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Bella's public facing email address (eor@eor.eor; many of the Bells are following similar protocols to Stella's, for web presence, and in Origin the relevant empire is called the Empire of Rings, after Saturn's feature) gets a lot of mail. Jane used to help with it; without Jane, there is still extremely smart filtering going on, and a program no one has noticed at work yet auto-responds to almost everything with canned but tweakable responses and links to the imperial website.
This still leaves a lot of emails every day she has to deal with herself, although some of them allow her to make gentle adjustments to Jane's program to handle future inquiries of the same kind. The number goes up over time. Slipstick's still on the lookout for a suitable secretary type person to help out. Until then, Bella leans on super-speed.
She has had to address the rumors about being able to raise the dead. It's a frustrating, narrow line to walk, between lying, explaining too much, and getting everyone's hopes up. Currently the FAQ has a section that looks like this:
Can you raise the dead?
Eventually, I'd like to be able to do that for everyone's departed loved ones. I'm working on it as fast as I can, but today all I can deploy are public health measures and, on a smaller scale, immortality, for people who are currently alive.
I heard you were dead and brought yourself back to life / I heard someone else was dead and you brought them back to life!
This is an exaggeration. I'm immortal; if I suffer lethal damage, the thing I do is called 'torching', not 'dying'. The same is true of other people who I've made able to torch.
I want to be able to torch.
There's a waiting list, but this is something I can do. Just fill out the form and my staff will process your application; if everything checks out the current wait time for getting into a torching batch is about four months.
I don't want to torch, but I want to stop aging.
This is also available, but the waiting list is longer; apply here.
Are you sure you can't raise the dead?
I really, really wish I could do that for everyone who asks. I maintain a waiting list of people whose resurrection has been particularly requested so that as soon as I have this capability I'll know who to use it for first.
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bellfounding
tearingup
"Are you going to make that face at me some more if I ask for Joker-watching powers?"
tearingup
"Was that not a disapproving face? It looked like one," he says. "And, you know, I do care if you disapprove of me. Not enough to let it keep me away from the magic Joker porn channel, but I care."
bellfounding
"It's not my cup of tea. But my preferences aren't even universal within my own template," shrugs Bella.
tearingup
"So I'm allowed to like things that aren't your cup of tea? Good, because otherwise I'd have a lot of trouble flirting with you," he says. "Can I get that magic Joker porn channel now?"
bellfounding
"Yeah, sure." She spins up to higher cognitive speed to design a limited form of pastwatching and waves her hand in his direction and spins down again. And then she conjures herself a cup of elf tea and sips it.
bellfounding
"D'you want to try this? It's a sort of Thilanushinyel tea, the elves drink it all the time, I like it."
bellfounding
She conjures a teapot full of it and another cup and pours him some. "If we were actually elves this tea would be accompanied by a lot of excruciatingly polite circumlocution around the fact that they consider it rude to ask questions."
bellfounding
"I don't blame you. Fortunately, Sarion doesn't mind if we ask her things, although she doesn't do it herself. If we didn't have a Bell who was an elf we'd have a really hard time interacting with them."
bellfounding
"You haven't seen the other Bells," observes Bella, clearing away the illusions of Jokers. "Want to?"
bellfounding
And lo, there were all the other Bells, Angela in the back with her wings spread to full span and everyone else arrayed in front of her. These, too, wear nametags. Those who have crown designs are wearing theirs.
bellfounding
"There are some axes on which we vary considerably, but at our most basic, yeah."
bellfounding
"It is once again a pity I can't duplicate the auras properly. Angela's in particular is nice."
bellfounding
"Auras do most of the same things except they each have two unique features - for Bells, anyway, Jokers all get one that's the same and one unique - and hers are an aura of benevolence, and musical accompaniment when she sings."