"Yup. It's going to be faster, if you authorize me to disclose your backlash at least to other agents in my network - lets all the other people who really need to keep theirs under their hats get matched up with you when their agents can't let it go any farther. If you've got, say, depression, and somebody else has mania but it's private because they are using their secret identity to distance themselves from mania-related misbehavior during hellweek, their agent will know about the mania - almost nobody will serve as an agent for an undisclosed psych backlash - and then I can say 'hey folks, I've got a depression, what have we got that puzzle-pieces up with that?' and they can go 'this one!' without telling me more."

"Makes sense, yeah. Okay, you don't suck to talk to and I really want to get on the road with all this, how do I sign up?"

"I don't suck! Can I get that framed?" laughs Phoebe. "I can send you some forms if you give me your email. Most of them are optional or can be put off for a very long time if you're not in a hurry to accomplish what they enable, the essential ones are 'Identity' and 'Esper Boilerplate 1C'. Unfortunately, that second one is long. We can go over it in my office or on the phone or while texting or whatever works best for you if it threatens to explode your brain."

"I will autograph you a little card you can put on your wall if that's what floats your boat. My email is kalendae at quickmail dot com, that's K A L—" She can spell the whole thing if Phoebe needs her to.

"Gotcha. Forms incoming. Is Kalendae your codename?"

"Nope, I took Juggernaut, my new ID's in the mail and everything. I should probably get another email for esper stuff but this is the one I already had."

"Ooh, that wasn't taken? And yeah, pretty good idea to get a work email, separate work phone number - it can be the same device, I use the Careerday doodad to have account switching on mine and it supports different settings and logins and app availability on the work account in addition to just having the second number."

"That sounds so convenient and also it's definitely gonna have me fantasizing about running away to be a lumberjack after two minutes trying to set it up. I'll deal, I'll deal. Thanks for the rec."

"No problem. Is this a good time for me to meet your PA and figure out what they're on top of versus what I should be picking up? The roles sometimes blur a little."

"Sure, why, not, I'll pass him the phone. Sean, say hi to my new agent."

"Hi Phoebe, I'm Sean."

"Hi Sean! How's the gig treating you?"

"I'm gonna be honest, it's been pretty wild. Kind of ended up with the job half by accident. I think I'm doing okay at it, though."

"What's it been looking like in practice?"

"I don't know how much of the whole story you want, but the short version is, when neither of us has any idea how to do something that needs doing, I take point on figuring it out, and when April needs a phone call made or a snack grabbed or whatever and doesn't want to deal with it, she says 'Sean, go do the thing' and I go do the thing."

"There's a story? I'd love the story."

"So I got some wild texts from April and showed up at her house to find out what was up. She was having a really rough time, and I ended up staying over for a few days to help out. Then the house fell down, and we found out 'a rough time' was 'awakening' when an esper pulled us out—Aumento, don't know if you've heard of him. He ended up wearing her as a backpack for the rest of his search and rescue shift, because their compatibility is decent enough that it made awakening halfway tolerable for her and let him get more done before needing to go back to his partner. And he was working the medical barge too, because he can heal people, so April was like 'great, I'll be your teddy bear,' and I came along for the ride in case she needed help with anything. Then the PA thing just kind of happened naturally from there."

"Wow. I'm glad you both made it through the whole worm situation all right in spite of the collapsed house. Are you expecting to stay on as her PA indefinitely or do you have something else you'll want to pick up once she's more established?"

"The PA thing is working out pretty well for me! I'm pretty sure I'm gonna stick with it."

"Great. If I can get your contact info too that's the kind of thing I need to have socked away."

"Sure sure." He can spell his email too, but it's just his first and last name. He also volunteers a phone number.

"Great. The usual breakdown of tasks - and we can rejigger this no problem, but to start out - is that my job is to hook April up with anything work-related that deals with espers-in-general, and your job is to hook her up with anything that deals with either people-in-general or April-as-a-person. I get her dungeons, mixers, a silo if she doesn't want to just silo at home, an Ablinger Passport login. You get her takeout, bring her taxes to an accountant, hire the cleaners, tell her partner that she needs to reschedule their guiding sesh because something's running long, go through a checklist for any gear she's bringing to a portal. And you let me know, unless she does it herself, if anything she's got going on is going to affect the dungeons-mixer-silos-etcetera thing."

"Okay, sounds pretty workable."

"It seems like, at least on whatever amount of backlash she's toting at this moment, she's comfortable speaking for herself, but if that ever changes, one of the forms I'm sending specifies to what extent she wants to authorize you to interface with what things for her."

"Yeah makes sense. She's not backlashed at all right now, hates carrying even a little any longer than she has to, but when she was awakening it was basically 'Sean, make sane life choices for me, thanks'."