He smiles. "It does. It's a shame it's not well-known, but I'm not so sure making it more well-known is the best thing I could be doing right now, either, in spite of agreeing pretty completely with that plan. Both plans, I should say."

He nods. "It did seem designed for force rather than persuasion. How did you hear about that plan?"

"I know the person who came up with the Seal idea personally, although they've asked me not to talk too much about them."

"Fair enough."

(The money has been around for a long time, but whoever wrote the Seal clearly thinks of many Others as people and Sam agrees with them and some of them are immortal...)

"I didn't want to bring this up around the others because while probably no one there would take matters into their own hands, I don't really want them associating your idea with the money. And because I wanted to ask. The, the self-perpetuating escape clause, mentioned releasing Others or practitioners if they agree to take the Seal. Even though practitioners would have little ability to inflict it on most Others anyway. So, speculation. Are there practitioners behind this who aren't bound by Solomon's bargain?"

"The person behind this is very much under Solomon's Seal, and they believe as I do, that it's not... good enough."

"Oh, right, the first person behind it would have to be just because everyone is. Any subsequent practitioners behind it, I should have asked."

"...isn't the Seal of Solomon baked into the awakening ritual, though? How would any other practitioners not have it?"

"I don't know, to be honest. But non-practitioners can get karma scores sometimes, so the spirits aren't completely deaf to them. I'd be surprised if there isn't any other way to become a practitioner.

And you did say you'd fought something that should have had plenty of time to run across Solomon's Seal, even if that time hasn't happened yet. Unsealed could mean more than one thing."

"Yeah, but that was, like, an Other that messes with time, I'm not sure how the rules apply to it. I'd be pretty surprised to hear about other awakening rituals, though," other than the ones I know anyway, "it sounds like things tend to reach a sort of stable point with this magic system and if there were others either they'd be forgotten or, like, just as well known? I'm not sure. And what other thing would 'unsealed' mean?"

"Not bound by the new one.

You're right about the equilibrium being stable. Other rituals—I suppose it would have to be a ritual, wouldn't it—are very much in the realm of "probably possible" rather than "well attested.""

"I... confess I don't actually know if it would necessarily be a ritual or what, most of my magic knowledge is about illusions and I'm not even very sure how the ritual works and which particular part of it does the 'agreeing to be Sealed' thing, it's all so symbolic, so I'll probably believe whatever you say about it."

"Oh, I'm speculating rather a lot. Not even very productively, if you say all the practitioners involved awakened the usual way."

He shrugs. "I mean, I suppose it's not impossible, if what you say is true? But the only person behind this Seal idea I've met is the one who came up with it" because he's never technically met himself "and they are under Solomon. Er, would that be particularly bad? I hadn't given this Seal much thought under the light of what a practitioner not under Solomon would be able to do with it" for a certain value of much "—can I look at the phrasing again?"

He hands him the bill. "It'd be bad for reasons not especially related to the content. This one would be better to have started out with, I agree."

He reads it as if he didn't have it memorised. "So you mean, like, the bad part would be that practitioners not under Solomon's Seal would upset the status quo?"

"They'd weaken it, at least. Not having exceptions matters.
If the freemen-on-the-land had any credibility, their independence wouldn't cost the Canadian government any power. They would cost it some of its legitimacy. And back on the outside of the metaphor, all the power comes from legitimacy."

"How about global optimisation, though? I mean, when you're optimising something and you get stuck on a local optimum, the only way to achieve a better optimum is by going through a bunch of places that are worse then either place."

"Could be. That sounds more like a justification after the fact than a reason, but if there's a concrete enough plan for the in between stages maybe it would work out."

"I mean, this is a general observation for any large-scale changes in social structures, yeah? Like, I don't think the period around the French Revolution was the funnest of all for everyone but I think it's hard to deny that democracy worked out better for them in the end. This sort of pattern isn't exclusive to magic."

"No, it's not. That's true. And if there had been only one successful government in history, which we knew to be propping itself up by being the universal status quo, I'd be much more worried about those sovereign citizens."

"Yes, but this is less strong evidence than it would be if magic didn't work the way it does. The fact that this status quo has lasted as long as it has is not particularly strong evidence that it's the best at anything when the whole system is rigged to produce winners that take it all and to give an overwhelming advantage to first arrivals."

"Oh, it's not the best. But the game being rigged doesn't mean we should flip the table.

If all the practitioners behind this awakened the usual way, how are you going about spreading the improved version?"

"I can in fact defend myself, under Solomon's Seal, and the Charybdis literally tried to eat me. But I haven't actually really done much with this oath, other than that—I think it's a good idea but like I said I'm not yet sure where my best bets lie. As for how the people working more actively on this are doing it, that's amongst the things I wanted to figure out."

"You don't know how they're doing it? Because if you're not creating exceptions the existing status quo, then each individual step is just one more Other with claws blunted. Hard to get far, but I can wish you luck with the small steps.

If you, or they, are creating exceptions then the tradeoff is a small risk of eventual catastrophe."

"Well. I at least am not." He hasn't awakened a new person in sixty years, even. "I might ask the person behind it what they know but they're actually pretty hands-off with the plan, as far as I know."