He is in a room in a dark, drafty house. Candles are set at the corners of what appear to be a pentagram set into the circle. The other two people in the room are a balding man in a grey cloak holding a rusty knife and a young woman tied to some sort of makeshift altar. Grey Cloak looks startled; Young Woman looks bored. Grey Cloak is holding a piece of chalk that he looks to have just completed the circle with.

"Oh, lovely, LARPers again. What do you need a fairy for?"

"This was supposed to summon a demon!" Grey Cloak screeches.

"Also, this isn't a LARP, this is a murder attempt, I am not here of my own free will," the young woman adds. She doesn't look too terribly concerned by this.

"Attempted murder and attempted unbound demon summoning. Two strikes, good sir." He flaps his wings and then knife-and-cloak guy is cloak guy. And floating in the air. He stares at the rope for a second or two before untying it properly (telekinetically). None of that snapping-the-rope nonsense, it's perfectly good rope.

"Do you have a safer way of putting him out than a blow to the head?"

"Nnnot off the top of my head. To be fair, I'm pretty sure he wasn't attempting to summon a demon without a protective circle at all, but those don't work on the Fey, so."

He looks confused.

For lack of other ideas, he tries a pressure point on Cloak Guy. If that doesn't work, a carefully modulated blow to the forehead with a random reasonably flat rock.

"I don't think I'm what you think I am."

"You showed up in a fantastically shitty demon summoning circle. It wouldn't surprise me one bit."

Pressure point works. The guy goes limp.

Nick makes sure to hold him in a way that does not impede breathing. It does take active concentration, but he's gotten good at splitting concentration. "Fey is not a category I'm familiar with, for example. And demons are more dangerous but operate under essentially the same summoning rules as fairies."

"Well, in the categories I'm familiar with, fey is a slightly more respectful word for fairy. You don't actually look much like one, aside from the fact that the wings are plausible and off the top of my head I can't think of anything else that might have them."

"Well, this is an interesting situation. I think this is a different Earth than my usual one."

"Seems it. Well, so far this doesn't much resemble the plot of some kind of cheesy thriller movie--in fact it's much less like one than it was five minutes ago. What do you need next?"

"...If I want to stay and be able to go home on request here I need to wait for this guy to wake up, get him to unsummon me, and have you re-summon me. Knocking him out may have been a bit hasty."

"I appreciate it regardless."

"I pride myself on my reasonable and proportionate hostility to murderers. I'll just go ahead and draw out a safe circle, it'll only get me as opposed to the first fairy who feels like it. You're kinda lucky, by the way, some other fairies might be halfway to New York, cackling as they fling trees into houses, by now." He pulls a piece of paper from one of his possibly overlarge coat pockets and draws telekinetically, with two pencils. The circle is in a fairy language, and so ought to be incomprehensible.

"I suspect someone would manage to stop them eventually, but if they'd be halfway to New York by now that's probably too fast for any magicians or what have you to take care of it before serious harm is done. Lucky me, it would seem."

"Unless your magic is terrifyingly powerful I don't think it can do much more than inconvenience daeva. New York was a facetious guess based on the fact that this is probably North America, by the way, but we are indeed fast when we want to be." Draw, draw, draw.

"Terrifying is relative. However fast you move, having someone banish you to a different galaxy every five hundred years or so is probably sufficient to call the problem solved, for most practical purposes. And we're currently in Pennsylvania."

"Ah. Yes, banishment to a different galaxy would be problematic. At that point I'd just wait a few decades for my summoner to die of old age, or for it to occur to them to unsummon me, I suppose, so I can finally go home." The drawing is done. It's a simple circle, no pentagram or anything, with a single ring of writing around it. He hands it to her.

"Step one, make most of the circle on a flat surface in any material, but don't close it. Step two, write out the script. Step three, finish the circle and wait a few seconds or up to ten minutes if I'm asleep at the time or something and I will probably appear."

"Oh, if it goes away when the summoner dies then probably they'd just kill the summoner. Unless the summoner was me and the person doing the thwarting was the Vampire Mage, in which case the offending fairy would probably get galaxied. And then have a very boring several decades because I do not intend to die of old age."

She studies the drawing for a moment before carefully folding it and putting it in her pocket.

"I take it the Vampire Mage is friend or family. And vampires are a thing. Lovely, I wonder what else exists here. Oh, circle has to have enough room for me to appear in, don't draw it on a post-it note or anything. You can also send them away by focusing, hard, on wanting to until it takes. Nice and easy, unless you're unconscious." Speaking of unconscious, how's cloak guy doing? That pressure point shouldn't have hit him too hard.

He is, for the moment, still not moving, but not exhibiting any other potential signs of damage.

"He basically doesn't care about anyone's well-being on a personal level except his sister, but she cares about me a lot and well-being includes happiness and he cares about her well-being a lot. I don't, honestly, know for sure that there's anything specific that for sure and certain doesn't exist here, but if you wanted an overview of the particular things I'm familiar with I'm willing to provide."

"Sure, list em. Vampires, wizards, mages, a different kind of fairy, demons confirmed. Angels? Space aliens? Perytons and bugbears? And, hey, let's get this guy roped up so he can't attack you when I'm gone." He lowers Cloak Guy to an inch or so off the ground.

Daphne begins rummaging around for rope. "Angels are strongly suspected by a large number of people-in-the-know, since the existence of demons would seem to imply their opposite, but if there's any proof that they exist no one's gone semi-public with it and I've never seen one. Martians exist, I don't know about any other kinds of alien. I've never met or specifically heard of a real peryton or bugbear. Ghosts exist, werewolves exist, more than one variety of vampire exists, half-demons exist, swamp creatures exist, bigfoots exist..."

The rope is behind the altar, still in one piece. "Good to know..." He holds up the rope. "I don't actually know knots all that well."

"I do. Mostly from untying them, but it shouldn't be too hard to reverse it..."

He hands off the rope and continues to hold cloak guy up. "I might want to learn magic, if it's a thing that can be learned. Knowledge is power and so on."

"I don't know very much myself, since it's a huge time investment and by the time I learned it existed I was already a college student with a full course load and no desire to drop out, but I can introduce you to some people who do."

"Thank you, I appreciate it."

"Well, you did rescue me, after all. I'd have gotten out after another half-hour of keeping him monologuing and working at the ropes, but you certainly couldn't have known that. So what-all is there where you're from, besides tall fairies with round ears?"

"It's an infinite flat plane, not a planet. There's trees and lakes and mountains, colorful plants and animals, that kind of thing. The only people there are more of my kind of fairy. We don't do cities so much, but there's a bunch of towns and the like."

"That sounds beautiful."

"I have pictures." He brings out an outdated tablet computer that probably looks like sci-fi to her. "Oh, I'm Nick by the way."

"Daphne. Oh, I was right, this is lovely. Is this magic or just more advanced technology than we have here?"

"...What year is it? The expected answer is 2180 something. It's just technology, bought it off a summoner a few years ago."

"It's nineteen ninety-nine."

"...I should grab a physics textbook or ten when this guy unsummons me."

"...And Biology, maybe? I'm a biology major an an enormous nerd about it."

"Yes, all the books, I was being sarcastic."

"Sorry, I'm just really excited."

"No, I get it, I would be slapping knife guy awake right now at the prospect of engineering books from a hundred fifty years in the future."

"I'm not literally slapping him awake because I haven't finished learning everything this century has to offer, but--yes. That."

"Exactly. Should I carry us all to a better place than... Wherever this is?"

"A forest a few miles away from Borgia University, where I study. My car's broken down a little ways off into the treeline."

"I can fly a car easy if you need it. Maybe after resummoning me, though." Poke, poke, wake up knife guy.

He wakes up groggily.

"Sounds good. I don't think we have any animate willow trees in this forest to crash into, so that shouldn't be a problem. ..Um, do you still have Harry Potter in a hundred and fifty years?"

"Sounds vaguely familiar. I'll just write off the willow thing as a pop culture reference. Dont mind the threats they're for show."

He speaks up. "Hey, knife guy. You are going to unsummon me or you're going to regret it." His rusty knife hovers in front of him threateningly.

"Wha-how-I can't! You have me tied up! How am I supposed to do anything without the use of my hands?" he cries.

"Unsummoning me works by chanting 'return to whence you came, fairy' in your head until it takes." No it doesnt, Nick just thinks it'll be amusing. "You have two minutes."

He looks appropriately terrified. He's almost certainly complying with the superfluous request, since his lips are moving slightly in time with what might be the chant. And in two minutes--

Actually it's closer to one minute, he gave a safety margin. Nick disappears.

And flies off to call in some favors and copy most of a library to his little computer.

And Daphne hauls off the still-bewildered wanna-be cultist somewhere he won't be able to see what she's doing and draws out the circle Nick gave her.

Nick does not immediately appear. He's still downloading things.

Good thing he warned her that might happen. She notes down the address of the place, insofar as it has one, to tell the police where to find the attempted murderer, and checks the pantry for edibles, and makes herself a sandwich.

He reappears soon enough, holding a big backpack. "Hello again. I called in favors, downloaded a library. Zero clue how to get this thing to talk to two century old computers though."

"Maybe we can find a mage with a compatible transcription spell. Want a sandwich?"

"Sure, thanks."

He hesitates. Then, "Talk about luck that I get summoned cross-world right in front of a pretty girl to redundantly rescue."

"I guess we're both pretty lucky then."

He laughs, and makes himself a quick sandwich. "Interesting times ahead. Shall we go ferry you and your car somewhere less dank and gloomy, and inform the law about your miscreant?"

"Sounds about right. It's not that far back to the University, and the police station's between here and there. I--hm. I know the route by road, but not as the crow flies."

"Roadwise shouldn't be a problem. I am way faster than a crow."

"...How fast are you?"

"Fairies don't have a speed limit. Practically speaking, I try to avoid significant fractions of c... Well, I guess we do have a limit, the speed of light, my bad."

"I think that might be the opposite of practically speaking, but that's awesome."

"Being a fairy is great, it's true. Alas, as far as I know there is no way to become one. But when humans at large finally figured out summoning on the other Earth, space colonization became much cheaper. The price of orbital, um, insertion is a couple trays of muffins, not however many thousands of dollars per kilogram."

"That sounds amazing. Our space program's pretty much stalled at this point, I think."

I definitely plan to give this world's sciences a good, solid kick. They eradicated malaria in 2030 or so, off the top of my head."

"Excellent." She finishes her sandwich. "Oh--when we get to the police station, it might be best if you waited in the car, or maybe even a bit into the woods in case they want to search my car again. That guy'll probably end up spilling that you coerced him into unsummoning you, and it might prompt awkward questions about why you were willing to threaten someone to send you home if you were just coming right back if they see you."

"I can stay away, sure. But how will you explain the supposedly broken down car moving?"

"It's just a flat tire. If you're as fast as you say, replacing it before going out to the station shouldn't be difficult."

"I don't actually know how cars work, but I'm sure it won't be hard to fix it together."

"Changing a spare tire is easy, yeah."

"Let's go, then." He noms the last of his sandwich then floats toward the door.

Daphne's car is far enough down the road to not be visible from the cabin, but not enough to take more than a couple of minutes for even Daphne's ploddy human feet.

He asks anyway, "I can give you a quick lift over there?"

"Oh, sure. Thanks."

Fwoosh! They are next to her car. She doesn't even feel the wind, since he brings the air around them along for the ride.

"Woo, trippy."

She unlocks the driver's side door, pauses, and asks: "Can you use your telekinesis to pick locks?"

"If every one of your particles changes speed at the same time you can accelerate without getting smushed. These locks, maybe. The ones I'm used to are designed to prevent it. Not that I have much of a reason to go around picking locks."

"The shenanigans that get foisted upon me are pretty unusual," she allows, sliding into the driver's seat and unlocking the passenger side door from inside he car.

...Is he supposed to get in a vehicle? "So where's the spare tire?"

"...Back at the University, I'm afraid." She considers his expression. "Force of habit. Should I be apologizing?"

"Fairies don't really use vehicles except for space travel. But this is not anything like the first time a summoner doesn't realize that at first, so no offense taken. And I do want to seem relatively normal." He flits over the top of the car and gets into the passenger seat, leaning forward enough not to crush the wings. Though the left one might be a bit close to Daphne's head. He does not seem to realize that seatbelts are a thing.

Well, he probably doesn't need one, given what he can do. Daphne puts hers on anyway. She isn't completely certain of his reflexes.

And then he says, "Do I fly it just off the ground, just let you drive it as is, make it act like it weighs half of what it does, what?"

"I was assuming the first one, to be honest."

"So it is ordered, so it shall be." The car starts moving, barely touching the road, following her directions. He goes rather fast, but at least it's not bumpy.

She's fine with fast!

And then they are at the University and he gets to play carjack if he's willing, unless he can figure out how to change a tire without significant previous vehicle-related experience.

"I can play carjack and power tool just fine. I'm pretty good at multitasking, and not just with moving things if you know what I mean." He pointedly and appreciatively glances over Daphne for a moment, then holds the car steady.

"Ooh, are you."

He grins. "Indeed so. And did I mention, daeva can only get so tired?"

"Ooh."

"Mm--since I don't know exactly where you're expecting this to lead, I feel like I should say--I definitely am interested, but I'm also in multiple open relationships, and that bothers some people."

"Well right now I am mostly just flirting. It's fun even without leading to anything else. I'll think about the rest a bit, but look at me not immediately flying off into the sunset."

"Oh, sure. But I've found it's best to get that particular warning out of the way early, just in case."

"Sensible." At any rate, back to imitating a carjack.

Back to replacing the tire! It doesn't take very long; she's had to do this before quite a few times.

"Alright," she says, wiping her hands on a rag. "It would probably be best to tell the police about what happened tonight--they tend to get cranky if I get too cavalier about incredibly weird murder attempts."

"I suppose I'll stay here and start curating bio books for you, since we don't want them to see me."

"Sensible. Thank you. Tomorrow I can get started scoping out which professors might be best to introduce futuristic textbooks in their subjects to."

"See you later, don't forget about the transcription spell. Hm, let's start with old university textbooks..." And then he descends into nerd fugue, writing out booklists and plans.

"I won't!" she calls before he's fully enveloped in fugue.

She goes to the police, who are exasperated with her for attracting another serial killer, but agree to take care of things. Then she goes to her room, email Cecil about a possible trans-computer translation spell, and leaves a note for Jaromira, who's currently out, about the broad strokes of the situation and does she know if Kanimir has something suitable.

Then she crashes, because it has in fact been an exhausting night.

In the morning she goes looking for Nick again.

Nick is still in the same place, though he has apparently acquired large amounts of coffee and paper from somewhere and looks slightly manic. "Aha, good morning! I've worked out some development plans." He flourishes a set of papers that might indicate 'some' as an understatement.

"Excellent. Where'd you get that coffee?"

"He was a grad student, I think? Or maybe a TA. I helped him move files and he paid me in coffee and paper. Wasn't paying too much attention, honestly. I don't need sleep but I can still get groggy."

"You don't need sleep? Lucky."

"Yes, well, I do settle into a sort of perpetual drowsiness if I go without for long enough, but caffeine removes it thankfully. Here, have a look at this."

It's a sheet of notes on keystone technology advances organized by decade in Nick's original earth. The closest ones to 2000 include things like lithium-ion batteries, algae-sourced biofuel, 'metacarbon materials', lots of medical information, it mentions medical angels and demons but those are noted as 'dangerous - skip for now?'

"What's dangerous about angels and demons? Specifically, I mean."

"Well demons make arbitrary things. Apparently they all live in complete material comfort and the only ones who take summons are looking for sex, souls, new media, or to get someone to screw up their bindings and have a chance at causing mayhem. Angels are similar if less extreme - they change things, so electronics at least are still tricky for 'em. I'm told your average demon is perfectly nice, but the average demon who will answer summons is not. So we'd need to study up on bindings and come up with a plan to prevent a demon from ever having a chance to turn Earth into a black hole."

"Aha, yes. How do bindings work, generally?"

"Bindings are written sentences added to the summoning circle that define things that the daeva being summoned can't do. They're quite prone to loopholes, and they can gain exceptions when a deal is agreed to. It's a tricky business. The kinds of bindings I'm usually summoned under, none now by the way, wouldn't do they're designed for fairies."

"I think you already said you weren't bound when you first showed up, and putting them in the circle you gave me seems...unlikely."

"Right, but I'm used to humans getting twitchy about bindings, so I said it again. And just to inform you, I've decided that open relationships won't bother me unless you and I get orders of magnitude more serious than flirting and related activities."

"Noted. Although I suppose it is relevant in this case that I'm not from a culture that expects your kind of summoning, so the...twitch reaction wouldn't be ingrained. I appreciate the courtesy, nonetheless."

"You're welcome. A perfect gentleman, except when I'm not, that's me. You know this country and time better than me, would it be a terrible idea to patent some of this future knowledge and sell it? I don't quite need money, but it's still very nice to have."

"Off the top of my head, it would probably be best to release some fraction of it to build your credibility and then patent the rest. If you just claim to be from the future with fantastic knowledge to sell without much concrete evidence, you're likely to come off as a scammer."

"I was planning to release a solid 'most' free, or free-ish. Things like consumer electronics are not as needed as an AIDS cure or yield-boosting agriculture AIs, though."

"There is that. I'm probably not the best person to ask, but patenting anything that's not on that level surely ought to be fine."

"I'll need to talk to Lawyers." The way he says it, it's definitely capitalized. "I've heard terrifying stories about Lawyers."

"That's definitely a stereotype more than a real thing."

"I suppose it's to be expected that I absorb stereotypes. My interactions with Earth have been rather limited. Anyway, any ideas on who to talk to about giving away tech?"

"Not specifically, but I'm sure if we ask around we can find someone."

"Sure, let's try it... If we can't swing a transcription spell I should have you unsummon me and find a bunch of printers that I know will hook up to this thing." He waves the tablet. "Even if I don't know anyone who could backchain to compact disks, it'd speed things up."

"...What do you use instead? I'm betting none of the science fiction I've seen is accurate."

"Wireless communication directly between two devices. And for stuff bigger than few terabytes - A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes is a thousand megabytes - little sticks of flash crystal that don't even plug in because they're wireless too."

"I imagine I'd be more impressed if my area were the mechanical instead of the biological, but even I can tell that that's pretty cool."

"It's pretty sweet, yes." He taps a few things on the computer. "I found a biology book I thought looked promising. Flip 'pages' by flicking at the corners." He hands over the tablet. "How does one find a professor?"

"Ah--since you're a stranger and I'm a student, it would probably be for the best if I introduced you, rather than simply giving you directions."

"Point, again. Though I'm half-tempted to just fly off to the CDC and wave new antibiotics at them, just for the sheer novelty. Eh, it'll wait until professorial route is obviously going to take more than a few days."

"That, I suspect, depends largely on which professors I introduce you to first. Hmm..." she bites her lip. "Professor Green is on leave, Professor Marsh has contacts but also priority issues..."

"What about Professor Tuyolev?"

"Tch, I just did the same thing you did with the Whomping Willow, sorry."

"Probably! Who's Professor Tuyolev?"

"Character in a long-running sitcom that started in 2168. One of the running gags is that Professor Tuyolev appears and disappears in places he oughtn't be able to, like a ninja."

"Nice. You know if for some reason patenting future science doesn't work you could probably make some good money importing media."

"Hm, I'm skeptical. Culture differences and all."

"I suppose that's true, at least to a certain extent, but it doesn't have to be media that's from as far in the future as you are. If you could get your hands on bestselling novels from five or ten years from now..."

"Hmm..." Tap tap tap. "Some of the most popular fiction serieses from 2000-2010 were apparently the last four Harry Potter books, a... Vampire romance? One about a zombie war. And a series about an aggressively dystopic society called The Hunger Games. Any of those sound interesting?"

"Trying to sell the last four Harry Potter books would probably get us in trouble with the person who sold the first three, and in general it's probably better to pick from later rather than sooner in that time frame so the author hasn't started writing it yet and probably won't, with the butterfly effect, but other than that those sound fine."

"So, 2020 or later. Butterfly effect will have plenty of time, then. I'll make another list while you're trying to find a professor."

She gives him a thumbs-up. "Awesome. I'll be back when I do, which could take arbitrary amounts of time but probably not more than a couple hours."

"Do you think anyone would mind if I explored the woods a bit? All the plants and so on are different, here."

"Nah. Go right ahead."

"I'll be back in an hour if you're done sooner than that." He downs the last of his coffee and flits off. Daphne still has the tablet computer.

Good, she can use it as evidence.

And then she spends about three hours talking to people, taking a quick break for lunch, and talking to more people, and finally comes back with a Computer Science professor.

Nick is watching a video on a different, smaller device. "Ah, hello again."

"Hello! I found someone in the IT department and someone in the Engineering department who think they can get things done quickly."

"Very nice. Hello, miss or ma'am. How much have you heard so far?"

"You're from an alternate universe where it's the future and also significantly less magically complicated," she says dryly. "And you brought that absolutely fascinating device with you, and you want to donate a great deal of scientific knowledge to the public good and sell a decent amount more."

"Broadly correct. Electronics and computing is the sector I think I'll reserve the most in. And I'm not planning to share weapons tech at all. I'm Nick, nice to meet you."

"Not sharing weapons technology is an excellent plan. My name is Gail Larsen, Professor of Information Technology. It is, especially under the circumstances, most certainly a pleasure to meet you too."

"So according to my research the first thing a professor of information technology would be interested in is fiber optics, 5-nanometer transistor chipsets... I'll keep the best stuff to sell later, unfortunately for you."

She shrugs. "It's sensible of you, and I'm not going to turn up my nose at what is on offer."

Unless someone here suggests otherwise, Nick will go from there straight into an explanation of Mostly Modern Information Technology.

Professor Larsen listens raptly. Daphne leaves after a minute citing a mage friend to talk to about translation spells.

The professor knows her theory as well as Nick does! Wonderful! Here are some books, here's Nick's vague speculations on how to get manufacturing kickstarted...

Well, for manufacturing he'll have to talk to the Engineering professor. Conveniently, Professor Larsen knows which one and where that is!

He continues to explain more advanced and elegant forms of internet architecture along the way. Sketches and notes are telekinetically deployed.

This is intensely fascinating and possibly a bit over her head but she manages to keep up anyways.

He's definitely not a teacher. But teaching is a lot easier when your student is so fascinated. He shows off the extremely convenient features of his tablet's programming language by walking her through programming a simple game in the time it takes to find the engineering professor.

Excellent. And then the engineering professor ("Martin Banks, how d'you do) is located and drawn into nerding.

Nerding could continue for quite a while. He is such a nerd. Critical mass of nerdiness causes a chain reaction of fascinated discussion. Unfortuantely for the engineering prof, he doesn't have advanced tools on him nor can he get them easily. There's a thing that might help for that but it's secret.

Can they improvise? Not all the way, of course, but they are in the engineering department of a fair-sized university, and there's a metalworking shop nearby.

Hm, maybe. A lot of this stuff takes rare metals or dangerous chemicals catalysts and so on, they'd have to secure permission from the chemistry department.

Perhaps that could be accomplished by showing them 150 years of chemistry advances?

The chemistry department gets involved. The chemistry department is enthusiastic!

At this rate they're going to form a nerdiness singularity. This is exactly what Nick hoped would happen.

He doesn't let go of the tablet at any point, though. Information security: Is a thing.

Well, that's reasonable. And if anyone doubts this Professor Larsen can discuss data security until they decide to drop it.

Yeah, literally nothing in this world is currently capable of communicating with the tablet by a method other than looking at the screen. Nick makes sure to only show the things he's not planning to sell, and nothing about summoning.

Where'd Daphne get to? Various people want transcriptions of books, some of them have almost written books' worth of notes.

Daphne is over there in that corner talking to a biologist one of the chemists brought in, and also a young man with rather thick glasses. She waves when she sees him looking for her.

He flits over and says, deadpan, "You've been sucked into the nerdiness amalgam, there is no escape now." To the glasses guy, "Hello, I'm Nick, the guy having lots of fun distributing future knowledge."

"Hello, I'm Cecil," glasses guy says, pushing his glasses slightly higher up his nose. "I'm a magician."

"And a biology student, and highly appreciative of the nerdiness amalgam," Daphne assures him.

"Aha, a magician. Any ideas for the fabled transcription spell?"

"Transcription's easy," he asserts. "Translating information from one data format to another would be much harder, if you wanted to do that, but just copying text onto a page from the screen is quite straightforward."

"It'd be nice if you could grab a whole book, diagrams and all. I can set it into latin alphabet plaintext with a nice simple dot kay tee eye format for the images if that makes it easier."

"If you could get the entire book to scroll past extremely quickly while a spell is cast on the device, that would work, but if I have to retrieve anything that doesn't physically exist as an image at any point during the process then I have to convince the magic to read the device's programming regardless of how it's designed to render visually."

"I can set up a scroll that displays images along the way, just a bit of fiddling."

Tap tap tap, tinker tinker. He fetches paper. "Let's try it, this is the data structures book Gail wanted. Tell me when to have it run."

"Alright then..." he arranges the paper in a certain way on a flat surface, and says some seemingly-random nonsense words. "Okay, go."

Scrollscrollscrollscroll. It takes several seconds.

And the paper flips over rapidly, like the fluttering pages of a book in the wind. They take longer than the scrolling to complete, but only a few minutes.

"Excellent! Do you mind producing a lotof these to distribute to professorial types? I think the nerdiness amalgam is going to last for a few days. After which I want to learn magic."

"Well, I'm not fronting the paper," he says. "But no, I don't mind casting the spell."

"This is a university, there will be enough paper."

He sets to finding out which department is willing to donate it.

Eventually, after some arguing, it is agreed that each department will provide the paper for textbooks that fall under their headings.

He didn't expect it to take much arguing. Well, anyway, three copies of the most promising few books and one copy of supplementary ones. He doesn't hesitate to threaten to cut a department off if they get too greedy or argumentative.

It wasn't much arguing. Anyway, no one's complaining about the number of copies of any given book; Cecil's spell works on paper at least as well as fast-scrolling tablets and he, as a student, is comparatively easy to coax into doing things.

Scientific conversations! Book copying! Helping the Engineering Department build a prototype 3D printer!

At around the two thousand book mark Nick thinks that's enough for now and he kind of wants a break. One can only tolerate so much nerding out in a given time.

"So what do you want to do for now? It's pretty late," Daphne says, pointing out the window. A bright full moon and a sprinkling of shining stars can be seen hanging in an otherwise near-pitch sky.

"I think that depends on how tired you are, because I can keep going twenty four-seven."

"Not terribly tired."

"Well, then a break from thinking sounds pretty good to me."

"I've been told I'm pretty good at making people stop thinking."

"That definitely sounds fun. I hope I won't disappoint."

She starts to move, but then stops herself and looks at him thoughtfully. "Some things are more fun if your brain isn't being fogged by anything else, even if you're not planning on doing much actual thinking, and it is fairly late. Would you like to get coffee?"

"Sure, coffee. Stimulants feel nice, and two things that feel nice are better than one."

"I know a nifty coffee shop that's about six miles that way," she points.

"I'll fly us. Want a fast hop, or to go a little more slowly and enjoy the view and the breeze?"

"Little more slowly sounds fun."

"Sure thing." He takes her hand, and they drift into the sky at approximately twice jogging speed. He lets some of the breeze through, but not enough to be uncomfortably chilly.

"Wow," she breathes despite herself.

"Flight is pretty great, isn't it? The other kinds of daeva make their own wings and do it the old fashioned way. It's almost sad that mine won't actually carry me. They're just decoration."

"Well, they make pretty great decoration."

"Why, thank you. Too bad you don't have wings of your own or I could say you don't need them for decoration."

"Thanks. Given my druthers I think I really would like one of the kinds that would let me fly, though."

"As far as I know the only way to get that is by asking a daeva-angel or daeva-demon, but it is possible." He speeds up just a bit now that they're high off the ground. The breeze doesn't change.

"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't. At the very least I shouldn't try to get something that much more life-altering than a tattoo without seriously thinking about it. I'm pretty sure our kind of demon can't do that, or at least not any of the ones I'm comfortable interacting with."

"I wouldn't know about local demons."

Pause. Cue contented sigh. "Earth's stars are beautiful. And there isn't even all that much light pollution, pre-2000."

"You don't have stars where you're from? Well, I suppose you wouldn't, if you live on an infinite plane and not a planet. That seems a shame."

"We have pretty rocks and wildlife to make up for it, you know. And we do get to visit other planets, if we take summons. The view from Europa in my spacefuture is really something else."

"The science side of my brain would like to point out that Europa is not a planet. The rest of my brain is sighing in envy."

"Heh, good point. I can show you pictures. Maybe even virtual reality, if I can rig a headset later..."

They're getting near the coffeeshop by now.

Coffeeshop! It is near some other buildings and it's not obvious from the air what function each of them serves, so Daphne points it out. "Pictures aren't the same. Virtual reality might be, I don't know."

"It's still not quite the same, but a lot closer than pictures or video."

He lands, relatively stealthily, and walks toward the coffeeshop. Hopefully his wings won't attract too much attention.

Oddly enough, for some reason they attract less attention when they notice he's with Daphne. Her predilection for attracting odd things is well-known.

The coffee shop is rich with the scent of roasting beans, and has a luxurious pastry cabinet containing things like chocolate chip cookies as thick as a sandwich. The menu boad lists most normal coffee additives, and a handful of less-normal ones like peanut butter.

Nick has a little money, pressed on him by various professors, but doesn't object if Daphne moves to pay. He orders a 'surprise me' because, what the hell, novelty is fun.

Daphne will totally pay! She has more money than him, for now, and she's arguably his host in this universe; it's only hospitable.

Nick gets something with cinnamon sugar and nutmeg; Daphne orders a white mocha.

It's tasty. "Ahh, precious caffeine, where would we be without you. Except groggy or asleep, presumably."

"Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere."

Heh. "Plants come up with a lot of useful stuff, actually. Medicine and so on. Some make less than useful stuff, I'm looking at you castor beans and nightshade, but still."

"Ooh, best not get me started on that subject, we're taking a break from intense science nerding."

"Right, sorry." He takes a careful sip. "There's something about coffee. Even though it's not tasty by itself. Good stuff."

"Mm, yes. Now, if you could figure out a way to bottle the way coffee smells, you'd make a real fortune."

"I think that exists, actually... No, away nerdy thoughts! What won't send me back to science... Are you a fan of comedy shows? They're about as unscientific as you can get."

"Monty Python is one of the great literary works of the human race," she offers.

"I have acutally seen some of Monty Python's work. It's still a classic a hundred eighty years later. Do you know the hiding spot skit?"

"Nnnot that one, not off the top of my head."

"I think it was actually called 'how not to be seen'? Eh, nevermind. The Holy Grail was fun, too."

"The Holy Grail was massively fun."

"My favorite knight was Sir Not Appearing In This Film."

"Oh, yes. I think my favorite moment was either when the witch tried by absolutely ludicrous means goes, 'It's a fair cop' or the bit at the end where everyone gets arrested."

He does something halfway between a laugh and a giggle. "I liked the bridge keeper's inconsistent questions a lot, too."

"You kind of have to wonder what would happen if someone actually got a question wrong. Would the keeper even know? All the people who got thrown into the chasm displayed ignorance, not inaccuracy."

"The world will never know for sure. But my guess is lightning."

"Alas. Although--the creators are still alive in this world, we could write a letter and ask if we really wanted to, or maybe someone already has and we could find that."

"Hm. I almost feel like the fact that nobody got anything wrong is part of the joke, though. Their stuff can be layered like that if you think about it long enough."

"I see your point...unless you count the time that one knight stumbled over his own favorite color, I suppose."

He shrugs. "When you dissect a joke, it dies. A lot like a frog, really."

"...And we're back to Biology," she laughs.

Hah! "I swear it was an accident." Sip, sip.

"Oh, I believe you. But what is the world coming to when not even comedy is safe?"

"At least we still have conspiracy theorists, politicians, and talk show hosts. The piercing light of science will never reach them."

"Yikes. I think I'll take my chances with comedy."

"Trust me, those kinds of people are still around in the spacefuture. Unfortunately." Sip. His coffee's nearly gone now.

"I'm not surprised. Those kinds of people were around in Ancient Rome, and the spacefuture's less than two centuries away."

"I guess we'll just have to keep ignoring them, then."

"Well, that should be safe for the conspiracy theorists and the talk show hosts, but the world would be a much better place than it is if one could simply ignore unscientific politicians."

"Fairies don't have much centralized government, I guess I was too flippant."

"Ah. Well, governments do do a lot that's helpful--I suppose your telekinesis obviates the need for a lot of the things that the early proto-governments were for, as far as I remember them from history class."

"But this is political science. I have uncovered its ruse!" He downs the last of his coffee, laughing.

Daphne slurps down the last few mouthfuls of hers. "Science! It's everywhere! Shall we never escape its sinuous grasp?"

"There is only one solution. We must stop thinking, with kissing."

"Well then." And she cups a hand to his cheek as she presses her lips to his.

...

She's good at this.

Mmm! This is good. Excellent, even.

He's not nearly so good, but at least it's pretty clearly not his first kiss.

She hadn't particularly been expecting it to be. Either way's fine with her, really.

Yummy kisses. After the third one he remembers that he can breathe through his nose, and thus prolong them.

Is he sure he can remember to do that? She's being awfully distracting.

Well, not consistently. But often enough not to get uncomfortable. She does successfully distract him from keeping his hands from wandering.

After a while he pulls back long enough to say,"Oh, wow. I don't think we should stay here, at this rate I'll end up scandalizing the coffee shop."

"D'you remember where my dorm was or do I need to play navigator again?"

"I remember it." He stands up and heads for the door.

Out of the coffeeshop they go, presumably to the relief of the other patrons.

Back into a semi-hidden area and up in the air they go. A lot faster than before. He miiight be a bit excited and impatient, here. And then, look, a dorm building. "Which door?"

"I have a window that's openable from the outside--that one there," she points.

He flies to the window and looks inside, snickering. "It's a bit of a thrill, sneaking around, being naughty."

She giggles. "Well, if you were really trying to sneak, you might have picked someone with less of a reputation than I have, but I appreciate the sentiment."

He opens the window and flies in. Doesn't even have to touch it to do so. "That brings me to an imminently relevant question... Will you believe me when I say daeva can't have children and don't get sick?"

"...Well the can't have children part is minorly irrelevant since I'm on the pill, but...trust but verify, I think."

He looks minorly annoyed, but, "Eh, reasonable I suppose." Back to kissing?

Back to kissing!

She's really good at this. And he can let his hands wander, now that they're not in public anymore. (The window closes behind them.)

Yes, he absolutely can. And kisses can shift location a bit. Does he have any particularly sensitive spots on his jaw?

Yes, a little dimple like thing off to either side. He gives a little gasp and his wings flutter reflexively a little bit when she finds it. One if his hands goes under her shirt in response. He attempts to return the favor... Not very well, too much kissing.

...There is another sign of excitement showing up, a little lower.

Of course there is.

She pauses for a moment to yank off her turtleneck, and then sees how much more precise she can get with those dimples.

Not all that precise, it's more of a general area. Though, if her hands brush his wings she'll find that they have much the same effect, at least in this context. And the short break let him recover enough brain to start trying to find places that Daphne particularly likes to be kissed.

Right under the left collarbone is a particular hit!

Well he'll have to make sure to return there once in a while between trying to find more.

Why is he still wearing a coat? He stops wearing the coat.

"Your wings aren't as fragile as a real butterfly's, right?"

"No, don't stab them or anything but touching is fine." Speaking of touching, he's long done keeping his hands in innocuous places. One has been sliding up Daphne's right thigh for a while now, for example.

In that case, there should be fewer pants in this equation.

Oh, really? The prospect of more bare skin is extremely distracting. The goal of not thinking about science is well and truly accomplished.

So he revisits just under the left collarbone, liiiingering there with a slight pressure, and decides they should be symmetrically pantsless.

Well, it's certainly arguable that biology is going on, but since thinking isn't, that's fine.

Biology can be pretty fun. He's really quite excited by now, but nothing says they have to get to the main event too fast. He doesn't want to feel like he's ignoring any part of Daphne. Some spots are clearly more deserving of repeated visits than others, though.

He's so observant.

This would probably be easier if they were on a bed! There's one over there.

Ah, a bed! New positions to try. Excellent.

The order of operations might be a little off here given that their pants are already gone, but how does Daphne like it when he removes his t-shirt and starts on hers a couple of minutes later?

She likes it plenty.

It's a chain reaction of pleasedness!

His kisses and touches migrate down a little, hover there for a while, then down some more...

Mmmm. That feels nice. She'll have to return the favor. It's a good thing there are so many places on the human or near-human body that can feel nice, isn't it?

Indeed it is.

Favors are exchanged. Nick is as good at multitasking as he first claimed, and he miiight be cheating just a little with his fairy abilities.

Best cheating.

Nick is not likely to be the one to decide they're done. Daeva don't get more than a certain amount of tired.

Yeah, they're going to be a while. Daphne's stamina is finite but it's noticeably higher than what might one expect from a normal human, if one has the experience to notice such things.

Nick probably has the experience to notice such things, but doesn't actually manage to actually think about it. It's great fun, though, isn't it?

When Daphne does eventually seem to be done he mentions that he's perfectly willing to sleep here (warm afterglowy feelings are nice), or not, at her preference.

"Mm, stay," she mumbles.

"As you wish." Blankets and sheets can be arranged telekinetically.

Zzzzzz.

The next morning is a school morning, which means a fairly shrill alarm at seven.

Nick is quite startled by the alarm. He's not used to having one at all.

He doesn't touch the alarm, but while he's getting dressed he comments, "Yesterday was extremely fun. We should do it again some time."

"Definitely," she says, slapping the alarm off, sitting up and stretching.

"Ahh. What a nice break from nerding out. Time to go continue improving science and technology."

"You have fun with with that. I have less groundbreaking classes to attend. There's a shower in the bathroom if you want to use it," she says, gesturing to a door.

"...Probably a good idea, thanks."

He showers, and re-dresses, and flies out the window, and buys breakfast from the town, and tries to reforge the nerdiness amalgam by visiting various professors.

The nerdiness amalgam is eager to reforge! Someone starts humming the theme song of some kind of sentai show.

He kind of expected someone from the government to take an interest by now, enough that he could invite himself to the CDC and distribute anti- this and thats. How likely is that to occur, o professor squad?

Well, he arrived literally yesterday. The CDC does get an awful lot of calls from snake oil salesmen who do not in fact have awesome future technology. It might take them a bit to verify things.

Maybe he should go to China. They could probably really use some of the pollutant-capturing tech he's thinking of, for example.

Well, maybe? Does China do things faster than the United States? What's even going on with China right now anyways?

Of all the sciences in this nerd amalgam it appears that Poli Sci got left out.

He's already distributed a bunch of approximately 2100-level textbooks. Does anyone want to buy exclusive rights to some 2150-level tech so he can make a quick buck and begin venture capitalism?

Well, that's going to lead to about five minutes of chaos as various people scream at each other about budgeting.

Sheesh, forget he asked.

He looks up where IBM is headquartered during the chaos.

A town called North Castle, New York, and by the time he's navigated the 1999 internet well enough to find that out the chaos has died down and a handful of departments may-or-may-not have room in their budgets for him depending on what he's selling for.

The prices, overall, are 'high but not absurd'. And nothing cutting-edge electronic, robotic, or AI is on offer.

(He sends an email to IBM and a dozen other processor-manufacturing companies, containing some 2030-ish technical documents with a few key details redacted, and says he has more, when can they meet with him to negotiate.)

Not every department buys anything, and none buy very much, but he has some spending money at the end if that.

Yep. And if he knows corporations it'll be days or weeks until one of them gets around to talking to him unless he barges into their CEOs' offices. If they believe him at all.

So instead he asks around, what is the next place of academia that would appreciate a personal visit from the Future Fairy and has someone who knows someone here so Nick can be vouched for?