We'll try that first but the more I learn of them the more pessimistic I get.

If they don't let you leave again and they can stop us from summoning you out...

Yeah. But if it's a project of Years or longer to convince them not to let the Enemy free, or to - prepare somehow...

Nod. Sigh.

I would miss you. I just - think we know enough about the Enemy by now that it's worth doing costly things if it turns out to be needed, to stop him.

I agree, I just - hope they'll be convinceable without going in person.

Very much so. 

Flying.

Flying is nice.

And eventually she wants to conserve the rest of her mana and touches down.

The local Fëanor wants to hop a hundred dimensions collecting their technology and perhaps their magic systems before we pick one to settle on. I might have successfully persuaded him that's dangerous, but.

It is dangerous but could maybe be cut to a worthwhile risk if we get really good parameterization...

Yes, and are very cautious when exploring, so even if a world's a Materia we somehow failed to screen out we might be able to notice and leave before offending its sensibilities...

Could open by earwiring people, if you talked to someone from Materia long enough they could tell you about the science thing...

If they won't assume they're suffering delusions or something, Materia has a high expectation that weird magic things will just happen...

Yeah, that's true. Although people who hear voices do often wind up talking back, it turns out to be really hard to ignore somebody who's talking to you completely...

I suppose as long as we can subsequently show up and not be delusions.

Yeah. Or we can try people till we find somebody who's more comfortable with talking to telepathic aliens.

True. And then we'll be talking to very open-minded people, probably.

Or ones who already hear voices and just think we're nicer than the usual ones. Mostly voices in people's heads are huge jerks.

I suppose you're the expert. Would that be filtering for - inaccurate information in other respects...

Not necessarily. It could though, if there's comorbidity especially. If we talked to a Materian who had delusions we might be told that science was forbidden by a conspiracy of hypersapient displacer beasts but we would not be told it was safe...

Okay. We can get started on that, then, once, uh, Nelyo leaves town....

And once I have the interdimensional earwires. They're complicated.

Anything I can help out with?

Sure, if everybody's up to speed on intro stuff and you've got the spare time.

I think they all have enough to go from here with.