"Machine chess?"

"Machines like this are really good at chess. They can win every time against a human or they can pretend to be worse at chess if we ask them to. There's a system for chess on this machine, I can get you set up with it."

"They pretend to be worse instead of just handicapping with pieces?"

"At least that's usual? Probably there's versions with handicaps instead but I just have the implementation that came with the machine."

"If I'm not needed anywhere I would like to try it."

"You are not needed anywhere."

And Kevin will give a tutorial on computer chess.

This is quite absorbing.

Kevin periodically passes on questions about the Acts.

Blai can look up from chess long enough to explain those. (It's really lucky that the Acts say she died and do not mention what happened after that because it would be really awkward if he had to redact Arazni as among the evil gods.)

If Blai expresses no further preferences they can continue this way until dinner, which is about as good as lunch but mostly involves a different selection of foods.

Different foods at different times of day! Revolutionary.

After dinner Chris approaches and says more things.

Kevin inhales through his teeth and starts taking notes.

He replies to Chris. Chris says more things.

Eventually Kevin turns to Blai. "Chris would like your confirmation that you will likely be unwilling to share your magic document or give any magic lessons in the event that the government does not delete the uncensored pictures of the Acts. Also that you expect to be able to confirm their deletion with repeated truth spell use and will assume that, if they decline to cooperate with this, it's because they didn't actually delete the pictures. And that the, uh, archmages will be able to do similar things if they want to."

"The archmages can certainly improve on it, they've got an Abadaran Inquisitor, he'll have the good truth spell. I think I would still be willing to teach any clerics of acceptable gods who might pop up? The basic generic cleric things, anyway. I don't think it helps anyone if I fail to assist a budding Shelynism movement or something. But the Prestidigitation sheet, Chris is correct."

More back-and-forth.

"Chris thinks he can work with that. Also he apologizes for the poor first impression."

"Worse than this is probably well within the scope of probable outcomes of meetings this strange."

"We appreciate that. Anyway, since it seems like you don't need to directly talk to the ambassador to get this done, you have spare Comprehend Language and we could arrange to receive copies of books or such, so Chris thinks it might be a good time to talk about learning English? We can get some books or such but not all of them."

"I would not expect anywhere, let alone an out of the way polar fort, to have all books. Starting me with the alphabet while you've got Share Langauge and then giving me something to read and something to take notes with while I have a Comprehend up will get me started."

"We can ask for copies of books, the same way you had that conversation with the ambassador, because there's usually a few hours a day when, uh. When things line up for it. We could just get you books for children, the kind with simple words and lots of pictures, or we could get you a few moving pictures with sound where the sound is, say, a song about English for kids and there are also pictures to go with the song. If we're getting books we'd want to know what sort of stuff you're interested in, they make a lot of books. We also have moving pictures here where people talk in English and there's an option to show the words they say in text, but those can be more complicated to understand. I can start you off with the alphabet right now if you'd like."

"I can see why books for children would make sense without Comprehend Languages but I do not think they will be much use with it. Why are the moving pictures more complicated to understand?"

"The kind of things for kids that we'd get you would try to have things be mostly clear just from the pictures, and not go too fast, and go for simple situations that make sense or are silly in obvious ways. In moving pictures for adults it might be, say, that a character kills another character, but the first character is being subtle and sneaky about it and then lies about it in ways that the viewer isn't necessarily supposed to notice right away, or two people might have a conversation about something complicated and there's no pictures to go with what they're saying. I guess if you have the Comprehend up that doesn't matter, I think we were wondering about books for looking at when you don't have the Comprehend but do have a few words already and someone to ask questions of."

"My plan is to take notes while I have the Comprehend up and then study those notes."

More back-and-forth.

"In that case we won't make copies of books and will continue to use the information-sharing for other things. And if you'd like to watch a moving picture for adults we could do another showing of 'The Thing', it's traditional."

Chris does not look actually upset but he does raise an eyebrow.