"Why?"

"I don't get reasons. Sometimes you get a feel for it over time but not so much on questions like 'this country first', might be they riot at the end of the week unless we prevent it or might be that it'll be a good scale to start or might be there's a guy there who should be president of the new Vanda Nossëo member state we're building, or -"

"Is that what we're doing?"

"I don't know."

"I wish you would stop."

"Why? Do you value some kind of experiential authenticity about world-saving so highly it doesn't matter if we get a tenth as much done -"

"No. You are absolutely right that it is insane to give up this amount of optimization power and that we should make it known to every potionmaker in the world that there's a market for as much Felix as they can produce and go around impulse-fixing things we might otherwise never have guessed were problems, at least if the fixes hold up in the long term and if it doesn't throw absurd results as soon as it's given to a teleporter with a much much bigger scope of stuff to get lucky over. But - not the same person, not more than a day at a time - this can't be healthy -"

"They'd need to have the right priorities, no matter how committed they are to fixing the universe if what they want deep down is for the pretty girl they saw on television to like them then Felix'll arrange that and it won't be obvious what it's doing in the middle -"

"That seems like an advantage to spreading it out across people, we can notice which things it's persistent about and which it -"

"Other way around. There's a cap on how many personal goals luck can get you, first few weeks it smooths out all your relationships and so forth and then it'll be reliably bigger -"

"And let me guess, a few weeks is long enough that coming off it would be awful -"

"Yup. Come on, let's go to Grenada."

The Caribbean's pretty small. They Apparate. Fredrick thinks the north end of the island is the lucky one. "Your alts think you should take a month off and decide afterwards what you want."

"Including the ones who aren't an Elf because I think I feel urgency more acutely than the Elf ones and that might affect it."

"Including Finankar and Ferardrin, Finleran was less sure he was qualified to comment."

He studies Timothy. "And said he'd probably do the exact same."

"They all said they'd probably do the exact same but if they didn't stop of their own accord post-crisis they would want to be made to take a month off."

"We're not post-crisis."

"By that definition we never will be - infinite multiverse -"

"Loki might develop spells that can be cast on worlds and solve all their problems at once and then we can just have an expanding ring outwards of fixed worlds and a small internal organization to clear people to cast it and then the crisis would be over."

" - okay, yes, that will probably eventually happen, but the development time on a spell like that would be upwards of a millennium."

"So it might take a while or maybe we'll figure out more powerful acceleration options or a shortcut to Loki's spell design process and it won't take as long either way there's a big difference between that and forever -"

"I don't think you should be on Felix for a thousand years pending utopia escape velocity."

" - can we just get this done, first. Once everyone's free and we can hand it off to Vanda Nossëo -"

Nod. Hug. "Where to from here?"

"Peal sent back the list of magic interaction results!" he tells his wife. "Highlight is that demons basically can't make anything and we should probably get some planets turned into breeding colonies for various scarce kinds of magical creature if we want to be in a position to meaningfully scale up potionmaking. Space Arda folks observe that daeva will take meticulously good care of magic animals if traded breeding sets, might be the best way to do some of the ones that are dangerous and not likely to do well just given their own planet and no supervision. They have a panel of kinds of mind-affecting magic to try against Occlumency on somebody who is not you."

"Somebody who is not me sounds like the ideal subject. Is Theodore all over the magical creature breeding program?"

"I have no doubt that it is already well under way, stewarded by six of him."

"My alts are probably all going to visit now they know I am a them."

"Oh good! Your alts are an impressive lot."

"And we like having alts and it seems obviously incumbent on them to do the visiting so it will seem so to them too."

"Why is that, because it'd be a pain to know when to visit them without interrupting all the empressing?"

"And because it's the same total time investment but they might run into each other here and that is also fun."

"I think I get most of what I get out of meeting my alts by reading all their research notes. And until I have what would we talk about? - well, I know what we'd talk about, I would say 'I have the best wife' and they would say ' - yep, you sure do -'"

"I love you. Should we actually be setting up single mes with yous - it's only happened the once while Timothies have two and a half of me -"

"Are there single mes? I am sure they would adore yous but it might make more sense to, like, propose they collaborate on a project, we really haven't the faintest idea how to carry on a romance and won't be motivated enough to plead with Timothies for cues until we have noticed how smart you are - knowing it isn't the same thing, it's hard to describe -"

"There is the Elentári one with free will but I don't know if he considers himself married still or not. Dunno about the Space fork situation either. There's a difference between knowing and noticing?"

"Yeah it's like - if there's a genderswapped Alessadro Volta somewhere I would happily, uh, acknowledge in the abstract that I bet we'd get along? But I wouldn't be especially moved to go and meet her. If I met her and then she - explained things in a way you can only explain them when you really understand them because you have a really good mental map of the concept space you're navigating, something like that, then there'd be a sort of moment of 'oh yes yes this I want to be around to see this person think' and it's for that specific person, I don't think it's for the template."

"Awwwww. I will keep that in mind if we encounter an Alessandra Volta and an unambiguously single you. - Ithil's early enough in the timeline to probably not have that one married."

"It sounds like she would have serious competition for boy Bells if any showed up. I suppose there are Voltas to go around - I don't even know if he's married, I was just trying to think of someone smart I hadn't met -"

"I think he is. Alas, poor Curufinwë Amilinyë."

"Bet it's something of the last thing on her mind with all this magic. I, uh, expect mes mostly have no idea what they're missing."

"It's probably kinder that way." Kiss.

"Yep." Kiss.

"I'm coming up on the end of my reading assignments and I still don't know the best way to handle Azkaban. There are some inelegant ways but they are that."

"Yeah I glanced at that too. Finding all the dementors will be a hassle and then it looks like there's no shortcut for going and grabbing 'em one by one and I didn't see great options for better wizarding prisons either unless someone's passionate about the subject and cares to wish one up."

"There's subtle artists. Which is, well, a strict improvement over Azkaban."

"Strict improvements on Azkaban are so easy. Have any of them tried blocking a wizard from magic use -"

"No. Shouldn't be difficult in principle but maybe we're weird."

"Occlumency might be somehow protective against subtle arts."

"I might let Boots try me."

Nod. 

"Kib let her do some stuff."

"So did all the fucked-up Timothys, there was a note."

"Yeah. They seem to get fucked up a lot."

"I never thought to appreciate 'Timothy is not randomly traumatized', it's the kind of thing you take for granted. Ardas - well, Ardas suck. Earths may take a while to get better but all the Earths far enough along have it figured out, Ardas -"

"Yeah they just kind of - be terrible -"

"Forever."

"We technically don't know that, maybe they sort out after a million years."

"I'm not sure there'd be much left of my family but - yeah maybe."

"Oh yeah no from a personal standpoint it's a near total loss."

Sigh. "Should maybe get someone with osanwë - or a psion or a subtle artist, if those ever turn up different results - to check if dementors have feelings or whether we can just chase them all down and teleport them over to Edda range for ripping into metaphysical shreds."

"Psions take longer to pick up a skill but they have more oomph when they've got it."

"Not worth the wait if someone hasn't already got the skill, probably."

"Yeah, not if there's not a way to put them somewhere convenient in the interim. Even if they are people they are bad people."

"It is technically possible they can't help it but I won't lose too much sleep over it."

"We can always grab them with the spell Loki's working on after everything more convenient is handled."

"I am really looking forward to that one - did she say how far out it is -"

"She's trying to get it to cover a lot of edge cases. She did the teleport sort of hackily - she says her other spells are a lot more elegant and handle weird use cases much better - and wants a resurrection spell that will not cause any problems in its own right. So. A long time."

"Well. Time we have."

"Yep!"

Bells visit! Minor is charmed by how Miranda interacts with her alts.

Having alts is so great!!!

And they're such good alts. He got the prettiest one though.

"There might be more who look like me eventually."

"I bet I'll still think you're prettiest."

"Oh good."

And they write to ask if persons possessed with telepathic forms of communication want to check if dementors are people real quick before they genocide them.

"- do not read as people to me."

"Oh good. We're pretty eager to be rid of them." But he takes one over to Eclipse for a mindreader in case that gets a different result. (Osanwë doesn't read anything either.)

The mindreader finds the dementor unpleasant but not cognitively complex.

"All right, how are we gonna replace Azkaban once it is no longer run by horrible monsters."

"If subtle artists can do an action block on magic, it'd only take one of them, there aren't that many prisoners -"

Boots is not sure she could get accidental magic.

That makes it harder. If they were very far away they still might not be able to escape but they could hurt people.

It's not impossible she could get accidental magic some other way but it seems hard to test.

Yeah. Some of the people in Azkaban would probably be perfectly all right with some therapy, and some of them are unrepentant mass murderers. Maybe in a Lórien accidental magic couldn't do much damage?

They could ask a Lórien if he thinks they're rated for that?

Maybe somebody else can do that. Do they have Vala-liaisons.

Elspeth can be called up for anything high bandwidth but there are some Elves for friendlier shorter less urgent conversations.

This probably isn't urgent. 

Then it would be better lobbed to one of the Elves who do that.

Sure, can do.

Lórien says that the forest is not intended for that but, yes, it would certainly suffice. Maybe they should use one of the wished-up ones that are not in Valinor, he is not sure it'd be conducive to the bliss of Valinor to have human murderers there.

Yeah, sure, they've got lots, people like them.

"Anyone got a less tedious way of finding dementors than having someone conjure for the surroundings of all of them and then going there looking -"

Not impossible magic rocks could dowse for them the same way they used to do witches.

"Even if Muggle magic rocks can't, you could magic rock a wizard, in case that's it-."

"Yeah, sure, who wants to be a magic rock."

Aaron wants to be a magic rock and bets he could wish for a batch of anything as long as the members of the batch had paid for wished-on magic or gotten it as part of the Vanda Nossëo membership trade agreements.

That's sort of cute. She checks his read on that.

He feels so passionately about that!

Awwwww. Then he can wish on some batch powers for this boring near Edda which is getting them as perks for hosting refugees from this other boring.

Wizard magic rocks: can in fact dowse for dementors. 

They clear out Azkaban, take the prisoners to a Lórien with a block on purposeful magic, take the dementors the two hops to Edda's neighborhood, leave them floating there a thousand lightyears from anything, wait for Aaron to go find all the rest and bring them over as well. 

And when they are all collected an item appears on Loki's schedule and she squashes them.

They drop by the Wizengamot to explain themselves. The prisoners are safely contained, they are no longer suffering as much as they deserve but all Dementors are gone and this is a worthwhile tradeoff. 

         "Do you consider yourself the de facto ruler of Britain?" someone asks Timothy coldly. 

"I don't want to assume that role until I can be a little bit more predictable to my subjects than is feasible at present."

"Our interests are primarily abroad, as long as the absence of Azkaban and laxity of Statute enforcement does not invite new atrocities here which aren't appropriately policed - that would invite us to pay more attention -"

"You sure people are going to put up with that?" he says when he hears.

"I am sure that no other action would have gotten an outcome I found more satisfactory across all desiderata."

"Not even, like, 'invent a philosopher's stone' -"

" - well, sure. It doesn't work well for technical problems with lots of conceptual steps. You could try it, in case you need a stroke of insight."

"In smaller quantities than Fredrick is using. And maybe set it up with the letter board I was using so you don't get accustomed to doing whatever pops into your head."

"Yes, I promise. That does not look healthy."

"But it works." He vanishes.

"That is really worrisome."

"His alts think so too."

"I wonder if they're going to stop him. - I wonder if he can stop them from stopping him."

"I don't think anyone's given him Loki's spells so presumably it wouldn't be that hard."

"Depends."

"Fair. We can ask Timothy what, uh, the plan is there."

"Yeah. Although I'm sure Felix is being real careful to keep Timothy micromanaged."

"You said Timothy was involved with him before, right -"

"Yes."

"So it's slightly less creepy and manipulative." Sigh.

"Oh yeah I'd be way more freaked out if I thought Felix'd told Fredrick to seduce Timothy in the service of inscrutable goals in the first place."

"The inscrutable goals don't look awful so far but still."

"They seem like excellent inscrutable goals - just -"

"Yup." He asks Timothy when he next sees him alone.

"He said he'll stop once we've ended slavery and pointed ourselves at a Vanda Nossëo membership and possibly a few other things should come together at the same time."

"Do you believe him?"

"You think he could lie to me?"

"Uh, maybe? Felix seems like quite a drug."

"I've been wondering if it arranged for our being dropped on the Arda."

"In theory it should not have been able to have an effect that fine-tuned past when it wore off."

"She might've made the decision before it wore off, hard to know. I suppose I could go ask Elio."

"How's he doing?"

"Convalescing with his girlfriend in Italy and so so disinterested in any politics."

"Was he even sympathetic to what she had him doing before she had him doing it -"

"Not especially, I don't think."

"Just kinda grabbed him for the skillset and if you hadn't known how -"

"Well, it would've been convenient to have gotten good enough to throw it off but not instantaneously. A bit safer. But yes, I'm very pleased I picked up the skill - should send my tutor a card -"

"It's only the courteous thing to do, really, I show up back from the dead teleporting wandlessly and updating the Wizengamot on what I did with all the prisoners from their prison from which a breakout is supposed to be impossible, he's probably wondering if he should be worried."

"I suppose you could send him a very tasteful card. With one of those looping animated sorcerous illusions including sound that he won't be able to dispel or pick apart."

"I really honestly don't hold a grudge there. Maybe it would get him to stop, that would be worth it."

"Do you think you can fill the niche -"

" - probably? I've never gotten it to work on a human."

"Who've you tried -"

"Just family, which is almost certainly the reason. It worked fine on the orcs. But I had relevantly malicious intent there."

"Maybe you could substitute peal trust if we can find a wizard alt of somebody who you don't know but their alt is trustworthy, and you teach them and they can let us practice -"

"That'd work - wish there were a better way to check for alts -"

"I'm thinking of how to just straight up invent a spell for it."

"That'd be awfully useful but I don't know any spells that do information like that - I assume the Hex crowd's tried charting one?"

"Their spells aren't good at information either - I was thinking variant on 'point me' -"

"You'd still have to do 'to an alt of this specific person', but yeah maybe -"

"I can iterate from there but at least it won't need demon time."

"We might be in as scarce supply as magic rock teleporters but if you can maybe get somewhere from there that'd be good."

"Teleporters scale with finding people who would make good teleporters, as far as we know wizards may scale only reproductively. We're still more easily come by than demons since we're being careful about demons."

"Yeah, I got a look at the whole convoluted 'get someone in Space to order this for you and then bring it over' process."

"Mm-hm. But maybe people can be wished magic or something."

"Bet it'd be easy to find someone who felt sufficiently strongly about it."

"Probably."