"And yet it is not! The spaceship that I traveled in moved in - well, okay, it didn't move in the same way as one of the ships you know, it had a mass effect core and it could fly at several times the speed of light - don't ask, it's two millennia worth of physics and we really don't have time - but the movement itself is the same kind of movement as taking a ship from Stygia to Cimmeria. - I assume there's a sea route between Stygia and Cimmeria, if there isn't feel free to imagine countries with coastlines."

"Stygia does not have a coastline but you can take a boat down the river to the sea and then travel to Cimmeria."

"Have you been there?"

"No, but I studied the maps. Before I was exiled."

"Maps? Who were you?"

"I was leading a revolution in the Kingdom of Kush against the Chagas. But maybe I should leave the explanation of all of that to when Valentin ends his storytime."

"Alright, where was I - so, making things is technology, but the way we travel between planets is a mix of that and the next thing I was going to bring up, the Mass Effect. How to explain it... essentially, there's a kind of rock that, if you put electricity through it, it changes how the world works around it. You can use it to generate energy and use that energy in technology, or to make things go faster than should be physically possible, or to make things lighter or heavier than they actually are. I have no chance of convincing you the Mass Effect isn't magic, do I. Trying to explain it without a twenty-second-century physics education halfway makes me think it is."

"At this point I am not entirely sure the distinctions you are making between what you call technology and what you call magic would make sense to me," says Taharqi, and Raziya nods.

"Magic is something that does not follow the laws of physics - something that can't be explained using the rules that we have found to govern the universe. Gravity, momentum, the speed of light. The Mass Effect bends the laws of physics, but - in a way that can be accounted for, you've put energy into a multiplier and you're getting more back. And it makes other rules make sense, rules that didn't make sense before we knew about the Mass Effect. But - teleporting a hundred thousand light years? Turning a stick into a snake?" He grapples with this for a moment. "It simply doesn't fit. You can't make it make sense."

He sighs. "Which doesn't mean that it doesn't happen; witness my being here. But it means something's different about this world from the one I'm used to. And that thing is what I'm calling magic."

"This translation magic is a trip," says Raziya. "'Momentum'," she repeats, in French, as clearly they don't have a word for it in whatever language they were originally speaking. "'Physics'. We don't have these words."

"Yes, I suspected as much. The distinction is... not as meaningful to you as it is to me, I know. But it exists, and I know that I am not doing the same thing that your wizards do. - ah, I was going to mention the third category of not-magic, biotics, which is essentially just Mass Effect created by a living being rather than by technology. When my mother was pregnant she was in an accident involving Element Zero, that not-magic crystal I mentioned. So I have small amounts of Element Zero inside my body and my brain, and I have a cybernetic implant, a biotic amp, at the base of my skull, which lets me use the Mass Effect by thinking and gesturing in certain ways."

He rubs his amp absently. He doesn't usually think about it; it's like wearing contact lenses, or having braces, or something. But mentioning it puts it on his mind.

"And you think the thing that brought you here was magic, not—physics?"

"If it was physics, then a lot of people are wrong about how physics work. Which is not impossible, of course."

"I don't think I know of any magic that does this sort of thing, instantaneous transportation."

"Well. More things in heaven and earth. - sorry, quote from a famous poet - I imagine if one world exists with magic then more might."

"Yeah, probably. You said—twenty-second century—"

"Uh, yes - I don't know if the event we count from has even happened yet or even would have happened in this world given how many things are different, have you heard of someone named Jesus Christ? Um, Yeshua of Nazareth, I think he was called sometimes?"

"No, I am not familiar with the name. Although it does sound—like it could be a name someone has. If that makes sense."

"More so than Valentin Saint-Martin, you mean."

He grins. "Yes."

He sketches a bow, then skips a bit to get back in marching order. "You can call me Tintin, if you like. It's the nickname I use when I'm among friends."

"...that is adorable," says Raziya.

"So I've been told! I had trouble pronouncing my own name as a young boy, so - Tintin. And it stuck."

"I do freely admit it is easier on the tongue. Tintin."

"So, about the geopolitics - you had some revelation to share, that you were coordinating a Kushite revolution? I remember there was a land called Kush on the Earth in my world, but by my time they were part of - was it Egypt? I think it was Egypt."