely. He does so.

He sits there and fiddles absently with the note from Bar that his alt couldn't read.

There are lots of people by the lake. They know his name and he doesn't know theirs; it is a little upsetting.

He kind of wants his parents to hug him for a long time but he doesn't tell anyone this because they would judge his parents for being neglectful and the way to avoid that is to make it seem like what his parents are doing is exactly what he wants. 

He doesn't even know what his parents are doing.

He asks someone to teach him to read. 

A while later some more people walk out by the lake and he doesn't know them so he goes over. He chants the letters in his head while he goes so he won't forget them and make the person who was teaching him feel as if it was wasted time.

"A kid!" exclaims Amriac. "A little one! Oh wow it's so cute! Can they talk yet that size -"

" - hi! I'm Nelyafinwë Maitimo. Well, the new one. It's all very confusing."

"You can talk! You're so cute how are you so cute!"

"Kids learn to talk when they're, like, one, and if this is a Timothy maybe sooner, he's like four -"

"I'm seven. But the worlds are different in some ways so I might be four of yours, I really couldn't say."

"I mean smaller kids can talk on TV but, like, so can cats."