We're fine. Just cooped up, Aegis says. We should probably sleep in shifts in case someone breaks in.

If you like that sort of thing, says Aegis. You want to sleep first or second?

I'll see if I can sleep now, then. Do I get a fluffy critter to hug?

Ivy fluffs obligingly into existence.

It is really cute.

Aegis wakes up about six hours later. "Your turn," she offers Sue. "Unless Howlett's in a tight spot now and needs the bonus brain."

Aegis goes right on snuggling Ivy, as she reads summaries from Jane of ansible communications she has expressed interest in. Best brainchild ever.

After an hour or two, Ivy vanishes in her customary flicker of golden light.

Where did you go? Jane wants to know. You were there and then you were gone and now you're back.

Oh. Milliways, he says. I guess. How was I not here? I was just dreaming. Did I go away?

I don't know about physically. There aren't cameras on you so I can't see you. But your linking-part was gone.

My what part?

The thing that I'm talking to right now.

...My mind?

I don't know. Maybe. You weren't living here anymore. Remember you showed me how I 'live' in Aegis? You weren't living anywhere I could see. But that doesn't have to be the same thing as your mind, because I live in Aegis but my mind's distributed all over the galaxy.

His cell is an approximately featureless metal box. It has a door (locked) and a tray of food (lousy) and a desk (offline). Aegis is not there.

Well, he can turn on the desk, for a start.

The desk is crippled - it has no connectivity at all; any data intended to leave it will have to do so through a wired connection - but it's got some familiar programs on it. Military sims. He's not exactly being instructed to play with them, but there's nothing else to do.

If Aegis is around, it's not near enough.

No. I lost visual track of you after you were taken off Eros. The people who grabbed you were enough of a mix that I can't confidently guess their affiliations but it's most likely based on background information to be Warsaw Pact. I think they've been in a communications blackout or they're working on a closed computer system.

But if you can tell I wasn't here, how can you know without knowing where here is?

You weren't anywhere. You're like a beacon to me, you and Aegis, I could find you in another galaxy if you went to one, but I couldn't find you at all.

...Aegis hasn't gone anywhere, right? Or you would've gone too. Can you tell anything about her? Is she okay?

She's still in the universe, Jane reports. I don't know if I'd go if she did - at least the way you did - I'm not just her, I only happen to live in her body, I'm her roommate. I can't talk to her directly without you relaying. I lost visual on her at the same time as you.

There are minds for about two hundred yards around, sparse clusters of them, and then nothing for quite a long way beyond that.

You went again, Jane says when he's back.

I know! This time I did it on purpose, he says brightly.

Ooh, how?

I wonder if I could tuck people into my mind and put them places?

The hallway is institutional: linoleum, fluorescent light. Jackbooted guard over there who is very surprised to see Sue and goes for a stun gun on his belt.

Sue shifts himself much closer and punches the guard in the throat.

I have a big mind, Jane goes on conversationally. I bet it could fit a person. Especially you or Aegis.

The guard coughs but doesn't go down, and he re-aims his stun gun.

Sue punches him in the throat again, much harder.

The guard shoots. And chokes.

The guard falls to his knees, clutching at his throat, dropping the gun.

I'm not sure. Do you mean see? Anywhere with a camera connected to something on the nets. Do you mean know where it is? Anywhere in astronomical maps.

The corridor branches out at the end, left and right, and there's a guard in each section.

What do you have to know about it?

"Blue-nine? Blue-nine, report," says Blue-nine's communicator.

Sue takes Blue-nine's communicator, and their stun gun for good measure, and skips nice and close to the other guard and shoots them with it.

A stunning turn of events!

The gravity and the slope of the floors suggest that he's on Earth.

It's swell! And she sends him a dizzily radial image of the entire planet from all directions at once. She can make out houses but probably not individual people except in the most heavily viewed areas - which would be more densely populated than this one seems. Like so!

Apparently the complex is on some kind of lockdown, because it won't open. He does, however, manage to set off the fire alarm.

And with the fire alarm going, the fire exit still won't open? Fucking typical. He sizes up the door, and then teleports to the other side of it.

He transmits this information to Jane, along with as much of a visual of his surroundings as he can stand to gather, and then he flicks back inside where it's warm.

Yeah, they're not really equipped to deal with a prisoner who can teleport.

Nope.

Sue doesn't stay, but he does link him.

Sue? What the - where'd you come from?

Learned how to teleport, he says. But I don't think I can take anybody with me, and I don't know how to open these doors. How long have you been up?

An hour. Where's Aegis?

Not close, and not answering. You know anything?

The food here sucks. That's all.

I didn't try any, he says cheerfully.

What do you know?

Well, they had about twenty guards in the building, and all the ones I met are on the floor now. And it's cold out. I went outside for a bit and now I'm looking for a coat before I try that again.

How the fuck are you teleporting, anyway?

I dunno! It feels like this, he says, sending as he makes his next jump.

I can't make heads or tails of that, Qiaochu says.

Nope. If he goes far enough thataway, he can find some other jeesh members and random other kids from Command School, some awake, some asleep.

None of them do, no.

It's apparently been turned off remotely.

There's one over there, one he doesn't know personally.

Sue puts himself where the minds are. They don't have a direction or a distance, exactly, but the whole configuration has a familiar shape.

Welcome to Milliways!

You're gone again, but this time I can still talk to you, it seems like, observes Jane.

There's another copy of Aegis, over there, sipping at some juice.

Maybe because we were linked when I went, he says, flicking over to the Aegis-alike midsentence. As he does, he notices that it's different when he teleports in Milliways: between places in his world, there's a flicker of that no-space outside that he didn't notice until he teleported just now without it.

"Oh!" exclaims the Aegis-alike. "Hello -" She peers at him. "Sue? I'm Shell Bell."

Maybe! I want to learn how to do this.

By tucking them away into my mind, same way you're tucking yourself. I have lots of mind, I bet I could hold somebody besides me.

"...You aren't asleep? But you just -" Shell Bell waves a hand. "Appeared. You didn't come through the door. I'm one of the magic ones; yours is the only one left we've gotten in any form of contact with who isn't."

"Oh! Wow! If you haven't met a magic one yet how are you doing that?"

Maybe Aegis to where you are?

"...I'm not natively magic like some of them," Shell Bell says, "I don't know if my defensive wish will block you or not. Is that - Ivy? Amariah wrote about her but Juliet didn't see any sign of her when you visited Sunshine later."

"Wow. Okay. I guess that probably happened because you got her when you were dreaming?"

I think I've almost got it.

"Guess so," he shrugs. "Anyway, can you coldproof me?"

"I can, but why do you need to be coldproofed?"

Here's Aegis, landing pretty much right on top of Sue and slumping to the floor in drug-addled sleep.

Well, I put her somewhere, is she with you? I was aiming for you!

"...Way, way better idea," says Sue. "Wake her up!"

Shell Bell wakes Aegis up.

"Mrrh huh? Sue?" says Aegis, sitting up and blinking. She spots Shell Bell. "Whoa. Whoa. What happened?"

"Hi, Aegis. I'm Shell Bell," says Shell Bell. "This is Milliways. I have no idea how you got here."

"Jane did it," says Sue. Yeah, she's here! "But guys, we kind of have a whole building full of kidnapped Battle School kids to worry about."

"It was more than just us? Can Jane get them out, too?"

I'm awesome, says Jane.

"Well," says Shell Bell, "I could just mint you and give you some starter coins. I don't walk around without plenty of coins on me since that unfortunate missed opportunity with Juliet. But I want to know how you got here, because coins don't cut it with getting into Milliways at will - Juliet can do it but she can't expect to reliably meet anybody no matter how many times she visits. It kills our ability to coordinate."

"Yes please to coins. Jane's a - a computer-person. Apparently she can also put me in Milliways? Sue-my-bird, can you catch me up real quick?"

"I can't even touch you," he says, "are you mad at me or something?"

"No! Why would I be mad at you?"

He shrugs helplessly. "Well, I'm shoving on you and you're a great big wall."

Shell Bell hands over a bandolier.

"Oh well done Jane," murmurs Aegis, aloud and through the link to Jane herself both.

Yes. I am very excellent, Jane replies.

"This is amazing," murmurs Shell Bell. "If she can take you anywhere - look, Sue, can you get me into the link too, or is the star wish blocking you?"

He knocks.

Aegis promptly catches up her alt on all the goings-on.

I think I found your building! Jane says, meanwhile. Someone can't resist downloading porn onto the nice clean network, and I got all the plans. I think I could pick up the whole thing, underground tunnels and all, and put it in the middle of the Hegemony complex, would that be good?

Okay. Pause. Done!

So we'll see if you can keep me in, if I step out the door, and if that works I can try closing it, suggests Shell Bell. Actually, let me see if I can force the door to Juliet's world. She's got a Jarvis who will be able to make a door back right away.

"Hello," says Jarvis. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Forced the door. Aegis has finally come to Milliways, and she didn't dream her way there and she didn't use a door - we're experimenting with Sue's linking now. Seems to work if the door's open. If you don't mind I'd like to try closing the door for just a moment, then opening it right away? Actually - you know what - it'd be interesting if we could try having Sue add you to his telepathic linkup, would you mind?"

"No," he says, "that would be perfectly interesting."

Sue, can you incorporate Jarvis from there? Or if you come through this door to Sunshine?

Hi, who're you? I'm Jane, says Jane happily.

I'm an ansible network! replies Jane, much in kind. She is as always rather heedless of the receiving party's bandwidth limitations.

I think so. I was an accident.

The best accident, says Aegis.

Yeah, agrees Sue. Hey, to Shell Bell, are you gonna close the door or what?

Now I want to see if Jane can put people in other worlds, says Shell Bell. After getting a look at them.

Okay!

Fascinating, says Jarvis.

I wonder if ansibles can link up between worlds? Then I wouldn't need Sue to aim, anymore, says Jane.

Show us how they're made and we can conjure one up, although I don't know if they'll connect to a network from as early as 2005 without serious compatibility issues unless Jarvis wants to act as a translator.

I am sure I can manage.

I look at everything that's hooked up to me. I can't not read it, Jane warns. None of it's been a person besides me before, but...

Could I isolate you to a subsystem? Perhaps we should get Tony.

[Hey, Tony!]

[???]

[Two of Juliet's alts are here - I'm Shell Bell, the other is Aegis - and we have a technical issue for you. We're in Jarvis's living room.]

[It's like, ugly o'clock in the morning,] he says. [Is it an urgent technical issue?]

[It could easily solve the problem of controllable interdimensional travel that doesn't rely on Milliways. I can magic away the sleepy if you want.]

[Go for it,] he says, sounding more alert already.

Sue links up Tony too.

Nice! So what's up?

I'm an ansible network! I can pick people and things up and put them down in other places. I know where everything is in my world which Aegis hasn't named yet, and I can use Sue's link to aim, and I think if I had an anchor here I could aim here too, and then everyone could go wherever they wanted anywhere I had an anchor! But I automatically read everything that goes through me, and "me" is everything connected to an ansible. Jarvis thinks I could possibly be on an isolated subsystem of some kind. I don't know if you can do that. I ghost through every security protocol invented at home like they don't exist and we're farther in the future than you.

Sure I can do that, snorts Tony. Tell me more about your computers.

Oversharing time!

Shell Bell hands over half a dozen. "Will this do, or do you need more? And I don't think I've met this exact you, but - I'm Shell Bell, I have one of you at home." Hugs?

I think so! I haven't done this before, says Jane.

Well, I could give you internet, but I don't want you to eat Jarvis by accident.

I don't want to eat him! I just don't know how not to look at things, and everything in a computer I look at is located in me after that instead of out of me.

Could you try to figure it out?

I believe I can, he says.

It looks like this! And she shows him looking-at-things code, in all the myriad variations depending on what she's looking at.

There are enough different architectures involved that he suspects she wouldn't have much trouble translating to his. He studies the snippets carefully, then reports that yes, he knows what they taste like now.

Can I see the nets now, then?

Tony doesn't have a big enough coin on hand, so he sends to Shell Bell the exact parameters necessary to wish Jane access to their high-speed Internet connection.

Poof!

...Nice.

Jarvis successfully spits out all of Jane's tangible intrusions into his system.

We scooped you up once, we can do it again, says Sue. Yell if you need us.

I tried once, it's like she's not even there.

[Sue can't link you but I can relay whatever,] Shell Bell adds.

Um, says Aegis, and she just adds herself and Sue and Jane to the brainphone directly.

[Silly me, Sue can relay, he's good at relaying.]

"Ooh," says Sherlock. "Will there be violence? Probably not. I'll pass, thanks."

Sue giggles into the link. I love you, Aegis.

Who's next?

I've been to Golden's and to Angela's, but not Amariah's or Stella's. Sue, you've been to Amariah's, haven't you? Shell Bell asks, heading for the door and pushing a wish that it lead to Milliways.

Yep!

Let's see if you can get the door to take you by asking nicely. Some people can. If you can't I can make a star safe for you and you can try forcing it like I did to Juliet's.