"You know, a table's just as bad as a floor if it's got clearance and isn't wobbled more than a certain number of degrees to one side."

It takes a full second for the person with freakily big eyes to abruptly fall out of his chair, the strange tattoos on his face pulsing wildly.

"Relax, I'm not gonna hurt you. What exactly were you trying to do here?"

"We're having a reading group."  (There's no one else in the room.)  "...Do you want to join?"

"...bringing the population of the group up to, uh, two?"

"Six.  At least."  He glances around at the room's walls, clearly expecting Cam to be able to deduce something about them.  Nothing obviously stands out; the interior design is spacious and tastefully opulent; the wallscreen is shifting through generic naturescapes.

"I, uh, don't have augmented reality contact lenses or anything on the optimistic assumption that's what you mean." He jumps off the table with a big wing-flare to steady his landing.

"That's not what I mean."  He's staring.  "...Bubbly surge."

"...no thanks I don't drink?"

"...Your costume surge.  It's really bubbly."  He carefully starts to get up off the floor.

"In principle summoning me should give me your dialect but it does not give me your precise vocabulary."

This guy is going to stare at him some more.

He sits back down in his hoverchair, kicks it over to where he dropped his stylus, and writes annoyingly slowly and with very bad handwriting, 'we are being listened to'.  Then he fiddles conspicuously with his silver chain necklace.

Blink blink. Sign languages are a... no, guy doesn't understand any and even if he could he couldn't produce them understandably right now. ...Cam will hand him a tablet with a gaze-tracking keyboard and a back display. Then produce his own computer. Look at letters to type them, and it'll display on the reverse side for me.

This gets a bunch of spam letter inputs while he assesses the layout, and then deletes.  We also have to keep talking.  (Complete with competent spaces and capitalization.)  He picks up his book, a falling-apart copy of the Communist Manifesto, and reads another paragraph from it.

"That's an interesting choice of book." What exactly are they listening for?

"History's pretty bubbly."  Too much to summarize.  Do I keep losing consciousness??

"Are you doing some kind of study on communism?" Not that I've seen?

"Not specifically."  Why are you - he deletes that.  How did you come to be here?

"The manifesto wants a lot of context, if you ask me." You summoned me with the thing you drew on the table.

"Doesn't everything?"  How?  It pinged you?

"Well, everything wants it, but this one had an unusual concentration of surprising-to-contemporaries geopolitical fallout." No, it magically pulled me here from the universe in which I normally live.

"Huh."

I'm brain-damaged, not gullible.

"I could come up with more book recommendations if you want." I can fuck off and go do something else if you didn't want a demon here and don't feel like being my native guide to whatever this-all is.

He considers this, rocking his hoverchair back and forth.

"I mean, it seems totally fascinating.  It'd be bubbly to get to know more context."

"Yes, just absolutely hella bubbly. I too could always use more context about the world." Do you want to stop having your necklace by any chance.

"Totally."  If you have a way to cut orbital alloy and deal with the resulting swarm of Specials.

"Yeah have you read, like, 1984." What is a Special?

"Yeah, back when I was an ugly."  Member of Special Circumstances, the city's solution to outside threats.

"How long ago was that?" That doesn't tell me if I have a way to deal with them or not.

"Four, maybe five years ago?  That I read it; I turned pretty about a year ago."  If you don't know, you should assume you can't yet.

"Is 'pretty' the name of a number or an age or something in this dialect?" That's not very informative and I'm getting pretty tired of having two conversations at once neither of which is telling me what's going on usefully.

"Sixteen, by default..." My friends can get hoverboards and wilderness supplies in a few hours.  Can you ride one?  I do not think things will go well for you if you try to leave this room knowing as much as you seem to.

"By default?" I don't need your friends to get anything. Have you not noticed the thing where I appear stuff from nothing. Can you possibly be at all specific ever about how anything you are predicting will happen?

"Sometimes there are delays." I thought I was briefly passing out???  You have a bunch of stuff hidden with sneak tech or what?

"- You know," it occurs to him while Cam is composing his next response, "if you felt like reading to the group for a while, that would be super bubbly.  All this stuff is totally head-spinning."

"From the manifesto or did we wanna do 1984?"

"Whichever."

"Behold." He appears a paperback 1984. "It was a bright cold day in April..." He's actually going to get a voice print cooked up and then make the computer take over by the time he gets to page 3. Now what?

He spends a fair while gaze-typing.

• My friends are out pulling a trick.  They left their interface rings here so the city can't track them.
• We think there's just a basic software warden checking that someone's talking enough that it doesn't think the rings have been abandoned, but the interface is always listening for people talking about anything tricky.
• I'm too trouble-making to have an interface ring; my girlfriend and I used to have cuffs instead but we managed to get them off and escape into the wild.  It took starving ourselves and sticking our (heat-gloved) hands in fire long enough to expand the metal enough to slip them off.  They turned out to have had a time-delayed tracker in my tooth and got us anyway.  Now I have the collar.  Nothing available to city pretties can cut or break it.
• They might have made her into a Special.  They're way faster and stronger than pretties or uglies, and have access to way better/scarier tech.  They almost certainly get their brains messed with.
• Pretties also get their brains messed with.  Pretty much everyone in the cities gets turned into one at or around 16; it makes us vapid and docile.  There's a cure; I took an experimental version; it ate a lot of my brain.  It has stopped doing that.

And:

• What, are you saying you're a walking hole in the wall???
• Do the wings work and if so how fast are they?

I expect I can cut your necklace if and when that's desirable. I don't recognize all the technology you're talking about. Is there a non-experimental cure? Would it still work on you? I have powers something like being a hole in the wall*, yes. I can do about fifty miles an hour once I get going but can't carry you, I'd make some kind of shuttle if I were bringing you anywhere.

* This is translating successfully as "Star Trek replicator".

There's a safe cure and some of the tricks my friends are doing involve trying to help pass it out.  I don't know if it would work on me but I also think re-pretty-heading me didn't really.  Shuttle as in hovercar, helicopter, spacecraft, or what?

The kind I'd go with can also do space travel. Does the cure have, say, a name? If it did not work on you would it be harmful?

It would be pretty bubbly to go to space.  Bet the Specials can't get us there.  I don't know a specific name for it; there's some chance it harms me.  But I think my brain may have been messed up enough that when they tried to give me the lesions again there, it didn't have the intended effect.  I've had my neurons replaced but I have to re-make the connections between them, is my understanding.

Sounds bad! I don't think I can locate 'the cure' without any kind of name for it. Maybe if you tell me who developed it? If you want to try this at all.

A Maddy and maybe an Az?  I don't know their last name.  Parents to a David.

Cam tries for 'the cure as developed by Maddy et al'.

Nothing.

Nothing doing, alas. Could you possibly explain as though I am not from the universe, since I'm not, what is going on with... everything here... more.

Happily.  You have - here he searches around the other keyboard menus, doesn't find whatever he was looking for - 1984, so things might have been the same at least up through the Rusty period.  Did you have a Rusty Crash?

We do not call any period by that name.

I don't think anyone did while they were still in it.  What year do you say you're in?

2179.

And in the early 21st century there wasn't a petroleum plague that left Earth at 2% of its previous population?

...I don't even know what a petroleum plague would be.

It only affected oil, not people.  But it made it explode.

That does sound like it'd be very inconvenient. We did not have anything making petroleum spontaneously explode. But we did have what's called Revelation, where it became newly public knowledge that it's possible to summon beings like myself and trade with us.

I don't think it took very many people to make the oil bug.  If I take alternate universes as a given it doesn't seem very hard to have knocked that off course.

A century after that, the little cities that had formed in the wake of the Crash decided to try and figure out how to make sure no one ever busted the planet again.  So they invented and standardized the operation, the idea being that if we made everyone pretty and pretty much looking the same, we'd eliminate most of the causes of war that weren't already covered by the material conditions.  Or, that's what we're taught in school; presumably the brain changes did a lot of the work there.

Thanks, I hate it.

That gets a smile.

So now kids live with their parents until they're 12 and move into the ugly dorms, and move to New Pretty Town when they turn 16, unless they run away or Special Circumstances decides to pressure them into trying to find other runaways and threatens to withhold their operation until they do.  For normal people, eventually they get bored of partying and start working.  The city /has/ a cure; even they want our doctors and firefighters smart.

Okay, uh, is that something you could identify for me to conjure up?

He takes a moment to think about it.

That's really all I know about their version.  Sorry.

Alas. Okay, so, uh, I'm indestructible. I don't think the spooks can do anything to me. The risk would be if they could do something to you remotely or very fast or triggered in a way that would be hard to stop them from completing.

I won't ask you to prove your indestructibility.  He pauses.  Is there a way to cover up the wings?  They're way outside morphological standards and, while I don't think anyone is watching us now or very likely to start, it'll make a big difference if they do.

I could hide 'em in a coat. I could cut 'em off.

Don't cut them off!!  A coat might be a good idea.

A coat appears. I mean, I could put them back, I put them there in the first place, but sure.

You're saying you hole-in-the-walled them onto your body?  And they stuck?  And don't cause you any of the massive problems I'd expect?

Yeah. - you are not going to fly out of here, it takes a bit to learn and humans get tireder than demons do.

I just don't get /how/.  But it's less important than catching you up.  Specials... they want everyone to fit into the city ecosystem.  They're willing to let people die if they don't cooperate with this, but they try pretty hard not to.  Things they might trigger on me are trackers, which I strongly hope don't matter if we're in space, or - he ponders - back while my brain was getting eaten my girlfriend took me to the hospital because I'd had an episode.  We stayed outside until I woke up, but she'd rushed there really obviously and it would have been suspicious if we didn't go in, so I injured myself.  While they were fixing me up and I was unconscious, they noticed everything wrong with my brain.  They put a stop to it getting worse.  But they didn't fix it; they stuck the tracker in my tooth and had it give me fake headaches like the ones I'd been having, so we'd get desperate, leave the city, and lead them to the Smoke.  That being the name for the mini-society of runaways.

So really, they could have anything on me, but probably not something that would kill me at least on purpose.  Or they could just think I'm a useless pretty again, and only have the collar to keep me here.

I still really feel like I'm lacking context but if you would sooner live on the moon I expect to be able to do that unless they can like remotely explode your head or something.

Quite a commute, even if it'd work.

I can also do a space station but I don't know what the state of your orbitals might be, assuming that anything you've described to me is not bullshit and this is in fact a different timeline or something.

Unless my memory's gone again, you're the one who brought up that explanation.

It would be a good explanation in the version of reality where you aren't lying to me or insane, but so far all I've seen is a guy with slightly outré tats and shaky hands reading himself the Communist Manifesto in a room with screen walls, which is not impossible in my own universe.

I hope it doesn't come off the wrong way if I say that so far all I've seen is a guy with costume surge wings and maybe some sneak suit material which he's programmed to whip off of slightly weird custom technology and a book he picked out at dramatic times, or is maybe is very good at precisely interrupting my consciousness.  Which is not impossible here.

Sure? I'm not that invested in you believing me, I do not at present have much use for that state of affairs as far as I know, you're the one who ostensibly needs help here, I'm fine. Do you want to challenge me to make something real specific?

I don't have a great handle on what you're alleging to be able to do, here.  A Special Circumstances hoverboard but decorated like the one I had as an ugly.  The costumes Tally Youngblood and I wore on the night she got accepted into the Crims.  Another little wing attached to your arm that you can flap autonomously.

'The night she got accepted into such and such an organization' isn't a conjurable parameter but if you give me a date that would be. My indestructibility is not friendly to alterations to my anatomy that I'm not authentically happy about. Hoverboard.

The guy blinks at the hoverboard.  Floats his chair over to touch it, some.

Then makes some gestures at the wallscreen and has it scroll quickly through what looks like his personal photos, sending it back to the generic display before Cam can really parse them.

December 21st?

This most recent one?

He nods.

Cam conjures. He looks at the neatly folded Nazi uniform in his hand.

You have incredibly poor taste.

I didn't really expect it to work, or for you to care.  It's been 500 years, here.  No one even got the reference when I wore it, beyond "some Rusty dictator's assistant" when I explained.  He holds out his hands for the outfits.

He hands them over. I guess at least you did not set out to offend anyone at the time, then, ex hypothesi.

He nods distractedly a few times, the movement of the tattoos on his face growing faster even than they were when Cam first appeared as he inspects the other costume.  It looks like a somewhat standard hand-knit sweater.

After peering intently at the stitches and sniffing at the air a little, he kicks his chair over to, well, a hole in the wall, and stuffs the uniform in.  A screen displays 'Recycling' with a progress circle; it continues for several seconds before the guy cancels the job, extracts the uniform, and dumps it on the floor.  In goes the sweater.  'Non-recyclable material in bay,' flashes the screen.

He puts his head in his hands for a moment, tattoos flashing around his fingertips.  Then he takes the sweater back, carefully, sets the uniform back in the hole, and turns his attention back to Cam.

"He must, he thought, have been ten or eleven years old when his mother had disappeared," says the voice print.

!
(He does not have a very "!" demeanor.)

Cam waves at him.

Can you remake the archive library that the Smoke lost last year when Special Circumstances destroyed it?  Can you remake things from the Rusty era that were lost centuries ago?

I don't see why not but is this really the time or place?

I wasn't asking if you /would/ /right now/.

Then we are on the same page about that, great. What's next.

He takes a deep breath.  It slows the tattoos some.

Proving the things I said?  Unless you already think that the hoverboard implies a Special Circumstances for it to be from.

I mean, the fact that some person place or thing is called Special Circumstances means nothing to me, really.

He spends a few of the voice print's sentences thinking.

It would be easier if I knew more about how you expect things to be.  It sounds like it's really not like I can just have you look at a map and have that be it, like I might guess of some other magically appearing magical person.

I'm a bit concerned that if I conjure up the thing that explodes petroleum it will explode and that might do you some harm, I'm not sure what other evidence I should be conjuring up here. I expect what I guess you're calling "rusty" civilization to be continuous with the civilization that summons guys like me all the time and is therefore post-scarcity and settled on Mars and stuff. - there's three kinds of guys, I'm a demon, we make stuff, there's also fairies who move stuff and angels who change it.

We aren't settled on Mars.

Mars, the one that is somewhere in the sky from here, as it is right now, lil desk ornament size?

Looks like a blank dirt ball!

He runs his thumb over it and then sets it on the table. ...he fills in all the writing on the table with matching ink. All right, that's not my Mars.

Nod.

Is there any way you can find out what happened to my girlfriend?  I haven't seen her in almost three months, and we didn't exactly part on planned terms.

Well, you could tell me her name and I could see what state she is in at the moment.

Tally Youngblood.

Tiny plastic Tally Youngblood and surroundings.

Patch of woods, campfire.  Two upright figures with short hair and even more face tattoos, in bodysuits.

The guy's expression doesn't much change, although his tattoos ramp their spinning back up.  Not that they've slowed down much since the last time.

Cam pinches out the model campfire.

Thank you.

No problem.

...What do you want?  Out of this situation.

Universal sapient flourishing?

...Nod.

Should we exchange names or is that incorrect to do with your type of magical guy?

Nah, it's fine, but points for the attempt at genre savvy. I'm Cam.

Zane.  Nice to meet you.

Charmed. Were we going to maybe leave, at some point?

I'd want to compose a message to my friends, even if your voice will keep the minder happy long enough for them to finish their trick.

Okay, knock yourself out. He sits sideways in a chair.

Zane is going to spend like twenty minutes with a personal screen, then.

Cam's going to grab the complete published works of the world since, oh, fifteen years before the oil 'splosion thing, and poke around at the news and whatnot since then, though a bit haphazardly since he doesn't know what sources to trust.

Then he'll get stuff starting in 2010, with no sign of Revelation.  There are some news sources recognizable from when he was human.  He comes across several articles about flooding and rising sea levels; it seems like looking at a map would have been illustrative after all.  If he checks the current state of things, Florida and New York City are completely gone, Lakes Erie and Ontario are gone but there are another two lakes around their size down around Virginia-or-so; the mouth of the Mississippi is a multiple-state-spanning bay.  There are similar differences across the globe.

As far as he can tell in twenty minutes, Zane is at least approximately right about things.  Here's a modern history textbook with a table of contents that pretty much matches the description Cam received, and if he checks ones in other languages the content is basically identical.

Wow. What is the current population of the world? How many died in the immediate fallout of the oil explosion and its sequelae?

Less than 300 million.  About 10 billion.

10 billion! There weren't that many people or even that close to it in his 2025! He will be looking at demographic charts at the time Zane's done with his composition.

Wave.  He's already typed, How are you planning to de-collar me, how sure are you it'll work, and how long do you think it might take even if your first attempt doesn't cut it?

Cam hefts the model Mars. It comes apart in his hand into neat quarters. Like that.

What am I meant to have taken from that?

I can create a thin layer of air in between the molecules of an object. This is called 'interpolation' and makes the object fall apart.

That does seem like it would work.  This once again has more of a reaction in the tattoos than the uninked components of his face.

Do you know of a way to bring my pictures and feed history with us?  I've been leaning on those a fair bit for having a memory that works, but if there's any chance it could make a difference in whether the city track us it's not worth it.

If they are stored on any physical medium and not encrypted in a way you can't get into, no problem.

Nod... Then I think we can go as soon as one of us makes you a mask.

Why do I need one? No one will recognize me. Or is that the problem?

You don't look like you've had the operation.  And we're in New Pretty Town.

Okay. Will anything I make up do?

Maybe you should pick something that exists, even if you want to make it yourself.  With a few gestures the wallscreen is filled with icons of fashion masks.  Zane demonstrates silently how to make it scroll or select one to view details on.

Yeah okay. That one is tolerable and goes acceptably with the snazzy leather coat. Cam appears it in place, fitted perfectly.

There's a bit of a weird feeling of movement underneath but then it's glued to his face in a way that moves comfortably with him and doesn't feel like it's going to fall off on its own.

Zane... rises from his hoverchair?

Is this some kind of creepy alive mask? Cam asks.

It's smart adhesive?

That's so much less concerning than some of the things I was worried you might say. Lead on.

Nod.

Once they're out in the hallway: "I'm so tooorn.  I feel like Cleopatra Park's easily the bubbliest place to see the fireworks at a distance, but it might be crowded enough to be bogus.  I guess we could go out to the greenbelt?  But it's like, so far.  Maybe not worth the inconvenience."  Here's an elevator.  "Ground floor," he instructs.  "Should I hail a hovercar?"

"Oh, you know, whatever." Can you write me something rather than make me try to interpret subtext please.

This gets a minute headshake and another presumable heart-rate spike.  "Cleopatra park's probably fine.  We can find a spot; we'll just kick out any uglies in our way.  Hovercar or stroll?"

???

"Well, I kinda hate walking."

"Yeah, it's kinda bogus.  I'm supposed to do a bunch of it so my brain gets used to it again but it's, like, hard."  Hand gesture and, "Hovercar, please."

Am I supposed to produce this shuttle or are we really getting a hovercar to show up in the customary fashion.

"Oh, sorry, I forgot something in my room; I'm so brain-missing.  Can we go back?  - Hold elevator."

"Sure, whatever."

Back to the room.

Sorry.  I guess I didn't convey that this is a weird way to communicate and people might see us doing it outside of my room.  How much takeoff room do you need?

For a shuttle? The size of the table you summoned me on would do for a little one.

Wow.  So the roof would do, if you won't set it on fire, can fly through safety fireworks, and don't mind being seen both across the city and by anyone hanging out up there?

Conceivably depends what you mean by safety fireworks. I don't really care who sees if you don't.

I don't know very much about how they work.

Tiny safety firework?

It's pretty!  And kind of tickly.  Cool, not hot.

Yeah, I might interrupt some bit of the show but the shuttle'll be fine.

Nod.  When are you planning to de-collar me?  Right before you make it?

You could give me literally any indication of when you want this to happen, either in advance with some words or moment-of by, like, pointing at it? I'm not picky I just cannot fucking read your mind and you're bad at explaining shit, which is probably the fault of whoever brain damaged you but that doesn't help us here and now.

I think the order of operations is probably we go to the roof, we agree on a spot for the shuttle, you free me, you make it, we get in, and we leave.  Should I pull this away from my neck so you don't miss and hit me?  Do I need a lesson on how to safely ride in a shuttle?

I am not going to miss, I guess unless you decide to start dancing and even then I still probably won't. You do not need safety lessons, there aren't even any big red buttons you need to not press or anything. What are you imagining the process of agreeing to a spot looking/sounding like?

Not even on how to strap into the seat belts?  If it's going to be less than a minute or so from takeoff I think it's fine to skip the pretty talk.

It will be less than a minute. The ride's very smooth and you don't have to wear a seat belt.

He nods.  Takes a breath.  While we were in the elevator I was wondering if leaving the hoverboard was going to cause any problems.  I don't know that it will, but if it's as easy to destroy things as it seems to be for you, maybe you should do that.

I mean, I can't annihilate them completely, there'd be a pile of dust. Is there anything in there that might explode, I don't know how those jobbies work.

...Zane goes over to poke at the hoverboard some more.  Tries to pry it open in a few spots.

It's not energy point or solar.  So I have no idea what it runs on.  Can we bring it with us?  Or if you make me a set of crash bracelets I can send it out of the city, though someone might still find it or see it on its way.

We can bring it with us. You gotta have in mind the ultimate fate of any objects you ask me to make, I'm not an angel and can't just poof them into air again.

Now that I believe you are a real magical person I will definitely do that.  He tucks the board under his arm; it doesn't seem very heavy.  Anything else?

Not on my end.

He - almost goes to type something, and then doesn't.  "Roof, please," he tells the elevator when they get there.

Outside, the architecture is weirdly spindly for Earth, but otherwise not wildly different from things Cam's seen before.  A bit more cohesive of an aesthetic than he's used to, maybe.  People are shooting fireworks at each other from towers and the ground and several hot air balloons; it's kind of unclear whether there's any organized show or just individual people setting them off at will.  (Apparently the safety versions also don't boom like regular ones, although some of them do sizzle.)

The roof has a dozen or so people who look kind of like Zane, although all with browner hair.  There's a cluster standing around drinking and a few pairs making out in the corners.  There's a clear area plenty big enough for a nontiny shuttle, although not a large one.

Despite Cam's assurances, Zane uses a finger to pull the chain well away from his neck.

Cam points at the area. "There?"

"Yeah.  - Who wants to see something bubbly?" he calls.  This gets a smattering of vaguely-interested cheers in response once people parse that he's addressing them.

Cam interpolates a neat little gap in the necklace so it can come right off. Assuming that works normally he then produces a shuttle.

This gets a few flat, shocked 'woah's from the crowd before it shifts into less-kneejerk 'ooh's and light applause.

Zane dumps the necklace on the ground and grinningly follows Cam's lead for enshuttling, waving to the onlookers on his way in.

And the door shuts behind them and they are up up and away!

Zane is pretty glued to the view.

It's not a bad view. Cam flops in a conveniently wing-accommodating chair. "Are we going all the way to the moon, or what."

"How long would it take?"

"Hours."

"Hm.  The thing is that I really have no idea about our orbital capab -"  He abruptly trails off.

"Are you having a brain damage problem or do you just not feel like telling me about your orbital capabilities or what."

"I thought I saw something..."

Cam pulls up more camera views.

There's nothing there.

"I'm not getting anything, though I did not prioritize zero-blindspot coverage."

"Huh...  Well, I don't know anything about our orbital capabilities, so it's possible that we should go to the moon while you orient, as long as that won't impede you from learning things?  You don't have a max distance on your powers or anything like that?"

"I do but it is astronomical, I can make stuff in the middle of the sun from here. I do have to aim and that's harder at range. Or do you mean where I can copy stuff from? No limit on that at all."

"...I did mean that.  Wow.  Please, uh, don't make things in the middle of the sun.  I think.  - Aim like slingshot-aiming or... what?"

"I have to know the direction and distance from me. This can work on a sorta visual-proprioceptive-ish-level, like appearing something in a place I can see, or in my hand even behind my back. Or I can do it by dead reckoning, so many miles along thus and such a vector. This is not a complete explanation and I took specialized classes on it in med school for purposes of implants and drugs and stuff."

"There's magical med school?"  He gets distracted by something out the window again, briefly.  "I'm glad we can talk freely now.  I don't even think our communication problems were the fault of my brain; it might just be really hard to puzzle out a universe-sized context gap while avoiding threats like that."

"I've admittedly never done it quite like that before, sure. Demon education is not quite like how humans I'm familiar with do it but I consider myself qualified in the things I studied, which unfortunately don't include Alternate Timeline Brain Damage."

"Mm.  What's your life, like, basically like?  Bet I'll be better at explaining things if I have any sense of your day-to-day."

"I live on a little planetoid with a pinhole singularity for gravity which hangs out above the giant rectangle of gold a plurality of demons live on. - the gold is just stupid, people put less stupid stuff on top of it, but the location is convenient because it intersects with all three of the locations in which the demon plane, Hell, sometimes overlaps briefly with Heaven, Fairyland, and Limbo, enabling trade."

"And what do you spend your time on, mostly?"

"I catch summonses, which are usually less complicated than this one, people want me to refill the strategic cheese reserve or put up a space station or whatever, and I turn down their trade offers till they're giving me something I don't mind taking from them and then I do that and they send me home. At home I read a lot and play the violin and keep up to date on the latest in medicine and summoning practices and engineering."

"Huh.  Why do -"

A human head appears out of nowhere on a couple of the camera displays.

"Holy shit!" He halts the shuttle's ascent. "Okay do we wanna give her a parachute or invite her inside, what do you reckon."

"- That's Tally!  You should let her in."

"Sure. Why not." He opens the door. "Hey, Tally! You could try knocking next time?"

She swings in.

"Tally-wa!  This is Cam; Cam-la, Tally.  Should we be expecting any other guests?"

- A small headshake.

"Do re mi fa so la ti do what is going on with the suffix?" The door closes.

"As long as you're not pretending to be a pretty I don't think you have to worry about using it.  The wa and la versions don't mean different things; it's just whatever sounds right with the name."

"Buuuut you called me it."

"...It's complicated and more intuitive than anything with rules, but it's something like, 'used more in the second person than the third, demonstrating some sort of affection for or alignment with the suffixed person'.  Can be ironic, sarcastic, et cetera, but not in a way that undercuts its genuine use.  New pretties call almost everyone approximately the same age as them it."

(Tally's body, meanwhile, has changed from being mostly invisible to being covered in a black bodysuit of shifting scales.)

"I am a hundred and seventy two," says Cam blandly.

...Zane is maybe piecing that together with some other information he knows.

"Care to explain why and how you're going to space?"

"Well, Zane was under the apparently erroneous impression that we wouldn't be followed to space? But I'm not picky, I'm just trying to be vaguely helpful while orienting to this alternate universe dystopia."

...She looks to Zane.

"You're not the only one who's been having adventures, Tally-wa.  As far as I can tell, this seems to be an actual magical guy from an actual different universe."

"Pleased to meetcha."

"What do you mean, 'dystopia'?"

"I have not seen very much of the place but I think I hate it? I'm sure it has its good points, to be clear, I haven't been in it very long, and also maybe my standards are artificially inflated because where I grew up is really really nice."

"And you expect to be able to learn about it in space?"

"Sure. I can conjure up all the reading materials I might want. Drop a phone on somebody's head with a telescope to make sure I don't concuss 'em, if they seem like they'd be worth talking to."

"A what?"

"It's like a Rusty interface ring.  - Tally, why are you here?  Not that I'm not glad to see you..."

"You got in some sort of - random hovercar, that appeared out of nowhere, Zane.  I wasn't just going to let you disappear."

"So you're sure it's not that all of Special Circumstances is after us?"

"No.  Shay-la and the other Cutters told me not to.  And now we're well out of skintenna range."

The shuttle resumes going up. "What does this imply about how much surveillance you had him under?" Cam wonders.

"I didn't have him under any.  No one even told me he was out of the hospital until tonight.  We were about to pay a visit."

"We? Should we go pick up some more folks? I might need to replace this with a bigger model."

"Sounds icy."

"- Absolutely not."

"I see we lack consensus."

"Zane, you're..."  She doesn't seem to be able to find the words.  "Shaking.  You shouldn't be going to space like this, however magical you think your help is.  Let's head back down."

"I'm fine, Tally-wa.  It's not like the nanos are still eating my brain.  I think I'm less likely to need my reflexes up here, honestly."

"If you happen to know of any documentation I could be reading on the brain nanos..."

"...If you could get outfits from a date, would it help anything to know when I took them?"

"I mean, that would get me a sample, it would not get me documentation."

"Dr. Cable can fix you, Zane.  She wouldn't because she didn't think you were icy, but if you come back and do something tricky on the way she'll have to realize you should be a Special.  Maybe this is already enough."

"I'd rather go to the moon, Tally-wa."

"But you're not well.  And being a Special is - it's incredible, Zane.  You wouldn't believe how good it feels.  Icy - bubbly - all the time.  And it's all so clear; I remember everything.  - Do..."

"I remember things, Tally.  And I'm fine at thinking.  Brains are good at rewiring themselves.  Yours did, when you thought your way out of being pretty."

"You can do it again."

"I don't have any lesions."

"If you say so."

"Do you want me to check?"

"...How."

"Make a copy of your brain and have a look? It will not be conscious, I can't make minds, anything I make of a species smarter than a snail doesn't behave smarter than a snail. But it'd show structural issues."

"I don't consent to that."

"This renders my magical powers impotent."

"Zane-la, did anyone tell you the story of what made me getting to the New Smoke take so long?"

"I don't think there was much time for that."

"It turns out there's a circle, out in the wilderness, full of pre-Rusties.  They don't have high technology, or medicine, or a lot of things that even the Smokies do.  They're totally Stone Age.  When I ditched the hot-air balloon, I fell in that circle.  They were about to kill me, but then they saw I was pretty.  They brought me to their holy man.  He spoke English; he called me a god.  Turns out the cities are letting a bunch of anthropologists ring a big patch of wilderness in devices that scramble your brain if you go near them, to keep these villages in.  So they can study violence and human nature."  She goes still.  "Magic isn't real, Zane."

"...Well, sufficiently advanced technology and all that.  How did you get out?"

"Andrew - that was his name, the holy man - knew some anthropologists were scheduled to come soon, and I stole their hovercar."

"Sounds pretty tricky.  Do you think it would have helped Andrew if he'd told the city folks he knew they weren't gods, without actually having any way to counter high technology?

"Churro?" Cam asks, holding one out.

She recoils.

"Yes please."  Nomf.  "Whether or not you think it's literally magic, it seems Cam-la still has some sort of access to a portable, instant hole in the wall, which prints things not necessarily made of nanoframes including air between the molecules of my collar.  So, y'know, it seems best if we all stay on friendly terms."

"Nonconsensually printing a copy of someone's brain isn't friendly even if you claim it's somehow magically not a person!"

"I meant the offer in a purely diagnostic spirit."

She fidgets with a glove of her bodysuit, tattoos spinning.

God that's so creepy to look at. "So, uh, the whole stone age guys situation, is that still happening, I kind of wanna go mess with that situation, that's fucked up."

"As far as I know."

"Y'wanna tell me where?"

"...I think it's a bad idea to let them out into the rest of the wild.  They had a lot of ideas about 'outsiders' and none of them were peaceful."

"I'll take that as a no." Is "Andrew" conjurable...

Yes.

"It's not like I don't think the situation is totally random.  But they go back and forth taking turns at revenge murders between the tribes; if you want to actually help them you're going to need more of a plan than just taking out the scramblers."

"You're not making an amazing case for being a collaborator on such a plan but do let me know if that changes," creepy teenager with motile tattoos. Surroundings of Andrew, scaled so he can match with what's visible geographically out the ship -

Actually the creepy teenager is going to move very suddenly and very fast to ??gently punch-tap Cam in the side of the neck??

He falls over. "If you make a habit of that I'm going to put you off the ship, that's very rude."

"- I don't think you should do -"

Tally does something very quickly with her hands and then tries whatever she did again.

"Say, Tally, do you know how to use a parachute or do I have to land if we have irreconcilable differences?" Cam inquires.

She opens her mouth to say something -

But Zane gets her in a hug before she can.

This successfully freezes her.

"I really want you to be able to stay here," he murmurs.

"Let go of me."

"Are you going to -"

She shoves out of his grasp and moves almost fairy-fast to the least-occupied corner of the shuttle.  But once there she just leans against the wall and breathes heavily.

"I'm indestructible," Cam mentions, judging it now safe to get to his feet again.

Tally swallows several times.

"I need to think."

"Feel free." Surroundings of Andrew?

Looks like he's just a couple miles south of the city.

- Tally gasps.  Apparently her version of thinking involves clutching the sharp end of a knife?

Wow, okay, that's probably not where the mad anthropologists put their preserve? Surroundings of Andrew last year. "- whoa there, my carpet. Do you want me to patch that up or is that not how we are feeling about demonic medical care today."

That is indeed a totally different patch of wilderness!  Cam can make out a few clearings with little clusters of huts in them.

Tally doesn't respond, just breathes heavily, hunched over in pain, until -

She's not.

Zane looks really concerned but does not, actually, do anything about it.

"Do you know what's going on," Cam asks Zane.

"After Tally and I first got the cure, or, our halves of it - our friend Shay noticed we were different.  We couldn't tell her about it, because we were always being listened to, and we weren't sure if she would spill to the Specials.  So she broke off from our clique and started her own.  With - knives.  To break through the prettyheadedness.  And it worked enough that it caught the attention of the head of Special Circumstances, and I guess based on what Tally-wa's been saying the group of them is still called the Cutters.  Which uh, seems to not be a merely historical name.  Obviously.  Sorry, that's obvious."

"Please feel free to say more obvious things, it's better than skipping nonobvious ones." The ship is drifting over the mad anthropologists' stomping ground now. "Does this practice imply the presence of the brain damage she won't let me check for and asserts she doesn't have?"

"Yes," she says, her voice steady in between her gasps for air.  "Or changes, at least."

"Indeed. Well, I'd appreciate it if you didn't knock me over again. If you need to stab me for some reason a downward strike into the top of my foot should probably leave me pretty stable?"

"I won't try that again."  She sheaths the knife and unzips a pouch in her bodysuit.  Takes something out and sprays it on her cut.

How efficacious is this at closing the injury?

It congeals her blood sufficiently to turn it into a powder and leaves only a raised line where the actual cut was.  Her tattoos are kind of fucked up now, though; an area around the cut has them jittering and flickering all over the place instead of displaying a smooth animation.

Occu...pational...hazard?? She seems fine and her self-harm is between her and somebody who likes her more than Cam does probably.

They're above the mad anthropology zone. Cam zooms in. What can he see from up here?

Not much, in the night.  But there are a few clusters of small fires here and there, surrounding collections of reed huts.  Seems like they have a bit of farming, too.

Agricultural stone age! What're they growing?

Looks like maybe some root vegetables?  Hard to say.  But something moves while he's peering at that, and then once he knows to look for it it's easy to spot that each camp has a few guards watching its perimeter.

What've they got in the way of clothes/shoes/dentistry/scars?

Clothes: rough cloth and leather, not very advanced sewing techniques on display.  Shoes: same.  Dentistry: nope.  Scars: lots.

Cloth! Neat! And they're surviving serious injuries repeatedly! He kind of thought it was gonna be worse than that. He busies himself making a little map of the place. How long till dawn?

Like seven hours.

That is such a long time uuuuugh okay he's gonna brush up on recovery from malnutrition and also pirate the mad anthropology and while he's doing that remember to ask, "You kids want dinner?"

"I'd take something.  What's, uh, happening?"

"Any requests? I'm spying on the mad anthropology setup both visually and by yanking all their publications."

"You can do that and were still going to copy my brain instead of taking my medical records?"

"...Sushi, please."

Sushi platter! "Do let me know if my timeline's sushi lacks your favorite elements. I wouldn't necessarily assume your medical records were complete and accurate? Also I don't know how to find them - topic is harder than author and I'm getting really circuitous to find the mad anthropologists though once I have the first few I'll be following citations. Furthermore medical records might be encrypted, I don't have an automatic way around that."

"All of Dr. Cable's records of me will be accurate, if you can get them."

He sighs and clones this Dr. Cable character's records and sees if they are encrypted.

Well, they want her eyescan.

"Yeah it's locked up. I could get into this but it would be very annoying and not a skill I have a lot of experience with, plus it seems like it might involve conjuring an eyeball and I have little idea what spooks you."

"Eyeballs aren't people."  She starts pacing, as much as there's room for.  "...Do you need a last name?"

"...I already have one? I don't know what you mean. I do not, generally, derive as much information from your statements as you would mean me to have if you had any cooperative conversational goals I'm familiar with."

"To find things from somebody."

"It's complicated. I can recommend you a seven hundred page book about the details of how demonic forensics work if you like but it seems faster, for any given specific case, for you to simply figure out what you want me to do, why I might be convinced to do it, and what support you can offer toward that end."

"...Can I have the book?" asks Zane around a mouthful of sushi.

"Sure. The author translated it into English himself but you will have to work around some dialect difference, of course." Seven hundred page book. It appears to be literally titled The Seven Hundred Page Book.

"Thank you!"

She's still pacing.  "I do want to help Andrew's people.  If there's a way to do it that's not incredibly destructive."

Cam's current estimation is that involving Tally with things increases the risk of incredible destruction considerably but there's not really a constructive way to say that.

"It'll be hard to give them things that they definitely won't try to use to attack other tribes," she assesses.  "I don't know how they'll react if they know you're helping all of them.  It would almost be better to separate them in some way, but seems wrong to make their world even smaller, and they probably won't like it if you move them, even if you have somewhere to put them.  ...You probably have a better shot at helping the littlies; they were way less scared of me..."

"I was planning to start with feeding them? Clean water? Maybe replacing some of their teeth, the teeth situation looked dire."

"It so is.  They still might take a feast as an occasion to raid other camps."

"Then they can fall over and have a nap, I guess."

Nod.

"And I can shop around camp to camp, they probably have distinct cultures and maybe one of 'em is nicer."

"That would be icy.  It still might be best to start with Andrew's, since he already has some exposure to the concept that 'the gods' are fakes.  Are you planning to keep the mask on?"

"No, I just sorta forgot it was there." He takes it off.

It unsticks from his face cooperatively.

Zane has been flipping around in the book.  "I bet all the research of the only Maddy I know isn't encrypted?"

"Okay, what's that relevant to?"

"She's the one who developed the cure."

"Keen." Let's have that then.

Yeahhhh there's a lot here and he can just read it without any trouble.  The most recent stuff is a combination of documentation for several different kinds of nanos and a case study on one F. Vane.