"It seems like it'd complicate a personal life," says granddaughter-in-law.

Nod. "Elves don't have children in times of strife, but it can still put a strain on marriages. There are ten of my father and only one of my mother, I don't think either of them are very happy about it."

"Then why did he do it?"

"They were estranged and he needed to invent something important quickly."

"You can't, uh, merge?"

"There are people working on it but not at present. We don't have nearly as much control over the chips that do our brain backups as we'd like, though research is careful because there's some potential for coercive use if we got good at the wrong things."

"Good at the wrong things?" asks Soyok's daughter.

"Inserting memories, altering them... our chips have a natural capacity that allows us to make binding commitments about our future behavior and if you could insert those you could trivially bind people to any course of action you wanted..."

"Oh."

"That's another one we don't explain because it's hard to verify and accordingly damaging to trust. At home it's really useful, and for distribution of powerful dangerous magic, but not so much anywhere else."

"It does sound convenient, you could cut out a lot of enforcement details," says Soyok's wife.

"Elves don't tolerate imprisonment well, and until we met other peoples our law enforcement consisted of 'oath not to do that again'. Cheap and perfectly effective! - which it would cease to be if we got good with editing the chips, another reason to have research on that topic very carefully contained. It can be very badly exploited, though, I wouldn't impose it on species that don't have it."

Blues nod.

"If any of you would like to drop by Ambaróna sometime - we don't have a regular public shuttle because the daeva aren't supposed to go wandering but the teleport building in Vanda Nossëo does private runs for anyone I tell them to expect - it's a very dense daeva-constructed city of the kind you might now be in the process of planning and I would be delighted to arrange someone to show you around and introduce you to people."

"That sounds nice," says Soyok's wife.

"Lovely. I will have someone get in touch to pick a time. It has been a real pleasure meeting you all."

"Thank you for coming," Soyok says.

"Thank you for everything you're doing, and thank you for letting us know when we can do better at it."

Soyok's daughter restrains a comment. Soyok says, "You're welcome."

"Is there anyone you'd like to be introduced to, or should that wait until you're not as busy at home -"

"Like who?" wonders a grandson.

"It seems like some recent members might be useful, to compare notes on what to expect - voting blocs I can imagine having a lot of political interests in common with you - the Orthodox Aratothalians have their own planet now and a set of stringencies surrounding food production and preparation that everyone else finds very onerous, I don't know if you have pollution oversight people who'd find it useful to exchange notes with them on compliance monitoring - or if you'd rather focus your energy at home right now, people who can get you magic and resources for that - I think sometimes people just benefit from having a sense of what an independent member planet not remotely invested in our mission and peaceably doing its own thing looks like..."

Nods from various blues at various list items. "Someone said we had a lot in common with orcs," says granddaughter-in-law.

"The kids. Orcs probably average ten apiece, and only stop at that point if there are enough grandbabies around to suffice instead. They build the most outrageous playgrounds full of adorable orc kids and they export such lovely children's toys. They've got themselves dozens of planets by now - we were fortunate to have more space for them before they filled up their first world. I can absolutely introduce you to some orc polities."

Nod.