self-devising bejeweled minds!

[incanted]

Bella stays with Brilliance as long as he needs. She has one or two conversations with politicians by brainphone at the same time, but she doesn't leave till he tells her he'd like to be alone, and then she goes. (She tells Lexi that she may have sourced her a Device.)

Comments

[withmypowers]

She laughs.

[incanted]

"You want to see everybody?" She looks around the room. "It'd be crowded for full size illusions but I could half-size 'em and they can all float."

[withmypowers]

"As amusing as that would be, I think I'd rather meet them in person when I get the chance."

[incanted]

"Okay. With any luck it's a short outage. I have better coin output than average and a few of the Bells without Jokers lean on me for larger coins - and Brilliance is the only person who can do the ten-pointers. They have some, but if they're stranded too long they might run low and have to cut corners on important Belling."

[withmypowers]

"You made yourself a verb," Matilda observes.

[incanted]

"We did. It's the whole curing-diseases-resurrecting-the-dead-playing-politics-ushering-in-post-scarcity bit we do when we get our hands on decent magic."

[withmypowers]

Matilda giggles.

[incanted]

"Oh, and colonizing space, we also do colonizing space."

[withmypowers]

"Space has been pretty thoroughly colonized in this universe."

[incanted]

"I don't see anybody living on the other planets in this solar system. Do you mean just conventionally habitable space?"

[withmypowers]

"I mean that if you take the goal of 'colonize space' to be 'put humans on more planets than Earth', which people on Earth tend to when they're discussing it theoretically, it has been done. There are something like a thousand inhabited planets across all the dimensions we know about, and plenty of room for expansion."

[incanted]

"Well," says Aurora. "This is gonna be interesting. Anyway, I'm also motivated by alleviating crowding on Earth itself. And any other crowded planets I run into."

[withmypowers]

"What's gonna be interesting?"

[incanted]

"Belling in a world with lots of humans all over the place. Amariah's looking at something a little similar because Alethia's a worldsheaf too, but if any of her subworlds have the tech or the magic for space colonization absent her help I haven't heard about it. I think Angela's universe has other human colonies besides the one she grew up on but she's being very leisurely about ascending on her home planet, I don't think she's touched anything else yet. Aegis's world has some aliens, and humans are just starting to colonize. Syntropy has aliens too, in addition to all the talking trees-and-stars-and-cats-and-stuff. Juliet's got to deal with several thousand species of demon. But everyone else is pretty much looking at the contents of the planet they started on as far as anyone knows, so this exact setup is new. I get to be a template for the next Bell in the situation 'unbeknownst to Earth, there are humans all over the place'."

[withmypowers]

Matilda laughs.

[incanted]

"Brilliance wasn't able to tell me a whole lot about the whole interdimensional civilization situation, he didn't have a great vantage point. What's it like? Why'd Earth get left out even after you joined up with the TSAB?"

[withmypowers]

"Left out of what?"

[incanted]

"The interdimensional civilization thing. It's not common knowledge and so far none of the miscellaneous presidents and prime ministers I've talked to knew magic existed. I didn't know till I met Brilliance."

[withmypowers]

"Well... yes," says Matilda, "exactly. Earth has hardly any mages. So of course the TSAB doesn't bother the rest of them; they're not going around creating dimensional disturbances."

[incanted]

"Is magic not common knowledge among non-mages in general? Is the TSAB just a free-floating enforcement organization that isn't associated with some kind of more civilian governance?"

[withmypowers]

"We're based on a planet called Mid-Childa. But the governing authority of Mid-Childa is vastly smaller than the jurisdiction of the TSAB. You know, come to think of it, I think Earth might be the only planet with a large enough population of non-mages that it's feasible for them not to know about magic. It's much more common everywhere else."

[incanted]

"Huh. Well, I'm gonna fix that," shrugs Bella, "do you want to, like, appoint a liason to help me not mismanage mentioning TSAB-relevant things to the general population? Bells are good at lots of things but it seems generally a good idea for us to outsource heavy PR and diplomacy when we can."

[withmypowers]

"Fix... what, exactly?"

[incanted]

"Magic not being generally known. I'm not just pulling a Stella - she visibly terraformed Mars and put a sign with her email address on it in front of the probes when NASA flipped - I'm working with Earthly authorities on presentation and timing, might as well throw in TSAB authorities too. I mean, it's obviously possible to be a mage and not know it for at least seventeen years," she gestures at herself and Lexi, "so you might find yourself with more to do Earthwise than you currently have unless you just want to leave it all to me?"

[withmypowers]

"Leave what all to you?" she asks patiently.