Subject: What exactly is the holdup?

I want someone resurrected. Name of Randall White, died of a dream overdose six months ago in London. Assuming you're not some kind of elaborate hoax, it would be nice if you explained just what your technical difficulties are, because I'm not buying this 'exaggeration' crap for a second. You're lying or you're onto something: which is it?

Re: What exactly is the holdup?

I've added Randall to the waiting list for you, with you as a contact person for him, and I have every confidence that Her Majesty will be able to get him back for you eventually; I'm just not sure when 'eventually' is. None of her reported accomplishments are hoaxes, but between the distribution of torching and the general scope of her activities, it was inevitable that there would be rumors about resurrection, too. She's working on it.

Please feel free to email with any further questions.

- Imperial Staff

Subject: Look, can you do it or not?

My best friend got himself killed last night. His name was Ethan Rayne. And he was right, it doesn't make sense that you're so fucking sure you can raise the dead but you won't admit to ever doing it or say one word about how you plan to try.

Re: Look, can you do it or not?

I've put Ethan on the waiting list for you, with your email down for contact info. Some magic is more difficult than other magic, and all of it is complicated to explain, but we don't think any problems are permanently insoluble unless they'd require time travel to the past.

I recommend signing up for torching. You can find the form here.

- Imperial Staff

Re: Look, can you do it or not?

> Some magic is more difficult than other magic, and all of it is complicated to explain

Try me.

Re: Look, can you do it or not?

Fine. I have some spare time tomorrow morning, eight-thirty in your time zone. Say the word and I'll teleport in to have a chat about it then.

- Bella

Re: Look, can you do it or not?

Be my guest.

Roommates, neighbours, and recording devices are thin on the ground. It's a messy little flat full of guitars and old laundry, and the only person present is a man in his early twenties with vivid green eyes, wearing artfully torn black jeans and an artlessly rumpled white T-shirt. He is drinking tea from a chipped brown mug when she appears, and immediately drops it in his lap with a startled yell.

"I said I was going to teleport," Bella points out. "I apologize for startling you, although I will point out I'm precisely on time."

"It wouldn't have accomplished much if I had elected to teleport to the Andromeda Galaxy. If I find your company charming enough that I want to visit you again in the future I'll put you on the brainphone network and I can warn you when I'm incoming, how does that sound?"

"Are you telling me you honestly don't think anything of hopping into a stranger's living room without a word, and advance warning is reserved for people you actually like? For fuck's sake, the door's right there," he gestures, "is it somehow mystically impossible for you to land on the other side of it?"

Bella looks at him, debates the wisdom of having this argument, and then disappears to the other side of the door and knocks as sarcastically as it is possible to knock.

"Yes, about that, were you listening when I asked about the anti-tabloid precaution?"

"Not really," he admits frankly, and closes and locks the door behind her, and resumes his seat in the chair. There are two other chairs close by; he gestures invitingly to the one that has obviously seen less use.

She looks at it, then sits on it. "It's not really a problem if one bereaved individual gets some information one morning. My PR people will yell at me if it gets any farther. If you'll agree to it, I can magically enforce a nondisclosure agreement."

"All right." Geas goes; she can feel it settle. "So. I can raise the dead. I just can't do it a lot. The magic I can use to do it is a renewable but finite resource, unlike torching, which I can do as much as I want. Additionally, anyone who died prior to April 4, 2009, may be currently awake in the afterlife, and bringing that class of person back is more complicated - they'll have attachments there, stuff, friends, residences, and I don't have a way to talk to them before I resurrect them. People who died after that date are asleep, but I still can't meaningfully scale things. I used to have a way to handle all of this, but it broke, I can't fix it, and while I wait for it to get fixed from the outside, the passage of time in this universe is not correlated with the passage of time in said outside - it could happen next week or in a hundred years or never."

Somewhere between wry and pathetic, "And I can't convince you to put Rayne on the shortlist?"

"Maybe you can. He'd have to predictably agree to the non-disclosure, too, and so would anyone else who learned that he died and would subsequently learn that he's alive. I've done this a few times since the system broke, but largely as a favor to political entities who could notify me instantly on point of death before the news spread and already have the operational security to order the resurrected individuals to keep their mouths shut. Or, I'd have to think that having him back now, as opposed to when the waiting list gets long enough that I'm willing to try some extra big magic on handling it all in a batch, was very important - enough to be worth the risk of getting a hundred million emails from people just like you in a week because Ethan wants to tell the nice reporters about how he was dead and then he wasn't. Well, sort of. He'd be technically dead still, like me."

"It's important to me," he mutters, rubbing his face with both hands. "Important to Rayne, too, for that matter. I can't imagine him running to the press about it; his only interest in your entire scheme as far as I could tell was getting me to shut up about Randall already."

"Randall? I don't read ninety-five percent of the emails that go to my public address, if Ethan wrote in about him before."

"My other dead friend," he says flatly.

"Another one? I've been kind of busy on the public health front and the prime minister let me put anti-car-crash magic on the U.K. last June, what happened?"

"So - you, Ethan, and some people who'd have to confess to crimes to tell anyone?"

He nods.

"As sure as it gets," he says. "I heard it - I was ten feet away - is your magic not working?"

"It's worked for bringing people back before, and that's not the kind of thing that would change for no reason. You heard it? You didn't, for example, see it."

"Well," says Bella, putting the evil away with a flick of her hand, "as long as I'm here, anything else need doing?"

"Yeah, could you drag Ethan back here for me?" he just about growls. "The absolute fucking shit - he did this because I wouldn't email you about Randall, you know, he actually went and faked his own death to get me talking to you."

"Why did he want you talking to me? Is it just about Randall, did he bounce off my filter a couple times and want you to give it a shot?"

"He bounced off your filter once," says Ripper, "two months ago, and apparently his backup plan was to murder his ex-dealer, because of course it was!" He throws up his hands. "Heaven forbid that Ethan Rayne ever do something sane and normal!"

"This is the guy you wanted me to resurrect?"

"He hasn't murdered anyone before," Ripper clarifies hastily, and then amends, "that I know of. It's just... not as much of a shock as I'd like it to be."

"Is the ex-dealer a great loss to society of any kind?"

"Not remotely, no."

"All right, then he can wait for general admission. You just want Rayne yoinked here?"

"That," says Ripper, "would be lovely, thank you."

"You don't, for example, want him landed out in the hall and instructed to knock."

"He lives here," says Ripper, quirking a smile, "so no."

She can treat pentagons like they're cheap, with three and a half Jokers in Origin, but there's no reason to use one when she can do without. Still stealthed to everyone except Ripper, she flickers to Rayne and back, quicker than blinking.

"Ow," he says, cradling it. "What kind of reaction is that when your best mate comes back from the dead?"

"All right, all right," Rayne sighs. "It was a nasty trick, and I'm sorry. But it worked, didn't it?"

"Define 'worked'."

"You got your precious empress to conjure me up; don't tell me she didn't do the same for Randy," he snorts.

"He can't perceive me," Bella puts in. "Unless I decide to let him. We can discuss Randall separately if you'd like though."

He tries to say something, shoots Bella a brief exasperated look, and amends to, "I'm sure you can guess who I asked for first, and funny fucking thing, he wasn't dead!"

Rayne follows the aim of that look and squints curiously at the imperceptible Bella.

Bella slooooowly unstealths.

"Well would you look at that," says Rayne, impressed.

Ripper sits back down in his chair and drops his head into his hands.

"You went to considerable and asinine trouble to get ahold of me," Bella says to Ethan. "I have an appointment in seventeen minutes, but if there's something you'd like to say before then, you may."

He shrugs. "Could you dig up Randall while you're here?"

[Honestly, of the two of them, Randall's more likely to go to press with it,] he says without lifting his head.

"Ta ta, then," says Rayne unconcernedly.

"What have you been telling her majesty?"

"I can't speak for Rayne," says Ripper, ignoring him, "but I'm fine."

"All right. D'you want to be able to torch?" she inquires of Ripper. She does not include Ethan in this query.

He shrugs. "Why not."

"All right." She torchables him, and conjures and hands him the pamphlet on how it works and how to contact one of her emergency-recovery staff by brainphone if he gets into a repeated-torching sort of fix. And then out she pops.

[In public places, sometimes - often, really, I don't like paparazzi. I don't sidle imperceptibly into people's houses as a general rule. Although it is per person, so if I'm in stealth mode at all, anyone who I don't know to be present can't detect me.]

[I don't like paparazzi either,] he snorts. [Good thing I'm not famous enough for them yet.]

[Yet?]

[Oh, I'm in a band,] he says. [I s'pose there's no reason for you to know that.]

[I did not know it, no. Explains all the guitars.]

[All? There's only - er, four. Okay,] he concedes, [all the guitars.]

She laughs. [How come you're curious about my lurking habits? Were you worried I was going to suddenly appear after you replaced your ill-fated tea?]

[I have actually had multiple cups of tea since you left,] he informs her, with a hint of a laugh. [No, it's just - Rayne stormed out in a huff yesterday and I've been feeling watched ever since, I'm trying to narrow it down between 'paranoia about magical empress with lapsed sense of personal boundaries' and 'paranoia about morally depraved ex-friend'.]

[I have not been spying on you,] she says. [At the risk of doing nothing to improve the situation, I would not have to lurk anywhere nearby to do it if I wanted to.]

He laughs.

[Do you think he's going to do something unfortunate? I can jump you through the queue to colonize Saturn or something.]

[For a broad definition of 'unfortunate', almost certainly. ...What's Saturn like?]

[Enchanted. Populated with a designer ecosystem, outside the habitats. People tend not to choose to move away from it, so far.]

[Can it use a rapidly disintegrating punk band?]

[I don't know about use, but it can accommodate one. It's not designed to require much from its occupants; Saturn is post-scarcity.]

[Shit. Sign me up,] says Ripper.

[Are you bringing the band or should I just issue you a passport?]

[I'll ask the band, but I think I know what they'll say.]

[Will you also drop your tea if I drop a passport in your lap?]

A short pause, then, [I put it down.]

[Is this not a free moment?]

[In a meeting with the King of Sweden. I'm just good at multitasking.]

He cracks up.

[We are talking about whether it makes sense to give me a Nobel Prize given that I had all this magic that's not generally available.]

[Doesn't everyone who gets a Nobel Prize have resources that aren't generally available?]

[Yes, but not magic, so I don't think it's very fair. Although, ironically, I could use the money.]

[Not much I can do for you there, unless you want to bribe him with my autograph,] he says whimsically.

[Nah, I'm arguing for not nominating me. There's other ways to get Earth currency.]

[But if you need the money why are you making an effort not to get it that way...?]

[Same reason I'm not cheating at a lottery. I'd take the Randi Prize in a heartbeat, but I didn't get on it quick enough; it folded up before I could try. The money's not urgent. I can magic up any things I need, and people are buying up some Imperial Rings. I just don't have enough to throw around casually in terrestrial markets for things that do need to be denominated in cash instead of magical favors, and I don't want to charge for most of the services I offer.]

[I guess that's reassuring behaviour in a magical empress,] he concedes dubiously.

[Which problem? Needing money, or caring how you get it?]

[Needing it,] laughs Bella.

[And are there more magical empresses I should be worrying about?]

[Not here,] Bella sighs.

[Where else?]

[Other worlds. I can't get to them, just like I can't get to the afterlife, right now. Used to be we could bounce around wherever we liked.]

[What changed?]

[There used to be a person who lived in a faster-than-light computer network, and worked even when spread out between many worlds. She could pick people up and put them down, anywhere she could see, and she worked for us. She's broken.]

[Oh,] he says. [...Sorry.]

[It's happened before, and she came back. She's broken worse this time and I don't know what happened.]

[And I guess you can't just magic it better...?]

[No. The problem isn't here; it's probably with the person her personality sort of sits in, and she's in some other world, and she has all the power I do and then some; I have to wait for her or someone who's with her to fix it, but for all I know it could take a hundred years in this world for thirty seconds to pass there.]

[Damn,] he concludes. [I'm sorry.]

[Yeah, it's frustrating and I'm worried about them, but at least I have most of what I need here.]

[Anything missing other than interdimensional travel?] he asks wryly.

[Jane - the computer person - was also really, really good at handling email and other computer tasks. The programs she ran for it are mostly local, so I can still use them, but they're not quite as high quality without consciousness operating them. Everything else does boil down to interdimensional travel and communication.]

[...So "Imperial Staff" is actually a robot? Some robot,] laughs Ripper.

[My personnel officer is hunting up an actual secretary to help out, but yeah, any emails signed 'Imperial Staff' are from bits of Jane's code.]

[It takes you two months to find a secretary?]

[Well, it has to be someone I can trust with most of my information, ideally without resorting to geases, and someone who gets along with me personally, etcetera. There have been candidates, I just haven't kept any of them so far.]

[Hm,] he says. [I'd volunteer, but you don't want me answering your email.]

[Why not, what awful things would you do?]

[I have - how did Rayne put it - 'an unforgivable combination of bad manners and soppiness'.]

[I am having a failure of imagination in trying to figure out how those traits might combine.]

[Nice when I should be nasty and nasty when I should be nice. Although given that that's Rayne's assessment, maybe I should be rethinking it.]

[Possibly. Though I'm not the embodiment of tact myself.]

Innocently, [Aren't you then?]

[Nah. Not my strong suit. Personnel officer's better at that sort of thing.]

[But she's too busy to answer your email...?]

[Yeah. I have, you know, personnel, though, and she vets them, she picks out ambassadors who are good at ambassadoring, that sort of thing.]

[Aha.]

[The secretary in particular is proving difficult, but I imagine someone will turn up; I could always go back to one of the rejected candidates if my email starts piling up too badly. I don't want you thinking Slipstick - the personnel officer - isn't good at what she does; it's just she's an import from another world and hasn't had as long as she'd ideally need to build up her network.]

[This whole 'other worlds' thing is a bit of a leap for me to begin with,] he says. [Although, oddly, not as much of a leap as Saturn.]

[The other worlds are less of a leap than Saturn? Really?]

[Haven't you ever found that when something incredibly, fantastically impossible turns out to be true, it's much easier to take than something that was only just barely impossible?]

[Nnnno, not really. I lived an unremarkable life, died at age seventeen, and then was woken up by seven alternate versions of myself, three of whom weren't even human, and they gave me lots of magic powers and we took over the afterlife together. I got dropped directly into 'fantastic', took it really well, and have not been much surprised since.]

[Oh, I forgot to mention, the other magical empresses I know all look exactly like me.]

[Er... why?]

[We're all of a template. Personalities - and faces and life narrative features - crop up over and over, and there are lots of me. They don't all look precisely like me,] she amends. [There is a boy one and an angel one and an elf one and a vampire one. And of the girls, two of them are shorter than the rest of us and one is taller due to childhood malnutrition and growing up in low gravity, respectively. And our thing is being magical empresses.]

[And one magical emperor, apparently.]

[Well, last time I saw him he hadn't progressed to emperor, he was doing motivated capitalism - there are some questionably acceptable deity-things in his world, at least one of which is evil, and he isn't sure he's ready to have their attention.]

[You have the strangest problems.]

[I don't. I'm the boring one. My nickname to distinguish me from all the others who are also named Bella is 'Pattern'. Because I do not deviate from the pattern.]

[That seems... cruel,] says Ripper.

[Oh, I picked the nickname myself. I didn't have a better idea. I might change it, later, when I see them again, something on the 'rings' theme, I did Saturn because no one else was doing Saturn.]

[I can't believe that you're the only one with no distinguishing features. How do you know you don't deviate from the pattern if everyone else does?]

[Because they all deviate from the same pattern - imagine you saw a sentence written a dozen times and each iteration had a different word changed to something random, you'd be able to work out what the sentence was. Also, because the one of me who is the princess of a fairytale forest and can magically see template properties says so.]

[No,] he says, [I think you do have the strangest problems, actually.]

She laughs. [For a certain reading of 'strange', maybe I do. I'm not completely indiscernible - like, I'm the only single one, I am the only Bell from a world that has a Gotham in it - they're not usual; most worlds have no Gotham and a more significant New York City instead - and anything I do with the knowledge of what the others have done, like starting on Saturn instead of Mars, is a chance to be distinguished. I just didn't start out with anything much beyond the fact that all the worlds are a little different and this one's mine.]

[The others mostly wind up with this one template - there are three and a half of them here, but one of them works for me, another one is basically her cuddle therapist, and the one and a half belong to the elf of me and got stranded here while they were helping me with the Saturn ecosystem, I'm not dating any of them. Although it is sort of tragically convenient that the one and a half are here because they're psychically bonded to Elf Bell and that means I can talk to her some. There was yet another one of this template who was born here, but by the time I un-died he'd already moved to Vampire Bell's world with his vampire boyfriend. And of the rest, most of them are dating or in one case married to one or both of this paired template which isn't here, and there are stray ones but I never wound up importing any or anything based on random party conversations, and then Vampire Me is the only one with a non-template significant other and they're Mystically Vampire Bonded.]

[None of the things that cause Bells to have significant others have happened to me,] Pattern says. [None of them went out looking. They just sort of had these people fall in their laps and wound up being pleased about it.]

[And you, being all template-y, aren't going to go out looking...?]

[It hasn't really been a priority. I sort of flirted with one of the stray Tonies at a Bell party one time.]

He laughs.

[- Does "stray" sound bad? It just means that he's from a world we're in contact with - when we're in contact with anywhere, although I bet Juliet can still talk to those worlds - but doesn't have a Bell of its own.]

[...If that's what it means, then yes, it sounds bad.]

[Well, an unBelled Tony, at any rate. Three of 'em appear with Bells, three of 'em appear only with their own template attachments, so far.]

[And you flirted with one. Good to know.]

[They're a flirty bunch, although not as much as the more common template I mentioned.]

[But the other ones weren't flirting with you. Do any of these people have names?]

[They've flirted with me, I just don't really flirt back with them. The Tonies are all named Tony, although I think it's short for a variety of things. The others have no name consistency at all - the ones here are named Queenie, Ghosty, Aianon, and Ansharil.]

[Which one's the 'and a half'?]

[Aianon and Ansharil. They're the same template, which landed in two bodies in that world - Template-Things Seer Bell says the template couldn't decide which species to land in - and are basically one person.]

[Do the templates have names? You're a Bell apparently, the Tonies are Tonies...]

[Yeah, and Tonies come with Sherlocks most of the time, and the personnel officer is a Libby, etcetera.]

[And Queenie and Ghosty and Aianon and I forget the last one...?]

[...Put your tea down.]

[...So you were actually dodging that one? It's put.]

[They call themselves Jokers.]

[Probably not. I was busy being dead while the local, eponymous Joker was active, so I'm not completely up on how his activities were covered in the news, but he's a one of them. There are lots more, though.]

[And there are three and a half of them in the world right now, not making the news?]

[Queenie and Ghosty describe themselves as 'retired'. Aianon and Ansharil hang out on Saturn, filling in gaps in the ecosystem and wishing they were back with Elf Bell back in their world and thinking at her a lot via telepathic bond thing. Jokers are really useful if you know what to do with them; the problem was the Bat had one and a worse than useless idea of what to do with him.]

[What are they useful for?] he asks, with a slightly desperate edge. [I mean, that man is fucking terrifying. I had nightmares about him. Sexy nightmares.] Half-laughing, [Fuck, did I say that out loud? I'm sorry, TMI.]

[I'll survive,] says Bella, amused. [I could introduce you to one or more of the available three and a half, if you want, although fair warning, Aianon and Ansharil are not humans. Jokers're useful for magic generation.]

[Do you make your magic out of fear or something?]

[No. They're not terrorizing the populace.]

[And what do you mean you could introduce me? Is it safe? Would they flirt with me? Do people generally survive their flirting?]

[I mean I could introduce you to them and they'd probably hit on you. They're not going around doing nefarious things! They're retired, they don't want Batlady's attention anymore - Aianon and Ansharil don't even come from a world that has one of her - and they wouldn't hurt you unless you're into that.]

[...Leaving aside the question of whether or not I'm into that, how did you ever manage to collect three and a half nice Jokers?]

[They're not unusually nice for Jokers. The Joker, from here, is living peacefully in a world called Aurum with his vampire boyfriend and their adorable hybrid children. Jokers aren't so much 'nice' or 'not nice'. It's a matter of what abilities and opportunities they're presented with. I hired Queenie, Ghosty followed her here, Aianon and Ansharil are stranded here because they were still around when Jane broke and they were doing Saturn's ecology.]

[I'm not sure I buy it,] he says. [And, you know, sexy nightmares are still nightmares.]

[Okay, I won't introduce you if you don't want,] says Bella.

[...well,] he says, wavering. [I'll think about it.]

She laughs into the brainphone. [They're as immortal as me and you, so no rush.]

[Oh, good. —Am I likely to run into one if I move to Saturn? How settled is Saturn?]

[They don't really hang out in inhabited parts of Saturn. Aianon and Ansharil are out in the non-habitats making critters sometimes, but they don't like the ground rules, they like more chaotic settings than Bell-operated colonies ever shake out to be.]

[Ground rules like the ones that mean if Rayne follows me to Saturn I can't punch him again? Yes, I'm not a fan either,] he laughs.

[And yet you plan to move there?]

[I think not being able to punch people but not having to pay rent is a great tradeoff.]

She giggles. [Saturn does have that, among other, advantages.]

[So I'll talk to the band and see what they say about moving, and they'll say no, and we'll play what was probably going to be our last concert anyway - do you want tickets?]

[Sure, why not. I'm not sure about plural, though, I don't know who to invite. What's the band's name? I can see if anyone I know is familiar, since probably you don't want me to bring a Joker.]

['Wretched'. Please don't bring a Joker.]

[I will not bring a Joker. Most especially not the dragon.]

He cracks up.

[Or, for that matter, the one who is six and a half feet tall, bright red, horned, tailed, winged, and inclined to forgetting that pants exist.]

Well, Ripper is now giggling helplessly.

[Might ask Slipstick. We should hang out more.]

[I think I want to hear more about the other one's trouser problems. Does he forget that they exist or does he just not care?]

[You know, I'm actually not sure, he just doesn't default to wearing them. He'll put them on when reminded, sometimes he remembers by himself. Probably has to do with the part where him and the dragon lived on an island all by themselves for several thousand years.]

[...Yeah, that'll do it. Wait, does he walk around naked all the time...? I am getting the most incredible mental images.]

[I don't really hang out with him while he's being naked,] Bella says. [I'm sure he would be thrilled to demonstrate if you need something clarified.]

He sputters with laughter.

The King of Sweden gets up to go to the bathroom; Bella has the brainspace to start another side conversation. [Hey Slipstick.]

[Hi! What's up?]

[Going to go to this random person's concert. Want to come?]

[Sure!]

[Slipstick says she'll come. When is it?]

[A week Saturday, eight o'clock.]

[Should I stealth or do you think I can manage not to be recognized?]

[Leave the halo at home and you'll be fine.]

[Will do.]

[See you then. Trousers optional.]

[Is there something you wanna tell me about the kind of concert you put on?]

[No one's stopping you if you want to wear a skirt,] he says innocently.

[Good to know. Nothing good comes of an overly restrictive dress code.]

[It's punk rock. You're not going to fit in, but fitting in isn't the point. Wear a ballgown for all anyone will care.]

[I am not up on the performing arts fandom, what do you mean about fitting in?]

[I mean - and this goes for my particular crowd, maybe not for the entire genre - you're not one of us, you don't dress like one of us, but no one cares that you're not one of us as long as you're not there to shit on anybody.]

[All right.]

[Right,] he says, satisfied.

[I suppose I'll see you then. You know, I have no idea if I like punk rock?]

[Then you have the perfect opportunity to find out!]

[So I shouldn't study up first?]

[Well... "punk rock" might have been an oversimplification, come to that. I won't be offended if you leave in the middle of the show,] he says cheerfully.

[All right,] she laughs, [noted.]

[See you then.]

...Well, that's interesting.

[Nicely done,] she says.

[Thanks,] he laughs. [So what do you think of punk rock?]

[I dunno about the rest of the genre, but I like your band. You can really sing. I'm right about what inspired that last song, aren't I?]

[Yes, you are,] he sighs.

[It was really good, I'm impressed you pulled it together in that time.] She's filtering out of the crowd on foot; as far as she know no one has recognized her yet.

[It's not finished yet, but it's getting there. It was good enough for an encore, anyway.]

[One of my alts and her Joker can sing, but I've never wished it up, let alone developed the skill naturally.]

[You can wish up singing?]

[Probably. I don't think any of us have tried singing - the one of me who can sing can do it because she's an angel and they're all about the singing where she's from - but one of me wished up flute skills and she's really good.]

[One of you is an angel?]

[Genetically engineered space angel, big speckly wings, grew up in a tech-relinquished culture that thinks she's an agent of their god and uses angels to control the weather via song, she later found out the god was a reasonably intelligent spaceship. Not a person, though. Jane ate it and cribbed the notes from the software so now I can still talk to my systems even though she's gone.]

[You're just never going to stop casually mentioning more impossible things, are you.]

[I'll run out eventually.]

[Like hell.]

[Speaking of Hell, I didn't tell you very much about the afterlife.]

[...You now have my full attention!]

She laughs. [It's not Hell any more. It was just really, really awful for a long, long time, and we found out about it in the obvious way - not me, I was asleep the whole time, but Shell Bell had a nasty time of it - and we did not like it. It's not quite accurate to say we took it over, but we caused enough of a stir to get a meeting with the admin, and she doesn't really like... doing things, as far as we can tell... so she let us change a bunch of stuff and now it is not Hell.]

[Hell - ex-Hell - has an 'admin'?]

[Yeah, she set up the place's initial conditions, and changed them a few times in response to miscellaneous badgering, and she's locally omnipotent. She's not bad, just kind of apathetic; she was perfectly happy to replace her existing systems for sorting people with Jane and us Bells. The place is called Downside - there's also a section called Upside but it doesn't come up as frequently.]

[Well, that's... sort of existentially depressing,] he says.

[Is it? How so?]

[The omnipotent ruler of the afterlife is apathetic? That doesn't depress you at all?]

[No, not really. If she'd had a vested interest in things being how they were we would have had a devil of a time getting them changed. And they were bad. Lots of torture going around.]

[Well, right, that's depressing on a whole different level, but wouldn't it be nicer if someone cared?]

[We care.]

[Who's 'we'?]

[Bells. We do Belling. Belling involves ramping up everyone's quality of life.]

[I don't think that's... exactly what I meant.]

[Why don't we count, then? Were you hoping for benevolent literal deities?]

[Never mind,] he sighs. [I'm gonna go to sleep. No other takers for Saturn, by the way.]

[Okay. Sleep well.]

[G'night,] he yawns, and up goes his busy message.

[Oh, the king agreed to recommend against nominating me to the committee, but it's anybody's guess whether they'll do it anyway. How are you doing?]

[Moved to Saturn. It's pretty up here. I think I'll write a song about it.]

[I'm glad you like it! A bunch of my alts and some Jokers swung by to enchant it with me, it was a fun group project and we got auras that way.]

[I'm beginning to lose track of all this magic,] he half-complains.

[There is a lot of it. I only have the Bell-standard kinds, since there isn't any from around here and I never got around to asking the unicorn how to safely copy elf magic like I was planning. I should maybe ask Aianon to ask Sarion to ask him for me.]

[There's a unicorn?]

[There's an entire population of them - actually two worlds have unicorns, but Thilanushinyel is the one with elf magic I wanted to copy and also the one I can currently talk to.]

[What's so great about elf magic?]

[I don't need it for any specific effects, but insofar as it does things, it does things without running down any finite resources.]

[That does sound convenient.]

[Yep. In Thilanushinyel, you get it by, one, being an elf, and two, being psychically bonded to a dragon, and the dragon serves as a power source; the unicorn showed up to warn us that if I just naively copied the magic I'd wind up stealing it from the elves, so I have to work out a design for the duplication with him, or possibly another unicorn but most likely the same one. Unicorns in that world go around reporting on what the Wild Magic has to say, and it knows stuff.]

[What is the Wild Magic? It sounds exciting.]

[We're not totally clear on that; it won't talk to us directly, even Sarion, and it's kind of vague with the unicorns too. I think it's like a cross between an instantiation of magic in general in that world - although only one of several kinds of magic user is actually called "Wildmage" - and maybe a god, but not an omnipotent one or anything.]

[How is it on caring?]

[On a personal level, no idea. In terms of stuff it's motivated to do, not awful - it cared that I was about to accidentally steal elf magic, it told Sarion what she had to do to save the world. It has a history of telling people to do things to save the world.]

[That's not bad,] says Ripper.

[Yeah, Sarion doesn't look poised to take its job so much as render it obsolescent.]

[Render it what?]

[It mostly puts people where they need to be to save the world; she intends that the world cease to need saving. Although I suppose it will continue to supply Wildmages with their powers indefinitely.]

[...If saving the world is a regular enough thing there that it's someone's job to arrange saviors, how's she going to do that?]

[Well, it needs saving from a specific set of things that no one has managed to completely eradicate. And this world-needs-saving thing only occurs about once every thousand years, so she has a while to figure it out.]

[Specific set of things like...?]

[Demons. Aianon's the last regular one, and he in particular is fine, but there are demonic spirits of various sorts, spooky dark things.]

[Ouch. Real actual demons, huh?]

[I did tell you Aianon is bright red and has a tail and horns and wings, didn't I?]

[And naked, you also mentioned that he is often naked,] Ripper reminds her cheerfully.

[Yes. I mean, so is Ansharil, but it matters less for scaly quadrupeds, yeah?]

[Definitely. I've been assuming this fellow is reasonably humanoid, correct me if I'm wrong. Or let me keep my pleasant illusions.]

[Dragon isn't, demon is apart from the mentioned add-ons. Also claws, he has claws.]

[I can see the sexy nightmares coming already,] he giggles.

[Enjoy,] snorts Bella.

[I will!]

[I bought your album,] adds Bella.

[Speaking of nudity. What'd you think?] he laughs.

[Of the nudity or the music?] she asks archly.

[Take your pick.]

[Wasn't expecting the former, was quite pleased with the latter. I didn't realize you wrote virtually all the songs; you're very talented and I look forward to seeing what Saturn inspires.]

[Anything in the name of art,] Ripper says cheerfully. [I'll let you know when I come up with something good.]

[I don't have an anthem yet,] she says impishly.

[Ooooooooooh. Oooh, you temptress,] he giggles.

She laughs. [No promises. I haven't seen you work in an anthem-y genre.]

[Is that a challenge?]

[Yes. Yes it is.]

[Oh my.]

[I am sure the results will be interesting.]

[You can bet on it.]

[I need to pick something by the time the next Olympics roll around, even if I have to wish up some skills and write it myself, so it's good you can apparently write songs fast.]

[Do you need an anthem for the Olympics?]

[Only if your athletes win something, but yeah, if you win your anthem plays.]

[And is Saturn entering the Olympics?]

[In a few events. Don't have the population to field contestants for everything, but I have two gymnasts, a sprinter, and an archer up here.]

[I am devoid of patriotic feelings, but I'll write you an anthem anyway.]

[Awww, but I so hoped to inspire patriotism,] says Bella.

[Eh, patriotism's fucked.]

[I'm not particularly attached to my country of origin, but I really really like my magic space empire!] she protests.

[I like your magic space empire fine, but I'm not cheering for it in sporting events.]

[And I don't qualify to participate in Eurovision, what a pity.]

He snickers.

[Yeah, turns out Saturn is not even slightly in Europe.]

[What a pity.]

[I know, right? I could have just got on the Euro instead of inventing my own adorable currency.]

[On second thought, stay out of Europe. The adorable currency is very adorable.]

[I'm glad you like it. I stole the origami birds idea from Stella - it was too cute, I couldn't think of anything I liked as much - but I picked different ones except the swan, and the coins are all mine.]

[Stella being another of you, I'm assuming?]

[Yep. She's the one who brought the peal of Bells our most everyday-useful sort of magic, and her empire is called the Empire of the Stars and her adorable currency is called asters.]

[Yep. We are the peal of Bells. The Jokers form a deck,] she adds, [no one else has a collective noun.]

[No? Not enough of them, or no convenient puns?]

[There are fewer of all the other templates - except attached templates, like, all of us Bells have parents - so probably a combination of the two.]

[The way you say that makes me think there are templates for whom parents are optional.]

[There are! One of the Jokers is a magical construct. Also there are some clones floating around.]

He just laughs.

[Siblings also vary; one of me has a fraternal twin sister, the rest of us are only children. Jokers occasionally have little brothers - those don't usually turn out well.]

[Meaning they turn out worse than the Joker? That I have to - never, ever see.]

[We call them Voices. They're - different, and not as easily adaptable as Jokers are. And if they're rescued early enough, they can turn out okay; Angela's Joker has one and he's - okay. But they can get very bad.]

[How many cities do they terrorize?]

[They do kill people, but they're less theatrical about it. Our primary exposures to them apart from Angela's okay one has been the one who found Shell Bell Downside and decided to take her home and torture her for twenty-five years. There was also the one who kidnapped Rose's husband and gave him brain damage; she killed him.]

[Well, that's... charming,] says Ripper. [Twenty-five years? I suppose that's not long to a dead person.]

[Yeah. She was down there for way more than that total before she found a door out.]

[Sucks to be her,] he says sympathetically.

[She's okay now. Although her girlfriend felt pretty awful about not having known she needed help. Because right after she got assassinated, said girlfriend resurrected her, only the problem was that back then if you did that it just forked the resurrected person, so there were two of her. They merged later.]

[It is,] he says after a moment, [weird that you know someone who has been assassinated.]

[We actually get assassinated a fair amount! I'm just an ordinary car crash victim, but Shell Bell got nuked by a political rival, people have tried and only just barely failed to kill Golden twice, somebody who didn't like Juliet got his hands on a wish and killed her, Aegis's spaceship got shredded by a local superweapon, Cam was nearly suffocated in his sleep by the evil deity-thing I mentioned. Also, if you want to count it, at one point we killed Sarion on purpose because we were trying to solve a problem she had that could conceivably have been solved by sending her through Downside. Didn't work, though.]

[...What the hell kind of a problem is solved by dying?]

[The "till death do us part" kind. Her thing with Ansharil and Aianon involved involuntary mind-reading, and that tops the list of ways to break Bells into non-functional shells of our former selves - Shell Bell got broke too but it took way longer her way. We were trying to get Sarion out of the dragon bond thing. Eventually we hauled in Stella's magic-seeing guy and got him to design a patch for it, once it turned out that the dragonbond snapped back into place as soon as we woke up Technically Dead Sarion.]

[Well, that's... I have no idea what to think about that,] he admits.

[Sarion is better now. Cam designed her an assistive version of our standard perfect recall, based on his magic notebook but without involving another personality, and she had some recovery time, and now she's doing the whole curing-diseases-setting-up-ground-rulesed-colonies-recovering-endangered-species Bell thing.]