"My best friends are neither singularly competent nor such standouts-as-friends that they'd come up in a conversation like this and none of 'em have names that sound like Glynn," says Ivan.

"I don't even have anything like being a knight - Ivan's at least in his planet's military, I don't do anything in particular to meet absurdly good knightlike persons at," says Aurin. "I mean, I could have had a friend exactly like this Glynn person when I was seventy and just not remember it and he'd be dead of old age by now but that seems not to be how this... spree of alts... has been working."