Welcome. Can I interest you in a drink?

"Eee, it is Milliways. Um, Mama says you're good at recommending things."

I'd be happy to recommend you something. An icy strawberries-and-cream something manifests.

It's nothing, really.

"It's awesome is what it is."

I'm glad you like it.

The door opens.

Sarah turns around to see who it is.

"Hi! I'm Sarah! This is Milliways!"

"...Hi, I'm Sylvi, what is Milliways?"

"Milliways is a bar. It makes doors in lots of universes. Some people get doors a lot and some people only get one once and most people never do. My Mama gets doors occasionally and my aunt gets them a lot."

"I've never heard of such a thing. Entire universes?"

"Yep."

"Who are those other people who - get doors? Is there a way to get more doors if I want them?"

"...My Mama and my aunt? I don't know if there's a way to get more doors, if there are Mama never said."

"...Come to think of it I'm not sure how we're speaking the same language at all, but I don't understand - are parts of their names getting turned into possessives somehow?"

"...Parts of their names? I haven't said either of their names at all."

"Titles, whatever."

"...My Mama is my Mama. She isn't most peoples' Mama. She's Raven's Mama and Erik's Mama too."

"Do you. Just not have a mother?"

"...Are you some kind of non-human that can talk? I'm a human, the stork dropped me like everybody else on my world."

"Of course I'm a human. No one who's not an idiot thinks mutants aren't human. And no one over the age of, like, three, believes that storks bring babies, but even if you do, storks bring babies to parents."

"Okay, well, I'm not three, and the storks bring babies to creches, I've - seen them do it, and parents are a thing animals have."

"...Well, of course I'm an animal, are humans plants in your universe?"

"No, humans are more like animals than like plants, but we don't have parents. We just happen, and storks collect us from wherever we are when we're babies and bring us to population centers nearby."

"...People don't just happen, that doesn't make sense. But even if they did, why would that mean you don't have parents?"

"...How in the world would I have parents after just happening?"

"They would adopt you! I'm adopted."

"I have an apprenticeship. Well, had. I just left it. Is that what you mean?"

"If an apprenticeship means the same thing to you than to me then no."

"I went to live with him when I was a kid and studied servantmaking."

"I guess maybe then. Most kids are with their parents from when they're babies but Mama didn't come for me until I was four."

"I was older than four, and it was still earlier than most kids get apprenticeships. Some people never do."

"Oh. I don't think it's quite the same thing then. I wonder why, don't people want to be parents?"

"I've considered getting apprentices of my own, but I can't imagine wanting a baby. They're a little much to deal with even for people who like them and take creche work to deal with them all the time."

"Well if you've got a lot of babies and only a few people of course it's a little much to deal with. Why wouldn't you want a baby? They're little and cute and they love you so much."

"If babies love people I've yet to see one express it in a more interesting way than vomiting. They're all right to hold for a short time but why would I want to have one? I can get pets if I want things to be little and cute, and then they'll also be useful."

"But they won't grow up into a person! And babies do love you, the telepaths say so."

"The telepaths!"

"Are these people who read minds?"

"Sometimes! They do lots of other stuff too and they don't read your mind without permission unless they're a bad guy or too little to know better and Mama kept Erik from doing that either most of the time."

"Well, as long as they need permission... what other stuff?"

"Well, they can talk in your head, and they can keep other telepaths out like Mama and Daddy too did with Erik before he learned better and probably Raven too but she knew better by the time I came home, and they can tell where you are from where your mind is even if they're not actually reading it, and if you let them in your head they can help you remember stuff."

"But they only do any of this with permission?"

"Well, I mean, they can't stop knowing where you are, and I don't think Mama or Daddy asked Erik's permission to keep him out of anyone else's head, but other than that yeah."

"Okay then."

"I'm not a telepath because I'm adopted but I teek."

"...what's that?"

"Teekay! Telekinesis!" She hovers her strawberry and cream thing in the air.

Sylvi looks at the floating beverage. "...So like puppetting but without the objects needing to have moving parts and... you can put them in midair."

"What's puppeting?"

"I don't have a puppet on hand to show you... if there's an object with moving parts, and it's not already another kind of servant, I can take it as a puppet and move its moving parts."

"Oh. Yeah, that's like teekay. But you can't pick it up?"

"If it has a spinnable propeller or something I can make a puppet fly, but only if it's shaped right."

"I don't think that's the same thing. I can't pick up a lot but I can still just pick stuff up."

"It's obviously very different, but it's the closest thing I have."

"Oh. Do you have other things? You're talking like you have other things."

"Puppets aren't the only kind of servant. I mostly work with shines, but I can do the other kinds too at least a little."

"What're shines?" Drinking the strawberry cream thing, still not using her hands.

"They're little spots of light, peeled off so they can move around on their own. You can puppet them or program them to move around on their own."

"Ooh. Program them? Like computers? My daddy works with computers."

"I don't know what those are."

"Uh...Bar, can you explain what a computer is?"

"Cool! You're gonna invent computers! That's so awesome!"

"Thank you."

"I'd offer to get my daddy 'cause he knows about computers but he's not home right now."

"Well, then I'll have to do without the tutoring."

"Okay. I bet you can do it, though, all the grownups say you can do what you want as long as you put your mind to it and are willing to work your hardest. And are willing to spend a long time being frustrated before it works and it's physically possible, but a bunch of them don't admit that part."

"I think I can do it too."

"Good. Computers are the best."

"What do you do with them that makes them so great?"

"You can play games and talk to people far away and read books and write books and draw pictures and look at pictures other people drew and keep a diary. And a bunch of other stuff."

"All that? Wow."

"Yeah! I don't know if all that's been going on for as long as there have been computers but it can happen."

"Well, I have a while to work on it."

"Uh huh." She finishes her strawberry cream thing. "The first drink's for free and Bar does really good recommendations."

"I got a strawberry thing! Strawberries are the best."

"Strawberries are pretty good." Slurp.

"I don't have any money on me to get another one and anyway I'm saving up."

"What for?"

"I don't know yet but when I find something I really want I'll be glad I didn't buy strawberry things."

"That's smart of you."

"Strawberry things taste good but when you're done with them they're gone. If I buy a book or a new dress or something I get to keep it."

"That is very true. Although I sort of wish I had fewer books, because I have to move to another city now and it's hard to fit them all in my horse."

"Oh. Why are you moving?"

"I don't get along with the other apprentices in my house anymore."

"That's sad. I fight with Erik sometimes but neither of us has to move over it."

"Well, they want me to leave, and I have an idea of where to go, so I'm going there."

"If they're making you leave they could at least help with your stuff."

"Oh, they helped me pack."

"That's good, I guess."

"Sort of, yeah."

"Still kinda jerky to make you move."

"I would have left soon anyway, but yes, they're not being very nice."

"Why doesn't your teacher make them stop?"

"There's more of them, they all agree with each other, he kind of agrees with them too, his wife has never liked me very much, and I was willing to leave."

"If she didn't like you she shouldn't have been taking care of you. I don't think your teacher was very good."

"She wasn't taking care of me. Her husband was my teacher, not her."

"Shouldn't she have been helping at least if you were a kid and living in her house?"

"She has her own apprentices. I think you're assuming my teacher was my 'parent' and he wasn't. He took apprentices who were old enough to mostly look after ourselves, and the older ones cooked and the medium-sized ones cleaned and we all studied."

"I think parents is better."

"Well, I'm glad you like having them."

"Yeah. I'm really glad Mama took me home."

"Why did you need to be adopted, if you didn't just happen?"

"I don't know. I've never met my birth parents and no one managed to figure out who they are. Maybe they died or maybe they didn't want a kid or maybe they couldn't afford to take care of me."

Sylvi thinks about that, then says, "Oh."

"But it doesn't matter because I've got my Mama and my Daddy and Raven and Erik and I don't want to be someone else's little girl instead."

"Well, then that's very convenient for all of you, then."

"Yes. Even if Erik needs to learn to stay out of my room when I didn't say he could come in."

"People going in one's room is annoying. I like to keep a diary and I do it in code so nobody can read it but me."

"I keep my diary on my computer and it's password protected but he keeps messing with my stuff."

"What do you do about that, then?"

"I'm trying to convince our parents to get a lock for my door. And I tell him to stop and he usually does for a few days until he forgets or something."

"If he's forgetting, you could put up a sign."

"That's a good idea."

"A sign didn't help me very much, though."

"Oh?"

"I had a sign on my room saying that people weren't invited in and sometimes people came in anyway."

"Why? Sometimes Mama comes into my room when I'm not there but that's different than when Erik does it."

"Because they wanted to borrow my stuff, or try to crack my diary cipher, or leave frogs in my bed, or hide from each other."

"...I think you grew up with bad people."

"I think they were pretty ordinary."

"How many co-prentices did you have? I only have two siblings."

"There were usually a total of six of us. Sometimes five for a while if the oldest one left and our teacher took a while to replace them. Five right now, I don't think he's replaced me yet."

"That's a bunch, but if he's not treating them like they're really his kids I guess it's not so much."

"And his wife had three or four. It was a big house. Not a lot of workshop space, though, we did most of our work on shines because you don't need a lot of room or equipment to make and program them compared to golems or automata."

"What did his wife do?"

"Makes shoes."

"That seems like it would take up space."

"There was workshop space, just not enough for seven people to all make large golems."

"Oh. I don't know how big golems are."

"You can make little ones, but you have to write all their programming on their surface area, so they can't be complicated if they're little, unless you make them out of paper, which is a good way for your golem to last about a week."

"So you program everything, not just shines?"

"No, it's just shines, automata, and golems. Pets and puppets don't get programmed."

"Pets are a kind of thing like golems and shines?"

"Pets are animals that get turned into servants, and then you can give them verbal instructions. I don't have any right now - I had a rat but she died a few years ago and since then I've been focusing on programming."

"How do you make an animal into a servant?"

"You hold it and concentrate on it. It takes a while and it's kind of hard to do the first time - that's why I had my rat, I needed one for practice to call myself a real servantmaker. It's easy after that though."

"You can mind control animals!?"

"...Uh? Sort of? It only works on animals, some nasty people have tried it on humans and it doesn't work. ...Well, on our kind of humans, I don't actually know if it'd work on you, but I don't think it would and I'm not going to try."

"I was just surprised. That's so weird. Animals don't have the same kind of mind that people do but they still have minds."

"They still act like themselves if their masters don't tell them to do anything specific. I made sure my rat wouldn't chew on my stuff or make messes in the house, and I had her bring me things and sit on my shoulder, but mostly she did whatever she wanted."

"Huh. We have pets where I'm from but they're just trained animals mostly, not mind controlled."

"People train animals the long way in my world too but it doesn't seem to work as well, it's just most people aren't servantmakers. Although I could make a decent living if I wanted to turn animals into pets and then tell them to do what others said. More if I did it with exotic animals that don't domesticate. I'm better at shines, though. I picked up most of my money the past couple years doing lights for a theater."

"That sounds like fun."

"It is. I'll miss it, a little."

"Are there theaters where you're going?"

"Yes, but I'll probably do something else."

"Like what?"

"Well, I think I may have an inheritance there, and that means I could just do research instead. Invent shine computers."

"Cool! ...Wait. If you don't have real families who are you inheriting things from?"

"People still die and leave their things to other people. Their spouses, usually, but sometimes their friends or apprentices."

"Yeah, but your teacher didn't like you. Did you have a friend who died?" she asks, sounding concerned.

"Sure. In Milliways, as long as the door's closed, time doesn't pass on the other side."

"All right. So... a while ago I started having weird dreams. Dreams where I'm other people. Living normal lives - I dream about being these people and going clothes shopping or trimming my fingernails or eating pears or something, it's random. There's three people, but I get two of them more than the first one. And when I wake up, I can remember the dreams, like they really happened to me, but a long time ago - twenty or a hundred years or more. They all lived in this town that I'm going to go to; I checked, and it's a real town, and it's where the dreams think it is. And a while ago I had a dream that makes me think that maybe these people were real, and I'm their reincarnation, and that if I go to Lapis I'll find their old house, and a golem one of them left there, and some saved money and old notebooks. ...And maybe the guy that they all married, because he reincarnates, too."

"Ooh. That sounds amazing!"

"Yeah. I hope I'm not just being silly."

"I think if your dreams gave you information you couldn't possibly have known that turned out to be true you're probably not being silly."

"I might have heard that Lapis was a real place separately and forgotten about it. It's a good-sized, old city, it's not unreasonable to have heard of it."

"I dunno then."

"If the dreams are just dreams, well, I'll be in a new city with a little savings and a decent servantmaking education, it'll be okay. If they're not just dreams - then I'm all set for life, and maybe my opposite number will show up soon too. I miss him."

"...I hope he's real then."

"Me too."

"When you find out if we find Milliways at the same time again will you tell me what happened?"

"Sure. Is that likely?"

"I don't know. Mama says some people find Milliways at the same time a lot but some people only ever meet anyone once."

"Well, if I find it again, or my reincarnation does and remembers you, then I will definitely update you on the story."

"Okay! How will I know it's them?"

"All four of me have wound up with the syllable 'bel' in our names. I'm Sylvibel. I have no idea how that happened because we were all named by creche workers, but it is still a thing that happened every time. We look a little alike, I think - not overwhelmingly, you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for it, the second time around I was a boy, but still. Other than that I'm not sure."

"Okay. A 'bel from the world with no parents."

"Yep."

"...Do you want to know anything about my world? I've been asking all the questions."

"I already know that you have animal-type reproduction and people with weird powers," Sylvi points out. "But yeah, tell me about it."

"Um, okay, it's the year 2030, as counted from the birth of a religious figure no one in my family cares about. We have mutants, who are the people with weird powers. We sometimes get nifty cosmetic extras, like my hair." Her hair is lavender. "No one knows for sure how long we've been around but we really emerged into the public eye almost seventy years ago. My grandparents--Mama's parents--were involved with that. They're pretty famous. Then a while back Mama and her sister my aunt Emily went on a multi-universal jaunt and came back with a bunch of other people like Kodiak and Dr. Aspen and also some nifty technology."

"Oh, I figured your hair was dyed that way. Did they jaunt through here? That sounds dangerous if you can't know when you'll get doors."

"No, this is my natural hair color. Some of the jaunting was through here. A lot of it was trying to get back home after aunt Emily's normally reliable Milliways-door-getting quality temporarily abandoned her."

"That sounds like a nasty surprise."

"They rescued a lot of people they otherwise wouldn't have, though. No one will tell me what was wrong with Kodiak's world but it's universally agreed to have been really awful."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't know."

"But yeah, I am really extremely not allowed to go home with anyone I meet in Milliways."

"Wasn't going to suggest it."

"I didn't think you were."

"How old are you, anyway?"

"Seven."

"And if you're not in a creche or an apprenticeship, what do you do?"

"I go to school."

"What do you learn?"

"Math. Science. Languages. History. Current events. Basic principles of art and music and stuff."

"Sounds like the sorts of things they cover for kids who stay in creche."

"Did you just stop learning everything that wasn't useful for the one job when you were seven?"

"I read, and we study a few other things formally too between servantmaking lessons. Not everyone needs to know how to do everything. I knew what I wanted to do when I was seven. Actually, all four of me wanted to be servantmakers."

"Okay. Some people just know. Mama knew she was going to be a teacher for as long as she can remember."

"See, there you go. Although people who want to be teachers tend to stay in creche, because that's people who are already teachers are to learn from."

"I'm glad our system works the way it does, though, because Aunt Emily didn't know she really really wanted to be a doctor until she was already studying it and she never would have picked it if you had to when you were a kid."

"Well, some professions or individual teachers work like that. There are doctors who will take little apprentices but more usually you've got to be at least thirteen or fourteen. I thought about it but I mostly wanted to be a servantmaker and I could start as soon as I could find someone to take me."

"I'm pretty sure Aunt Emily didn't pick until she was in college but maybe she would have sooner if she hadta."

"It's also entirely possible to change careers. Plenty of people work in a shop or on a farm or something simple like that until they decide what they want to study."

"Okay. That makes sense."

"I'd certainly hope so."

"Not everything people do makes sense."

"Yes, but if the way people chose jobs was too nonsensical, that would be a little sadder than if people choose silly hobbies."

"I meant like how people have wars sometimes and stuff."

"Yes. Those are also bad. But I'm not sure they actually don't make sense. They often do, at the time."

"Sometimes. And sometimes people are mean for stupid reasons, like someone looks different than them or comes from somewhere else or disagrees with them."

"Yep."

"And sometimes people elect really stupid politicians because they have a lot of money and can advertise better."

"Well, people could elect politicians they'd never heard of, instead, but I'm not sure if that would be better."

"They could also pay more attention to what the politicians were actually saying. I'm pretty sure everyone's heard of at least one non-stupid politician."

"A lot of politicians sound smart and then turn out to be stupid."

"Yes. But if the smart-sounding thing they say now and the smart-sounding thing they said a while ago contradict each other and they dodge questions about it that's a good way of telling."

"But I'd rather have one who can change their mind when they learn new things and is smart enough to know that most people won't understand that, than one who never changes their mind or says things that are obviously a bad idea to say."

"Right. But if you ask them about it and they say they changed their minds or learned better, that's different than if they dodge the question or pretend they never said the first thing."

"But politicians who claim they have learned things tend not to be elected. Which means that if one claims that, they aren't paying attention, or don't want to be elected."

"I don't want someone to be in charge of me who lies to me."

"That is a reasonable thing to want, I acknowledge."

"Yes."

"But if I wanted to be the Prime Minister or the General Secretary or the First Citizen or whatever of some city-state, I would probably want it badly enough to at least simplify things to voters if I thought that would help."

"Simplifying is different than lying. If you try to tell everyone everything they get bored and wander off."

"They're different. But they aren't totally different."

"If you don't tell someone something because you don't think they'll care that's different than if you don't tell someone something because you think they will care."

"If I tried to run for public office," says Sylvi, "in some city-states there would be a form to fill out that would ask if I've ever done that before. And I think I might have, because I had a dream about one of those previous incarnations, filling out exactly that form, although I don't remember if she actually ran or if she decided not to. But I can't tell them that. They'd think I was crazy. And they'd care a lot if I believe weird things that might mean I'm crazy; but I'd probably just write no."

"There's a difference between your personal business and the stuff you'll do as a politician though. And Mama says if telling the whole truth will make people only believe the part of the truth that's inconvenient for you then not telling isn't the same as not telling when people would believe everything."

"Fair enough."

"If a man says he wants to raise benefits for the unemployed and later he says he's slashing benefits so he can lower taxes and he won't give a straight answer why that's bad."

"Sure. But I wouldn't summarize the problem as 'lying', there."

"If he says he never said he wanted to raise benefits then that's lying, but I don't know a lot of real examples, I don't follow politics that much. That's mostly a grown-up thing."

"True. I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, but I think the past me's did."

"Mama cares a lot about politics and she rants about it sometimes. That's how I know."

"Makes sense."

"Yes." She nods sagely. "But I should probably go home soon. I don't want to forget to make a sign to put on my door."

"Sure. I hope it works for you."

"I hope so too! Thanks for suggesting it." She hops off the bar stool and heads out the door.