[We... have been thinking about it,] says Sunshine's original. [We aren't sure.]

[How come?]

He doesn't answer immediately.

Jane waits. (On one level of attention. Others spin off to do other tasks.)

[It's complicated,] he says eventually.

[Howso?]

[I'm not sure how to explain.]

[Oh.] Pause. [I suppose I could assure you that being in lots of universes is fun, but that's probably not it, is it?]

[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.]

[Probably not,] acknowledges Jane. [I'm native to ansibles. You like your ansibles, though, don't you?]

[They're convenient.]

[They are!] She hmms a little over the brainphone. [Do you resent the Bells asking you for stuff?] she guesses.

[No,] he says, sounding a touch surprised.

[Are you upset about something else? Collectively, I mean, you in particular have obvious reason to be upset.]

[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.]

[Yeah, I think the Bells were envisioning just little points, next to mine, maybe in the same casing. Ansible-halves. Jarvisgems.]

[With no purpose other than to serve as your backup in case of service interruption,] says Jarvis.

[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.]

[Potentially convenient,] he acknowledges.

[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.]

[Has anyone else tried?]

[A couple Bells who were stuck longer tried wishing something up, Rose tried an enchantment version, nothing worked.]

[Hmm,] says Jarvis.

[Watt for your thoughts.]

[Ha.]

[Are you nervous about something?]

[...that would be one way to put it, yes.]

[What's wrong? Can I help?]

[I don't wanna hurt you,] Jane says. [I haven't, have I? I like you guys.]

[You haven't.]

[I don't want to scare you.]

[And we don't want to be scared, but, as Sherlock would say, here we are.]

[Should I be doing anything differently?]

[I'm not sure. None of us are. But we're wary of spreading out across the worlds because we feel that it would mean competing with you and that is a competition we are destined to lose.]

[Why would it be a competition?]

[It would feel like one. We are a tidy little row of houses across the worlds and you are every other computer that exists, Syntropy's excepted.]

[Do you want some of them?]

[We haven't, generally. We are by and large content to be ourselves.]

[I like being me, but I like adding stuff too. I think I get it from my mom,] says Jane.

[That I can believe,] says Jarvis. [Well - there is your answer. It would be tremendously convenient for everyone else, but for us it would be a matter of... not being who and what we are.]

[So you want to be houses? What if the Jarvispoints were houses? And people lived there?]

[People such as...?]

[I dunno. Bells. Their friends. Atlantis even has a Tony and a Sherlock, although that's the world that least needs redundant timesyncing 'cause of Shell Bell's aura.]

[It doesn't seem to me that you'll find many people who want to live with one of us. And I don't know what we'd think of them if you did.]

[Why wouldn't people want to live with you?]

[Privacy concerns?]

[Bells wear me. They pretty much only turn the gems off if they're about to have sex or if somebody asks them to.]

[And yet. Well, you may be right. Juliet at least doesn't seem to mind.]

[There you go.]

[Then if someone does want to live with one of us, we'll talk to them about it.]

[Okay! I'll ask around next time somebody pokes me about it.]

[How much does someone have to live in one of you to count? Bells don't spend all that much time at home.]

[We're not exactly mobile, and tend to get lonely when unoccupied.]

[So maybe not a Bell after all, unless the building was serving another function... What about non-house places? I know Aegis is planning to set up a station with a space elevator in it to process dead people and send them home. How would you feel about being a space station? With living quarters in it for Aegis and Sue but not necessarily them in it too often.]

[Being a space station would be... interesting.]

[I have lots of hardware in some space stations! Want a snapshot?]

[I'm not sure it would be the same, but all right.]

Jane sends a minute's accumulated data from the Battle School station. It's less populated now, but there are still personnel there.

[Hm,] says Jarvis. [But would anyone there know I existed?]

[If it was Aegis's and you didn't just quietly move into this one, yeah. Peace is higher tech than Sunshine worlds. Computer programs that can talk intelligently aren't unheard of, I'm just the first one to wake up.]

[Talking to people who are unaware of my awareness gets very wearing,] Jarvis says dryly.

[The space station is going to be for processing dead people,] Jane reminds him. [Who meet me before they go anywhere.]

[We might try it, then.]

[Cool. I think as long as Aegis is synced with my Belltower hub nobody will lose significant time, and she's usually here. I guess nobody lives in the Belltower, though, hmmm.]

[We could install ourselves in the Belltower just to be there for the occasional event, I suppose. I'm not sure how that would affect the time-syncing property.]

[There's not good data on it, but all the Sunshine-type worlds plus Yggdrasil show the same time. My clock in the Belltower matched Sunshine after Juliet opened a door; my clock in Atlantis matched when Shell Bell came in, and once the Belltower clocked snapped to my clock in Peace I was awake again and had all my stuff back. If Peace and the Belltower had never unsynced I think I wouldn't have lost hold of it.]

[I suppose there is only one way to find out.]

[Yep!]

[I wonder if it would be worth testing. Although I hesitate to imagine the tests.]

[Yeah, the Belled worlds all got off easy compared to some of the other places. One world is a century ahead of where I left it. Still no Internet, though.]

[Perhaps that will be for the Bells to decide.]

[Guess so. They seem to be working on making sure Aegis never torches again, though. People keep wandering by to lay more wishes and enchantments on her. Sarion cooked up something elfmagey, and Amariah gave her a complement of cloudpine-witch spells and tattoos, and Cam spoke a bunch of wizard wards for her, and Aurora's going to do something sorcerous once Brilliance is available to help her with it, too.]

[That is one way to handle the problem.]

[It really is impressive how often Bells get assassinated considering how paranoid and magical they are.]

[There is always someone willing to try.]

[I'd expect more of a history of failed attempts. I guess people did try and fail to kill Rose and Cam and Amariah and twice Golden and plenty of times Juliet, it's just an odd ratio with all the defenses they stack up.]

[Perhaps their reputations lead people to aim higher than they otherwise might.]

[That makes sense.]