The Valar announce that they've done as much as they can in Singularity (they can't bring back peoples' babies in that critical period either, but they can get them earlier versions) and are setting up portals between there and Sanity as soon as they are confident they've cleaned up the plague. A bunch of Elf architects have this wild idea for a fivedimensional city where alternating intersections are interdimensional portals between various Valinors and they get eagerly to setting it up.
"They're teaching everyone to do something actively dangerous, and they think I'm lying when I try to explain why. It's very frustrating."
"I know someone who was a really good summoning teacher, didn't go in for gags at all, but then he got shot and now he's a demon."
" - I mean, being a demon is great. I get worked up about the gags but you can just never take summons, and most demons do, or you can get a long term thing like that guy has."
"Uh, Michael told Amriac that she could have whatever she wanted from him - which is legitimately a stupid thing to do, don't do that, you don't have to gag us but that's dumb - but he seems to be extremely happy about that life choice of his so. Timothy - like, that is both the kind of thing Timothy would do if he needed to and the kind of thing he would not give any outward indication he was doing, so I can't go off 'he seems to be happy', but Cam's a Miranda so no."
"Uh. Secret knowledge about the multiverse, don't go posting it online or whatever... some universes have the same people in them. I mean, like, look alike, sound alike, just the same people in different circumstances. And once we noticed that then we realized they don't always look alike, either. The Elves have this thing that can identify 'em. So Miranda, the girl I like, is an alternate universe version of Cam, the demon dating Timothy, and Miranda wouldn't, like, arrange for people to pay her with sex and pretend they're not doing that, so neither would Cam. It sounds crazy until you see alternates of people together and then it's really noticeable."
"It does sound weird. ...so if she likes you too you and him will be dating the same person?"
" - alternate universe versions, yeah. It's a little weird but I liked Miranda way before Timothy met Cam and I think Timothy got with Cam before we learned about it."
"Yeah. I mean, Miranda and her alts are really amazing so it's not surprising that we'd both like one but it's a weird coincidence that we met them at all. - if you want to see the alts thing I could make you pictures of my family and pictures of the royal family of this one Elf kingdom, they're our alts. They look like us except Elves."
Picture of his family! Picture of the Elves at comparable ages, and then pictures of the Elves today!
"I know right? Timothy and I were up in Ganymede trying to help the prisoners - they gag the demons, so they go like sixty or seventy years without talking - and people commented that he looked like the head of the Elf diplomatic mission. They're the same except Timothy's not as Elfy, obviously."
"Uh, really patient with not much sense of time, which is annoying, they'll be like 'that's urgent, I'll see to it within ten years!' There's an Elf Miranda and she's not like that because Mirandas are great. They sing, all the time, like if you're just kind of wondering where an Elf is they're practically guaranteed to be outside singing. They're all super pretty. The Elf me's smarter than me, it's sort of upsetting but I figure I'll catch up eventually."
"Yeah. Well, being the royal family also probably contributes to that, they can just be casually like 'oh, yeah, that's a problem, I'll ban it.' Like, I wish politics worked like that here. If you ever wanna meet some I could probably arrange it."