"I'm not a historian; I don't know how it came about. But once it was true, of course very few people were going to do what we did. We might even be the only planet where something like this happened."

"Only one I've found, though I haven't checked them all and one of them wanted eight days to set up a quarantine before talking to me."

"I expect they're worried about catching the contagion."

"Yes, I expect so. Is worrying about sprouting wings, which is not a disease, also ideological?"

"It's known that the wing contagion comes from the - Earth maze people, so treating it that way is an extension of treating outsiders as automatically unclean. But even if it weren't... I think unexpectedly growing new limbs would be very upsetting for most people."

"Well, I'd suggest doing it expectedly instead but somehow I don't think it'd help. Congratulations on not calling them filth creatures!"

Assistant Coordinator Sikyal Tegati makes an alien facial expression. "Thank you. If we understood how it worked, and if people were used to thinking of growing wings as normal, then maybe... but we don't and we aren't."

"There's the planet that wanted eight days... and the ongoing civil wars... and a handful of people who I extracted from a civil war to wait it out on Earth... and you guys. And the places I haven't checked. Do you suppose that from this starting point your society could learn to live with the idea? Because otherwise it's going to be very hard to humanely supervise you and I don't think leaving you unsupervised is the best plan for the next while as things settle out."

"This planet will be fine," they assert. "We succeeded in establishing a new consensus. Even if the wing contagion got loose here... we would have a hard time, but I don't think there would be many deaths. I don't know anything about how the rest of the planets are doing."

"Haven't been talking to them?"

"Someone might be checking the interplanetary communication devices, but it isn't me and I don't know what they're hearing."

...Cam produces transcripts of recorded conversations between this planet and other planets since the end of the world.

Nope.

"Well, if they have been they weren't recording. How do you anticipate that going? What if your societal consensus is outnumbered?"

"I've heard enough to believe we have by far the most stable and functioning society," they say. "If we're lucky, maybe more planets will decide to join our consensus."

"And if they don't?"

"Then I don't know what will happen."

"Well, I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect you to be an oracle. About all those purity-keepers you're prophesied to kill..."

"What about them?"

"Is it really necessary to kill them?"

"...It would be really disruptive to stop. And there's only another hour or so left in the ritual sacrifice period."

"The amount of time it is taking you to accomplish this is not the thing that's bothering me."

"There probably isn't enough time to convince the right people to stop sacrificing purity-keepers in time to save any purity-keepers from being sacrificed, and if you somehow did anyway, it would still be really disruptive. It would... it's... the point of sacrificing the purity-keepers, and doing it in this way... it's that now the time of purity-keepers is over for good and we don't have to go around killing people anymore. And the message is being successfully communicated. Suddenly deciding at the very last minute not to kill the purity-keepers after all... well, people might get the idea that we weren't taking the 'not killing people anymore' part seriously. It would damage the consensus. And it's a good consensus."

"Are you cognizant of the irony of announcing that it's time to stop killing people by killing a bunch of people?"

The alien makes an alien facial expression.