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[lurkingkobold]

The kobold sits at Miles' kitchen table, working. A spool of twine she found someplace sits just at the edge of easy reach, with her knife beside it; she's taken several lengths of twine from it already, and added a variety of knots to them and sometimes tied them to each other, and laid them out carefully.

The twine is just twine, and the knots are just knots; there aren't any words encoded in them for an outsider to see. But they're still a useful memory aide; six months ago the kobold used a single knotted rope much like these to remember which medicinal plants she needed to look for in her foraging, with each knot representing a plant. Today, she's thinking about a post for the forum - an overview of the various kinds of people who post there, and some thoughts on how to recognize people as people, and how it is and isn't okay to treat people, and what kinds of help might be available if someone's world isn't meeting those standards.

It's a lot to think about; she fully expects to still be at it when Miles gets home.

Comments

[lurkingkobold]

"I'm not sure I would have listened to you, either." She makes a face, then hugs him again.

"A couple other interesting things I learned with that - Eva, on the forum, seems to be part of Oifilei. And they had this orange rock with some kind of magic - if you hold it, and then someone else holds it, the other person can see what you were seeing and hear what you were hearing and things. Magic senses, too. Oifilei doesn't seem to sell them, but we might want to get one or two of those if we can."

[thisvorlunatic]

Hugs.

"That sounds potentially useful and/or entertaining."

[lurkingkobold]

Nod.

Next knot:

"Tyche... do you know anything about artificial people... artificial intelligences? Tyche is one, and I like them, but it seems like a lot of people worry about that kind of person."

[thisvorlunatic]

"There aren't any people like that in this world, that I know of, but people sometimes worry about what would happen if some of them appeared. The concern is that because of how a person like that would exist and interact with the world, they'd end up being very powerful, and since they'd be artificial people, if someone made a mistake in creating them or deliberately made them suited to some unpleasant purpose or they just turned out to be antisocial, they could cause a lot of damage and there's not a whole lot the rest of us could do about it. But that's all theory; like I said, as far as I know, no one in this world has ever made any."

He shrugs.

"If we encounter artificial intelligences on the forum, I have no particular reason to think they're any more worrying than anybody else."

[lurkingkobold]

She nods, relieved. "Tyche doesn't seem to be more powerful than anyone else, and they're nice," she grins. "I might take them to see my world, sometime."

Next knot... she pauses to consider.

"I haven't had time to go check, yet, but I think my old tribe might be in trouble. I'm not sure there's anything we can do about it even if they are, though."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh, boy. Well, of course if there's any reasonable way I can help, just let me know."

[lurkingkobold]

She nods.

"One thing is... if I'm right, the easiest way to help will be to bring them food, but I'll need to be very sneaky about it; if they figure out that something strange is going on, I don't know what they'll do but I don't think it will be anything good. The easiest way to bring them food is to put animals in their traps, but the animals here taste different than the ones in my world, even when they're the same kind, and I'm not sure why."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Hm. Could be ours are better fed," Miles says thoughtfully. "You could try one of the really wild goats from way up in the mountains and see if they still taste weird. Or if the animals don't have to be alive for very long or pass as normal animals while they are, Da could conjure some that were just like the ones in your world, but conjured animals have trouble moving around because demon magic isn't any good at making brains."

[lurkingkobold]

Nod. "One of those things might work. I'll check on them soon and see if they need help at all, I might be wrong altogether."

Next knot - she's about halfway through the knotted section of the rope, now. She pauses to consider how to word this.

"Did you see Novelty and Queen Hot, on the forum? It turns out that their tribe was eating humans, sometimes." She pauses again, to offer comfort if needed.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles winces.

[lurkingkobold]

Yeah. Hug.

"Novelty was good about it, and stopped right away when they figured out there could be a problem. Queen Hot... well, Cordelia went and talked to them, anyway, and their tribe won't be doing that any more. But there are other spider tribes, and the humans don't know yet that anything has changed, so there's still a lot of work to be done in that world."

Hug continues. This is definitely a situation that warrants it.

[thisvorlunatic]

Hug. Yes. Definitely hug.

"The multiverse is a very big place," Miles mutters to himself. "But dammit, somebody has to solve its problems."

[lurkingkobold]

Nod. "I haven't posted about it, yet, but I bet there are people from the forum who would help."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah." He smiles slightly.

[lurkingkobold]

Hug.

Next knot, two to go:

"I worked things out with Anda and Linsa, more or less. They told their chief about the forum, and I went with them to do that. I told them we might be able to help with their world - this was before I realized how much trouble the spiders' world was going to be - so they might be in touch about that. I did make sure they know that we've got other worlds to help, and they might need to wait sometimes."

[thisvorlunatic]

Friends like this are a blessing.

"From what I remember, their world sounds like it could use the help."

[lurkingkobold]

Nod.

"I didn't find out much more about that than what's on the forum, but, yeah, it seems like it. They just told their chief yesterday, though, and it seemed like he was going to need some time to get used to the idea of other worlds existing, so we've got a little time before they ask for anything, I expect."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles nods.

"Okay. What else?"

[lurkingkobold]

"Nicer news: Cordelia got me some cloaks to cast on, so we have invisibility cloaks now. They're pretty simple, but I expect they'll come in handy, or we can trade them. I've made about ten so far."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Fun," is Miles's comment on invisibility cloaks.

[lurkingkobold]

Grin.

"And last - you know that thread where Measure Twice was drawing pictures of people? They started talking, some, and their world doesn't seem too awful, but their situation is pretty bad; I'd like to invite them to move here. They want to know what the schools are like here and if their parents can come too."

[thisvorlunatic]

"The schools here are acceptable by most standards. It might take a bit of trickery to get them enrolled in one - they're human, right? - but I'm sure Mother can come up with something."

[lurkingkobold]

She nods. "I'm pretty sure they're human, yeah. It won't be a problem if they don't want to go to school, right?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"If they don't want to school there's no reason they have to. The law around here is that education has to be provided to everyone, not that they have to take it if they don't want it."

[lurkingkobold]

"Good." Miles may notice that she's rather emphatic about this, as if someone has recently and annoyingly disagreed with her on the topic.

Her rope is out of knots: "That's all I have notes on, there's other stuff that's happened on the forum that I don't know anything special about. I have been working on this," she gestures to the table.

[thisvorlunatic]

"And 'this' is...? Your notes format is interesting but not very readable."

[lurkingkobold]

"It's some ideas for a forum post about how to tell if someone is a person and what that means about how it's okay to treat them, I hope it will help us find some of these problems sooner. ...is there a better way for me to make notes? I still can't write."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Voice recordings?"

[lurkingkobold]

"Maybe. Part of how this helps is by letting me see everything at once, though."

[thisvorlunatic]

"You can dictate notes to a comconsole and have it turn them into text, it's not just the forum that does that kind of thing. Standard on almost any device with both input modes, in this world. Does that sound like more of an improvement?"

[lurkingkobold]

"That sounds like it might work," she grins. "Good thing I've still been working on learning English."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah, that'll be a help."