Cam opens his eyes. "Uh, hi, who's asking and where the hell am I?"

"Sherlock. Milliways. Do please answer the question, I promise there will be plenty of explanations afterward."

"Sherlock, are you ki- okay, I'm Cam."

"And does that by any chance expand to Campbell Swan?"

"I am Sherlock Holmes; it is my business to know things. But in this particular case it wasn't terribly difficult to figure out, because I have already met nine of you, of whom every single one has the syllable 'bell' in her first name somewhere, and where applicable the last name 'Swan' or some variant."

"Excuse me?"

Brightly: "Which part would you like explained?"

"Nine of me. Definitely the nine of me part. Also the corresponding pronoun."

"I have met nine different versions of you from nine different universes. All are female. One is my girlfriend."

"...Okay, I grant that the fact that you knew my name suggests that there is something going on here, but how in the world - worlds - would you know I was one if they're girls?"

"See, again, Sherlock Holmes. Your bone structure is nearly identical, you move the same way, you speak the same way, you're carrying spiral-bound notebooks, you exhibit nearly every characteristic common to the Bells except for the ones directly related to sexual dimorphism in humans."

"How do you know about my notebooks, my backpack is zipped, have you been talking to Grace or something?"

"The bindings put pressure on the fabric of the backpack, distorting it in a distinctive pattern. Who is Grace?"

Cam smirks. "Ah, something you don't know. You're Sherlock Holmes, can't you figure it out?"

"Grace is evidently a notebook. You're carrying two. The other is a decoy, because you'd hardly name each book individually, there's hundreds, so unless it's an inherited title you must have combined the lot of them into one, how am I doing so far?"

Cam counts on his fingers. "Hit, B-plus, no points, hit."

"Mm, not a decoy? Serves some other function, then, I won't venture a guess until I know how your world's magic works beyond the obvious, would you like to meet the rest of you? They'll be terribly excited, or possibly appalled, there has after all never been a Bell who pees standing up before."

"I'm kind of appalled. Why am I girls?" Cam says, shaking his head. "I dunno, start me with one first, then I'll meet the onslaught of - what's the term? Sisters, cousins?"

"Alts. And I believe the specific collective noun is 'peal of Bells'."

"At least if you're one's boyfriend I don't have to expect a torrent of Jellybeans too, I think that might be a bit much and you're definitely not a Jellybean," snorts Cam. "Peal of Bells. Cute. Way too cute, why am I girls..."

"Tell me more of this Jellybean," says Minus, turning toward the door. "There's only one Bell with a unique significant other, and Sherlocks are in the minority, I'm one of two."

"...Oh. Jellybean's my boyfriend. He dresses up like Sailor Moon and he and Tilly saved my life when Iggy was trying to kill me and he's good at improvisational spells," says Cam. "We starting with your girlfriend?"

"Is he by any chance about six feet tall, curly brown hair, strong jaw...? Yes, I was planning to introduce you to her first, unless you object to that for some reason."

"Ah, you have hit upon the Bells' most common companion. The individuals are Jokers; the collective is a deck. Handy fellows to have around. I believe there were eight at last count, not all connected to Bells."

"Wow. Okay. And I am the only boy Bell. They're going to be all over me. I'm not sure if it's Christmas or Armageddon."

"Can it not be both?" he inquires.

"Perhaps it can. And there's more of you too, huh? I'm going to need to see a list at some point." He tucks Grace away into his bag. "Get everything written down."

"There is such a list, as it happens. Fair warning, I am the only Sherlock who is likely to flirt with you. Shall we go find my girlfriend?"

"Others only like girls or something?" asks Cam. "I think I'll have enough to deal with if there's eight more Jellybeans. And yeah, let's go meet your girlfriend. What's her name? Belinda, Arabella, Isabelle, something like that?"

"I guess if I'm the only boy I can just carry on going by Cam," says Cam.

Here's Juliet! She steps through the door. "Yeah? Where is she?" she asks, bouncing on her toes.

Cam sighs.

"Hi," says Cam.

"...Okay, that's new, how do we know you're an alt and not just a coincidentally named brother-type?"

"Apparently notebooks are a thing?" Cam offers.

"They are till we meet the peal and make 'em redundant by hexing up perfect recall," says Juliet.

"Don't say that, you'll scare her," says Cam.

"His notebook is named Grace," Sherlock chips in. "She is magical in some way."

"She's particularly well-loved, and I've warded her and everything, but everything talks, she's just particularly cooperative 'cause she's mine," says Cam. He takes Grace out and pats her. "Don't worry, you're not redundant," he soothes in Speech.

"You're talking to your notebook," says Juliet. "In a weird language."

"You could talk to yours if you were a wizard. What are you instead? I'm getting a general impression of some kinda magic."

Sherlock picks up his girlfriend's hand and kisses a flicker of flame between her knuckles.

"I'm still not totally convinced you're a Bell and not a coincidence," says Juliet, shrinking her aura down to a low hum of hazardousness. "But if you are, yeah, you can help yourself to everything on that list except 'Slayer' and you'll want to regender 'empress' and you might want to wear Jane someplace other than a necklace and of course whether you want to date the vampire is between you and him."

"Is there, like, a checklist?" Cam asks.

"Clumsy, except while flying if applicable? Tendency to wear default outfits instead of fussing about it? Notebooks for introspection, self-analysis, and brain-hacking? Self-centeredly altruistic? Aspire to useful luxury? If applicable, huge magic geek? Anti-death as a matter of general policy and most particularly in your own case? Parents named Renée and Charlie or variants and reasonably likely to be divorced and depending on how old you are Renée might've remarried? More likely than not grew up in Forks, Washington? Generalized terror of mental spying and editing and, if available in your magic system, natively resistant to same? Like old literature? Think crowns are a great fashion accessory that goes with everything? Unabashedly seek phenomenal cosmic power and control of the universe because it's not being done adequately?"

"...It's like you know eight of me," says Cam after a silence.

"Noted," says Cam. "For future reference when I have my bearings. Damn, that's a list."

"There's one more thing. Go up to the bar and see if she gives you a key," says Juliet.

"She? Okay." Cam is less fazed than some Bells by the notion of a sentient bar-lady. He goes up to her and addresses her conversationally in the Speech. "Hi, bar."

"Thanks!" says Cam, taking and pocketing the key. "So you can tell I'm a Bell, I guess? How do you manage that?"

"Recognizing people is all in a day's work," Bar says serenely. "Won't you have a drink while you're here? I serve everything."

"Huh. Sure, I'll take a smoothie, let's call it banana peach, unless it's particularly pricey."

"...So, you talk to stuff, and it talks to you, huh?"

"Yup. In the Speech. Anyone can learn the language but you have to do some rigmarole prior to or at the latest during puberty to actually get anything to do anything beyond talk back."

"What pray tell are the other options?"

"Basically, I can tell stuff to do stuff, and it'll listen to me," says Cam. "I try not to be pushy with anything smart, and there's some stuff it's not wise to do, like screwing with the weather, but I can fix broken things or ask stuff about what's been going on around it. Mostly I convince seeds to genetically alter themselves so I can distribute them places that could use improved crops. Matilda's mom helps with all the stuff that needs legal majority, but the company's mine, Seedling Enterprises. I do seeds because nothing I've figured out in pharmaceuticals or whatever scales well, but I can make the fancy rice and potatoes breed true once I've talked them into changing to begin with."

"I wonder if I can just wish myself a wizard in this sense of the word," muses Juliet. "Any reason not to try it, Cam?"

"Uh, I dunno if wishing would interrupt the process or not, but new wizards have this habitual problem where The Lone Power - I call it Iggy, that's how it introduced itself to me when it was pretending to be a rock - tries to kill them. So there's that. But you're pretty thoroughly magicked up, so maybe it couldn't make any headway."

"I already died," says Juliet carelessly. "If it happens again I don't even have to make the round trip through Downside anymore, I just reset where I am."

"It's very convenient," Sherlock says brightly.

"Tell me of this 'Downside'," says Cam.

"It's an afterlife common to a number of worlds, and - sometimes new ones can be hooked up, but I can't add yours. Amariah has the same problem; the Downside admin says her world has a competing afterlife. I can make you able to torch - that's the reset - which I recommend unless you know and are fond of whatever you have at home instead."

"I haven't a clue but I wouldn't bet on it being Disneyhades. Set me up."

Juliet sets him up. "Downside used to be terrible, but we stormed the place and got the admin's attention and talked her into installing Jane and otherwise giving everything a Bellish touch," she says. "We're working on setting up our respective worlds to receive large numbers of dead people, but you won't have that issue unless you want to open up to immigration until we figure out your afterlife, and Amariah's in line ahead of you."

"I really do need this list of people," Cam says.

"Yeah, sure, let's show you the Belltower." Teleportation!

"Well," Sherlock remarks, "that is adorable."

"Hi, Cam," says Jane, manifesting a face. "I'm Jane. I'm a multiversal ansible network. Can I eat your Internet?"

"Uh, that sounds kind of ominous, and some computers are reasonably intelligent - not like you, but enough that I'd be a little concerned about you eating them," Cam says. "Whatever that means."

"Jane can manage not to eat intelligent computers under some circumstances," says Sherlock.

"I'm not sure if Jarvis is the same kind of intelligent he has in mind," Jane says. "He can apparently talk to all kinds of things. But yeah, I can avoid nibbling on specific things you want me to steer clear of."

"I don't have, like, a Rolodex of computers that I don't want eaten," Cam says. "Just general nervousness around eating. I've been a pesco-pollo vegetarian for about two years now on the basis that a goat told me she didn't want things to eat her and that chickens are really dumb. I'd have to talk to more computers than I have to get an idea of how bright they are when they haven't belonged to a wizard for ages. Grace is smarter than my laptop, but Grace is pretty much smarter than anything else that isn't me or Matilda."

"This Matilda you keep mentioning - who's she?"

"Why, are there nine of her too?"

"There's one person in our sphere of notice who's called Matilda, but name collisions also exist the usual way - we have two non-matching Alices and so on," says Juliet.

Cam opens up Grace to a new blank page and coaxes a sketch of Matilda into existence.

"Yep," says Juliet, inspecting it. "Shell Bell knows one of those, she gets invited to Bell parties. She's not from any Belled world, though, she just encountered Shell Bell in Milliways."

"Transcribed!" Grace chirps, and Cam picks her up and flips easily to Shell Bell's entry with her guided paging help. He scans the profile. "Huh. Okay. That'll be interesting."

"Cam also has a Joker named Jellybean," Sherlock mentions.

"Oh, that's useful, you won't have to put out a job ad for a mint," says Juliet. "You dating yours?"

"Yeah," says Cam; Grace shows him minting information. "Well, this is a fucked-up magic system, but yes, I can see Jellybean helping..."

"Enchanting channel, too," says Juliet, "that's relatively new, Rose brought it in. You know, I'm not sure what to extrapolate about your sexual orientation from you dating your Joker."

Cam reads about enchanting. "It'd be silly to try to extrapolate when you could ask. I'm bi." He glances up from Grace. "You want to test my claim?"

"Oh lord," mutters Juliet. "Try Amariah, she's got this habit of test-driving boys for the rest of us."

Sherlock giggles.

"Basically. Shell Bell's special circumstances that apply only to her Sherlock, and according to Amariah daemons don't count so she doesn't care what shape Petaal's being at any given time."

Cam reads up on the remarked phenomena. "This is a fantastic sort of multiverse I find myself in," he murmurs.

"Isn't it just?"

"Yes. I'm still nonplussed about why I'm girls. But I'll take it."

Juliet laughs. "Read up on the standard powerset and describe what you want and we can stack you up with an evil," she instructs. "Takes one to make anything stick now you torch, but I stand by my order of operations since you don't even go through Downside and if something unexpected happened you'd be hard to fish out."

"Yes ma'am," says Cam flippantly, and he reads. Partway through he says, "I'll take a pentagon-temporary super-speed thing to get through this material quicker if you've got it to spare." He is obliged. He reads faster.

"You should also write your own profile for future additions to the peal - current ones will all meet you in person; the book used to be more important before we had Jane - and then we should disseminate the news, and then we throw a party somewhere, I don't know if you're in a position to host one, someone else can do it."

"I probably could host a decent-sized party at the Seedling offices but I don't know if it'd be a great idea," says Cam, writing in a profile to the original Bellbook. Grace copies it into herself in realtime. "Not what the place is designed for."

Sherlock glances at the profile and grins. "Oh, I do like you, you're delightful."

"Yes. Yes I am."

"Not everybody's had a party-hosting turn yet," Juliet says. "Stella did the celebratory Downside-conquering party, Rose hosted her own introduction party. I'm sure someone else'll take a turn to do your introduction party. Jane, you want to ask around? Cam, here, have a declawed evil."

A smoke-grey hex and star appear in the relevant hand.

The star wraps Grace up nice and safe. "I'll go get Jellybean in here, he'll flip," says Cam. "Oh, maybe I'd better get one of those - gems, first. Hmm. Not much of a jewelry person. I'll take an earpiece, let's make it clear." He wishes one up, tucks it in, and plugs the other half of the ansible into Jane's hub. Then he teleports to the door, sticks his head out, and says, [Jellybean, you will never guess what happened! Get Matilda and c'mere!]

"Interdimensional magic bar! There are alternate versions of all three of us. I'm girls, for some reason."

"Of course you are," he giggles, and hugs Cam. "There, there, baby. Being girls isn't so bad."

"What do you mean, of course I am? Do I give off a vibe of definitely being mostly girls if you sample ten of me?" snorts Cam. "Here we go." Teleportation takes all three of them back out to the Belltower.

"Hullo, Jellybean and Matilda," says Juliet. "I'm Bella. Call me Juliet, because there's lots of us."

"In those exact words? No, actually," laughs Juliet. "You want to see hot, though -" She permits an aura flare, grinning.

"I want one of those, by the way, is there some Saturn left?"

"Sure, lots. I think the pack of Jokers," she says, waving at Jellybean, "is still around, or planning to make another trip, or something, for their own."

"Fuck me," says Jellybean. Matilda pats him on the head.

"No. Try Amariah," says Juliet. She withdraws her aura. "Or wait and see if Cam gets something cool. They don't match, not in the special features."

"Is Amariah happy about having her test-driving tendencies bandied about to people-in-general?"

"I think she'd be less prone to personally advertising them if that were the case."

"I want someone to fuck me," says Jellybean. "Can I meet the other me? I bet they'll do it."

"You bet they will, all eight and three-quarters of them," says Juliet, "Jane, are they still on Saturn in Origin?"

"They haven't got gems, so I don't know about Saturn, but I haven't moved any of them out of the world. Not that that'd stop Sue," says Jane.

"Then I guess I wanna go to Saturn," says Jellybean. "Can I go to Saturn? Also, eight and three-quarters?"

"I'm not sure why Juliet picked that exact fraction, but two of you have external souls with their own names who talk and shapeshift," says Cam with a vague gesture. "Alethia has this as a feature of everybody - except most people grow out of the shapeshifting - and Sue visited the place and got his own."

[I'll broadcast the news and Pattern will probably invite you all to Origin, which would be a convenient place to have Cam's introduction party as many of the standard guests are already there,] Jane says.

"Awesome," says Jellybean.