"I bet you could pull it off. And if you didn't have to disassemble between two identities."

"Huh. I hadn't quite thought about it that way, but there might be something to that," he says. "I should tell people my life story more often if it results in such interesting insights."

"You probably get unusual results off me.

I should sleep."

"Yes, you should." And they are coming up on their destination, how convenient. "Goodnight. See you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow." And no, he can't sleep, now he has to wrangle his brothers. 

Well, Miles can sleep. If he could somehow donate his night's sleep to Maitimo instead, he would, but Maitimo is the one who has to do the politics and Miles is the one who needs to keep to a once-a-day sleep schedule at least most of the time, so here we are.

He goes back to his shuttle. He sleeps. He emerges in the morning.

Brothers are not about to make anything worse, at least. 

Well, nobody's standing on the shore requesting his attention, so he checks in with the engineers who are working on getting his shuttle powered and then goes across the lake and checks in on the sound recorder project and then maybe he'll be able to tell whether Maitimo is awake and/or wants anything from him.

He's awake. He would love it if Miles would go talk to these ten people, he thinks they'll hit it off. The list is not in Maitimo's handwriting. Macalaure's sitting there looking amused. 

"Sure," says Miles, glancing between them in search of the joke.

"It's just good to have him back."

"Yeah," Miles agrees. "All right, and where shall I find these people?"

"They should come when you ask for them. I am the King and everything, I think I'm supposed to have that much power."

Miles laughs. "Fair enough. I'll meet your ten people, then." He can consider it a start on the 'get to know all the Noldor' project. If he tries hard enough, maybe it will only take him one thousand years!

I think I'd have hurt feelings! Can I prohibit you from surpassing me at people?

He giggles. No, but you can ask it as a personal favour.

Take two thousand years to become personally acquainted with the entirety of the Noldor. As a personal favor. If you need it for effectiveness reasons you may learn all but one of them as fast as you can, but pointedly avoid that one person until it's been two thousand years so my ego is soothed. 

I'd better make it at least a handful of people or that one remaining Noldo is going to feel very snubbed.

That's your lookout, isn't it?

Do let me know if you need anything. 

Will do.

Off he goes to meet people, then. With a list and everything. How official. Who's first?

First person is in charge of surveying. He is flattered and confused that the King wanted them to meet. He's been trying to figure out where they can most reasonably start mining. Mining would most urgently have been for coal and iron, but maybe now they should be mining for something else? Anyway, here's how they were going to do it, here's what their greatest logistical challenges would have been...

Miles gets out his reader to display his scans of the area and happily dives into discussing this problem. He has thoughts on many different aspects of this situation, and knows things like what else they should be mining for (copper and silver are going to feature heavily in the electronics!) and how to look for all these things on the scans. It's a fun time.

It's a delightfully productive couple of hours. They end it with a good plan for mining everything. 

Miles is very happy with his choice of King.

Next?

Medical technology! Elves heal fast and in Valinor there were Maiar and the Valar for everything they couldn't recover from. Now they're trying to invent a useful combination of magic and healing knowledge and it seems like Miles' world was way ahead of them on the one front and might be interested in the effects of the other.