"Agreed. Cherry-picking has more appeal, I think. If we tell the world literally everything there would be some - upheaval. People wanting us to search for alts of them, not trusting us with our apparent couple in charge status, and so on."

"The story as it stands mostly holds together. Adding more information but not all of it has the possibility of making it obvious we're leaving more things out. Like, okay, if there are other worlds and you came from one, the obvious next question is how many are there? What's in them? Why aren't we letting scientists and explorers and entrepreneurs go have a look at them? And the answer is because there are zombie alts, but we don't want to say that, so...?"

"Fair," admits Adarin. "And it would help us throw technology at everyone, certainly."

"We might want to limit our appearances on Earth if we go full disclosure, though, so we aren't constantly bombarded with requests. Move the offworld portals and guard the Earth-Colony portal with Juniper And Friends..."

"Right. Possibly also get one of the fancy Prime portals to replace the Earth-Colony portal. Either way, we need a new house that is not on Earth. Pity we can't have Cam and Adana build it. I suppose we could join the club and move to Pantheon? Or find a pretty planet with lots of moonlight."

"I think I'd rather live in the colony than in Pantheon, even if we wind up hanging out in the Belfry a lot and getting relatively exotic groceries from Cam on days when we don't want to deal with paparazzi in order to purchase salmon."

"Fair. Okay, we'll set Juniper And Friends at building us a house. Which - we need to plan out what house we're having them make."

"Yeah, they can't take nearly as much creative license as a demon could... I'm not even sure whether daeva would get daemons but if nobody's willing to risk it we'll never find out... Let's delegate this problem to an actual architect. And get humans to do the fine detail work. The robot army can lift and haul but they're not really designed for doing crown molding."

"I think the colony might have an architect," muses Adarin. "Somewhere. We should look. If not, we can find someone from Earth, I suppose."

"So this leaves our press release looking like, what - ladies and gentlemen, while the resurrection and immortality spells are my own work, the reason I haven't told other witches how to makes portals is that it's not witch magic, it is my husband's otherworldly powers. Since this complicates his citizenship status considerably, we are going to move to our space colony. Skilled would-be immigrants can apply in thus and such a way. No questions please."

"They will probably want to know where the colonists from the space colony came from. So maybe I should write a - I don't know, brochure on New Kystle. Toss them at reporters before we teleport away."

"All right, you write a brochure about where you're from and I'll write up an immigration policy to give to staffpeople and put on a website?"

"Yeah. Probably also give good reasons for why people would want to immigrate, as well. Not everyone is from New Kystle and therefore desperately wishing to get away from New Kystle."

"I don't think we can absorb even ten percent of the fraction of the Earthly population that just really wants to live in space and/or figure out what we're up to, love."

".... Point. Damn. We need more magic."

"We'll be very very picky about immigrants, maybe get some daeva summoned to see if any of them want to experiment with maybe having daemons and if they don't get them we can have Cam and Adana over to improve our absorption capacity. It should stem the tide that the colonials don't speak any Earthly language..."

"We already wanted Cam to make us a larger robot army - why not find a way to let them be translators, too? And that would help with absorption capacity."

"All right. And the robots can walk, so he can just make them in Pantheon and they can march right over here no problem with transport."

"Yes. And then we throw them at building things to let us absorb more people. For - Earth immigrants, can we have a focus on people that are teachers and scientists and highly educated people, and such? To update the Kystle refugees to Earth standards."

"Yeah, definitely. Teachers and scientists and doctors and possibly historians. Oh lord we're going to have to set up customs to make sure nobody brings things we don't want into our colony... and have some way for visitation to work, I don't think I want to rule out immigrants who want to have their parents over for lunch or whatever..."

"Oh, that'll be fun. The robots have a network, though, and they recognize people, so - we can take advantage of that? Have them politely ask people to leave after a certain amount of time?"

"Yes. Politely. My scary high tech armed to the teeth robot soldiers are so polite."

"You should probably not advertise that they're armed to the teeth," snorts her husband. "Scary high tech armed to the teeth robot soldiers are rather intimidating."

"Well, it won't be mentioned the first time they go looking for someone who's overstayed their welcome..."

"Ah, of course. Well, be careful, with using them as threats."

"Naturally. But they are probably one of the better enforcement options if something needs, you know, enforcing."

"Yeah. I would suggest reinforcing them with magic, if mine weren't at such a high demand lately."

"Yeah, considering how easy Cam makes it to replace their chassis and considering that they don't have individual continuities worth fretting about I wouldn't spend any mana on it."

"I think she said she could apply her skills to it, which isn't exactly like being an architect?"

"True. Hm. Still - might be useful for building it."

"Maybe. She can stop hiding out in a national park, anyway."

"Yes, she can stop doing that. She might find that exciting."

"Do you want to tell her or shall I?"

"No preference. We can tell her together if you like, it can be a couple bonding exercise."

"Sure. Next time we're on Earth we make a press release and then quickly fly away and go let her know."

"Probably let her know first, I think."

"Sure."

"The - other mage, too, the quiet apologetic one."

"She's still got her job at the portal hub and she can pass for a witch, which makes her citizenship issue less complicated if she opts to continue to do that, and means no need to make a separate trip to tell her. Although I guess her husband can't pass for a witch, so maybe they want to move to the colony too."

"Yeah. I suppose we'll find out. If she's finally figured out how to watch the news by now."

"I mostly wish that she had figured out how to watch the news earlier for purely selfish reasons. Could have figured out the glitch in resurrecting mages with her husband, safe at home with all my tools, instead of stranded on another plane and you as the guinea pig."

"Yeah," sighs Adarin. "But, her husband was spared from - icky lack of magic?"

"At your expense. Once I'd found out about the glitch there would be no way we'd have traveled anywhere until I fixed it."

He sighs. "Yeah. Well. There's - not much we can do about it now. Unless Rain and Katydid manage the time machine."

"I think they have first dibs on it if they do."

"They do. But why would they be the only ones to have it, they're us, they'd distribute that."

"Maybe if it's used more than once the damage to the timestream increases exponentially and it's a total disaster."

"Mm. In that case - we should probably only use it once, and use it to save as many lives as possible. So Rain and Katydid probably wouldn't get the time machine."

"What would be a good target? One of the Kystles pre-invasion, I guess?"

"Probably. Or, if we find another large-scale - murdery thing, that. Prime's Kystle before mine, I'd say, considering he has the secondary bonus of large-scale genocide to add to the deaths. I would not want to tell him that he would have to start over, though."

"Yeah... What are we going to do about your Kystle, anyway?"

"I - am not sure yet. I can't just let it sit, certainly. But I don't think we have the power to politely make the invaders go shoo."

"Can we - yoink the Lynn?"

"I think," he agrees. "But the problem with that is, according to the - other Lynn, she was really not fit for company at the - time I'd be yoinking her."

"I don't think we should yoink her and drop her in the middle of San Diego with a hotel voucher and a bottle of water, but there's unoccupied continents on our colony planet, or Cam could make her someplace to be in space somewhere."

"Let's - go with the space option. She might not want a daemon."

"Yeah. And presumably we should talk to the one from Prime's world before doing that, but it should go on the to-do list."

"Yeah. Uh. What do we do with her - tragically deceased daughter? I suppose we'll have to ask Prime's."

"Yeah. She's not getting any more tragically deceased. I can wait until her mother's ready for her."

Her husband nods and snuggles his wife. "I love you, have I mentioned?"

"I love you too."

"Something I am eternally happy about! Want to write up brochures about mages and my world's general history and immigration policies for our space colony, respectively, while cuddling?"

"Yes."