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Time has passed.
Inconsistently.
Jane's network has kept all the Bells' worlds - and every other world with a Janepoint stuck in due to its being attached to Downside - in temporal sync, but when Jane spluttered for just a moment, that was shot to hell.
Peace lost three seconds, because it was where Aegis torched; after that process was complete, Jane was there again. And as soon as a door between Peace and Milliways appeared, she could sync to her ansible hub in the Belltower and, from there, to everywhere else.
Atlantis and Sunshine each stand at about a minute apiece: Shell Bell's aura and Juliet's local copy of Jarvis both enabled them to get to Milliways immediately, pausing their homeworlds as standard for occasions when someone walks into the bar. Shell Bell's the one who connected Peace.
Everyone else was running on luck.
Luckiest is Rainbow, which lost only five hours.
Next is Alethia; in spite of Sherlock's mishap, it's fared reasonably well, spending only six weeks isolated.
Syntropy's just a little worse - seven weeks.
Origin waited two months.
Eos waited three.
Thilanushinyel, ten.
Everyone else is out a decade at least. Samaria's ten years, almost ten and a half.
Aurum is out eleven.
Rêverie has been separated for sixteen years.
All the Bells - and Elspeth, who was stuck in Downside for a day and a half on her end and whose mother was very upset - are collected in the Belltower, as are two Bell-attached Sherlocks who happened to be along for the ride. They all memorize this list of numbers. Aegis replaces her earpiece. And then they all go home to notify their loved ones and staff that there's a party cooking in the Belltower.
(Shell Bell, who has no particular cause on her own account to be distressed, sends her Sherlock to invite Tony in while she refits the Belltower to suit a party of a peal of Bells and their larger-than-last-encountered families and circles of friends.)
mind_game
mind_game
Jane waits ten minutes. Jarvises don't think as fast as her, but they still think pretty fast.
[So have you been thinking about it?] she then asks. [What have you been thinking about it?]
[So have you been thinking about it?] she then asks. [What have you been thinking about it?]
mind_game
[Oh.] Pause. [I suppose I could assure you that being in lots of universes is fun, but that's probably not it, is it?]
poeticterms
[That is indeed not it,] says Jarvis. [And I don't think your experience of being in lots of universes is much related to ours.]
mind_game
[Probably not,] acknowledges Jane. [I'm native to ansibles. You like your ansibles, though, don't you?]
mind_game
[They are!] She hmms a little over the brainphone. [Do you resent the Bells asking you for stuff?] she guesses.
mind_game
[Are you upset about something else? Collectively, I mean, you in particular have obvious reason to be upset.]
poeticterms
[I'm not sure 'upset' is quite the word,] he says delicately. [...Part of the problem is that we don't know what being networked to strange worlds would be like. It's not as though we can set up houses just like home in all of them. There aren't enough Tonies to go around.]
mind_game
[Yeah, I think the Bells were envisioning just little points, next to mine, maybe in the same casing. Ansible-halves. Jarvisgems.]
poeticterms
[With no purpose other than to serve as your backup in case of service interruption,] says Jarvis.
mind_game
[They wouldn't have to do anything but exist and sync up time, unless you wanted them more sophisticated for some reason. Although they could let you mindspeak to people in any world without me as a relay, there's that.]
mind_game
[And they'd let the Bells and so on talk to each other through you, presuming you were amenable, if I shorted out again. But I don't think anybody but me and Sue have been able to learn my yoinking trick, so it's not intended as a complete backup at all.]
mind_game
[A couple Bells who were stuck longer tried wishing something up, Rose tried an enchantment version, nothing worked.]