I'm an elf with substantial powers. I'm in a hotel or conference center, and the FBI and local cops are investigating me and other magic-workers, fearing terrorist conspiracies from elves or oni [Japanese demons].

I cooperate. In fact I wish they'd hurry up and invent a magic detector; they seem not to have any way to tell if magic's going on except deduction from results. If they don't invent one, I plan to try! We elves don't like the idea of oni taking over Earth any more than humans do. Oni are mean.

Run a gauntlet of three cops I've met before. One does run a wand over me, but it only detects metal. Well, magnetic fields. I actually pause, say "Don't panic, I'm going to run a test spell, see if your wand detects it." No. Damn. This is their best so far... and it's crap.

Outside the lobby, tourists and picnic tables. I see a huge mayfly--feet and wingtips fully 10-12 cm apart. But non-biting, of course--they all are. This Earth has an oni plague, not a mosquito plague...

And the two other species, that should be allied to stop it, are still wary and not coordinating.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• FBI & cops investigate me: literal! Five weeks ago, two G-men and two local cops came to our door, looking for a house trading illegal stuff & threatening people on the Net. Our web provider Comcast told the FBI we must be criminals since our web usage pattern was weird--too many strange names and searches (Duh. We're a co-op house full of artists, not a single-family home). We endured Comcast selling our usage data to advertisers, but this is the last straw! We're dumping them and switching to Monkeybrains, who vow not to track or sell customer data (cost way less, too!)
• Giant harmless mayfly: bugs all over our house this week--but fruitflies, not mosquitoes.
• Three peoples on parallel Earths: Wen Spencer's fantasy/sf books Tinker, Wolf Who Rules, Elfhome and Wood Sprites. Humans, elves & onis evolved on alternate Earths. Despite friction, elves and humans can get along, but onis are sociopathic, and the other two species need to cooperate to contain them.
• Elves are OK, but onis are sociopathic: my dream agrees with Wen Spencer's assessment--normals and fairies (whether just sexually or cognitively queer) can get along okay... but onis are another story. As Jon Ronson's creepy sociology book The Psychopath Test points out, you can't get along with someone who doesn't want to--would rather exploit you. Spencer and Ronson both wrote well before Trump's election, but my dreams certainly apply the oni metaphor to it. Not just this crop of leaders, but leaders as a whole test out more callous than average; and, more often than chance, monsters. Yet we follow them--or enough do.

MONTHS LATER

We dumped Comcast, and switched to Monkeybrains. They've been great.

I'd like to dump our sociopathic leaders too, but that's a bit harder. I do vote. Do you?

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