And someone else appears in the office with a pop. He's human but the resemblance is still striking.

"Uh. Hi. Is your Melkor dead."

"...yes."

"Sauron?"

"Maybe."

"- I can put in an order to have Cam check." He sits down at the glass thing and taps it. "I don't actually do - new-world onboarding, I think he just thought - since I was a you and at least more of a hassle to mind-control -"

"Uh-huh."

"The word for it is 'alts'. The same people, different worlds, different species. Often look alike but not always, there's also a genderswapped Arda and some people come in different human racial categories. There are - twelve Maitimos - and - did your Valar do a lot of aggressive mind control to their populations to manage the crime rate -"

"Yes."

"So that is not standard and wherever it doesn't happen he is a great person but in - we call them 'evil Ardas' - he's a catastrophe. All his alts are constantly petitioning for permission to murder the evil one - there was only one, now I guess there are two - and they keep getting turned down. The evil one isn't administering anything and all the other ones will go to excruciating lengths to stay out of your way, if you want that,"

"Petitioning who?"

"Everyone else involved with interworld affairs - us, Bells, the rest of his family, various other people who've ended up being useful - they don't actually need permission but they won't do it as long as we all disapprove."

"Bells?"

"A person who has alts in a lot of worlds - did you drop on an Arda in a magical accident of some kind."

"It wasn't an accident."

"Mindreading is terrible, alcohol is terrible, take lots of notes, feel very strongly about human immortality, clumsy..."

"Uh. I don't have anything against other people drinking."

"Name has 'bel' in it somewhere? Parents' names resemble 'Charlie' and "Renee'."

"Corbelan. Karale. Rinya."

"Pleased to meet you. Yous help run the multiverse."

"...cool."

"And they have an introduction written up for new yous which they say is much better than the generic one - I'm going to have to go get copies, I don't have them on me - they'll probably also be more persuasive on the 'no the other Maitimos aren't just strategically hiding it' thing - the other Findekáno from an evil Arda was totally convinced of that -"

"He's very convincing."

"Why don't we just give you both lots of magic and then you can review the evidence at your own pace."