"The Andalites are holding it up for political reasons so it's just a pilot group helping with industrialization and so on. And me, I think I got grandfathered in by being dead when the treaty was signed."

"Oh." He ducks his head, briefly. "What - was it like, being dead? And...coming back?" 

"It was.... all right? Mhalir was in Nirvana where they do - healing and understanding your trauma and things. I was in Heaven where they - were cleaning up the aftermath of the -"

Ma'ar doesn't need to be reading her mind to notice that she doesn't, especially, want to talk about the aftermath of the - war, he assumes, the one with Hell. (Cities turned to glass-and-ash...) 

"What determines where a person goes when they die?" 

"There's a trial. Where you're sorted based on your conduct in life. Our gods - see the world through two - angles, I guess, that sort of translate to human things and sort of don't, Good versus Evil and Law versus Chaos. So there are nine afterlives for all the combinations of those. Heaven is Lawful Good, and Nirvana is Neutral Good. Hell is Lawful Evil."

"I see. I wonder how I would be sorted?" He shakes his head. "I doubt your gods would approve of my life." 

"Probably not. Mhalir was Evil, when he reached Golarion, but Aroden is Lawful Neutral. It's not necessarily as simple as ...killing lots of innocent people is Good sometimes if you have a reason." She sounds somewhat bitter about this.

Ma'ar is quiet for a moment, eyes downcast. Then he reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. 

"I do not think it is ever good, though, in the human sense of the word - the one I use, at least. Even when it is a - tradeoff worth choosing - it is always a tragedy." 

Carissa's belief is that powerful people can do whatever they want and it's stupid even where it's inexplicably not dangerous, to go around wishing for them to do something else. 

She leans into him, nods. 

Ma'ar slips his arm around her, without thinking about it. He's reading her mind - he figures she's already given him blanket permission - enough to pick up on that thread. 

His thought is that you don't go around wishing. If you notice that you would prefer the world a different way, you list your resources - acquire more if necessary - and you make a plan and you change it. Which often requires becoming powerful oneself, and that takes a long time and is gruelling and frustrating and, yes, dangerous. But he can't say that he's every considered doing it a different way. 

He doesn't know how to say it, though, not in a way that actually translates; he never has been able to communicate it very well, and in this case surely Mhalir has tried already.

Mhalir gives him a minute of silence, but it doesn't seem like Ma'ar is about to say anything, and now Carissa is sad and he would prefer a new topic. 

"We could watch an Earth movie?" he suggests. 

"Let's watch another one of the ones about the Earth adventurers."

Mhalir has a poke around the computer database of movies. "Oh, I recognize this character!" <Carissa, have you heard of 'James Bond'?>

And for Ma'ar's benefit: "James Bond is a very famous fictional adventurer from Earth media! I think there were many books about him and then many movies made over decades. I suppose we can find out why he was so popular a character." 

The movie is called 'Goldfinger' and the plot summary claims it's about James Bond fighting a villain called Goldfinger, who is living up to his name by...trying to mess with vaults of gold and destroy the world economy or something? 

"Why? - I guess we learn that by watching it."

Mhalir puts it on. 

Ma'ar is looking forward to it! He showed some movies to the leadership of Predain, but mainly fiction about space and other made-up-futuristic things, or fiction about worlds with magic (which Earth apparently never had!) He's curious how this genre differs. 

He sits down with Carissa. Leans against her a little, again. 

James Bond, after his last mission, is on vacation! However, his handler nonetheless tells him to spy on a fellow guest at his hotel! He sees Goldfinger, a gold-bullion merchant or trader of some kind, cheating at some sort of betting card game! Bond blackmails him into losing on purpose and then seduces his employee! However! The next morning he's knocked out by Goldfinger's manservant, and wakes to find Jill dead and also painted gold! She is supposedly dead because of having been painted gold, though it's unclear this medically follows. 

The scene skips to London, where Bond learns that Goldfinger is somehow smuggling gold across country borders in order to profit from selling it internationally! He is tasked with finding out how. This involves meeting Goldfinger at his country club (some sort of retreat where rich people spend time) and playing a game called golf with him, also with a bet made. 

More things happen. Many more characters are introduced. A nuclear physicist from a faraway country called China is involved, and Bond discovers that Goldfinger plans to release toxic gas to kill everyone in the US gold-bullion vault. There is also a bomb involved. Bond and some others are locked into the gold vault! There is a dramatic showdown where multiple people attempt to defuse the bomb and Goldfinger's manservant fights them; Bond wins but is still unable to disarm the mechanism, until seconds before the countdown runs out, an atomic specialist is rushed in and...flips the off switch on the device.

This seems like the climax, really, but the movie inexplicably ends with Bond being flown to have lunch with the US President, which is interrupted by Goldfinger hijacking the plane! However, when in the struggle his gun accidentally fires at a window, the pressure difference sucks him out the broken window! The plane crashes into the sea but Bond and the pilot parachute down to safety. And then hide from search helicopters??? The reason why is unclear and the movie ends there. 

Carissa leans against Ma'ar and assumes they've established common knowledge about everyone's state of seducedness because it's not a very complicated thing to convey and if Ma'ar is not gay then he's not, given the being twice her age, going to be inexperienced. 

She is not very impressed with James Bond. "I feel like they could have assassinated Goldfinger much sooner!"

"I do not really understand the decision processes used by anyone in this movie!" 

"I feel as though they were supposed to be portrayed as ruthless but that...sort of only works if your ruthless strategies are competent? It still managed to be quite gripping, though." 

"They're good at storytelling. And the music's lovely. And I guess if it's propaganda you've got to appeal to the average person, and the average person can't read or write or count past thirty and doesn't know how to evaluate an assassination plot beyond whether you came out on top."

"I think the average American, which would have been the main target population, could read or write in..." Mhalir peruses for the film's date. "In 1964. I can absolutely buy that most people cannot evaluate assassination plots beyond who won and how fancy their fight moves and technology and explosions were." 

"It seems the right level of complicated for schoolchildren, anyway. - Though possibly it is not aimed at schoolchildren, given the seduction depicted, many places frown on that." 

"- Also the violence, I have not actually spent time on Earth but my sense is that rich societies there do not think children should be exposed to violence, in real life or in media." 

"What, why not? Do they think they won't do it if they haven't seen it? Does that work?"