The Millways door opens but to experienced patrons it might look a little unusual. There is an expanse of white nothingness behind the man who just walked in. He is wearing a well fitting shirt and pants with covered in intricate but subtle designs with a similarly adorned backpack strapped attached to his back by an unclear mechanism. He looks around in undisguised bewilderment and fascination.

"Well this is certainly new and unexpected." 

Temperance looks up. "Hi! New to Milliways? Don't worry, the place is safe and interesting."

"You're speaking English? Do you have your own translation magic or is this a weird coincidence? Also yes, I'm new to wherever this is. It's gratifying to hear it's safe I always hate losing time."

"I am speaking English. The place has its own translation magic and it is a weird coincidence. This is Milliways a bar that connects to other dimensions randomly. Funny you mention time because when you are in here with the door closed, time doesn't move on your native dimension," she peeks beyond him, "not that it looks there is much going on in there."

"That place is as confusing to me as it is to you," he says pointing behind him. "I got pulled out of a thread on my way to explore a new planet. The beacon from my last waystation suggests I was in transit for three hours before arriving here. In all our explorations so far we've never encountered another world that spoke english. I'm not quite sure what to make of that rule being broken."

"Ah, Milliways is further away than what you're expecting. It is basically it's own tiny universe that connects to different distinct universes, some of which have similarities. Earth is a common category despite the many different flavors it can manifest itself."

"Well then, the world is larger than the Institute knows, I'm going to have such a long report to write by the end of this." He looks down and frowns for a moment, then he looks back up with a smile. "This is going to be so much fun. But where are my manners, my name is zabna tsani. What's yours?"

"Temperance Greenpledge. From Earth in the year 2015. What year are you from? You mentioned planets exploration."

"It's 2101 on the old Earth calendar. A lot of people still use it, but there's about 3 others in more or less common use just counting those used by people who migrated from Earth in the 21st century. These days there are colonies in about twelve other solar systems and there's a lot of people living off of Earth around the solar system. I can't say much about what people on the distant planets in Earth's universe are up to since the communication lags are measured in years, but there's a lot of interesting stuff happening on planets in nearby universes as the threadwork connects things. Some of them have humans transplanted from Earth a really long time ago, and most of the transplanted humans have ended up with at least one unique magic system."

"Ooooh, that sounds like a cool universe. What is the threadwork? Are the magic systems shareable?"

"The threadwork is a series of paths through and occasionally between universes that allow you to travel along them at the speed of light. Actually using them requires either really advanced technology along with luck or a lot of time, or else you can shortcut those requirements with magic. The threadwork also lets you send high fidelity messages a bit like a fiber-optic cable, that usage isn't as difficult though. Magic varies a lot, there is one magic system that can copy other magic systems and it allows it's users to craft magical artifacts that grant some amount of those powers to other people but there's only a handful of people who meet whatever arcane criteria Wanderdeep requires to become a mage and for whatever reason it isn't friendly to forking so those few people are a pretty big bottleneck. I'm actually a fork of the first Mage known to the institute."

"Wow," Temperance asks fascinated, "that is amazing. Does this mean you have magic? What does yours do?"

"It means I have magical artifacts. Some of which are embedded in my body. One of them protects me against hostile magic, I'm not sure how absolute the protection is but it's better than nothing. Aside from that important one I have something that lets me learn languages really quickly, a lie detector of sorts, something that lets me sense and to a limited degree analyze magic nearby, and of course something that lets me travel the threads without technology too bulky to carry."

"Oooh, how does the threadwork works? Any chance my universe could be hooked up?"

"We really don't control the threadwork, to the best of our ability to discern it's a naturally occurring phenomena but then maybe it was created a very long time ago by whoever or whatever created Wanderdeep or magic itself."

"What is Wanderdeep?"

"Wanderdeep is a place, the source of the most flexible and precise magic we know of. I tend to associate it with the threadwork because it uses a lot of sophisticated space-warping magic to rearrange the threadwork in its vacinity into more convenient patterns. That's the closest we've ever seen to something changing the layout of the threads. But wanderdeep also has a magically complete, though strangely limited library, among other things. There's a pretty large research team still trying to understand all it's secrets."

"Okay, do you have any idea if there is a way to purposefully hook up two universes together? I might be able to leverage something from my end, but I am not sure."

"The honest truth is that we don't know. If you can show me your universe I can check if the threadwork is present there, but ultimately we cannot manipulate the threadwork on any large scale. Before I discovered Millways the threadwork was the only way we had to reach other universes so bridging unbridged universes it wasn't a concept even on our research agenda."

"Fair enough. What exactly showing entails? If I open the door it will lead to my universe instead of yours. Would that be enough?"

"Let me activate the display feature here, we can check Milliways first." zabna lifts his hands out in front of him a few feet apart and then twists at the air and a gently glowing area appears between them. Within the glowing area a vague outline of the room they're in appears in miniature thin tendrils brighter yellow of light crisscross the room. None of them pass through the door or even the wall the door is on. zabna gestures slightly and the view expands showing a tall hotel of unclear height above them a fuzzy landscape behind them, and a void in front of them. In this view the tendrils form into continuous loops overlapping the area. zabna turns his head sideways. "That makes absolutely no sense."

"Yeah, Milliways is like that apparently."

"The yellow color indicates that it's conducting magical energy along it. I'm not sure where it's getting that magic though, usually magic comes from structures built into the center of planets and stars and such that we call Wellsprings. We can check your world if you like, I'm not sure if this is evidence of Milliways being weird and thus we should expect threadwork to exist in your world or evidence of it being specific to my world and thus we shouldn't. Also, now I want to look at the Milliways magic."

"Oh, magic from other universes might work completely different from what you are used to. Worlds themselves can be vastly different too. And I wouldn't expect my world to have a Wellspring at all, the magic appear to be a feature of the universe itself."

"Huh, I guess there is a sense in which our magic is tacked onto the universe. We're reasonably sure that at some point we'll be able to do anything magic can do without using any. That's a pretty long way off though. We only discovered sublayers about a year ago and there might still be more missing pieces."

"Sublayers?"

"In my universe the primary space-time 'layer', which is where we are now is adjacent to other usually empty space-times which we call sublayers. It took a really long time for us to figure this out since magic makes heavy use of a couple particular sublayers and something, which we think is also magic, makes it all but impossible to visit those sublayers. There are projects underway to work around that interference but we haven't succeeded yet."

"Cooool, and these sublayers are what? Different universes or something?"

"It's a little bit unclear to be honest. Sublayers, near as we can tell are totally empty except for matter moved into them from primary layers. Gravity also propagates between sublayers and the primary layer. That doesn't happen between universes connected by the threadwork so we don't call the sublayers separate universes. I'm not sure if you've heard of Dark Matter but some scientists think that at least some portion of it is in one of magic's sublayers." 

"Huh, I can't say I really get the science side of it. I wonder how much of your future knowledge would help us. Not only for technology, but maybe how to," she makes a vague wave gesture, "adapt to new kinds of magic. Back in my world the magic has just become known to the public a few months ago."

"I would not be remotely comfortable condemning another world to unsupervised singularity trials. Hopefully that's one of the things that only happens on the Earth I'm familiar with. As for how to adapt to magic, given how much the singularity trials changed things I'm not sure how much advice would be applicable given that we discovered magic after those had ended." Zahn sighs. "Still I'd be happy to offer whatever advice I can, finding new cultures and opening diplomatic relations is my job."

"Singularity trials?" She asks distracted again.

"So, around 2030, genetic engineering really took off in a big way, people figured out how to genetically engineer things with a lot more speed, precision, and ease than they ever had before. Unfortunately, the leading edge of this work allowed anyone with a grievance to engineer custom biological weapons and release them. Some places including my current employers suspected this might happen and so had filters good enough to keep their people safe but most people didn't. A lot of people died. Current estimates are that about half a billion people died from the plagues before governments and charities managed to distribute enough countermeasures to keep people safe. The only thing that stopped those numbers from being higher is that most of those plagues were targeted to some ethnicity, or genetic disease, or heck there was at least one plague that targeted people with blue eyes. I wish I could say that was the end, but really it was just the beginning. In the scramble to address the plagues nanotechnology advanced by leaps and bounds and not all of the discoveries there were friendly either. Some cities ended up being nuked to contain particularly dangerous nanotech. At the tail end of that mess, someone cracked human uploading, which resulted in a lot more panic but thankfully a lot less death. All told by the end of the Trials over a billion people had died either from direct effects or from disrupted ecosystems leading to starvation and other such lovely knock-on effects."

"Wow. And I guess your world's experience isn't going to help that much. All that we have to face is the sudden appearance of hate-monsters, magical girls and a woman that could be confused with the second coming of Christ."

"Tentatively that sounds a lot less dangerous, I don't really like the sound of hate-monsters though."

"They are more... monsters made of broken promises and sense of betrayal, but that isn't as catchy as hate-monsters. They are hard to deal with without magic and get stronger over time, nowadays, the population of Oathknights is large enough that they can be dealt with in the same day. I would even say that most of the problems are more social."

"Well that makes me feel better. I take it that that's what your sign is about? You want to become an Oathknight and the process includes binding yourself to a magical oath?"

Nod. "Yeah, 'binding' might be an oversimplification but there was no simple way of putting all the relevant details in the sign. ...Do you want the full explanation? It involves some historical facts."

"I'd love a historical explanation."

"Alright, so our magic works by making oaths. You make one and the magic sort of helps you fulfill it. Typically the effect of this are very small and breaking promises diminishes it. However an alien species discovered a trick. Making oaths and ask-slash-wish for the benefits to accumulate as a sort of reserve, with the option of transfering the benefits to other people as well. It still took generations, but they eventually managed to harness the power for interesting effects."

"However, there was a downside to it, the greater the power, the greater the backslash, creating curses, bad luck and monsters made of magic. The aliens tried to patch that up, but the magic was smart enough to pretend and attack later. Soon the entire species was essentially cursed."

"To avoid the complete doom of their civilization the aliens explored the universe until they found humans, then they used bio-manipulation to interbreed with humans, purifying the descendants and creating a new human subspecies that is nearly identical, except for a thin white line around their iris," Temperance points at her own eyes, albeit it's hard to notice without getting closer, "things were mostly fine for a while but the corrupt magic was playing possum again or maybe breaking promises got worse. They created the Oathknights, which was a group of magic users with the specific purpose to fight the effects of corrupted magic. They also tried to patch it with regular visits to Earth to get uncursed people, but the problem got bad enough that all they could do was basically evacuate to Earth and seal off the portals to keep the corrupt magic out."

"Some of that magic still escaped to Earth and would try to open the portals again, the Oathknights dedicated themselves to prevent this. Except that a few months ago the corruption came very close to succeed. But there was an Oathknight - who of course was also a princess - managed to prevent that. Oathknights get powers based on their oaths and hers included the line 'to be the light that stands against the darkness', so that manifested itself by sealing off the portals much more strongly at the cost that she is now in a coma. And also her magic is manifesting itself as the Lady of the Oaths, a figure that goes around saving people and offering them the chance to become Oathknights and fight the extra monsters that have showed up because some extra corruption magic that escaped."

zabna blinks slowly twice. "Well then, your magic sounds really unfriendly. Like magic in my world often does terrible things but I've never heard of it being malicious in its own right."

Temperance shrugs. "I can't say I like the downsides. One thing of note is that Oathknights have a specific Oath format, the first and fifth lines are predetermined and the three middle lines are picked by the specific knight. The Lady offers a new kind of Oath with a different final line, and the knights that go by that one don't appear to experience negative effects from corruption except by diminished powers. One of the things I am considering is which version to pick."

"So, you're saying that using your magic is also to some extent fueling the very thing you're fighting against. I guess it's too late to wonder whether this Pandora's box should have been opened but wow I don't like the implications that has for your world." He sighs. "What sort of powers do Oathknights have? How much of a difference do the two final lines make?"

She actually has those written down.

The original version is thus:

This is an oath to fight injustice. May I never break it.

While the new version is:

This is an oath to bring hope. May I do my best to be worth it.

"There is a sense where specific knights can influence their own interpretation of the Oath, but these specific words sort of... tie the first Oath in a sort of aggressive role and make it rather inflexible. The second Oath is more... forgiving? And generalized in a rather positive direction. On the other hand, it is known that Princess Felicity - the girl that sealed the portal - and her twin - of course she has a twin - made their Oaths interpreting 'to fight injustice' as meaning 'to work hard against bad things, because everyone deserves good things' and that apparently helped them to get more versatile powers."

"As of powers that Oathknights might get, it varies a lot: healing, elemental control, super-speed, flight, weather-control, ability to control technology and ability to understand and invent things are all possibles. All knights tend to have at least one power. I think most of the new ones tend for more constructive powers, but I don't know if that is the Lady selecting them or something else."

"Why do you keep saying 'of course' about throughly non-obvious features of reality?" He shakes his head, "More importantly, what do you hope to get out of being an Oathknight? Are you doing this mostly to get the magic or mostly out of a feeling of social obligation or duty of some kind?"

"The entire situation follows a lot of narrative tropes that are easy to recognize? A lot of it looks like from an anime with magical girls that transform into super-heroes. Ah, I completely failed to explain the basic attributes of an Oathknight, it includes an alternate form called 'Armor' which allows you full access to your powers and looks generally like you, but young adult and donning an impractically elaborate armor that still lets you move at easy. In armored form, knights can summon a magical weapon and a shield. Old knights can get the ability to create a slowly expanding castle, but the new ones might get a super-powered pet. And wanting magical powers is the main reason, but I also would like to help people. Magic that helps people is like the best thing ever."

"That's a fascinating coincidence, I have no idea what to make of it. Is a castle useful in 2015? I mean you specified that it was magic, and it doesn't sound like you're defending against conventional assaults so the reasons why castles aren't effective against guided munitions probably isn't too relevant but I'm still kinda unclear what use a castle would be. Also, if you only have access to your full powers in this alternate form is there some non-aesthetic reason why you would ever exit it?"

"Besides keeping a secret identity? The form that you're not in recovers faster. Just changing in and out is revigoranting. Otherwise, not really."

"Huh, that's an interesting advantage. Why do you need a secret identity? Is it just a work-life balance thing or are Oathknights disliked by the official power structure? Also you didn't give me an answer about the castle."

"Not everyone wants the public life, some might dislike or fear their governments. Oathknights is not technically a job. And I am sure some are doing it because it fits the tropes. The power structure has mostly been confused about the knights. Castles are magical, they... do a space distortion thing that means you can put them wherever without damaging surrounding buildings. They can be hidden and you can learn how to influence some of their properties in useful ways, like making a room where healing is faster. Multiple knights can join castles together for a bigger one."

"Ah, so the castle is more of an aesthetic than an architectural form in this case. I guess that makes sense. What risks does the old oath expose you to?"

"Corrupted magic backslash. Not necessarily hate-monsters, but things like bad luck, powers not working or working with side-effects."

"Then it sounds like which oath you should take depends mostly on your risk tolerance. Well that and whether you prefer pets or castles I guess." He chuckles, "What sort of powers are you hoping to get incidentally? Are you interested in healing or another support role? Or are you the sort to want to leap into battle and face challenges head on? Or something else entirely?"

"My family has a castle, but I can't affect it's magic directly. Another part of the problem is that the answer to my last question is something like 'all of the above'. I would want something flexible and versatile even if it means an overall weaker power set."

"Ah, that is a challenge. The Institute tends to address that by handing out very specific magic for most purposes and relying on technology for versatility but handing out most of our technology to an unsupervised world would be a really bad idea. Do you have a start on what you think you want your oath to be? Do you have any books with examples of what oaths result in what powers?"

She has some ideas scrawled out and heavily crossed out notes for her own oath. Some of the notes include:

[first part of the sentence] . All hear my oath of magic. (If using this, either repeat three times or use Benevolence and Freedom? instead of magic)

To that I shall use all kinds of magics.

To use all tools of magic for ???
I want to journey creation.
Heralding the joy of living.

Reference to "Curiosity", "Benevolence", "Freedom"? and "Magic a lot"

The closest thing to a complete edit is the following:

My word is binding. All hear my oath of power.

Through land, sea or even sky. All hear my summon for magic.

No matter how, no matter where or when. All hear my pledge of benevolence.

Through all places in creation. All hear my promise of freedom.

(old oath) This is an oath to fight injustice. May I never break it. / (new oath) This is an oath to bring hope. May I do my best to be worth it.

She has some of examples of oaths written down. And how they work. How much you care about the thing helps giving a power boost. The adhering to the original interpretation you had helps a lot, but there is a sense where you can't escape the others and can bend things towards a direction if it is somehow suitable. Because all oaths have "hear" it is quite easy for Oathknights to get powers that lets them hear cries for help, even though the oath's phrasing is meant for the Oathknight to be heard.

"As it is, my oath is very likely to give me some sort of long-ranged teleportation. At least some versatile form of transportation. Maybe with the ability to transport things to me because I put summon in there. The first part of the third line reinforces the transportation power, but also could get grant me the ability to create things out of nothing. 'Benevolence' makes it more likely that I get non-combative powers and 'Freedom' reinforces transportation again, but also could do things like preventing me from being mind-controlled. I could easily change 'benevolence' and 'freedom' for 'magic' twice. Or for 'power' and 'magic' in an alternating sequence, which should make my magic gifts stronger, while weakening the other aspects of my knighthood. Using 'all hear' three times likely is going to boost my telepathy and I might edit that out for something like 'this is' or something suitably generic. Oh, and the first part of the second line reinforces my versatility, but has a slightly downside where would reinforce the need to actually take options to solve problems."

"Hm," a sphere shaped mirror appears in his hand. He bounces it off the ground a couple times before it vanishes again. "I'm not quite sure what to make of that if you want versatility like you said then it sounds like diversity is a good thing to go for in the oath. I do worry a bit about binding yourself too tightly though. It sounds like if you resist those bindings it gives the magic a chance to hurt you and others, if you're going to leave something like that in it's likely better to go with the newer safer oath."

"Hmm... I think I could have diversity, versatility and flexibility all there. Might be able to put them there without sacrificing the other details?"

My word is binding. All hear my oath of power.

Through land, sea or even sky. All hear my summon for magic. This my summon to use the flexible powers of magic.

No matter how, no matter where or when. All hear my pledge of benevolence. This my pledge to use diverse ways of benevolence.

Through all places in creation. All hear my promise of freedom. This is my promise to use the versatile paths of freedom.

(old oath) This is an oath to fight injustice. May I never break it. / (new oath) This is an oath to bring hope. May I do my best to be worth it.

(There is a tally mark after the "new oath" line. She isn't discarding the old oath yet.)

"Of course, there is a benefit of not spreading oneself too thin. I might just go with power and magic instead of benevolence and freedom. After all..." She mutters to herself.

"I'm not sure how much the fittedness of these lines matter, but I don't tend to see freedom as versatile, not on an individual level anyway. Respecting the freedom of others is a narrow road with a lot of pitfalls. Diverse ways of benevolence doesn't quite scan in my head either. I can't put my finger on why though. And now that I'm thinking about it there's a degree to which benevolence and freedom feel opposed to me, though that's likely just a false dichotomy imposed on my mind by institute politics."

"I was thinking more how there are many ways to be benevolent and how there are many ways to be free. Which isn't quite a virtue, but in my head sort of works. I honestly don't get how benevolence and freedom can be opposite to each other? Like... at all. I also don't see respecting freedom as a narrow road."

"Right, so for the opposition of freedom and benevolence, I think it's because the way freedom tends to be used in the political debates I mentioned is as freedom to make your own mistakes. Where the side of benevolence is more about protecting people from making the mistakes we already learned from. The sense in which respecting freedom is a narrow road comes from a broader take on what it is to be free that incorporates both that sense of freedom to make your own mistakes and being free to be yourself, in the sense of not constantly being worried about dying or being killed. Trying to balance those two concepts is what makes the road narrow."

"Ah, politics. I can't say I quite like either side of the debate? My way of seeing freedom and benevolence is kind like... If I had the power, I would give everyone enough magic to fend for themselves and them let them sort out what they want. That doesn't solve all problems, but takes most of them."

"The debate is kinda a lot more complicated than that and it partially revolves around the fact that distributing some of our technology is often worse than all or none. There are also smaller factions who mostly care about other things like the sanctity of other cultures or the potential that their natural development will lead them down paths we haven't considered and therefore by opening diplomatic ties we're destroying priceless research opportunities," he says rolling his eyes at the end. "The issue with most capabilities you can give people, and this may not be true of your magic, is that it's often easier to hurt someone than to protect yourself. To some extent you can obviate that with social structures, but it takes time for society to adapt to new capabilities."

She makes a face. "Yeah, not really the kind of problem I am good at. The freedom and benevolence thing still looks like an arbitrary dichotomy to me."

"Maybe so, I think that broadening the specifics into such big terms is likely pretty silly. But I think the underlying question is important: should we let people make their own mistakes even when it'll hurt them badly? Or not too differently: should we show people our answers to a problem they're facing or let them find their own without that sort of interference?"

"To which I propose the question: What those people want?"

"Well that is certainly a solution to the problem. I'm not sure it's the best solution, but it's a solution. The issue of course is that by asking the question, you are in a way already interfering in their lives in a way that some would say is irrevocable."

"I mean, I understand there is a difference of... effort, but I honestly don't think that doing anything isn't changing their lives and removing any choice and options from them altogether is the epitome of not actually caring for their well-being."

"That is among the arguments used against the hardline no-contact stance. You may note that I didn't mention having any stealth magic. I am in favor of opening diplomatic contact with less advanced societies. I just worry about how easy it is to use that leverage to force them to be more like us under the guise of offering help and advice. The technology we have all but necessitates massive social changes and so it's not entirely unexpected that societies look to emulate us more than they would in the absence of that sort of upheaval."

"Well, yes. It isn't an approach without problems, but that prime directive nonsense is worse."

"Agreed, I'm taking a lot of exploration missions lately because there are certain research projects that might strengthen the anti-interventionists."

"Does you world still have cultural problems with that sort of thing?"

"I'm not really sure what you mean. Are you referring to anti-interventionism, because yeah that's a pretty big issue politically as I've said. Or are you referring to what I said about research? There are some outside the institute that oppose research, that thinks we've already come too far, but that wasn't what I meant by my comment. Some research is being done into the magic that first forked me in the hopes that we can um, run afterlives for worlds without intervening there physically at all. I expect that will strengthen the anti-interventionist cause."

"No, problems caused by interventionism."

"It depends a lot on who you ask and what their values are. When we open diplomatic contact with a world there tend to be some flare ups of violence and to some degree their culture will be changed into something a bit closer to ours. People like myself think it's worth it given that we help cure their diseases and, once we have the infrastructure setup, offer uploading, but not everyone's value system places the lives of individual people as the most important thing, and our arrival tends to cut birth rates by a lot in the long term, so fewer people get born."

"What causes the lowered birth rates?"

"People who don't have biologies tend to not have kids. You can still manage it but it's hard to do. Also, we tend to make really good birth control available.  Some people hang onto being biological as long as they can but aside from having kids there aren't many advantages and there's a bunch of advantages the other way."

"...So you are saying that is mostly people making the decision to not have kids?"

"Yeah, as far as I know it's all down to increased ease of not having kids when you're biological and increased difficulty having them when you're not. There is something of a spike in the short term since we make it easier for gays and lesbians to have biological kids."

"Okay, now take that logic and apply it to, say, a woman whose husband is cheating on her? Do you think if a third party wanted said woman to have more children, then it would be okay for that person to hide the husband's affair? Speaking as a girl whose father committed trigamy."

Zahn looks puzzled for a few moments then, "Ah, you're referring to how I followed up my comment about different value standards with one on how lower birth rates is one of the larger effects of our interventions. I suppose I didn't phrase that as well as I could have. I don't think that anyone seriously sees having more people be born grow up and die as an important terminal value. Just, there are some people who are afraid, incorrectly in my opinion, that cultures with low to zero death rates are doomed to stagnation. I'm not an anti-interventionist and I'm likely arguing their points poorly though."

"Ah, okay. My main problem is the idea of having other people having children while they are not fully informed of the situation."

"Oh, I don't think anyone tried to influence societies into the direction of having more children. Regardless, we were talking about magic before we got into all this politics stuff. I don't know that much about your magic system but given what we've gone over since then it your most recent oath sounds pretty good. I wish I had a better sense for how elaborate you're allowed to get with these oaths though. Is there some point at which the first and last lines aren't enough to 'anchor' the oath and prevent it from backfiring too badly? Is anything preventing people in your world from swearing unanchored magical oaths? How do you know the bad magic isn't just playing possum again?"

"There is in fact a point where the two lines stop anchoring the oath, but it's a fuzzy limit, though. What do you mean with backfiring it? There is always the risk of magic playing possum again, but since what happened last time they have been very thorough with magical-analyzing it. Knights of the new oath are magically distinct and the effect of not following the oaths looks more like a diminished quantity of magic, while the old oath produced something akin to... visible damaged. The metaphor I was told was 'a small flower instead of a withered flower', if that makes sense."

"Hm, I don't think I'd risk being damaged like that if I didn't have backups, but maybe you're sufficiently confident in your ability to hold to the oath to risk it."

"Also, its pretty much the only way to get immortality in my world. Unless your backups can be done with just technology?"

"They can. I'm backed up on half a dozen servers in various places throughout Institute space, not to mention the other forks of me that are running around." He frowns, "Unfortunately, uploading tech is classified as critical technology, us explorers don't carry the needed tech for fear of capture."

"Is this a time to mention that Bar can provide basically technology that isn't alive, magical or bigger than her countertop?"

Zahn steeples his fingers and sighs. "Uploaded people require some maintenance, though depending on what body type it can be of the variety of once every few centuries. They tend not to be able to be magic users in my world, they can use magical artifacts though. I do worry about giving out certain technologies without someone to supervise but if you're going to go that direction, I'll do my best to help you do it as safely as possible."

Temperance blinks. "Uh, I mentioend that not because I want you to force you to do anything. I mentioned because now anyone can go to Bar and ask after your technology. Well, not directly your technology, but they can ask for things with certain capabilities and narrow down from there."

"I suppose I should speak with this Bar then. Although, if the multiverse is as flexible and varied as you say, I doubt that mine is the first or only to make our breakthroughs. In all likelihood, I can only hope that the patrons of this establishment will use what they obtain responsibly."

"Yeah, can't say every patron here is going to be nice. It sounded relevant to mention even if it turns out your method isn't the best."

"I would be more worried about competence than benevolence. The institute's technology would be more dangerous in the hands of a well intentioned buffoon than a careful competent villain even if both would be a terror."

"Well, there is a minor cheat that might help: You can publish a book about the subject, Bar will have it available as long you sell at least three copies. You can then talk about anything that you would wish to tell to the well intentioned buffoons across the multiverse."

"Hm, I think the first contact manual is available for sale. There are likely some parts of it which aren't optimal for this circumstance but it has a good guide to how we usually run technology rollouts how to deal with various real or imagined magic systems or cultural quirks, stuff like that. It's a lot more complete than anything I could write myself."

"What is the title? If it is about first contact, then maybe the person might not think of asking Bar about. And if you can't write something yourself, maybe you could ask someone else to write it? ...Actually, maybe if you could just wholesale get the first contact book and give it a new title that might work."

"Hm, does Bar do format conversion? Actually, I should probably have this conversation with Bar." He walks over to the counter. "Do you have a vocal interface then?"

No. But I can write napkins. Would you like a drink? The first is free.

Zahn makes a confused facial expression. "I'm not sure what you could offer me, this body doesn't have taste buds or a digestive track. Maybe I'll save that offer in case I come back in a body that can appreciate it better. Can you do format conversion?"

I can't. But someone could rig a way using things I make available or that themselves own.

"Can you sell paper and ink?" He turns over his shoulder to Temperance. "I'm probably going to go really silent for a couple minutes and then I'm going to stow some of my skin, please don't worry too much."

"Okay, but why?"

(Bar can sell paper and ink.)

"If I'm going to edit a textbook down to a form that can fit on paper and optomize it as an introduction to my world for people who won't have The Institute to help supervise I won't have the brainspace to also carry on a conversation. As for the comment about stowing some of my skin I can write faster if I don't need to limit myself to the shape of human hands and writing with a pen."

"Ah, alright. Good look then. I am going to edit my oath a bit further."

He spends a bit being silent then negotiated with bar to get the inks and paper he needs along with materials and tools to bind the books. Then the skin on his hands seems to be pulled away revealing a mass of metal resembling nothing so much as a tree of needles. The trees blur into motion placing ink on paper and bringing three copies of a book into existence. It takes a good twenty minutes or so before he's done but he's willing to talk once he starts printing them.

"Would be insensitive to ask if you're a robot?"

"Whether I'm a robot is a complicated question. My mind is copied from a biological human but my body has no biological components."

"Huh, I feel like answering that statement with the trivia that one of the new kind of Oathknight has produced someone that can turn into a robot."

"Do you mean they turn themselves into a robot or that they can turn other people into robots? Also, robot is a pretty broad category."

"Turn themselves into a robot... Well, their body is made of metal and- hold on a moment," Temperance asks a picture from bar.

There is a newspaper with a picture of said oathknight. It's clearly not just a futuristic armor there is a hollow space where the abdomen should be the torso is supported by a system of pistons connected to the hips.

He raises his eyebrows. "Well, that's surprising. I'm not sure what to make of that."

"In what sense?"

"You're magic is more, showy than mine tends to be. Also, human transformation isn't something I think we've found a way to do yet, the stuff you had mentioned previously sounded more like putting on a different set of clothing."

"Ah, no. The two forms are sort of... separate? If you're harmed in one, you're not harmed in the other and vice-versa. Even if the other form looks like you with a different outfit."

"Then yes... that sounds very different from my magic. I don't really know how I would begin to accomplish that."

"Technically, I don't think anyone actually knows how. Maybe the Lady does, I wouldn't be surprised."

"Well that's the other big difference. My magic does exactly what it's told to do, though sometimes it doesn't learn quite the pattern you intended."

"What do you mean with that? Not learning the pattern you intended?"

"Magic isn't smart, not like a person is smart. But you can try to teach it things. If you try to teach it something and mess up you can end up with not quite what you intended. Like you could try to teach magic what a bird is and if you didn't point it in the right directions it might decide that squirrels are birds since they're animals of similar size that spend a lot of time in trees."

"Can you unteach the magic or edit some parts out?"

"Yes, you can try as many times as you want. You can also either freeze a concept that magic has learned or tell it to try to keep learning. Letting it keep learning sometimes has weird consequences. Someone told magic to pay attention to boats a few thousand years ago and that category now includes submarines hovercraft and aircraft carriers, also certain airplanes and space ships."

Temperance giggles. "Why not all airplanes and space ships?"

"I think the rule it learned was things that float in water at least some of the time, and aren't animals."

"Uh... driftwood? plastic bottles? hell, a surfboard?"

"I think there might have also been a minimum size, or maybe a holds people clause. I didn't see any of those when I was looking. I did see single person kayaks though."

"Still, that is both interesting and funny. I suppose the concept is not too much of a hindrance?"

"Yeah, the weird and troubling stuff more happens when you're trying to make magic learn to do something rather than recognize something. Some of the people who got my magic before and left notes... their research is useful but it is not something I would have done. Messing with people's heads is pretty hard to do safely and even with an undo button people got hurt in the process."

Temperance shivers. "Ugh. What sort of stuff they did?"

"That's not precisely the right question. It's more what happened in the course of their research. I mean I personally don't think I'd ever use a memory removal effect but the final effect is pretty safe. And the quick language acquisition effect is part of what my standard translation magic is based on. The unintended effects of the memory modification was mostly either erasing the wrong thing or too much, or too little. The translation thing had weird effects, like making the person only able to speak the new language, or not able to speak at all, or switching between languages without noticing."

"Ah, ok. That is way less horrible than I was expecting. Still, I have a half-sister that would likely be terrified out of her mind over that."

"The fact that my magic system can do mind reading and mind alteration is part of the reason why I have strong anti-magic shields on my body."

"Makes sense. Any idea if it works on other kinds of magic?"

"I honestly don't. I don't think we've encountered any magic that wasn't built on top of the magecrafter system before."

"How would it interact with voluntary mind-reading? I have that."

"My antimagic is a brute force thing, no exceptions for being convinced to let beneficial magics affect me. How do you have mindreading?"

"Remember when I mentioned the subspecies of human? I am one. We all got voluntary telepathy."

"That explains it then. You're welcome to try, I'm not too worried about my mental privacy and my superiors wiped anything too classified from my head before I left."

"Okay..."

"Uh, is not actually something that would happen by accident, but it sounds relevant to mention. Individuals of my species have extras on top of their standard telepathy. ...Mine is mental alteration."

"Well, now that you said that, I'll be vetted a lot more thoroughly when I get home regardless of what happens. Might as well."

"Heh, okay."

Mind poke. Hello?

"Did you do something? I didn't feel anything."

"I did. I sent a 'hello'?"

He shakes his head. "Nope, that's at least suggestive that my antimagic works on your magic. It could be the weirdness of this place though."

"The telepathy works on Bar."

"I more meant that whatever is powering my magic here works differently than what I'm used to so it could also be translating our magic in the same way it translates our speech."

"Ah, that does sound like something Milliways might do."

"Yeah, this place is kinda weird, it's nice, but it's weird. So, any other burning questions in your mind?"

"Nothing in particular. I probably should get back to my oath drafting."

"Alright, it was great meeting you. Perhaps we'll meet again someday."

"Let's hope!"