May writes that down. "Is the sun responsible for temperature or is that handled separately? Tides?"

"The sun affects temperature somewhat, but a lot of the details of climate variation are handled by the, ah, grass hairstylist phenomenon. Tides are not directly affected by the moon but are on a related schedule."

Nod. Notetaking. "Is there any time stuff apart from the weirdness relative to Earth?"

She shakes her head. "No. All the parts of the world have the same flow of time relative to one another. A day is twenty-four hours and there are three hundred and sixty of them in a year."

"Is that a fundamental law or a convenient convention."

"The lengths of the day cycle and seasonal cycle are both fundamental law. I do like having seasons. In some respects it would be convenient for timekeeping if every day had twelve hours of sun and twelve hours of night, instead of the proportions varying with the season, but the variance is useful for climate purposes."

"No, I just mean that if you wanted to get back the void-eaten people and they are in fact thoroughly eaten the easiest way conceptually would be something in the neighborhood of informational time travel."

"...ah. Yes, I see what you mean. No, I don't know of any way to accomplish that."

"Damn."

"Yes."

"You could maybe do something with backwards extrapolation if the place is deterministic enough and computational load isn't a factor."

She shakes her head. "I don't think it's deterministic enough."

"Hrm."

The Queen nods. "It's a hard problem."

"I will probably also want to design in more stringent editorial constraints because, however convenient is for me, what the heck kinda world kidnaps rando teenagers and gives them root access. - Was English already vernacular when you appeared? Were you the first kid to show up?"

"I wasn't the first. They spoke a different language before I showed up, but the way the translation works turns out to mean that the language spoken in the Kingdoms will tend over time to shift to match their respective monarchs. It took two centuries and was fascinating to watch. I'm not sure it's possible to entirely get rid of the effect outworlders have on the world, but I do think you might be able to - shore some things up, make them more resistant to change."

Nod. Notes notes.

"If I'd had the option at the time I would've changed the translation effect to something with less accidental cultural imperialism, but now that English is the common language of the Kingdoms I don't see that much would be gained by going back."

"Do you know much about what the kids before you did?"

She shakes her head. "I only know I wasn't the first because both the King and Queen obviously already had an idea of what an outworlder was going to be like and how they could use one before I showed up."

"Apparently none of them were effective assassins."

"I'm not surprised; most teenagers aren't."

"So... congratulations."

She smiles wryly. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. - Did you lose anything other than the body when it, uh, went home? Did it go home or did you just sorta stage it -"