"...Yes," he says, "I imagine it would have been."

"Three of the other contestants did die before she got to them, but - yeah. Very brief affair. It's entirely likely that Coin didn't long survive assassinating me. But maybe Sherlock prioritized resurrecting me first and my live copy just put her on the moon. I'm a softy like that."

He smiles again.

"Not as much of a softy as Sherlock's brother, though. People were allowed to put in appeals for people I'd put up there and most of them didn't submit any. He put in, like, four. He's a sweetie. I miss him too." She peers into her tea. "So, I've been told there's no way of communicating with the living - but I was also told there was no way to check up on them, whereas you've given me hope that if I go back to the library I can find books on myself and find out what happens after the unfortunate assassination. So maybe you have contradictory information for the other discouraging thing I've been told too."

"I imagine having a series of books published about your life is not common enough for most people to think of it when asked if there is a way to check up on the living, which there otherwise isn't. And I did mention the books are not entirely accurate. For one thing, in the books, I survived my trip off the edge of a cliff."

"I find it reasonably likely that my books will report that I survived my nuking," Shell Bell points out. "I don't even think this will be a journalistic error as far as it goes, given my hypothesis about my apartment. Also, I showed up wearing my crown, if anybody is famous enough to warrant biographies the crown would be a hint, wouldn't it?"

"And yet," he says, shrugging.

"So you don't know any mechanism of communication that goes the other way. Unless I find a door to Milliways, which to hear Eights tell it could easily be a thousand years in coming."

"Correct."

"D'you know Milliways?"

"Oh, yes. I've been there once or twice. Not recently."

"You came back here. I wouldn't, not without at least recovering my magic and being sure I could leave whenever I wanted - then I'd come back and try to accomplish something, but I wouldn't without. Why'd you come back?"

He shrugs. "I suppose I don't consider myself wholly useless here."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean - of course you're accomplishing something here. I mean do you not miss where you came from? Or didn't you at the not-recent occasion when you found the door?"

"I do, a little. But there is no opportunity to go back."

"If I found Milliways and my door insisted on opening to here instead of to where I was when I was alive, I'd wait for one of my alts or their friends or my girlfriend or her brother or - anyone I knew. And I would expect this to eventually lead to me going home, or at least somewhere nicer than here even if ultimately it was deemed too awkward to have two Empresses of Atlantis with only one Atlantis to go around. What do you mean, no opportunity?"

"Neither I nor anyone I know found Milliways while I was alive. I would certainly have remembered it. So I don't hold out much hope that they will if I hang around long enough."

"Fair enough. There's six of me that we know of who've been to Milliways. We have a shared room, there."

"I don't believe I've heard of anyone with so many duplicates."

"You've got lots, too," Shell Bell says. "Not as many, but plenty. We didn't work out a nicknaming system for your template so they'll be hard to enumerate now that I don't have a perfect memory anymore, but we'd collectively encountered four of you, not counting, well, you. And a number of me came with a different template; we called that template 'Whistles' and we know of five of those."

"Quite the circus, all together."

"Oh, yes. As of the last time I checked I think I was the only Bell who'd met all five of the others. I think Juliet's met more of you than I have, though. I can't remember exactly... but I think so. So it was never exactly group photo time. But it was fun."

Shell Bell waits.