"That'd correspond to some of the more relatively disturbing possibilities that I'm sure hoping aren't true, because I'm kind of screwed that way, either by being the only real person here, or by being responsible for the existence of a whole lot of other people many of whom seem not to be leading very fun lives right now."
"But no, my main theory is that I was nonrandomly sent to a world where masochists exist, nonrandomly dropped at the Worldwound where I'd run into Carissa Sevar, and by the way, it so happens that whatever selection process that world used to pick the people who'd be my students, would happen to run across Ione and Pilar and also somewhere in there a girl who's working against the rest of us."