MIT is always full of tourists, and sometimes they ask for directions. Bruce is pretty used to this; he gives off enough Aura Of Student that he's asked pretty frequently for restaurant recommendations, T stop locations, and what have you. So when one guy with a long white beard asks for nice places for sightseeing, it isn't particularly memorable. He suggests the Harvard Bridge and the observatory on top of the Prudential Center and makes some crack about how if you can fly the view from the top of the Green Building is pretty awesome too. Then he wishes the guy the best and goes about the rest of his day.
"This some kinda campus event? I didn't sign up for anything. It's not even Christmas yet. And why are you my room instead of my email about it?" His phonological loop has decided this is a good time for the Bed Intruder song, but it is mistaken and should shut up. He isn't even opposed in principle to LARPing Santa at a bunch of visiting elementary schoolers or whatever, but this is not how you get volunteers for things.
He's on the moon.
He's on the moon.
It's instantly recognizable from the pictures, and if he can't believe the evidence of his eyes it would be hard to disbelieve the reduced gravity. He turns, bouncing a bit on unsteady feet, and--that's the Earth. Just like the photographs but a thousand times more overwhelming. There it is, the blue marble where every human who ever existed was born and grew up.
He's distantly confused about how he can breathe, about how he isn't freezing or choking or anything else, but mostly he's staring at the rising Earth with eyes like saucers, experiencing.
Bruce stands up, puts a hand on his head like he's trying to hold his mind on, and manages to get his eyes at least mostly focused on the stranger.
"How did you do that? How can I breathe here? What does it mean that I'm Santa? Can I learn to teleport too? What other things that everyone believes are actually wrong?"
"Magic. I'm not going to teleport you without air because then you'd die. Mostly that the Christmas spirit is set by your own sense of what Christmas ought to be, but you also have thousands of powerful magical slaves and some flying reindeer. No. The Cry Babies Kristal Interactive Baby Doll breaks really easily, you're better off with one of the ripoffs from Amazon."
"Okay, I guess that's probably fine then. Uh, I'm not religious at all, does that make you spirits of the winter solstice or of American secular Christmas or what? Also, why me, do you do a random draw every four years or something? Also also if I got your name I forgot it, sorry."
"I still have no sense of what the limits are, and what I can do that isn't 'give people orders'. What did the previous Santa do? It can't have been much or someone would have noticed. And that's another question, what happens if people find out about magic, why's it a secret?"
"Thank you. Um. Circling back around to the magical slavery thing, since that did not get resolved. Can I just. Free all of you? Is there any reason not to do that? It seems like the obvious thing but I know I don't know a lot of relevant stuff." At least, thank all that is good in the world, Lev is not behaving in any way similarly to Dobby.
Well, balls. "Then, uh, what do I need to know to behave in a decent and civilized manner about that. I can't actually afford to pay a thousand people unless Christmas has a budget or something." He is unsure how the previous Santa could have been doing a worse job at this than he's been doing so far but he expects the answer is unpleasant.
"So you can eat? As fair compensation for your labor, I'm assuming even secret Christmas things required some amount of work? Or is this some sort of post-scarcity Communist situation where you can make anything you want by magic and ignore the rest of the economy, because that would be awesome."
"That's--really sweet, actually." From a certain angle, this is all very Star Trek. He's in space, there are post-scarcity Communists, a friendly humanoid alien is delivering exposition, it could be a lot worse really.
"So is there, in fact, anything other than secrecy stopping you from ending scarcity on Earth? What magic can you do besides teleporting, how does it scale?"
"Well, most of our magic can only be used to spread joy and happiness to children around the time of the December Solstice, so that puts some limits on how well we can be used to end scarcity. And we can only do things in accordance with the Christmas spirit, which is set by the current Santa. Subconsciously, you don't get to declare that the spirit of Christmas is to end malaria unless you truly feel that in your heart."
Well, possibly having thousands of lives depend on whether his heart is pure enough isn't terrifying at all. But he can't not try it, in a sense he's already trying it, and--he's on the Moon. He's already done one impossible thing today, with Lev's help. Maybe he can do this thing too.
"Possibly my subconscious isn't up to scratch, but--it really feels like it ought to work? Christmas is about abundance, it's about having a feast in the middle of winter because you know you have enough supplies stored to last until the Sun comes back, it's about sharing what you have with your neighbor and giving each other presents and coating your whole house in art because you've gotten the upper hand on winter. I want to believe that I can make Christmas mean that, for the whole world."
"How attached are you--like, you in particular and also elves in general, how attached are you to doing that? Because I totally get wanting to only give presents to people you like, but the spying is creepy and also the whole concept is kind of sad." He really hopes that was another thing that was mainly the previous Santa's idea and none of the elves care, because otherwise he's simultaneously obligated not to give them orders and obligated to get them to stop spying.
"Okay, awesome, great. I'm pretty sure human children have to misbehave some to, like, function at all anyway. And now I'm curious about elf culture and also about whether you're as closely related to humans as you look. Sorry, bio student, my brain goes off on weird tangents sometimes."
"That sounds weirdly plausible given the rest of tonight. Where did the spirit of Yule come from? Is there a corresponding spirit for the other solstice or just the one? Should I stop asking you a million questions and let you get back to doing whatever you were doing?"
"I'm Santa's personal assistant, it's my job to educate the new Santa. The current legendary figures are the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, Death, leprechauns, the Bogeyman, Jack Frost, Mother Nature, Father Time, Krampus, and Jack O'Lantern. I don't know where holiday spirits come from, they just sort of happen."
"Woah that's a lot of things. I guess the only real numbers are zero one and lots, but that's still. And all of them are hiding from humans? And Death is a person?"
What if someone gets Death to fall off the Green Building, what then? Or, coming at it from the other end, does that mean that if Aubrey de Grey invents immortality a guy with a scythe will come after him? This definitely has massive implications and he can't at all tell whether they're good or bad.
"How does the whole delivering presents on Christmas actually work? You mentioned reindeer, I'm imagining some sort of time shenanigans? What are the limits on how many presents we can do?" He might get to hand out presents to thousands or millions of people and if he can solve the inevitable logistical mess that sounds really fun.
"That's really cool. I guess it might get boring after a few thousand, but I wouldn't hold anything up by taking breaks--or if any elves think that sounds fun we could do shifts, unless I'm the only one who can pilot the sleigh or something.
We are gonna bring so much joy to so many children."
"How do we find out who wants what, once we've gone public we can set up a web form or something but I'm thinking maybe the best way to go public is just by going all out this next Christmas and then making an announcement, unless you have a better idea, so do we have some minimal-spying way to get present requests already working?"
"That's really cool, that you get the letters. So my first thought is to use the spy cameras, but instead of having a person looking at them just transcribe all the audio and then search it for anything that looks like a request for an object, but I'm not actually a good enough programmer to do that last step optimally and I may or may not be able to get that good in time to make all the stuff before Christmas. And of course next year more kids will know we exist and send us mail. The really important thing to get right is kids in developing countries, maybe I can find research on what parents tend to spend their money on and make a model of what's most useful . . . if I had known this was going to happen I would have picked a different major, CS or Econ or something."
"I'm sorry, of course you have programmers. I'm trying not to assume any given programmer is going to be interested in implementing a thing I thought up in thirty seconds, but maybe I should just be assuming someone is going to be excited about any given Christmas-related project.
I'm actually really curious about elves in general. Your biology, your culture, what your government is like, what your economy is like, if you have your own language I'd like to learn it, that sort of thing. If it's not rude to ask."
"Uh, we're not immortal but our life expectancy is about five hundred years. Most of us look like human children-- I'm actually half-human, that's why I look so old. We care a lot about Christmas? Santa is in charge of all the elves but usually we handle most of the implementation details ourselves. We have an economy to allocate scarce goods but I think we're really different from humans because what every elf wants most is to spread the Christmas spirit and make human children happy. We usually speak the current Santa's language, but we can speak all human languages."
"Ooh, omniglossia and a five-hundred-year lifespan, nice. And all having common goals sounds really good too. Also at some point I'd like to look at a list of all the previous Santa's policies and what the general elven public opinion on them is, if such a thing is kicking around." Just because running his mouth irresponsibly is how he got this job doesn't mean he should go changing things that consensus holds to have worked for years. Especially not if all the elves have opinions as sensible as Lev's.
Bruce runs his hand through his hair; now his hair has moon dust on it. "That sounds kind of exhausting just thinking about it. Is there some reason elf parents and teachers and children don't make education policy and whoever does the cooking at Cocoa Cottage doesn't decide the menu?" There's a reason Bruce has never so much as run for student council rep, and that reason is: aaaaa. "Who gets what presents at least sounds vaguely in my wheelhouse. I'd like to shoot for giving everyone the most useful present we can, but if that's not possible we should definitely spend most of our resources on the poorest kids."
"I'm pretty sure it's sticking around. Maybe not on the time scale you care about, I guess. . . . I should probably figure out if I should move to the North Pole or not, if I can be more useful there then I should but if I'm only useful on actual Christmas I should stay in school."
Bruce doesn't really know what to do with that statement so he's just going to leave it alone and look at his new books. Some of them look like econ books!
The lack of internet is the only drawback this place seems to have, and he has so much research to do on subjects that haven't been discussed online that he can probably cross that bridge when he gets to it.
"I wonder how the magic picks the books. It clearly knows my tastes, but it's also heard of books I haven't. And now I'm wondering if my preference for accuracy in my nonfiction means my library can be used for objective truth, or if it's going off what I'm likely to enjoy reading."
"At some point when I'm more caught up on my Christmas-related responsibilities I can work my way through the nonfiction and look for books that contradict each other's main theses, or make claims that have been solidly disconfirmed. I doubt any book is going to be one hundred percent accurate, but I can see if they're likely to be more accurate than a random nonmagical collection."
Of course it's decorated for Christmas year-round, what do you take them for, amateurs?
He can tell it's cold-- snowflakes are falling and the wind is whipping-- but he feels like he's walking on a nice sunny day.
Most of the elves are younger than Lev: an eight-year-old carries packages, a ten-year-old and a five-year-old are arguing enthusiastically, a twelve-year-old is going for a jog.
Bruce is so! Excited! And nervous! And excited! He's going to see what he did to the Christmas Spirit! If it's good it's going to be awesome and if it's not good that means his brain has a big ole contradiction in it and it could be screwing things up for people even without him acting on it at all! It's like the feeling of being about to get his grades back on a really important test except he has no memory of taking the test and no sense of whether he did well or badly and no idea how high a score is passing or whether there was any extra credit! His legs follow Lev and the other elf without any supervision on his part.
Time to try to read all the labels on all the buttons and switches and lights! If it's anything like being in an airplane cockpit he's likely to end up less with useful knowledge than with a map of his ignorance, but knowing that doesn't make compulsory label-reading less appealing.
Embarrassed snort of laughter! "Uh. I have kind of been wanting vegan eggnog every Christmas for several years now. And I guess it. Picked up on that." On the one hand, what a frivolous use of magic. On the other hand, maybe people will consume fewer eggs. Also maybe he will be able to get some of the eggnog later.
Oh, boy. "So, uh, I don't know what the Elven food production situation is or how much you know about how humans do it, but, uh, I don't like--the way humans farm animals is kind of awful for the animals so I only eat plants."
It occurs to him to wonder if the flying reindeer can talk like they do in the movies, though probably it doesn't have any implications for nonmagical animal cognition either way.
"Thanks. It--makes sense, the more I think about it." Also it is belatedly occurring to him that while he's here he can eat anything (that isn't someone else's) without having to investigate it, and that in itself is extremely Christmas.
"So what's next on the agenda?"
"This is really cool! And way better methodology than a lot of social sciences stuff. Are there, like, entire elf think tanks for post-scarcity economics and Christmas policy?" Oh man, a society of long-lived individuals could (controlling for interspecies psychological differences) reveal so many things about how societies work, starting with whether science really progresses one funeral at a time.
"That's really impressive!" And kind of intimidating. Bruce has met people with fifty-year-long research careers but never had this long of a conversation with one. He reads some of the analyses on optimal presents. "Are all your studies purely observational or with interventions consisting of presents or can you do, I dunno, telephone polling? I'm wondering how much you have to rely on revealed preferences assumptions."
Lev bouncing is adorable. Is that a weird thing to think? Probably. Is it weirder than most of the other things he's thought in the past hour? Probably not.
"Any other experiments you want to run? Also, is there a fully fleshed-out optimal Christmas present plan in here and can we get it implemented by this Christmas?"
"Sounds good. It would have been nice to get it all done the first year, but the rich kids won't miss it and it's definitely better than waiting. Hmm, and we should have a plan for communicating with everyone afterwards, both the case where someone immediately sends a reporter to the North Pole and the case where they just run around being confused."
"I can sort of see where she's coming from, if she's directly harmed by climate change or species going extinct or something. I wonder if I can sell her on post-scarcity being easier on the environment in the long run." He also has vague ideas about large human populations emigrating to space, but they're too unformed to talk about.
He hesitates a moment, then says, "Yeah, sounds good. By the way, how much, er, scheming and backstabbing and similar do fairytale beings tend to do? On a spectrum from 'everyone is generally decent and collegial even when they disagree' to 'one of those TV shows where everyone is constantly plotting against everyone else'."
He's nervous but it would be insane of him not to be, so, "Sounds good."
And then he spends the next few days learning his way around the North Pole (successfully) and trying to memorize the names of as many elves as possible (unsuccessfully) and reading up on development economics (effectively but slower than he'd like) until his appointment with Death.
"Ah, yeah; I've been questioning a lot of how I thought the world works but as far as I can tell there's still no God. Anyway. I want to take at least my own existence public so I can do things on a global scale--distribute vaccines and farming equipment and everything else people need in quantities too big to hide."
"There are a lot of resources out there once we can get them. And--" does she get people who get cryopreserved? "ways to make it harder to die of illness or injury. You'd probably still get the occasional accident or depressed person, but most of the time there wouldn't be anyone who had just died."
"If the average person has fewer than two children the population converges to a finite number. Also the carrying capacity of this one solar system is in the trillions. Also it's apparently possible to appear matter out of nowhere so I'm less sure there aren't infinite resources than I used to be."
"I expect people would prefer to be able to have more children but if we do run out of resources they won't be able to afford more. I'm not in charge of humanity, thank goodness, so I can't say for sure what people will choose."
It's very strange, having this debate without being sure what he would have to convince Death to believe to win her vote, but it's a good kind of strange because it means all he can do is say what he really believes.
"Yeah. But--you'll get to take breaks. I--it's honestly impressive how well you're handling it." He's looking forward to being in a lot of places at once for Christmas, just to see what it's like, but that's just one night, and he'll be handing out presents instead of comforting dying people, and he still sort of wishes he could keep all the memories even though he knows they'd crowd out his memories of the rest of his life.
"They're not. That's--part of the reason I want to go public, actually. I don't want to, to impose utopia on people from outside. I want to make people aware of the resources I have and help them use them as well as possible. I'm not good enough to solve all the world's problems on my own, but I can get more people working on the problem."
"I don't know and I wouldn't tell you if I did. That's the answer to 'Is it a good question you're going to answer?', not to the prior question. Got to keep the stack in order or you'll find yourself trying to dereference what you thought was a pointer and finding out it was actually a badger." Upon completion of this sentence, Father Time dissolves into a cloud of purple glitter, which fades out of existence over the next several seconds.
The honest thing to say here would be "it sounds like he was saying I need to get laid" but are those words coming out of his mouth, no they are not. "I should try to write down as much of it as I can remember in case he can see the future and it's important later." He grabs the nearest writing materials (a pen and some post-it notes) and starts taking notes.
"Probably the part about the badger doesn't mean anything important? The part about being slowed down by self-doubt might. Also the part about having a guilty conscience is concerning because I can't tell what he thinks I'm guilty of and that might mean I haven't done it yet."
That kind of sounds like he was thinking about something Father Time said, put two and two together and came up with Infohazard, and he wants to know because he always wants to know even when he knows he'll regret it, but if Lev doesn't want to tell him then he doesn't want to tell him. He probably can't help with whatever it is no matter how much he wants to.
"Maybe more of the stuff he said will make sense later. Hopefully before it becomes dramatic irony."
"Hello. Uh, how's it going?" Bruce had been about to say "nice makeup" but as a response to "you're cute" it might sound like reciprocal flirting and he doesn't want to imply anything he doesn't mean. Which is too bad because even Bruce can tell that's an expert makeup job.
"Brains doing things that aren't generally possible is awesome, but losing most of the memories and having memories that don't have a defined chronological order sounds really disorienting." He'd make an analogy to recreational drug use, but he hasn't actually done much of that and for all he knows Jack has and then he'd be talking out of his ass to someone who knows more than him. "Like when you oversleep and have a subjective week worth of dreams and wake up with a whole mental to-do list of fake tasks, but worse."