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

[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.

[cross_and_bow]

"Yep," says Juliet, inspecting it. "Shell Bell knows one of those, she gets invited to Bell parties. She's not from any Belled world, though, she just encountered Shell Bell in Milliways."

[lifes_sake]

"Transcribed!" Grace chirps, and Cam picks her up and flips easily to Shell Bell's entry with her guided paging help. He scans the profile. "Huh. Okay. That'll be interesting."

[eversomuchfun]

"Cam also has a Joker named Jellybean," Sherlock mentions.

[cross_and_bow]

"Oh, that's useful, you won't have to put out a job ad for a mint," says Juliet. "You dating yours?"

[lifes_sake]

"Yeah," says Cam; Grace shows him minting information. "Well, this is a fucked-up magic system, but yes, I can see Jellybean helping..."

[cross_and_bow]

"Enchanting channel, too," says Juliet, "that's relatively new, Rose brought it in. You know, I'm not sure what to extrapolate about your sexual orientation from you dating your Joker."

[lifes_sake]

Cam reads about enchanting. "It'd be silly to try to extrapolate when you could ask. I'm bi." He glances up from Grace. "You want to test my claim?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Oh lord," mutters Juliet. "Try Amariah, she's got this habit of test-driving boys for the rest of us."