"...I do not understand thinking we can't tell if there is a God. But in my country we can also tell how many atoms are in every faraway star."

Alex shrugs. "Well, there could be a God, sure, that hides himself from everyone and everything and has no detectable effects on the world. Or there could not be. An all-powerful entity that does nothing? It's unfalsifiable. You can't prove it wrong. Or right. That's what faith is supposed to be, maybe."

"I did not know that God does nothing. Hylia does something sometimes. I think Hylia is an example of the same species as God."

Alex frowns and shakes their head a bit, sighing. "Well, I don't know what franchise Hylia's from. I mean- If it's some sort of, media, gaslighting, thing. It's hard to believe, right? Sure, doc says you're from nowhere we've ever seen, but portals to another world is a really damn big stretch. I still half think you're just... Thoroughly confused somehow. Anyway, yeah, God doesn't do anything around here, if he exists. He might have done something in the distant past but we got no way of checking, and the stories are consistent with people making shit up."

"Do you know how I can know if I am thoroughly confused?"

"...Things that would be consistent with you just being thoroughly confused, like, if we found some record of you arriving on the planet, or for some reason the places you remember being are all kind of small and you couldn't go everywhere you wanted, or there are weird inconsistencies in what people say and believe sometimes, like an actor forgetting their lines or mentioning computers by mistake when computers don't exist. They have a whole star system where they build immersive fake worlds and people pay to be heroes in the fake world. Goddess Hylia sounds a bit reminiscent of that, mythic fantasy style. Fight monsters, purge the great evil, and save all the magic races through valiant battle."

If they have such a record he won't learn that by consulting his memory right now. He's pretty sure people didn't weirdly mention computers sometimes before multiversal contact. Hylia's world... is exactly as described and that's the first thing that's made him take the hypothesis seriously as something actually plausible rather than something he should test on principle.

"...'Kind of small' is how much?"

"A city block would be small- The size of the fence around this place would be a little bit small. Not having many books or meeting many people is a different kind of small. They could maybe fake going to different places, if we're thinking someone has gaslit you your entire life? Any sudden desire to go somewhere new would face delays. If someone was really extremely devoted to this - for your magic, I guess, to get warded items you don't realize are valuable out of you? ...It stretches the imagination in all kinds of ways. It's ridiculously implausible. It's just that alternate universes are ridiculously implausible too."

"Hylia's planet is bigger than that. I walked a lot. I saw... I saw very far away at the same time as I was walking a lot? I flew over my planet's ocean but lots of different parts of my planet's ocean look like each other."

"Yeah, big landscapes are a point against, they'd need to rent out a big section of a planet and not use it for anything else. It should have taken a long time there and back, if it didn't another big point against. Were things set up so it made sense to make magic things all the time, as much as possible? We haven't heard tell of any supposedly indestructible new products, and they'd probably be news... Though, we don't get all the news out here. That's the only reason I'd see for doing something like this, really. It'd be hugely expensive and inconvenient, other people would wonder what the hell they're up to, I can't see anyone with the resources to do such a thing, doing it without expecting to profit somehow. Except SolNav, they're more about order and the community of humanity, but they wouldn't try deception, they'd... I don't even know, just stick you in a cell for questioning and then make it a luxury hotel later, maybe."

"It did not make sense to make magic things all the time for seventeen years but it made sense to make magic things all the time for a few months. If someone could control all of my life and that person wanted me to make magic things all the time... I would have different parents."

"Yeah, makes sense. I kind of think in tropes, given how I work in media, I guess. But the next question is, what should I expect from alternate universes. And not just one, either, a whole pileup... Interdimensional consortium? Cross-world invasions? Some universe-eating threat we'll have to find and deal with? I mean, not everything's a story, though..."

"What is an interdimensional consortium?"

"Like, the old United Nations, it wasn't a federation, more like a diplomatic agreement zone where diplomats from various states could discuss things without immediately jumping to war, work out trade deals, stuff like that. But between powerful states in different worlds."

"Maybe that is like Milliways."

Alex snorts. "You said it was a bar? There's an old cliche, that all the real diplomacy happens over shots in bars, not in the hallowed halls of government. Where leaders can speak candidly to each other instead of speaking to the public. Maybe not just a cliche."

"I do not understand that."

"When discussing things publicly, politicians have to think about what their constituents want, and what their competitors will say about the things they say. If someone says 'we should compromise with the other state to avoid a war', another politician can say 'that guy wants to compromise! I wouldn't compromise, I'd win the war, vote for me!'. That's- Very disruptive. Not great for actually negotiating between countries. So politicians have to do it where other people can't hear."

" - I understand that your politicians are deceitful and wicked. I think that in my home shots cause people to die...?"

"-Oh, shots can mean bullets, but it can also mean small servings of alcohol."

"Oh! Yes, you can buy small servings of alcohol at Milliways - do I mean 'at Milliways' or 'from Milliways' or 'in Milliways'? I don't know these things."

"All three of those work for buying something. Slightly different connotations... 'From' means you take it and leave, or get it sent to you, I guess? It's hard to explain, and buying is unusually weird. Also, shots specifically refers to 'hard' alcohol - drinks that are mostly alcohol, not drinks that just have some."

"Thank you."

"My pleasure. Hm, what were we talking about before I got all paranoid?"

"You told me about socialist theory."