After the Plane Shift, Joy Jenkins, her cameraman, and I arrive on a steep slope covered with grass; large rocks are everywhere, and looking around, there’s a lot of mountain peaks in the distance. The air is a little thin and cold.

“Why’d you bring us here?”

“Sorry Joy, but for now the transition between planes of existence is a little uncertain; I can’t pick an exact arrival point, I - and everyone traveling with me - ends up hundreds of miles away from wherever I target.” For now. But next level, at 12th, I gain access to 7th level spells, and that gets me Greater Plane Shift from Spell Compendium on the Cleric list, which has pinpoint accuracy. That’ll be nice. “Today? We apparently landed on the side of a mountain. It’s an easy fix, I’ve got another spell that gets us to a specific point on the planet, so just one more and we’re OK. Ready?”

Without waiting for an answer, I cast Greater Teleport out of my prepared arcane spells, using my Mythic Ring to add Reach and Chain spell, transporting us to Arcana, and I follow it up with Heroic Fortune and use the Hero point that spell grants to recover the casting of Greater Teleport.

This puts us at our destination: Arcana. Which isn't very impressive, yet. For now, it's basically a few acres of flat land (mostly sheets of stone, but with dirt areas that are starting to sprout grass) with a couple of pointless buildings surrounded by ocean. There's a lot of "people" just sort of milling about: Mostly-human looking folks with silver-white hair the color of a lightning strike and pointy ears with longbows, some winged people with longswords and a large snake tail instead of legs, and muscular dog-headed people with greatswords… all of whom are visibly and obviously female, most of whom are wearing simple robes. They're just kind of milling around, looking out at the sea. There's also a ten foot tall woman with a chest matching mine and six wings milling about, but she seems to be meditating.

The place makes a good dumping ground for my permanent Summons, and the fake angel is here to slowly expand the place when I don't care to spend my own time to do it faster.

"Welcome to Arcana," none of the summons, nor my fake Solar, really react when I speak, "It's not much yet, but it's growing."

Joy looks around in wonder, "These are your citizens?"

I shake my head, "No. They're summons. They're lacking something I consider essential to personhood: Free will. Those don't have it. They have intelligence, creativity, the ability to make decisions, the ability to learn… but they literally can't refuse me. They might tell me they can't accomplish a particular task, but they will never tell me they won't even try. At the end of the day, they're just puppets to my will. Little more than automatons."

"What if I ask them to do something?" Joy seems curious.

I consider, "Then as long as it doesn't conflict with something I've told them, they'll say … yes or no … based … on…." their alignment, knowledge, personality, experiences… basically for the purposes of that decision, they'd have free will. Ah, man. I'm going to need to reconsider that 'intelligent summons and constructs are not actually people' thing now.

Joy reacts to my trailing off and my face's rather comical attempt at a frown, "So 'limited free will', then?"

"Possibly. I now have a bunch of philosophical thinking I need to do. I may need to reconsider my stance on their citizenship status. Maybe hold elections or something. But anything I say goes instantly and absolutely, so if I'm involved the elections are a complete farce if I say a simple 'vote for me' - because they all will, no matter how articulate my opponents… including my opponents themselves … ugh. OK, I'm going to be completely hung up on this one for a while."

Joy chuckles, "I have enough footage to keep my boss happy if you think you need to cut this short."

"I should show you the portable room thing. Hold a bit…" I pull out my key ring and pick the same Keyhome meeting room we just exited, "Here…" I open the door in thin air, "... non-euclidean geometry. Walk through the doorway, you're in the meeting room. Walk around the doorway, and there's no meeting room behind it. A bona-fide spatial discontinuity."

As her cameraman walks circles the door, then walks in, walks around, and back out, Joy Jenkins continues to interview me, "And how much did you say these are worth?"

"They have a list price of a billion on my government price lists."

"And you had like twenty or thirty keys on that ring. Does that make you a multi-billionaire?"

I chuckle, "They're only worth that much if someone is actually buying them for that price. I mostly listed them there because they were hard for me to make at the time, and I didn't really want to sell them, but I'd accidentally shown one off. I've improved my methods since then and they're much easier to make now, but I can't just sell them to anyone: They're a smuggler's wet dream and a custom's agent's worst nightmare. Even one of these is basically the same volume as two or three full sized shipping containers... and it just looks like a normal key. It's one thing to sell a few to a government agency that won't overly abuse them, it's quite another to sell them to anyone who can cough up the cash. Sure, it'd be legal to sell them, as they have many perfectly legitimate uses. Portable shops, meeting rooms, storage, garages, housing, and on and on … but it's super easy to abuse, so …" I shrug.

"So basically, 'The world's not ready'?"

"Pretty much. The same holds true for a lot of the stuff I can do. Laws don't really cover me, because everyone thought what I can now do was against the laws of physics, so nobody bothered to seriously think about the implications of people doing things that simply couldn't be done. So I'm doing something most people should do anyway: Trying to think about consequences and ethics first. Which is why the realization that I might be surrounded by people now is giving me the heebie-jeebies. And I can't ask them their feelings on the matter because they're completely subservient to me."

"Well, if you'll take us back I'm happy to let you…"

Not really listening to her, I continue talking, "... *I* can't ask them, because they're completely subservient to *ME*. But if I hire a reporter to investigate …" I look at Joy.

Joy pauses, "I have an exclusive contract with Channel 9 'on time' news at the moment, plus a non-competition clause for a few years after that's terminated."

"Hmm… still, the approach is - in theory - sound. But yes, I can get you home. You ready?"

She nods, as does her cameraman, and I again watch as he flips the lever briefly while I Teleport us all back to the states. Due to the need of Joy and her cameraman to drive their van back to the station, I plop us all down in my warehouse parking lot.

"Oh, are you still doing a free day on the flight?" - the cameraman, surprisingly. Or maybe not so much.

"I am. Just don't use it for anything meaningfully illegal, all right?" I issue something close to the standard warning as I cast my spell on Joy and her cameraman, "Done. How's it feel?"

The cameraman flies up a few feet, twirls around, and comes back down, his camera still rolling, "I'm going to be able to get some great shots… thank you."

Joy chimes in as she floats a few inches off the ground, "I guess I can risk taller heels now… thanks for the third toy."

Her cameraman considers, and counts on his fingers a moment, as he puts the camera away and turns to Joy: "We're off the air now… OK, this will bug me. You said 'another' with the language thing, and a 'third' just now. What was the first?"

Joy turns beet red, but gives something of an answer, "Let’s just say my cosplay is going to be some seriously next level stuff at the next anime convention."

The cameraman seems a little slow, "Your con costumes are already some seriously next level stuff as it is, the only way you could be more cat-like is if you could actually remold your flesh… wait…" but he gets there. Of course, I'm hardly one to talk some days. Maybe most days, if I'm honest.

Joy nods.

The cameraman turns to me, "If you can set her up to just change into a kitty person and back…" I nod, "... can I get…" he whispers in my ear.

I consider a moment, yes, there's that other races section for tieflings, so it's viable. He gives me a surprisingly detailed description, and.. yes, I can do that. "Sure. But you might want to skin down a bit so you don't wreck your clothes like Joy did."

"What are you talking about? Her clothes are…" he trails off as I dismiss the illusion, and he can see just how wrecked her outfit is, what little is left of her bra having fallen down when nobody could see and dragged her shredded shirt with it, leaving her "can't complain" chest visible.

I cringe, "Sorry Joy, but I have to manually cancel the illusion, and I can only do that nearby, so I had to get it before you left."

She takes a breath as she sees about tying what's left of her clothes back up, "It's… I’ll live. The camera isn't rolling, I’ll be fine. And apparently I won't be the only one." She gives her cameraman a meaningful look.

He sighs and strips down to his underwear. He's no James, but he's OK. Little bit of a beer belly, but there's some muscle there. I cast the spell he requested… and he turns into a cat person remarkably similar to Joy's form, but a slightly different color scheme and one other detail. He has white fur with a blue heart around his tail, a tiny waist a man could wrap his hands around, a big behind begging to be slapped, bazookas on his chest bigger than his head, green eyes, and cat-like retractable claws… but he's definitely still a "he" as his nine inch rod stretches out his underwear, and his new silky tail bursts out and snaps them.

Joy blinks, "You wanted to be the first officer?"

The cameraman chuckles, his voice now quite high, "I guessed you'd be the captain, and wanted to match. Was I right?"

Joy answers by shifting her form to the one I gave her. The two smile, then shift back and get themselves covered wordlessly. I wave as they climb into their van.

As they drive away… wait … did I just smuggle these two across the border? Twice? Should I be taking people through customs? Oh well, next time.