It's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. At least not resisting when people do things to him is such an ingrained habit it doesn't take any effort. It's fine, this is fine, Atsinni deserves nice things, and besides, it'll be better than almost all the experiences he's ever had.

Atsinni rearranges his hair and rubs his eyes a bit once he's settled into the brain. "Thank you," he tells Luka, and, "Do you have more specific questions, because if I just generally rummage for Hell memories I get a bunch of torture mostly."

Luka makes a pensive face at being thanked. (He isn't judging, even if he were in the habit of it it seems likely that Atsinni's going to be able to use this host to significantly shorten the time it takes until yet another hell is defeated, but it'd be wholly inconsistent with his character for that to be more immediately emotionally salient than worrying about Atsinni's current host and feeling vaguely disgusted at being used to facilitate Atsinni taking over that person's body again.)

"Yes," Sara says, "we could use a newer and better map of the tunnels, anything you can tell us about the number of different demons involved in running the place. Maybe you know of evidence of captives trying to resist them, or evidence of divisions or disagreements between the demons. I hesitate to say you should avoid looking through torture memories, actually, if you can get anything from them about the tools and materials they have access to."

(Jess makes a face at that and sighs.)

(And Atsinni's host tells himself that literally anything would be totally worth it if it would help everyone still there, and that maybe he'll get to watch more cartoons later, and really he ought to be totally fine with all of this.)

"If you have computers I can learn to touch type and then he can watch TV while I'm writing things for you."

"Oh, with a physical keyboard? I have this cool ergonomic one I can lend you. Not, like, right here, but I have one."

"Sure, wherever, if it's got a TV and more shows like Avatar."

"Totally. Like it how, theme, art style, sense of humor?"

(He has no idea what aspects of Avatar he likes. Also he's vaguely worried that even considering whether he might possibly want anything more was a betrayal when Atsinni has been kind to him like this over and over for no reason.)

"I dunno. He hated Steven Universe, if that helps narrow it down."

"Hmmm, what if you try the first episodes of like ten really different shows? I can put together a list by the time you've figured out touch typing."

"That would be great, thanks."

She shows them to the place she's been crashing nearby - it's a little cabin near some other cabins, she's renting it for the month, and it's surrounded by weird sculptures and a zoo - and gets them set up with a fancy ergonomic keyboard and a program that teaches typing, and then she can get a list put together...

She ends up with a long list of shows and movies mostly chosen for being very different from each other and each having other obvious things to try next. There are half a dozen Elysian shows on her list, and a movie series from New Jerusalem, and Friends and Three Kingdoms and Taarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashmah and Slow TV and Spirited Away and a Eurovision compilation and Grey's Anatomy and Kim Possible and Kung-Fu Panda and Fantasia and Lord of the Rings, and each one comes with its own reclist of similar things. She notes that Kim Possible and Kung-Fu Panda are probably the most like Avatar.

Atsinni teaches himself 140 WPM touch-typing in a few hours with superhuman executive function, and then before settling in to watch TV and type wants to swing through the zoo!

He vaguely feels like maybe he should be judging this life choice, or maybe he shouldn't and doesn't know anything, but actually all he's succeeding at feeling is that having a break to do something else before doing more typing sounds like a really incredible luxury.

The zoo has, in approximate order of proximity to the entrance, a map of itself, a lepidopterarium, a day-cycle-offset exhibit of nocturnal animals, a reptile house, a gift shop, two aquaria, a botanical garden, and an extremely large lion exhibit.

Wow, that's a lot of zoo. Maybe this time just the lepidopterarium and the reptiles. He can come back next time he needs a break.

Back to the typing mines! He puts on Spirited Away and looks at it with only very occasional glances to make sure that he hasn't actually dhigyrf sesy gtom homr toe.

If it made the slightest sense to want nice things for himself he'd want to spend all day with the butterflies and their associated flowers. Or maybe all week.

This movie rec feels pointed, almost barbed. It's been a long time since they took his first name from him; it's been a long time since they took away the name they gave him first; he doesn't remember half the names he's had. He doesn't want to evaluate whether they want him to imply that their explicitly fictional story is accurate about whether losing your name really traps you in the employ of those who took it, or why they would want him to think it might be, or why they would want him to specifically conclude it was a lie, or why they would want him to think they wanted him to think they were trying to convince him it was a lie. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a story. It's a very resonant story, but they probably just came up with it by figuring out what happens in Secretly Not Really Purgatory (maybe by being in league with the demons there) and writing something that'd be sort of similar.

He'd rather work at Yubaba's bathhouse than... anything he can remember ever doing before, really. It seems so nice. The spirit they remove the bike from is grateful; they're not just inflicting something terrible on a screaming prisoner because someone said it was a good thing to do, or because they're afraid to disobey, or because hurting others is the closest they get to having fun. They don't necessarily know if they're doing the right thing, but they know one thing about it and the thing they know about it seems good. And it's a beautiful place.

Also, eating things is terrible, see?

And meanwhile, his memories.

He remembers the texture of the stone. He remembers the color, sometimes, of places where the light wasn't too dim that he visited at times when he hadn't had his eyes sewn shut. He remembers how firm it was; he remembers the planes of cleavage. He has guesses as to where the stone was carved and where the caves formed as a natural lava tube - confident ones, as long as he doesn't consciously consider whether he really should be confident. He's never actually gotten to study geology; he wouldn't believe a class or a book about it anyway, anymore; he's just paid attention.

(Luka did study geology, once, and anyone with his knowledge could be pretty confident in how the caves formed, and that the topmost layer to be found in Atsinni's host's memories formed of ash that fell through the air rather than from a lava flow, and quite a bit about how the composition of the magma changed as the stone formed.)

He remembers - things, all kinds of things. He remembers what year a fellow damned soul thought it was when they first started working on a printing press. He has a lower bound for the number of nameless interchangeable demons running the place. He has a lower bound on the number of books they have. He has a very partial list of languages they speak. He knows so, so much about their material culture.

They systematically try to train their captives not to tolerate almost anything that would help them think clearly or make careful choices or keep their emotions under control. Food is one. Sleep is another, or was supposed to be; it didn't work out as intended this time. He was allowed water when they didn't want him too hoarse to talk, and could theoretically infer that not everyone ever had a job where that was a requirement. He hasn't identified the pattern and doesn't have enough faith in himself to wonder about it.

Atsinni writes this up for the duration of Spirited Away and then keeps catching himself yawning and wants to sleep. He will not make his host eat dinner first, this time.

That's so nice. Why is Atsinni so nice.

He doesn't wake up straight out of a nightmare this time, which is sort of like not having any.

They are going to have breakfast, though. If there is any food around.

The only thing that matters at all is the chance that their information will help rescue people. That's all. Nothing else matters. Or so he keeps repeating to himself in a doomed effort to avoid thinking anything else.

(Jess has a bunch of oatmeal and dried fruit on hand and does not in fact know enough to move her from her general habit of generosity.)

Bowl of oatmeal, half an hour of typing with the first episode of Friends, and back to the zoo.

The show is weird and alien and confusing and he dislikes it.

Are they going to see the butterflies again? There is no point in him having preferences about that. They can see whatever. He wonders if the animals are miserable being kept in cages. Maybe they don't even notice. They're freer than he can remember ever being.

They can see the butterflies again. Then the lions.

The butterflies are nice.

They'll have to be a little bit patient to see the lions, whose enclosure is vast and contains things that break line of sight, but they can also do that and anyway it's a nicely landscaped exhibit with a rock tower in the middle that they can eventually watch some of the lions climb.