It takes twenty minutes for Svanhildur Bowie of WorldHop to show up. He's a tallish white guy with brown hair and a blue business suit. Slightly tanned, freckles, and blue eyes. Clean shaven, and horn-rimmed glasses.

I recognize him mostly because he's the one that stops and stares. Most people just look at it, guess it's a screen of some kind, and move on. I wave, duck under the ropes from the stanchions keeping most people out (my workers have been walking people out all day), and walk over to him.

"So you must be Mr. Bowie?"

"... that's some display screen… ah, yes. I'm Svanhildur Bowie. I take it you’re Chris Carlson?"

"I am, and I can assure you, that's not a screen."

"Look, I'm sure you've got all kinds of fancy tech, but I can see the tarmac behind it through the windows on either side. It's a very impressive TV screen, or projector screen, or whatever… but that's all it is."

I grin like the cat that ate the canary, "Well, that's easy to test. Go touch it."

"Pft. No point. It's obviously…" he trails off as I toss a freshly Fabricated rock through the portal.

"As I said: New technology. I break a lot of assumptions. Where would you like to go?"

"... how about Hawaii? I could use a drink…"

"Sure, no problem. Come…"

He's very quiet as I lead him through the portal, and the park-like demiplanes. Ninety foot wide walkways in a spoke and wheel design, surrounded by lush vegetation practically bursting with fruits, berries, and nuts. I walk him out of the Texas zone to the "main hub," the eighteen gates from there to the Hawaii Hub, and pause.

"Any preference on which airport? There’s only seven for passengers."

He gives me a distracted, "Honolulu if you can…" as he looks at a ripe orange hanging from a tree.

"Feel free to snack, it'll grow back quickly enough."

He reaches out, grabs it, and peels… then looks around: "No trash cans? I don't think I've seen any restrooms either, and no water that's not a stream… this place is gorgeous, though…"

… oh, right. "So I have a few bugs I need to work out. I can have that rectified quite quickly." Very easy to use the Structure option of Create Demiplane to route water from the waterfalls to pipes, and set up restrooms and such from that falling water pressure; plenty of vegetation and space for making septic tanks and fields again via Structure. I can make trash cans at the same time, and set some Conjuration Sphere Companions to managing them via magic: The Destruction sphere is great for making things go away via the Disintegrate advanced talent, while Create Materials and Fabricate from the Creation sphere can do trash bags (also paper towels and toilet paper, no problem). I pause time, go set it up for all fifty-two of the applicable demiplanes, get back to where I was, and clap to trigger Conditional Favor and get me back into normal time. "Already done, in fact. Look behind you."

He looks, and sees a restroom building much like one would find in an outdoor park, flanked by trash cans, drinking fountains, and water bottle refill stations. And no, it wasn't there a moment prior. He walks over and touches it, feeling the solid stone construction.

Svanhildur turns back to me: "Did you dose me with LSD or something? This is not possible."

"My technology breaks a lot of assumptions about what isn't possible. Come on, let's get you that drink…."

I lead him through the Honolulu exit, and he stares out the window at the sun rising. Right… time zones. There's like a five hour difference between Hawaii and Texas right now.

Mr. Bowie checks his phone, and watches as the time updates, "Twenty minutes. We just walked from Houston to Honolulu in twenty minutes. And that includes the time I was standing there gawking. The world's fastest jet doesn't go that fast, and we walked." He's apparently familiar with this airport, as he starts heading to the exit.

I follow. After a bit of silence, I break it: "So… about your services…"

"Yes, you can have them. If you let us use your … transit system?" I nod, and he continues, "… until the job's done, we'll waive all shipping and handling fees, and yeah, we will ABSOLUTELY prioritize you. Because everyone will want a piece of this. And if we don't get in now, we won't have any airlines next year."

He pulls out a key, and unlocks the door to a barely labeled bar, and we walk in, even though the hours on the door say they don't open until 11. He walks behind the empty bar, joys something down on a leather-bound notepad behind the bar, grabs a couple of glasses, and pours two beers from the tap. He hands me one, downs the other in one go, and pours himself a second.

I take a sip - it's a heady ale with a hint of honey. "There’s better coping mechanisms than drinking."

"Yeah, well…" he takes a few chairs down off a table, and we both sit, "... unless you're going to charge through the nose… " he looks at me expectantly.

"I'm planning $100 a person, plus whatever taxes and fees apply."

He just shakes his head and continues, "...you are going to CRUSH all competition. Nobody is going to be able to keep up. Assuming you don't get assassinated, bought out, broken by antitrust laws, or crucified in the court of public opinion… and honestly, expect them to try all of it when they get wind of this… you are going to be alone in those airports within a few months."

"I'm not currently doing international travel…"

"Yeah, that's like 9% of air travel. You'll have EVERYTHING else, and you said 'currently'."

"... an assassin has a rather futile task, money is mostly meaningless to me, my airport access is part of an international treaty with the feds, and I can hire a lot of PR firms very quickly.  You may have seen one of my interviews after the Iran thing?  None of those are going to be serious problems."

He pauses, "'The Iran thing'... " he takes a breath, "No, I didn't catch them, I mostly avoid talk shows. So you're THAT Chris Carlson, the supposed goddess. Although having seen what you can do, I get why people say that." Svanhildur Bowie sighs, then frowns, "If money is worthless to you, why are you charging at all?"

Oh, that's simple, "Two big reasons: First, people almost never value or respect that which costs them nothing, and I've no interest in being treated like dirt. Second, it gives me better control over who has what, and gives a nice excuse to have guards at the doors."

He pauses, "Because once you go international, someone is going to try driving tanks through there."

"Sooner or later, yes. And the guards I'm using are loaded for tanks." My cleaning crew is, even. Disintegrate - whether Spheres or Vancian - is murder on large machines, and the portal itself makes a good choke point. And they've got class-A buffs all around to go with their casting.

"So what do your guards look like?"

"Oh, you've already seen a few. I have them handling tickets, cleanup, maintenance, and everything else."

"So those cute little girls that look like pushovers…"

"Can bench press your car, fly, shoot death rays, soak a hit from the main gun of a tank, make a nice martini, heal the sick, raise the dead (as long as they're not too dead), and many other things."

Svanhildur blinks a few times, "Dead is a spectrum now?"

"Yes. It's easier to repair a body where, say, the person got shot and died when their lungs filled up with blood than it is to repair a body that's missing the head entirely, and that's easier to fix than when the body isn't available at all; death by old age is particularly tricky…" I trail off, he's got quite the look in his eye. In fact, he's standing up, and gripping the table hard enough to turn his knuckles white as he looks me dead in the eye.

"Can you give me my daughter back?"

I give Svanhildur Bowie a more detailed look. His brown hair has just a few strands of white, he has the start of wrinkles on his forehead… maybe in his forties? And he does have the smell of whisky on him when all he’s been drinking here is ale. He could easily be someone’s father. And this is clearly eating him up. And it’s … possible.

“I just got through saying how hard it is varies… so it depends on a number of things. We’ll start with ‘what happened’, ‘how long ago’, and ‘what happened to her body’?”

“A stupid car crash a year ago. She was out drinking and while she had a designated driver who stayed stone cold sober… the pickup truck that ran a red light and T-boned her at eighty did not. The fact that the drunk driver died too is small comfort with my daughter taken from me. The coroner said he couldn’t really do anything, and we ended up going with cremation rather than a closed casket funeral… we scattered her ashes into the ocean.”

OK, so that needs True Resurrection or a few Wishes if we go Vancian; Supreme Resurrection if we go Spheres… the first requires I pull out a minion for ten minutes, the second I can do myself in one round… with three more to recover… and Spheres would take one minute. Not that the time spent matters overly much. But…

“I’ve reversed death for someone who didn’t worship me exactly once… because she got me through a VERY dark time in my life, and I’d come to love her.”

“I’ll give you anything… just… please…”

Given his reaction, I shouldn’t have mentioned that. This … is not something that should be held over someone. If I’m going to do THAT, it needs to be given freely, with no strings. And he’s so broken…

I let out a breath, “Without access to her body, I need to be able to distinguish her in an absolute sense from everyone who’s ever lived. Her full name, the exact date and place of her birth, the exact date and place of her death.  The more detail, the better.  Even at that, though… in the end, all I can do is open the door for her return. I don’t know where her soul resides, but if she doesn’t choose of her own free will to walk back through the door… I wouldn’t force her even if I could.” If there’s a body I actually have a way to do it… but I’d need the body, and it’s very yucky to pull off. I really don’t like necromancy.

He spends some time babbling through my asks, and I listen intently.  And - once I figure I have enough - I start focusing on my power….