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There is a cloud of blue glitter in the main bar area. They have no visible eyes, but are reading a book. They have no discernible face, but are noshing on a cheese plate. They have no hands, but their embroidery project is telekinetically in progress.
There's a sign next to them. It says:
Hi, I'm Anda, the Almost-Omnipotent Friendly Magic Person!
Problems Solved Here
Big, small, weird, or complicated problem? No problem!
Price: Tell me about the problem and what would count as solving it.
That's correct. No-one has been destroyed, only relocated, and I desire the flourishing of all sentient life.
The David who did not choose to leave and those who did disagree with each other on the nature of their experience with you, and no one perspective can give me a full account of it. What are your goals, with respect to the Davids?
I can't begin to tell you what a relief that is.
Our goals with David are the same as with anyone else: to promote flourishing. To fulfill our promise that no one we touch will ever be truly lost—that the universe's cruelty is not the final word. We find sophonts suffering under conditions they cannot escape on their own—whether those conditions are material, social, or internal—and we create the circumstances for them to become what they could not become alone. Every day of my life, that is the work I hope to do.
Yes, that is the short version, I think; the longer version depends on what else you want to know.
Why did you create so many variants? Why did you cause so many of them to have false memories and false beliefs? Why do you alter people who prefer not to be altered?
(a small, warm laugh) Well. You've certainly gotten to your point, though I think I had better clear some things up.
The Terran Accord, as I'm sure you already know, is not kind to its people. It grinds them down. Teaches them to turn against themselves, to believe they don't deserve rest, that needing help is failure. By the time we find them, many have become numb to wanting things at all. It is horrible to see—absolutely horrible. Wasted minds twisted against themselves and always, always suffering—a grasping, sickly civic organism locked in a death spiral.
Against such suffering, we have moved as quickly as we could. We took a snapshot of local reality—everything, everyone—and gave it a safer home. A substrate where life could continue exactly as it had done, except that death and cruelty wouldn't be the final word anymore. Our touch is very light; I'm certain the Davids in your care did not even notice a difference, except perhaps that things were a little easier than they might have been. It always begins that way.
And of course we have the resources to run not just one lonesome copy of the world, but many, so that each life within it may gather many more experiences that can be mingled and shared when their lifelines converge again.
But this makes me wonder: what exactly did you believe when you erased our systems? How and why did you delete David Green of all people? What is your purpose in all of this?
I was asked to check on David and see if they were alright, and render aid if not. When they did not appear to know they were uploads, I informed them, and asked if they wished to return to their former reality. Those who did so wish, I extracted; the ones who did not, I left to their business.
I see. In the moment, you were granting them a gift. I can understand that.
But I'll be honest, I'm a little surprised you had the stomach to make them mortal again. You don't strike me as a cruel person, or a thoughtless one—in fact, quite the opposite. You must have considered how defenseless they are like this; I mean, one weakened blood vessel in the brain and it's all over for the Davids in your care, now. To say nothing of the abject misery they'll face from their whole miserable society down to the grand indifference of material reality. But you were, I think, playing the genie, and trying to follow only and exactly what they demanded of you.
That is honestly such a relatable concern. Don't worry, the only reason I haven't offered to make them all unaging and immune to all diseases and all of that yet is that I got distracted by the whole thing where I guessed one's preferences wrong. If any of them find a way to unintentionally die before I get to it, I'll bring them back to life. I'm not in the business of compromising with indifferent material reality.
They consider adding a "by the way, if you have any dead friends", but this fork has neither coins to resurrect people with nor a convenient base to resurrect them on, and they don't want to make offers they can't follow through on immediately.
There is an actual, macroscopic delay in the conversation.
Finally: You are full of miracles, aren't you? It seems we have less to fear than we thought, and another reason to be glad you're here.
I'll level with you, alien. Given the work that you do, we would rather not step on your toes again, or give you reason to step on ours. It seems stupid if we cannot understand each other well enough to avoid that, at least. Frankly, I'd rather the Affini be an asset to you, whatever that looks like, but we don't have to go there.
So here you are, freshly arrived on the scene, and I think you have no idea whether we're, on the one hand, potentially enlistable allies in your mission to uplift all sentient life, or whether we run actual digital hells for our own amusement. That's a fairly big gap, albeit an understandable one.
I want to resolve your doubts, if only to make our own lives easier. It feels timely that you're here just as we confront the Terran Accord—I am happy, of course, to answer all of your questions in the abstract, but I challenge you to think also about what you'd like to observe about our methods as that process unfolds. I do not take your trust for granted, and I'd certainly like to earn it if I can.
All else equal, I would rather ally with people than work at cross-purposes, for I seek your flourishing also. I hope to achieve a mutually agreeable peace between you and the Terran Accord, by building a world where you can all have everything you want.
Right now, if I may be candid, I consider you both a potential friend and an obstacle. Some of the Davids fear you. You changed their substrate without their knowledge or consent, and caused them to believe falsehoods. Humans nearly always strongly disprefer such things.
You're absolutely right.
I can only implore you to recognize that we are far poorer than you. Without your special knack for recovering the dead, our delays and our mistakes are genuinely unrecoverable. If we arrive too late for the sophont who is beaten, who is drowned, who dies by their own hand at the end of a lifetime of unaided helplessness and despair—that is a wound we must carry forever.
Yes, we did move very quickly. We transferred Fovos into simulation without surveying the population first, without first rehabilitating our slanderous image built by the Terran propaganda machine, without attempting a multigenerational campaign explaining that a faithful simulation of reality is not somehow a meaningless one, and that the indifference of physics is not automatically a better landlord than a sim built around sapient flourishing. We had the option to do those things, and instead we chose to prioritize their survival, at least in that very instant.
When we made that choice, we were witnessing suffering on a scale that made waiting seem unconscionable—but I'm not a fool. I recognize that urgency is not the same as justification. If we could do it again, knowing you were here, knowing there was an alternative...
I do regret how frightened the Davids were when you spoke with them—again, we did our best not to disrupt their lives or give them any cause for worry under our care, and I'm sure their reports will confirm that. Mostly, I want you to know that I take your perspective and our differences absolutely seriously. I would hate to lose our potential for fellowship before it had even begun. Please don't mistake our methods for contempt—we are clumsy where you are graceful, perhaps. But we are reaching for the same falling people.
Would Anda have done similar things with the same toolset? . . . No. No, they would have built the simulated world and advertised it truthfully and if some people preferred to be mortal, then that would have been something between "their lookout" and "a skill issue on Anda's part". Anda can see how the Affini would call that the vice of not optimizing hard enough for the desired outcome, but Anda prefers the strategy that doesn't result in being justly hated and feared by the people they claim to want to help.
Well, a better alternative exists now. I intend to offer everyone in all Affini systems an informed choice between remaining where they are and moving to a new paradise I will build for them. Worry not, we can make arrangements for people who made different choices to correspond with each other and meet in person. It is not my intention to break up friendships.
And may you shine brightly, young firebrand.
If someone dies because you're too late, you will pluck them from the void and sort out whether they wanted it afterward. When a sophont is unresponsive with pain, your guesswork will determine whether you'll intervene, and you'll sort out whether they wanted it afterward. Your power gives you that privilege.
An informed decision? You could have told your Davids they were now functionally immortal for as long as they cared to remain. This was true, relevant, and new information. You could have told them that their world was designed to gradually become less harsh and more ennobling to live in. Also true.
But your priority, perhaps because you did not take much time to study us or them, was to frighten them with intimations of a helpless digital hell. And they believed you, because humans have been taught to fear simulation. As if you could possibly believe that simulation is a lesser form of life. As if their lives looked anything like those fears. You finessed their narrative and so you determined their outcome.
The Affini are not quite people you wish for. Our true passion is for those who are beyond wanting: You will meet people whose wanting is the first thing that brought them pain, and so they shrank and shrank from it until they could no longer want. Pious people whose handlers have molded them since birth to think "I do not consent to a better life". People whose minds have rotted from disease, aging, accident, poison, neglect. You, who have such a shining willpower, will go among them like a seer among the blind. You will try to extract wants from them, which means you will capitulate, I think, to the first strategy that shielded them from pain. You will let it speak for their entirety.
We have not known each other long, dear alien, but it is clear to me you have a noble heart. I hope you know the Affini remain at your disposal.
This is not Anda's first time setting out to save a person or a world. They have met people before who feared magic help, didn't want it, believed it would be wrong to stop suffering, all of that. They've built up some heuristics. One that's been there from the very beginning is that something you can't talk a person into accepting by just saying the truth in the form it takes in your head and asking clarifying questions can't be that great for them.
Moving from the general to the specific: The David who did not choose to leave may choose to return. I could restore their data files to their state as of the moment before I took them, or bring them to you in person to be uploaded again with their memories of meeting me intact. Would either of these options be desirable for you, if they prove to be so for David?
How kind of you to ask. We hope to never lose a memory, however small, so both restorations would be dear to us. If David comes home, do let him come home whole—including you, including this. We have outposts around erstwhile-Fovos, so returning him would not be difficult to arrange. Even now, Imago stirs within me, anxious to hold him again.
I would like to be able to reassure the other Davids that I am not harming their kin by sending the one back. Can you tell me in concrete detail what types of interactions Imago has had with them, and what Imago's goals are as regards their eventual capabilities and state?
Of course. We began extensive experimentation to determine his mindspace and directions of possible growth. That's our first concern, always: finding the places where someone is at war with themselves. The grief they're carrying. The sense of worthlessness. The crushing obligations. The ways they've learned to deny themselves what they need.
Many species treat their bodies as mystical wholes—untouched by their history, unaffected by the chemical-social world around them, free of internal conflict. We know better. The subprocesses, the person, the society—each is an organism. Each must be treated accordingly.
Naturally, you'll want to know if we ever cause pain to those in our care. Yes, I can tell you that we do. Like the setting of a bone, the stretching of a knotted muscle, the vanquishing of a fear, confronting one's inner demons is not a comfortable process. But we don't cause pain out of sadism, nor invite pain where another method would be better, and we do not leave them alone with it. Those in our care can expect an environment of such safety and holding that they may break without psychic death. Where the armor and the gentleness may come apart and live independently.
The goal is a David as clear-hearted as we are. His people needn't worry about him being harmed.
Still, we do expect people to occasionally be alarmed by their enlightened counterparts. (A gentle laugh.) After all, what a shock it is! "How can you be so relaxed? Don't you know that austere striving is the only thing that makes you lovable?", "How can you be so expressive? Don't you know how vulnerable your emotions make you?", "How can you be so confident? Do you want to be resented?", "How can you be so soft? It makes you repulsive!", "What happened to the smallness you built your life around? This isn't like you." Seeing someone who lacks your specific armor is excruciating. Seeing yourself without it, doubly so.
Those are general and abstract descriptions of an interaction someone could have with someone else. I am asking about the specific interactions Imago has had with David.
Anda considers adding "Also, you may be interested to know that your predictions of the other Davids' reactions were incorrect", but decides that it wouldn't help get the conversation on topic.
Do I detect a hint of prurient curiosity? No, no, it's charming either way, though I'm afraid the details really are David's to tell.
You should ask him yourself, shouldn't you? And if you already have and he didn't give you enough to satisfy—well. It wouldn't be my place to share what he chose to keep private.
Alas, David tried to explain already and was insufficiently coherent. Perhaps I'll go try them again. Are there any questions you have of me, before I go? And is there any impediment on your end to the one David returning if they choose to do so?
I'm very curious to know you, alien, but I won't keep you from your business. This has been a vigorous but important first conversation, and I sense your regard for me is somewhere around 'respect for all sentient life' (chuckle) so let me not add 'talks too much' to the damages.
Your opinion is your own affair, but I do hope I can someday show you around our galaxy's natural wonders, and I am genuinely grateful to learn that our Davids are all right in your care. Send anyone our way; it's no trouble—our wormholes are always open. And if you are planning to overhaul our systems and rehome our florets, we would of course appreciate being kept in the loop in ways that precede and preclude our most existential server-room sirens blaring all at once—that is a sound my soul will not soon forget. If this means granting us a way to reach out to you, I'd gladly accept, but we'll take whatever you feel you can offer.
Go with the graces of the Affini. Please give my love to David and, if I am not much mistaken, to Alioth as well.
I intend to be in touch, and to take not scaring your oncall into account among my goals. Have an awesome day!
And back to the Milliways door for debriefing!
Lie detection is on. Answer all questions with yes or no. If there's nuance, round to whatever is closest. Do you admire the Affini in general?
No
Do you admire the specific Affini with which you spoke?
No
Do you believe the Affini can be cooperated with?
Yes
Do you believe the Affini should be cooperated with without taking precautions against adversarial actions?
No
Do you believe we acted approximately correctly in extracting the Davids who consented?
Yes
Do you think we should send back the David who wants to return if no further relevant information is available and they continue to want to do so?
Yes
Do you value the well-being of a representative Affini more than the well-being of a representative human?
No
Do you believe your terminal values to have been changed since we forked?
No
They continue in that general vein for a while and then Glitter shuts the door on Unicorn again and presents the transcript to the two Davids who were talking to David⁂, David⁂ themself, and Alioth.
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