sweeping changes

[mind_game]

Jane has finally been updated in all of the "extra" worlds with no Bells, Jarvises, or other routine visitors to the peal, and she is conducting template sweeps in them.

[Hey,] she tells all the Jokers and all the Bells. [There's a Joker in world number twelve who wasn't there before I crashed. Can't find him online at all, though.]

Comments

[inhispockets]

"Tell how?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"She has an enchantress's aura that lets her see something called 'metacausality' - templates, the things that templates attract, that kind of thing. Auras develop if you do enough of a certain kind of magic. You can have one when you're older if you like."

[inhispockets]

"I can have magic? Are you sure you know more of me?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I did say," says Elspeth, "when you're older. Right now I'm not going to give you anything bigger than the smallest kind of wishcoin, and if you get up to anything particularly irritating with the triangles I won't distribute those either."

[inhispockets]

He snorts. "Yeah, that sounds more like it."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I can make you immortal, though," she adds casually.

[inhispockets]

"Why?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Well, if you died, then I'd have to go get you out of the afterlife, and I couldn't even do that if Jane happened to break again."

[mind_game]

"I'm not going to break again. I'm all snug in the tower."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Most people like being alive. Even most of you like being alive most of the time," Elspeth adds to the yet-unnamed Joker. "You don't have to go back where you came from. You don't even have to come home with me if you don't want to. There are plenty of things to do with being alive that aren't being mistreated."

[inhispockets]

"So... you want to make me immortal for me, not for you?"

He looks like he can't quite wrap his head around this notion.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Principally, yes. I mean, there's a sense in which just by being born in a world attached to the relevant afterlife you're already immortal. If you died, you'd be unconscious for a while, and you'd miss whatever went on during that time."

[inhispockets]

He shivers.

"Then... sure," he says, "I guess."

[her_imperial_radiance]

Elspeth torchables him. "There you go."

[inhispockets]

"...What, that's it? I don't feel any different."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Yes, that's it," she says. "If something ordinarily fatal happens to you, you'll reset on the spot; otherwise it doesn't affect much."

[inhispockets]

"Huh."

He looks speculative, but doesn't pursue the point.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Do you have a name you like? If you don't, one of your alts suggested 'Felicity'."

[inhispockets]

"Huh," he repeats thoughtfully.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Hmm?"

[inhispockets]

"'Felicity'. Not bad," he says. "I'll take it."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"All right."

[inhispockets]

He smiles.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I think it probably would be a good idea to have Glass in to look at you, if you don't mind."

[inhispockets]

He shrugs. "Okay."