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wherein Merrin is dropped on Cheliax
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"I don't understand why you'd have to build something for it to be intelligent?  Lots of things that aren't built are intelligent.  There's a sentient river a few largedistanceunits away from my hometown."

"Largedistanceunits.  'Miles'.  It's a few 'miles' away from my hometown.  I don't know what largedistanceunits are."

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Ione is trying so hard to understand and it's very cute and Merrin is not entirely sure what to do with this feeling. 

 

"...Right. I - so probably I should just ask you for your top examples of things that are intelligent but weren't built - but, our world's understanding is that–" 

Pause. 

"Um. Does the word 'optimization-process' translate usefully at all?" 

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"...thing that makes things... better..."

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"...Yeah, I guess that's - not wrong about the core thing there. But it's– so, 'better' is relative to some particular criteria, right?"

Merrin, remembering the previous translation awkwardness spots, is trying incredibly hard to break all of this down into the smallest and concrete-est pieces, as though she were teaching a class to five-year-olds, not that she's every actually DONE that for anything that wasn't extremely basic first aid -

"- An optimizer is - an entity that has a goal for how the world-state should look in the future, and - makes plans and takes actions to bring the world toward that state? And a stronger optimizer makes better plans that shape the world more quickly and accurately toward whatever the final goal is that it's optimizing for?" 

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"If we're not talking about 'gods' then I'm not sure what we're talking about...?"

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"...I mean, I think Golarion gods are an example of an optimization process? If Erecura chose me in particular because she predicted that would result in a particular outcome and she liked that outcome better than the possible outcomes where she didn't choose me, that's - basically just what being an optimization process is. But it's not the only example, humans also do this - less powerfully, obviously, but that's a quantitative not a qualitative difference.  Dath ilan has this concept and considers it important even though we had never heard of your kind of gods existing." 

Merrin pauses. Makes a face. 

"- I could totally say more things about that but I'm noticing that we're maybe falling into the conversational pattern where we just keep drilling deeper and deeper into more specific digressions. Which I might be fine with as a relaxed breakfast conversation but seems unlikely to prioritize answering the questions you're most curious about. I think you'd started out asking me things about dath ilan in general and what living there was like? Not sure if chasing down all the Baseline words that sound like they mean math you don't know is answering that usefully for you. Oh and I also notice I'm failing to eat my food." 

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"Uh... I think you were trying to figure out how much context Tongues gave me, when I said or heard something in Baseline for which there wasn't an exact 'Taldane' fit?  And then I said the word complexity and it sounded like math I didn't know.  And before then I wanted to know everything about your world and your life and how you got here and if I could visit there."

(Not that Ione actually remembers this, but the Security wizard on Telepathic Bond to her does.)

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"I have to say I'm really curious to experience this from the other side! But I should probably plan more carefully when I use my Comprehend Languages and not do it for relaxed breakfast conversation. It...does seem like Tongues doesn't really fill in that much of the context, if it's something you don't know at all? And it doesn't provide automatic conversions between units of measurement, which is kind of irritating, you would think that would be really easy and not take much spell complexity, it's just multiplication or division. But if it's a more specific version of a concept you do know in generalities, it seems like it gives you that? But also I get the sense it's possible to accidentally say something very specific in Baseline, possibly because I am getting the sense that Baseline goes in harder on having precise words, and then you don't automatically know exactly what you said? Just that it's something very precise? ...I'm still pretty confused about how this could work." 

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Ione wordlessly points at Merrin's food.

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....That is also a good point. Merrin stops talking and starts eating. Ione and the others might be grateful for a minute or two to think about what the most interesting conversational tack would be on their side.

Merrin should maybe also take a step back and figure out what would be a satisfying breakfast conversation for her, because 'ending up falling into the social default of discussing math even when she wouldn't have picked this if shown all her options' is not an unfamiliar problem for her. 

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Ione will eat her own portions, and very very quietly and obediently receive her transmitted advice from the QUEEN OF CHELIAX about how they've decided to gamble on having one student unabashedly fascinated with the useful things of Civilization and her name is Ione Sala, so she is approved to exhibit a little license about poking around for the more interesting things that Merrin knows.

Ione will not think any bad thoughts.  Ione will not think any bad thoughts.

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...Merrin has concluded that actually the conversation she is really itching to have is a nice social gossip session with some other girls one about what in the name of supercooled superfluid helium was going on with Albe yesterday. No one has explicitly told her that she shouldn't talk about it and it's not like she personally feels very private about it, and their world has an entire god of sadism and masochism, that part isn't going to be an infohazard. 

She sits in silence until she's gotten through about a third of the food on her plate, which seems like the point at which further conversation is definitely allowed. 

"So! A completely different incredibly weird thing happened yesterday! Well before the Erecura weird thing. The person who originally took point on talking to me decided it was worth bringing in a very serious very highly-qualified Governance consultant, who it turned out also had some Chaotic Evil Outsider in her ancestry - which is how I learned that's apparently a thing, here. And had inherited this super-rare powerful magical artifact that significantly increases her cognitive abilities which is how I learned THAT'S a thing."

(Also if this were a novel, her superpowerful magical headgear of cognitive enhancement would have to be some kind of important plot hook, but that's the Tropes thing again and she doesn't really feel like getting into that conversation with the wizard students.)

"And she spent the entire session of doing experiments in her dangerous and impressively doompunk magical laboratory flirting with me, which is - I guess how I learned that's much less weird here than it would be in dath ilan, and relatedly research lab safety standards are way less of a thing. It kind of took me a really long time to notice the flirting and be sure it was that, because I was incredibly not expecting that, it's a little embarrassing now." 

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(Ione has not particularly been briefed on any of this whatsoever in order to preserve her properly surprised reactions!)


"Okay that doesn't all particularly happen at Ostenso wizard academy either."  WHAT.  WHAT is Ione SUPPOSED to be reacting about this.  "I mean... it does sound legit Chaotic Evil if that's what you're asking about?  I wouldn't flirt in a magical laboratory."

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"...I guess I had already been thinking it wouldn't happen frequently here and I was just - unusually interesting, because of being from another world and all. Umm. She did say she was herself Lawful Evil, not Chaotic Evil. She did a somewhat better job at explaining what the Taldane words 'Good' and 'Evil' even mean, I'm still kind of lost about Lawful vs Chaotic - I have theories but I'm trying to hold them very lightly because they're almost certainly importantly wrong. I - did like her, overall? Which is surprisingly if only because I did not particularly realize I was attracted to women in the 'wanting to date them' way as opposed to just finding lots of women aesthetically pleasing. Could just be that I have literally never met a woman in dath ilan who was doing whatever the flaming glitter her gendertrope is."  

Shrug. "I think it turned out the magical laboratory wasn't very dangerous to me because I am categorically immune to magic unless it's my own cleric magic. And probably it wasn't dangerous to her because she's an absurdly talented and qualified Governance consultant. I didn't know that at the start but I'm not - holding a grudge about that part?" 

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"I think even if you're totally safe, flirting in a magical laboratory is the sort of thing where, I mean, Pharasma's not really going to ding you much alignment points for it probably, but, like, that is a Lawful Evil person with worrisome Chaotic tendencies."  Wait is she stepping on somebody's seduction plans here.  "Probably a lot of fun in bed though if that's what you're wondering about."

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Abrogail is, of course, noting all of this down to mention to Ione later, which is honestly one of the best parts of her job.

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Huh. That feels like it has to be informative for what 'Law' and 'Chaos' mean here, but Merrin isn't totally sure what to do with it yet. 

"I...mean, in that sense maybe I'm not fully entirely Lawful, I...kind of would prefer living in a world where occasionally people might flirt with me in doompunk laboratories when they knew I was totally safe but didn't. Dath ilan has people who will do things like that, not maliciously, just because it's...fun, I guess. I think dath ilan is better for that and I don't think it's in contradiction with...I don't know, with what Civilization is trying to be. Which may or may not be related to what at least the gods here conceive of as Law." 

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But you've got to be careful about Law, it's not enforced the same way as Evil and you might end up in the Abyss Ione is Lawful Good and also Abaddon isn't particularly scary.  "I mean, very few people are entirely Lawful or entirely Chaotic, that's more of an outsider thing."

Can somebody PLEASE give Ione direction on what she's trying to achieve with Merrin here?  Are they supposed to be encouraging Merrin to be more Chaotic?

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(We are trying to seduce Merrin through her masochism among other tendencies, and persuade her that there are things Lawful Good failed to offer her.  Aiming her for Lawful Evil is secondary to aiming her out of Lawful Good.)

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"...Huh. That does make sense. It maybe makes me more confused about how Outsiders work, if they're - not like that, but I'm not expecting to resolve that confusion during this conversation. Not sure I'm expecting to resolve any specific confusion by telling you all about this, more just - I was really overdue for an opportunity to gossip and complain about this deeply weird experience." 

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"What was complainable about it?  I could file a report with Security and get the person corrected on their flirtation errors so next time they could flirt better."  Ione smiles to make it clear that she's joking.

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"- I mean, I want to complain but I don't endorse people acting on it? There's– so a thing I've already learned about myself is that in some sense I like being flirted with in ways that are uncomfortable and feel weird. I had a boyfriend at one point who..." Pause. "Um, I should check if you actually want to hear my moderately anonymized gossip about my boyfriend from dath ilan or if you'd rather have a different conversation instead." 

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YES, YOU WANT TO HEAR THAT.

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"Hearing anything about dath ilan sounds great to me!"

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"So, right. I have a boyfriend who's about a decade older than me and way smarter than me and, um, generally more impressive than me in every way, you know? And he really likes to tease me about how I'm - extremely talented in unique ways and so unusual and special. He knows this makes me really self-conscious so then he'll go on about it for like two minutes while I squirm and make grumpy noises about it. In a sort of supervillain-monologue voice. And it's super uncomfortable! But it's not - it doesn't make me want to leave and it does feel like it conveys him - liking me, wanting to pay attention to me, and I guess I can't claim I don't like that." 

Merrin's thoughts indicate that she thinks any claim that she could be uniquely talented is ridiculous enough not to be worth considering any further. 

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