good guesser

[lifes_sake]

Cam is taken entirely by surprise when his office door doesn't lead to his office, but instead to a bizarre sort of bar.

He has Grace and his manual - he always carries them, in a backpack sort of thing with one cross-chest strap - and not much else on him to handle this situation. It might be Iggy. It might not be Iggy. He is not sure.

He looks around, concludes only that he is confused, and closes his eyes and listens instead.

Comments

[cross_and_bow]

"...So, you talk to stuff, and it talks to you, huh?"

[lifes_sake]

"Yup. In the Speech. Anyone can learn the language but you have to do some rigmarole prior to or at the latest during puberty to actually get anything to do anything beyond talk back."

[eversomuchfun]

"What pray tell are the other options?"

[lifes_sake]

"Basically, I can tell stuff to do stuff, and it'll listen to me," says Cam. "I try not to be pushy with anything smart, and there's some stuff it's not wise to do, like screwing with the weather, but I can fix broken things or ask stuff about what's been going on around it. Mostly I convince seeds to genetically alter themselves so I can distribute them places that could use improved crops. Matilda's mom helps with all the stuff that needs legal majority, but the company's mine, Seedling Enterprises. I do seeds because nothing I've figured out in pharmaceuticals or whatever scales well, but I can make the fancy rice and potatoes breed true once I've talked them into changing to begin with."

[cross_and_bow]

"I wonder if I can just wish myself a wizard in this sense of the word," muses Juliet. "Any reason not to try it, Cam?"

[lifes_sake]

"Uh, I dunno if wishing would interrupt the process or not, but new wizards have this habitual problem where The Lone Power - I call it Iggy, that's how it introduced itself to me when it was pretending to be a rock - tries to kill them. So there's that. But you're pretty thoroughly magicked up, so maybe it couldn't make any headway."

[cross_and_bow]

"I already died," says Juliet carelessly. "If it happens again I don't even have to make the round trip through Downside anymore, I just reset where I am."

[eversomuchfun]

"It's very convenient," Sherlock says brightly.

[lifes_sake]

"Tell me of this 'Downside'," says Cam.

[cross_and_bow]

"It's an afterlife common to a number of worlds, and - sometimes new ones can be hooked up, but I can't add yours. Amariah has the same problem; the Downside admin says her world has a competing afterlife. I can make you able to torch - that's the reset - which I recommend unless you know and are fond of whatever you have at home instead."

[lifes_sake]

"I haven't a clue but I wouldn't bet on it being Disneyhades. Set me up."

[cross_and_bow]

Juliet sets him up. "Downside used to be terrible, but we stormed the place and got the admin's attention and talked her into installing Jane and otherwise giving everything a Bellish touch," she says. "We're working on setting up our respective worlds to receive large numbers of dead people, but you won't have that issue unless you want to open up to immigration until we figure out your afterlife, and Amariah's in line ahead of you."

[lifes_sake]

"I really do need this list of people," Cam says.

[cross_and_bow]

"Yeah, sure, let's show you the Belltower." Teleportation!

[lifes_sake]

Cam glances around, spies the Bellbook, takes out Grace, sets her on top of it, and says, "Make friends."

"Okay," trills Grace.

[eversomuchfun]

"Well," Sherlock remarks, "that is adorable."

[mind_game]

"Hi, Cam," says Jane, manifesting a face. "I'm Jane. I'm a multiversal ansible network. Can I eat your Internet?"

[lifes_sake]

"Uh, that sounds kind of ominous, and some computers are reasonably intelligent - not like you, but enough that I'd be a little concerned about you eating them," Cam says. "Whatever that means."

[eversomuchfun]

"Jane can manage not to eat intelligent computers under some circumstances," says Sherlock.

[mind_game]

"I'm not sure if Jarvis is the same kind of intelligent he has in mind," Jane says. "He can apparently talk to all kinds of things. But yeah, I can avoid nibbling on specific things you want me to steer clear of."

[lifes_sake]

"I don't have, like, a Rolodex of computers that I don't want eaten," Cam says. "Just general nervousness around eating. I've been a pesco-pollo vegetarian for about two years now on the basis that a goat told me she didn't want things to eat her and that chickens are really dumb. I'd have to talk to more computers than I have to get an idea of how bright they are when they haven't belonged to a wizard for ages. Grace is smarter than my laptop, but Grace is pretty much smarter than anything else that isn't me or Matilda."

[eversomuchfun]

"This Matilda you keep mentioning - who's she?"

[lifes_sake]

"Why, are there nine of her too?"

[cross_and_bow]

"There's one person in our sphere of notice who's called Matilda, but name collisions also exist the usual way - we have two non-matching Alices and so on," says Juliet.

[lifes_sake]

Cam opens up Grace to a new blank page and coaxes a sketch of Matilda into existence.