"...okay. Who's the test for whether it works if you read from one I make? Who and when."

"You can get them at an arbitrary point in time? 

We should probably start with one of our pilots who was shot down over Brithombar, something safe like that."

"Yeah, should be able to get them whenever, by time or to a less precise extent by condition or proximity to death or something. Name somebody."

"Andúmeldë."

"Right before they died?"

"Yep."

Chip.

"And a blank chip, to write to?"

Cam provides.

And a minute later - "here you are, have a go."

Cam: has a go.

Live fighter pilot. She blinks at Findekano. 

"Hey!" he says. "This is secret, do not contact anyone."

"As you see fit," she says a little shakily. 

"It's been about six months, your sister's still alive, we are going to have a strategy meeting and then I may give you leave to tell people. As far as you can tell are you completely okay?"

"Yep."

Cam relaxes, a little.

He does not look happy, or even slightly so. "Andúmelde, the room next door's empty, can you collect yourself there? We're going to be having a strategic discussion and it's inconveniently going to have to be spoken aloud." And he extends a hand. And she takes it, and stands, and is perfectly steady on her feet. 

"Okay," Findekano says to Cam, "now I think we should bring Maitimo back."

"...I think this will be more conspicuous to the Enemy than she will. - also you need to teach me how to do the chip reading and writing thing."

"Sure. Any hope of keeping it from Hell in general, and would sending you a copy make that worse?"

"If you were a demon you could make a version of the information only I could open. If you just tell me how to do it, then we're fine."

So he explains how to do it. "The King needs to know and I don't expect me telling him to go very well."

"Well, I'm not sure he'll be thrilled that all this time I could have resurrected his father, either. You think Maitimo's right for the job?"

"Ordinarily I'd say 'yes definitely' but the Oath complicates it. See, we don't need the Silmarils now, and they're still sworn to rend as many worlds as needed to retrieve them, and I'm not positive whether that'll compromise their capacity to think about our strategic priorities at this point."

"Do you - by any chance - have enough information about how the chip data is organized that you could like. Find the bits with the oath in them."

"I wish. 

...we could retrieve him before he swore it."

"How long ago was that? - Also please be really sure you're not forking people for personal reasons."

"I wouldn't fucking tamper with his head for my sake. Eight months ago, a month before you met us. It's possible they'll still be able to strategize in a straight line with the oath but I am not certain, it was a really really dangerously phrased oath."

"What was the phrasing?"

"Be they foe or friend, Elf or orc, Maia or Vala, or any other being in all the reaches of the universe, no threat, no law, no love, no risk, and no other consideration shall protect from Feanaro, or from Feanaro's kin, anyone who claims, takes, keeps, or attempts to destroy a Silmaril. Death we will deal him until the universe's end. So swear we all and to the Everlasting Darkness damn us if in this deed we fail."

"...well that sounds like a really terrible idea. How long do you think it would take to do the find-the-oath-in-the-chip thing?"

"Do you know how much data a brain is? It's possible that it's, I don't know, apparent in some way - it'd be apparent if I ran the mind and perturbed it with oath-invoking scenarios, but that's not great - and if it's not immediately apparent I could look at it for years. You could give me an immediately pre-oath and immediately post-oath Maitimo's brain state and I could check for discrepancies and go from there?"

"Do you know exactly when he swore it?"

"Down to the day, not down to the hour or minute."

"Mmmmaybe I can do it naively."

He tries it. He gets two chips. "This one's pre, this one's post."

And he looks at them.

"The risk if I fail is that the oath's still binding but I erase it from his memory or something, and then as soon as he's told about it it's in full force, or even worse he swears something that competes with it and then we have to kill him..."

"...I don't want to erase that much of his not-being-captured life, I really don't want that. If you erase it from his memory and then we tell him it happened that should obviate the worse failure modes and he seems sensible enough to be caught up on what's happened before immediately reswearing it or something if it's not in force."

"Understood. I'd just rather have any Maitimo with his whole head than one I've been playing in when I don't know what I'm doing. Can I compare these two brain states to, like, a collection of a few thousand to train the computer on what typical brain state variation is, can I have brain states before and after a different oath..."

"Yeah." Chips, so many chips, god this is creepy.

"It's going to be chewing on that for a few hours," he says after a few minutes. He's shaking slightly. "If you have in mind anyone else who could do instead, I'm listening."

"I've unfortunately not been paying much attention to that level of affairs, I don't know who'd suit. Maitimo with up to date memories at least already knew."

"I don't suppose you can just pull the relevant three months for him to watch and catch up on, or anything like that."

"It has not been sounding to me like you have the sophistication to turn chip data into video. I could give him some of my notes, but that's not gonna be the same."

"I don't have the sophistication to turn chip data into anything, all I have is read/write and machine learning which at least in Valinor was not nearly good enough to deploy to problems like peoples' heads."

"Yeah, I don't think I can do that format conversion either."

He sighs. 

"We also may have gotten Mandos' attention. If he notices that there are live instances running around of minds in his halls..."

"...yeah, that probably should have occurred to me. He would have noticed the first one, though, this won't be qualitatively new."

"I think we don't awaken in Mandos if the chip's still intact. That's why I asked her first if she remembered it, though that's not definitive proof. If you're killed but the chip's intact you can just take it to Lorien and get a new body for it, it's more like a serious injury. This may be qualitatively new."

"Her remembering it would depend on Mandos sending as well as receiving data."

"Yeah. And no one remembers Mandos, when they're reembodied. Hopefully if he's stirred to come out and scold us he'll also, ah, notice the Enemy." - "you could check whether someone goes to Mandos if their chip's intact by checking for the instance of Finwe in Mandos."

"I'm not sure that'll be definitive. Presumably Finwë was in fact backed up in Mandos, and I might be able to produce a chip of him from that version whether or not he's conscious there."

"Right.

We could ask someone what Maitimo'd likeliest want, but I'm worried the answer is 'back with Oath intact'."

"...We could just do that. It's the closest outcome to 'not captured in the first place'."

"I don't feel good about trying to find and erase the Oath without damaging his head. That might be the best we can do. I suppose if they do go on a Silmaril rampage you can kill them and then maybe we'll have a better understanding of oaths or at least an advance directive."

"Charming thought," sighs Cam. "Here's him right before he died."

And he starts reading it. "Not the body from then, hopefully, since it had the bioweapon."

"I could actually make it without the virus in but yes, before then."

He hands him a chip. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

And: Maitimo.

He blinks, looks around at the two of them, stands quite steadily.

"It's been five months," Findekano says, "I have a summary of them for you, if you want."

"Yes."

"It's on this computer - demons can now do minds, might be better to keep that confidential. Cam is there a secure way to give it to him?"

"You can show it to him without dechiplocking it, you just have to scroll through the files and such."

So he does. They stand stiffly beside each other while Maitimo reads.

Thank you.

Didn't do it for you. I need someone to make this known to your father in a way that doesn't cause a tantrum.

Mmmhmm.

Destroying every single backup copy'll be for you but this wasn't.

If I'm understanding this right, you know, you can just ask Cam for a version of me you like better.

I did try to get you out from under the oath.

If we need a non-Oathed version of me that's fine, it might in fact be best to do things like have all risky operations carried out by versions of someone the Enemy already has -

We should say this aloud for Cam.

"Cam," Maitimo says, "I am coming up with all kinds of horrifying ways to exploit this if we decide we don't mind the Enemy knowing we can do this. How confident are you that we can keep it from him?"

"Not. The possibility was derivable from information he almost certainly has, and deriving the actuality would just require suspecting you were around."

"Then in that case we could start conducting military operations with only clones of people whose chips he already has, and set a dozen of my father to solving lightspeed and so forth faster."

"...I guess you could do that. - Alternately. This removes the major barrier to destroying Valinor."

"To what?" says Findekano.

"...yes," Maitimo says. "Let's do that."

"There are still the Maiar, I am not super thrilled about the Maiar."

"And the dinosaurs," Findekano says. "And every single other living thing smarter than a snail."

"The Enemy offered to stop the torture simulations," Maitimo says.

"And we can't warn them -"

"Can't warn them. They would apparently need a nanosecond to react and mustn't have it," Cam says. "The dinosaurs et al can be recovered as species albeit not individuals if anyone was attached, I can do eggs, demonic mammals can usually carry to term, there's animals in Hell."

"Hold out for a better deal," Maitimo says. "You kill the Valar and destroy Valinor for them and they never again harm another being, harm tightly defined."

"Oh yeah. I only get to do this once and it has to be fucking perfect."

"Should I stay dead, then? I don't know how good his spying is."

"I don't know either. - and since I can't swear oaths the black hole comes before the evacuation and I imagine it will be complicated to evac everybody if, say, Melian knows what happened and is screaming bloody murder about it -"

"...probably a safe bet that she'd know. They can swear to stop harming people conditional on you destroying Valinor according to the agreement, then you wouldn't even necessarily need to evacuate Endore..."

"What about the contingency where the Valar notice while the black hole's in progress and stop me, or if one of them is offplanet for some reason and survives?"

"Or Eru turns out to exist and object? You fulfill your end by dropping a hole and not warning them, I think? That seems fair."

"We're talking about helping the Enemy and irretrievably murdering a million people," Findekano says.

"I don't expect you to agree."

"I don't."

"I don't like it either," Cam says. "Do you have a better idea."

"Petition the Valar, hope some of Sauron's recent stunts cross the line? Figure out how to upload Men and Dwarves, then blow apart this planet -"

"Dwarves wouldn't consent," Maitimo says. 

"I suppose not. Hold tight and hope someone here or in Hell invents something targeted that can destroy the Enemy?"

"He's been avoiding the Dwarves and Men - specifically to keep leverage over me - but that still might take more than a million deaths' worth of time."

"Dwarves and Men are also mortal, right? Do we have any reason to think we can fix that beyond 'Fëanáro can do most things'?"

"Maybe once the Valar are dead," Cam says, "they can summon things."

He shakes his head.

"Are you going to tell anyone," Maitimo says.

"The last time we had almost exactly this conversation," he says, "was Alqualonde, and I am not sure if I wish I had."

"I am not going to let you tell anyone."

Blink.

"Well I suppose I needn't be in doubt about whether we have you back."

"Thank you for that."

"Please don't kill ten million people at the Enemy's behest because you did the math and it seems worth it."

"Please give me a better alternative."

"I'm trying! You going to have Cam osanwe-proof the room and make it pretty enough I can hold on a while-"

"I haven't, have I? You going to tell Huan -"

"I haven't, have I?"

"...I should have kept my mouth shut," observes Cam.

"No, no, given that you are debating murdering ten million people I'd much rather know about it."

"That's the Maia population, then?"

"I don't think there's a count. It's not much less than that."

"I can't even make a basement dweller of a Maia proper," he sighs. "Their forms sure, not the actual Maia."

"I'm not sure that many of them are people," Maitimo says, "lots of them are very simple and do things like sing a song to a tree over and over. A million certainly."

"The Enemy wants you to do this. I don't think you can be sure that he doesn't have - I don't know - oaths could break when Valinor's destroyed, something like that..."

"Could they? That'd be a dealbreaker. - but it's the sort of thing I could have him swear in advance."

"I don't know if they could. The Enemy wants it, that's all I know, and it's prima facie pretty evil, and, well, people differ in how much mass murder they're willing to commit for the greater good, I'm at my quota."

"I've still never actually killed anyone," Cam says softly. "But I don't value the cleanliness of my hands quite this much."

"Talk to Fëanáro. Maybe there's another way, at a minimum enough people looking at it can make sure it's more careful-"

"Yes," Maitimo says. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me for letting you kill people again."

"If there were some pretext to lure the Maiar off planet, or even some of them, or get them to try summoning in case it's barely possible that the afterlife and the actual production of a daeva in the process are not identical -"

"I'll try to think of something. Fëanáro'll try to think of something. But you're planning to do it anyway?"

"Not right this minute. This deserves at least days of thinking. And I don't know if the Enemy will want to hold out for something less thorough than what I want if I'm going to sell my innocence for it. It is however currently the leading plan."

"I won't do anything that restricts your options in the meantime. How are you planning to keep Maitimo secret for a week?"

"Don't know yet."

"It would have been smart to give me a different body," Maitimo says. "But I think we'll manage. Cam can make me somewhere to stay and I can swear anyone who does somehow notice to secrecy."

"I could dye your hair and - I was going to say change your eye color but Elf biology."

He sort of shudders. "Yes, good idea. Won't be recognized from the back, at least, and I can rebraid it -" he makes no motion to do so.

"Pick a color."

"Black," he says - the vast majority of the Noldor have black hair. "You can fix it later?"

"Black to a lighter color is actually hard to get right but yes. I assume you'll be appalled if I tell you it'd be easier to just put it all back red if you shaved your head."

Findekano is watching them with extraordinary amusement he's making no effort to conceal. 

"I can't shave it off," Maitimo says in a strangled voice.

"That's what I figured. I can do a temporary dye that'll wash out?"

"That'll work."

And now he has black hair.

Findekano is having the time of his life. 

"Thanks," Maitimo says. "I can have a viewscreen in my face, people shouldn't think too much of it - can you replace the clothes-"

"Sure, what do you want."

"You notice how there are three kinds of uniform cuts people wear around here? The one that neither Findekano nor I is wearing."

Cam hands him a uniform.

He changes. "And if you both leave I'll rebraid my hair to something that's not distinctively mine and also not inconsistent with the outfit."

Cam rolls his eyes slightly and goes into the next room.

So does Findekano, who still looks outright gleeful.

"You're chipper."

"We have resurrection."

"Congratulations, by the way, figuring that out, I would not actually have guessed that it boiled down to 'have you tried turning it off and on again'."

"I assume my uncle didn't guess for the same reason. I wonder what the biological equivalent would be?"

"I know it's not defibrillation, because that totally happened in medical scho- actually I don't know that because all the subjects in med school were probably intentionally made to be basement dwellers in the first place, why would anyone bother aiming for a sapient human when they know they won't get one."

"Electroconvulsive therapy sounds like a closer equivalent, since it's the mind and not the heart that's a problem - how likely is it that all this leaks into Hell and a short time later it's a very bad place to be?"

"They'd have to put together a lot of pieces and have much weaker incentives to do it. But there's a lot of them."

"Or maybe someone's already found out and just doesn't share because he doesn't want anyone else objecting to the idea that the sex toys in his basement are sentient."

"Figured that part out, did you. Yeah, it's possible. Although it's also possible this happened a hundred years ago and has just not been publicized, electricity has been known for a while."

"Well. Continue not publicizing it. At least you can make yourself a Maitimo in Hell if you want one there."

"...uh," says Cam, "one, I'm not sure I ever wish to return to Hell, two, nnnnnot especially?"

"This world's going to get less exciting if we win. Even if you win by killing all the Valar. It's not a giant plane made out of gold, though, I'll give it that."

"It would be really hard for this world to get less interesting than Hell. Everything interesting about Hell I can replicate here."

"You don't like any of the people?"

"I like some of them okay but I don't tend to cultivate close friendships, and we can correspond; the people I'd really like to see in person are my parents and they're in Limbo."

Maitimo finds them. His hair's braided differently. He has a screen reader. He's also slouching. The impression is of a different person but it's not a very convincing impression. "I feel ridiculous," he says, "let's get me out of here but preferably within osanwe range so planning can continue."

"I can make a new section altogether if you like."

"And people won't notice and wonder what a new section's for?"

"I'm not sure how much attention anyone's paying. We can also just leave if the answer is 'some'."

"I think the answer's probably 'some'. Nervous about the Enemy and all. Let's go." He turns to Findekano. "Thank you."

"I was expecting to regret it but don't make me regret it even more."

"Will do."

So Cam gives Maitimo a ride to the beach.

"Thank you. Please don't mention the Enemy's parley offer around anyone other than my father, most people will definitely tell."

"Yeah, lesson learned."

"And most of them I don't even have a way to shut up."

"...how do you shut him up?"

"With or without your help? With your help I was in fact going to osanwe-proof the room and then tell him that either he swore not to tell anyone or we put him in a different bunker and I got you to summon me a much more cooperative instance of Findekano who'd trust me about the situation and do what I said. And that'd be evil - like, moreso than it sounds, it'd be really awful and he does not like it when I do evil things so he'd swear not to tell anyone. But there aren't many people I know that well."

"You seem very confident you could have gotten me to do that."

"To osanwe-proof the room and not actively point out that I didn't have your cooperation while I threatened him? You would have, you were out of your depth and half a second from losing what may be our only way of saving this world. To do it - no."

"Your drama with your ex is really fucked up," Cam says.

"I am sorry you keep getting dragged into it. We've only interacted around you a handful of times but I suppose they've been memorable."

"Rather. ...He doesn't still think you seduced me, does he, I was assuming when you mentioned he thought that that you had since disabused him of the notion."

"Well. He doesn't trust me and would not have found this afternoon half as entertaining if he did. I apologize. It's partially my fault because 'no, no, there's nothing between us' seemed tonally the wrong approach so I just said that I was wholly focused on the war and he should be too which I think he took as not a denial."

"Ah. Lovely."

"I'm sorry. I'll tell him and swear to it. You have a very serious very legitimate grievance with me under local law, for not denouncing a rumor like that forcefully enough."

"I am not annoyed on a local law level do not go around swearing things it's not a big deal it just means he doesn't think very much of my time management skills."

"Or mine! I told him at the time I was insulted on those grounds. Which I guess also could come across as 'not a denial' to the right ears."

Snort. "Should I go tell your father the thing or are you going to osanwë him from here or what?"

"Told him, he doesn't believe me and has been quizzing me on childhood trivia, once he gets past that we can start planning."

"Should've guessed. What do you want to live in while you are here?"

"All I need is a suicide trigger and five months of the things that should have been crossing my desk."

"Regardless of whether you want that in paper or electronic format," Cam says, handing him the latter, "you probably don't want it rained on."

"Little stone lighthouse, dark grey? It has to be pretty, I can pull up a design if you need one -"

"I think I can pull off pretty working freeform."

He does in fact pull off pretty. Little stone lighthouse.

"Fantastic, thank you. I shall sit here not interacting with anyone until we decide you don't need the secret, though if that's a long time it'll be hard on me."

"What I need is another even more stupidly nitpicky oath-drafting session and your father's opinion on contingencies like 'will the summoning prohibition outlast the Valar' and 'is there any way to save the Maiar'."

"That is not the sort of span of time over which a lack of socialization will begin to impair me. My father's convinced I'm back and exasperated that resurrection was so easy, and wants his father back but I explained myself on that, and I'm sure he's happy to talk with you."

"Okay. Is he going to yell at me about his father or does you having explained yourself mean all is magically well."

"All is magically well. If you want to know exactly what was said I can expand on that."

"Might be useful."

"I said 'hey, remember last time the Enemy was trying to manipulate us to create divisions and we figured out the precommitments that would make him look foolish? I need that again.'

And my father said 'go ahead.'

And I said 'I've identified something that I think should be done that I expect you'll countermand me on and that I'm accordingly inclined to keep from you, can you promise that I wouldn't be better off doing that, you're welcome to convince me I'm wrong but if I'm unconvinced you won't go ahead and do it?'

And he said 'yes, all right'.

And I said 'Finwe's chip at the parley would probably have worked fine. It would have given us back a version of your father designed by the Enemy to harm us as much as he could, but a breathing one'.

And he said 'so you lied and said it was broken'.

And I said 'I thought you'd want to bring him back and take the chance. But - father, if the Enemy'd given you a chip of me that he'd chosen, I wouldn't want you to bring it to life, I want to win this war. So would the King. Doing right by us is doing right by our goals, not our persons. Don't bring him back yet. After the war we can apologize.'

And he said 'I miss him. I miss you. I'm less effective. I am utterly terrified of dying and terrified of letting my father down and you down and I cannot endure knowing I am failing you'.

And I said 'I love you so much, thank you for doing this for me, I don't think I do know how hard it is but only because you are extraordinary at managing it.'

And magically everything is all right."

"Useful sort of magic. Is this going to be a three person conversation and if so in which location should I be?"

"I don't see what I have to add. He might enjoy a trip to the surface if it's safe."

"It is only probably that."

"Then go talk in his office, he can reach me if I'm needed to consult."

"Okay."

And off Cam goes.

Fëanáro is working. Fëanáro's stacked a dangerous number of blessings and sleeps about as much as Cam, which is to say not at all. "Hello. Thank you."

"...you're welcome."

"I am assuming you picked a recovery point before anything happened and he's fine?"

"Yeah. Chip's from right before he died."

"Someday when we have no more pressing issues we shall have to figure out ethics as applied to lots and lots of versions of people existing. I think most ones that have been in Angband we don't want to retrieve but - doesn't feel terribly principled - and then what if I'm tempted to see what kind of person I'd grown into if I'd had loving parents? You should probably set out guidelines or you'll waste lots of time refusing things. After the war.

Today's topic should be more immediate."

"Yeah. I only get to commit genocide for the greater good once."

"I'm sorry. We can try other solutions. If you think you could conceal enough server banks I could try to have FTL by tomorrow and then somehow get all the Dwarves and Men and then hope he's bluffing that a black hole won't kill him. The math is pretty obvious, though."

"It may not be worth the risk but he wouldn't find servers in Hell."

"Are there demons you trust enough with the knowledge your kind can make minds after all?"

"Not categorically."

"And a way to get the servers done without making it clear that what you're running are uploaded people? No, I suppose the read-and-write step'd be fishy..."

"Quite. If there were a concordance coming up - no, that would be a terrible idea and there isn't anyway -"

"Have the demons send the servers through and someone else do the pressing 'start'? If only we could summon you back...

I think we destroy Valinor. There are too many points of failure, trying to wait. The Enemy figuring out summoning is the most obvious - a Vala might be able to circumvent a Vala ban, if it wasn't a fluke in the first place, and if it was a repeatable fluke they can have a billion people attempting repeats. Maitimo saw that circle you drew testing whether an angel could safely be summoned, which means the Enemy should probably be assumed to know it by now."

"I should demand that he leave daeva alone as part of the oath I extract for the deal," Cam says. "Maybe the summoning ban will end when the Valar die even if it's in effect for the Enemy here and now." He starts a list of demands.

"No dimension-hopping, too, in any form. If they do end up in the daeva afterlife no summons."

Nod, nod. "- this is going to constrain what they do so much I'm not sure whether to expect them to want the Valar dead badly enough. Presumably they want the Valar dead so they can do something?"

"What are you going to do if they refuse?"

"...probably a bad plan to go in prepared to negotiate down."

"I'd walk in and swear on the spot that it was this or nothing. You don't have that luxury, sadly."

"I do not. I wonder if it'd help to identify myself as Revelation, that being the handle I used when I was telling humans about daeva anonymously."

"Has he done enough reading to appreciate the significance?"

"Well, he knew who Hitler was, although maybe he's just indulging personal taste in his choice of material and hasn't read any other history."

"I bet he read everything written about summoning."

"Then he'll know who I am if I claim it."

"And that gets you? Does he have a reputation for being uncompromising?"

"I don't know if it would be helpful at all. The Revelation persona had no personal reputation to speak of. I'd be trying to communicate 'I'll swing around enormous leverage to get what I want but it'd better be for a really good cause I can be smug about indefinitely' but it might do something else."

"You can always send the oath text, announce that you're in a lightleaper headed for Valinor and that if you have their oaths by the time you arrive you'll hole the place and otherwise you'll petition the Valar for aid in the war effort."

"...that would be an interesting strategy. It is not my style but it may be a good plan."

"The stylistic problems are?"

"I don't know that they're problems per se, I just definitely would have taken longer to think of something that dramatic and commitment-demanding if I'd thought of it at all."

"Dramatic and commitment-demanding are my favorite genres. Even more than 'smart' though I typically permit it to do the steering."

"They might call my bluff, and then I have to wreck my Enemybait or look like my commitments aren't worth expecting me to follow through, and it only works if they expect the first one and the oath I pick won't ruin all the fun they were planning to have with the Valar dead to the point where they don't even want the bait that much, and they have no overwhelming reason to expect the first."

"Fair enough. I am unsure how best to constrain future mischief of the 'talk heads of state into wars' form, like what he nearly pulled off in Valinor."

"Eugh. Yeah, that's hard especially on the 'can't ruin literally all his fun or he won't want the results anymore, probably, unless killing the Valar is his absolute priority' front."

"Yes. It seems possible that the hope of indirect future mischief won't be sufficient to stop direct mischief, but certainly anything where he might as well be dead is probably not going to work despite being what we'd really want.

Does anything go wrong if you don't put things to that effect in and then later we kill him as soon as we've figured out how?"

"Might take a while to figure out how?"

"Build a planet out of servers and it'll take me a week, tops."

"This assumes it can be done without taking him by surprise."

"Yes. I'm bound to try forever anyway, I expect I'll eventually stumble on something."

"Well, barring chip-editing shenanigans you're bound to try forever."

"I also want him dead, it's not really an imposition."

"This is reasonable."

"I don't have to try constantly or anything, just not be deterrable. There can be long soothing stretches of engineering work in between if needed, and if it turns out impossible to brute-force killing him within a few weeks I'm going to have a go at mortality before I worry about it again."

"Ah, mortality, my old foe," mutters Cam. List of demands. "Needs to not hurt anybody - completely unrestricted by substrate and species, I don't care if in twenty billion years coral are sapient, no harm may come to the coral people. No summoning, no dimension hopping. I am to count as having held up my end even if the Valar notice the black hole in time to avoid it and I need to word that generously enough that he can't defect should he stumble across me on a reconstructed Valinor..."

"How are we defining people for the purposes of harm, and are we okay with it if he finds the thing that has brains just below the described threshold and tortures uncounted trillions of those forever?"

"I may have to make a 'can't ruin all his fun' exception if he wants to torture puppies," Cam says. "Defining people is difficult, though, I can't think of a definition I'm happy putting all this weight on..."

"No torturing anything that'd have preferences about the matter" is clean but might indeed ruin his fun.

I could ask people if they'd volunteer copies of them to be tortured forever for the greater good, many of them probably would..."

"Dear lord no."

"We are going to murder him pretty soon."

"And he can run copies pretty fast and what if we can't murder him."

"Alright. Airtight definition of people."

"Yeah." Tail-lash, frown. "Can't just appeal to language use, not sure I want to rely on his ability to assess or capacity to refrain from harmfully assessing capacity for self-reflection..."

"I'm not even entirely sure it's a natural category. Self-reflection seems like something that might be much more of a spectrum."

"I am reasonably confident in my assessment of all the species I've met but I could be wrong about some of the ones I consider nonpersons," Cam agrees, "and it'd be awkward trying to explain that to the coral people if their grandparents were not up to some threshold."

"Here the distinction is generally explained as 'Valar can't make people, only Eru can do that' which makes me very nervous as a criterion and vaguely worried about the category. And leaves them an opening to take the stance that non-Eru-made things, no matter how people-like, clearly don't have the relevant internal experiences."

"Speaking as a non-Eru-made-person let's not include this in the definition."

"Absolutely nothing to do with daeva' is already in there, right? But yes."

"I wasn't a daeva to begin with."

"There is something to be said for 'no torturing anything that has preferences about this and wants you to stop'. I wish I had a better sense of what he considers fun so I could guess what would count as ruining it."

"I am a little worried about how he's meant to gauge whether something has preferences or not."

"Fair, Anything that he thinks there's even a reasonable chance you'd consider a person on having had the chance to interact with a lot of them?"

"And no fiddling with his assessment of my consideration and some clause about any genuinely unique entities he runs across and a definition of 'reasonable'..."

"Might be safe. He'd probably try to alter your opinions about what counts as a person, but I can't think how he'd do that, or you could add a clause prohibiting it."

"Eugh, yes, no opinion-alteration."

"Might do the same thing for 'hurting'?"

"Yeah. With the New Geneva Declaration as an attachment for benchmark. - That being a human treaty on what constitutes adequate treatment of people in and out of situations of imprisonment. It will not include 'must never lock up an Elf without lots of houseplants and even then keep it to a week or less' but it should lose him plausible deniability on things like sleep deprivation or whatever."

"We kind of might be in violation of a human treaty on adequate treatment of our people - the rate people are working on better blessings and better evacuation ships -"

"Well, you didn't sign it. I think you guys need more houseplants and less sleep and, like, that works fine for you, I wouldn't be attaching New Geneva as anything other than a hint."

"That's insightful of you. I've been thinking, reading human media, that 'we'll wait to build exquisitely beautiful things until after the war' works as well for an Elven mind as 'we'll sleep after the war' to a mortal one."

"Humans can be strongly affected by unpretty surroundings but it takes really awful concrete buildings and other stressors and even then it's just a few who are anything more than slightly moody about it."

"We're lucky to have you, you make tolerably pretty things by default. But yes, I think in a human city we'd do about as badly as in a human prison."

"Well," says Cam, "don't go get arrested by humans, then, they'll think you're making it up if you tell them."

"Interdimensional travel might be impossible in principle, but I'll take a look at it one everything more pressing is sorted. If it turns out to be possible we'll be sure to do lots of communicating before we say hello to any humans. And they'll already know of our existence because of lightleapers  - do they already?"

"Hasn't been a concordance so there's been no chance to go through fairies and no demons with the information have had a chance to tell yet."

"Ah, well. At least it's not as if people in your world are dying of the lack."

Nod.

"Is it worth prohibiting the Enemy from interdimensional travel? It seems like that any restrictions we put in place for this world could prove inadequate in one with sufficiently different physics or something, but it may be impossible anyway and it may be something else they'd find too prohibitive..."

"It's... probably worth it. It seems unlikely there are exactly six universes, five of them clustered, and that there is exactly one interdimensional travel mechanism which worked here only once for completely irreproducible reasons - and other universes are likely to contain situations we don't anticipate."

"Yep. You could make it 'can't travel to other dimensions without Cam's agreement' if we happen to find one that's somehow safer than ours - though of course make it apparent he couldn't blackmail you into it -"

"My uncoerced agreement," nods Cam.

"Do we want provisions for your permission to alter other conditions? Could we give him permission to kill something else even worse than him if it somehow shows up?"

"...might come in handy. Be odd for there also to be an extremely finite number of unfortunate deities," Cam says. "Could help with the not-ruining-his-fun thing too."

"If he thinks he can eventually bring you around on being evil," Feanaro says, nodding, "or get to work incredible violence even if only against designated targets."

"Exactly. I'm pretty sure I am not going to eventually be evil."

"It did cross my mind to worry that you're only a hundred something and this universe is 13 billion local years old and should last forever with demon magic and this leaves you rather unstoppable if a billion years turn out to change the mind in undesirable ways, or one of the evil entities that might exist in the multiverse has mind-control, or something. But I can't think of a way around that and as I said I expect to have killed him long before then."

"I feel very stable but the mind control or for that matter the reliability of my self-assessment are both points of concern. No need to express any of the reasons to believe the clause won't be used horrendously to the Enemy, though."

"Yep. If you wanted to be more cautious you could say your current self has to be the one who'd give permission, but that has costs in terms of his odds of agreeing."

"And I cannot just load 'Cam, age one hundred seventy-two' from backup and I don't like the idea of trusting his assessment of my judgment if he could become convinced I was unqualified to correct him."

"And no one back home you'd trust to have a position as important as 'without the permission of Cam-and-so-and-so?"

"My parents are very nice people but would not be suited to advising an evil deity and I have alas not made person-curation a project of mine."

"I think having a permission condition on 'kill people' but not 'harm people' might be the way to balance concerns about your future stability and run-ins with mind-alteration against the fear we'd need Moringotho against something."

"...Yeah, that sounds good." Note note.

"He can't order the orcs to do anything, but we also want to discourage him making it known what he'd like them to be doing, they think he's their savior and will think so even more after the destruction of Valinor..."

"That might be less of a pressing problem once all the ones he killed for not wanting to swear to him are alive again to tell the tale, but yeah."

"He can deny personally having any part in it, throw some lieutenants under the bus, but yes."

"Speaking of which I need to know how to cover the lieutenants, there might be important ones besides the one who came to the parley."

"Make them all swear to the same thing? It's not that restrictive for people whose motives aren't murderous."

"It is a little with the interdimensional travel restrictions and so on. I'm not going to be real quick to hand out permissions for that."

"Interdimensional travel isn't even currently possible. You could have a pared-down version for lieutenants if you don't think they need the whole thing to be safely permitted to live. Or, ah, those we can more easily kill after the war, I already have a notion of how to do it."

"Your anti-Maia thing you mentioned?"

"Yep. It's not that close to working and it's currently too broadly targeted but once the war's over there won't be the pressing time considerations."

"I might also need a definition of 'lieutenants', I don't know what kind of employment contracts or facsimiles thereof his Maiar are under."

"Every Maia who he's worked with or given orders and who he expects to continue carrying out any of his current projects? Too broad?"

"He might have some actually innocuous project in the works for whatever reason, or ones that could be converted into innocuousness, or a Valaish definition of 'current' applying to whatever he did with his time during parole..."

"Well, if you have the time, you could ask each of them to swear to a full account of all their activities for him that they expect would interest you, go from there. That works better if there's ten than a thousand."

"I have what may or may not be a useful instinct that it is unwise to go in expecting to definitely need to make a lot more judgment calls after delivering my offer. Seems likely to open me to attempts to deliberately fatigue me or something."

"Yes, fair enough. Do you have ideas for language broad enough to cover everyone in his service? We could also be very idealistic and say they all have to abide by the same conditions until they explain themselves completely and truthfully to a court set up for war crimes and abide by its judgment whatever it is."

"Then we have to figure out how to set up a court for war crimes."

"I kick problems like that to Maitimo. Under the circumstances I suppose he'll hand it to someone more unimpeachable than all of us will be on that front."

"Should I worry about a war crimes tribunal, say, paroling them from their oath or parts of it after it's just been such a long time -"

"I mean, the drawback to giving any decision power to people other than you is that they might decide differently from you. But everyone knows what happened when we pardoned the Enemy; I cannot imagine that mistake happening again while anyone lives who remembers the original."

"Fair enough. War crimes trial or my pardon otherwise same oaths as the Enemy if they've taken instructions from him."

"Works for me. He might claim he can't do it - some of them are currently offplanet, or something..."

"And if he swears that this is in fact the case - and that he didn't send them offplanet specifically to thwart the attempt - hm."

"Yep. Hard to avoid making any situational decisions, though if we've talked over all possible contingencies you could at least make them swiftly and confidently. ....would it be possible to snatch a copy of the Enemy and play his upload game, try to get a sense of how he'd react?"

"I thought they didn't have chips? And if I try to make a Maia instead of a Maia's body I get nothing at all, I was assuming Valar would be similar."

"They don't have chips, but they must still be computations - though I suppose if they're unrecorded computations there's no way for you to fetch them. Don't try to make a Vala, Eru forbid it actually work."

"I think that's a dead end."

"Yep. Who else are you going to run this by? It's going to be even more complicated than the last one."

"Well, last time Melian had useful advice but this time obviously that won't work. President Círdan and his chief of staff are both competent but I don't know if they're competent at this..."

"You haven't met my son Curufinwe but he and Macalaure should probably both take a look at it. Maitimo says he warned you to keep a small circle in general."

"Yeah."

"I imagine your feelings about Earth are something like ours about Valinor. Gets in the way of thinking clearly."

"...yeah. I'm not gonna be super popular with anybody who ever lived there after this, am I."

"No. And lots of people do like the Valar. I - like some of them as individuals, actually, I just think they are fourteen individuals and count exactly as much as any fourteen Men or Dwarves."

"Lot of concealed internal disagreements on all the things attributed to 'the Valar'?"

"I think most of the decisions I resent were 7 - 5, some of them publicly announced to be so."

Cam sighs. "Great."

"Some of them weren't! Their opinions about marriage are unanimous."

"Well, they run on divine command theory and I have the impression there are divine commands to be had on that one."

He makes an annoyed face. "I'll grant you they think Eru exists and said so. Oh. Eru. If he exists, chance he intervenes. Oaths need to still be valid if that happens. Also you might have to do some fast-talking to this universe's supposed creator. I do not assign the possibility much weight."

"He seems the noninterventionist type." But Cam makes a note.

"What else do you think this needs to cover?"

"...no submitting things to demonic curators to inspire them to be evil. Like, especially when he notices that the population of Valinor is alive and well, but even if he has other ideas."

"Good one. Demonic curators are unlikely to summon his complete works, right?"

"Unfortunately, demonic curators range from likely to do that to guaranteed to do that. Demonic curators love having everybody's complete works."

"So at some point the fact you have a way to do minds is going to reach their attention. We could plant lots of evidence it's magic - I am honestly impressed Findekano even thought to be careful - "

"I am impressed with his entire project," Cam says. "But while the idea that it's magic will deter some people from bothering to try, demons are sometimes bored and the test is not expensive for them."

"It takes a lot of doing to read to and write from chips. Or do you think there's an even simpler way?"

"There might be, or one of them could just have a few weeks to kill."

He sighs. "Interdimensional travel's going to even more of a problem, if I can figure out how to do it. Demons can summon themselves it and go anywhere. And some might come here and lots will definitely go to Earth."

"Yeah. But some will also go to Limbo. Limbo could use some demons. Of course, some of them will also go harass angels due to pointless racism."

"Will pointless racism endure extended contact? It often doesn't."

"Possibly not. Currently all the contact they get is completely blocking the Heaven/Hell concordances for any useful purpose so they can take it out on each other. They might get bored if they had more than a few hours every several years."

"Does this have an origin in grievances or is it entirely an outlet for childish people to root for their tribe?"

"It's really unclear how it started but it's sort of structurally impossible for there to be much grievance, what with the 'can't interact for more than a few hours every several years and in between all correspondence is one-way'. Both demons and angels get along great with Limboites and fairies - Limboites love demons, we send them the best care packages - but angels and demons don't get along, may have never gotten along - the conflict predates the invention of writing - and angels may be partially responsible for the mythical reputation of demons among live humans."

"Though the difficulty of paying you would also explain it. I find it terribly entertaining that the people of my world have souls and no way to prevent demons from stealing them. Ah, I'll delay interdimensional travel while we think about that, but not much, some worlds might need us. It may in fact not be possible anyway."

Nod nod.

"Want to prohibit him from writing down creative ways to be evil in transmissible format, or just not deliberately getting their attention?"

"Not deliberately getting their attention should suffice. It's not like people in my worldcluster aren't already plenty creative."

"All right. I can't think of anything else at the moment; shall we return to it in a few hours with fresh ideas?"

"Yeah, sounds like a plan."

"All right. See you later. Thank you for bringing my son back."

"You're welcome."

And in the interests of having fresh ideas Cam goes and does something unrelated: spies on the censorship discussions about the Hell Library on Valinor.

Banned: sexual content. 

Banned; violence.

Banned; torture

Banned: antisocial behavior

Banned: violence

Banned: sexual content

Banned: criminal sexual behavior

Banned: disturbing content

Yes, of course, but is there any commentary on these decisions?

Lots of it! Some just notes the place in the media where the objectionable content was found, some cites specific local regulations, on the internet there's a ridiculously long debate over various kinds of sexual behavior in human media and whether humans even engage in it and whether that's relevant to the ban. Also whether it's safe to ban just a few episodes of a television show or whether people who enjoy it might be tempted to watch the banned episodes.

...well, hopefully anyone who likes the first few seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer can also find a way to get ahold of the parts in which Willow's gay to find out how it ends.

Hilariously, all homosexuality that doesn't involve on-screen deep kissing (which gets the heterosexual couples censored too) is slipping past the censors entirely. Saying "I'm gay" doesn't do it, nor does introducing people as your boyfriend or telling them you love them.

...that's adorable.

Valinor: sufficiently oblivious that they made it a thousand years without finding their princes suspicious. 

This does put that in perspective. All right. Cam shoos the list of which episodes of Sesame Street may be shown on Valinor and checks his correspondence.

Lots of requests, none of them urgent. 

Anything he can fill locally he will do now and everything else he'll put on a to-do list.

He will fill the remainder of his not-thinking-about-murdering-several-million-Maiar-for-keeps time with violin unless someone comes and finds him.

No one does. When he heads back into Fëanáro's office Macalaure's present.

"Hi."

"Hi. Father invited me over to take a look at the wording about half an hour ago, I have a few suggestions." And he explains them rather systemically.

And Cam makes adjustments and pivots from there to make more.

They work at it for a couple hours. It's not a cheerful room.

It's really not. Somebody can walk in with a better idea any minute now.

Better ideas are undersupplied. 

"I also wanted to show this to Curufinwe," Fëanáro says. 

"Sure."

He comes in a minute later and nods to Cam, the rest of the explanation apparently being given over telepathy. He sits down. He reads it over. "We are still going to try to kill him afterwards," he says, "but this seems worth the price. I'm worried about a few phrases -"

More editing. Such fun.

After a while Macalaure announces that he's going to hold a concert, and excuses himself to go do that. 

"Don't worry," Fëanáro says when he's gone, "he does impromptu concerts enough it won't be suspicious. Clears his head."

"Entirely reasonable."

A while after that Curufinwe pulls a stunningly intricate malleable metal puzzle out of his pocket and starts playing with it. Then looks back at the oath, makes more suggestions.

Editing. Editing. So much fucking editing and he can't doze off or slack on the details because he's dealing with an evil god and he only gets to commit genocide to end a war once.

The Elves notice his distress but don't comment. Blessings for calm would probably not go over well. Macalaure comes back and has new suggestions some of which have been obviated by revisions since he left.

And eventually Cam wanders off to eat surf-and-turf and read a book (banned: illegal sexual content!) and then he comes back and returns to work.

"Ran it by Maitimo, too," Fëanáro says after a while. "He says -" and then he conveys more comments.

Yup those sure are refinements to be incorporated into the genocide plan.

"Do you think you're going to have trouble going through with it when you get to Valinor?"

"Not if we get this to the point where I present the offer and I don't then immediately realize a disaster in paragraph eighteen. I'm just going to be in a really bad mood for a while about it."

"Understood. If rebuilding Endore after the war and bringing back most of the dead will help your mood or be tolerable in a bad one, though, it'll be much appreciated."

"Yeah, I won't mope, I'll just -" Shrug. "Yeah, that can be next."

"Yeah.

I don't see anything else here that worries me."

"Me either, but that might just mean I need to spend another few hours forcing myself to laugh at arguments about whether magical girl anime intended for five-year-olds is to be banned on Valinor so I can come back with fresh-ish eyes..."

Fëanáro sighs. "Yes, go do that. I have calm and clarity for everyone else, if you want to try an adjusted look..."

Cam goes and does that.

When he comes back the Elves all look utterly intent but oddly disinterested. One more revision, they aren't even sure it's necessary but it seems safer.

Yeah, it does. Maitimo have any opinions on this version?

They'd forgotten Maitimo existed. Fëanáro removes the blessings for calm and clarity, exasperated, and runs this version by Maitimo.

Maitimo has no suggestions.

"...you have something called 'clarity' that causes you to forget people exist?"

"Gives you total focus on the task at hand. It's good for coming at a question from a completely different angle but which angle is unpredictable and you can't correct course. I have an automatic expiration after an hour on mine, because it really does help but it's very narrowing."

"Makes sense. ...I think I want to sleep on this, actually sleep not just caffeinate. And then if I don't have anything new I guess I drop more bricks on Angband."

"All right."

Cam goes and sleeps. He has a shower and eggs Benedict and reads a new installment on a slow-updating serial fiction he's been following for 38 years. He looks over the text again.

It still looks okay to him. Does it still look okay to everyone else?

Yep. Airtight, to everyone's eyes.

Okay then.

He goes up and gets a bead on Angband.

And he drops bricks.

And a while later, he gets a response. 

Cam, 

Delighted to work with you. A few problems. Some of the Maiar in Melkor's employ are vampires. If you're willing to continually supply them with the blood of people they can swear not to harm any, but they want a stipulation to the effect that if their health and capacity to reason are suffering because they can't get blood then they are obliged only to minimize the harm to people involved in feeding. Some of the Maiar in Melkor's employ aren't on this planet and would take weeks to call back. Some of the Maiar formerly in Melkor's employ have fled and their locations aren't known to us. If any Valar survive we require an exception that permits us to continue our war with them. We also require the ability to take actions that might constitute harm in self-defense, since many Elves will certainly continue their war with us. With those revisions we accept your terms.