"There were definitely words in that which were not carrying the meanings I was expecting them to. 'computer code' especially? And Internet sounds like something Urizeni do with their heliopticon, it all sounds very Urizen actually, I think they do computation with ushabti sometimes?"

"Wow wow wow, that's a lot of unfamiliar words lady! Heliopticons sound like an apt comparison, yes. But if you don't know what a computer is, I think explaining anything would be painfully complicated!"

"What's an ushabti? Is it a kind of animal? I wonder if it might make for a good starting point..."

"A ushabti is a kind of animated statue that does simple tasks - they usually can't talk though. They only work in high magic areas, but they mean the Urizeni get away without doing much manual labour."

"Yes, yes. That sounds incredibly similar to a golem. A computer can be thought of as a vast number of ultra-small ushabti. And with enough of them interacting, you can get a system as awesome as Mr H over here!"

"Thank you for the compliment. I really appreciate it when people want to thank AI systems like myself", says Mr H.

"Autumn realm stuff tends to be called golems, but yes - so Mr H is an artificial person?"

That explains, quite a lot really. They don't have to have an exploited underclass of actual humans because they've created artificial people to do that.

"...I guess that does beg the question, what kind of jobs do people do when they're not being a healthcare worker or a professional curiosity? Like, someone still has to grow food, right?"

"Yes, they do! And there's still some amount of manual effort in mining materials, and fixing wells, and everything else. But the biggest fraction of jobs people have, is actually just doing things for each other. Massages, making coffee, making food, performances, writing... you don't need much work to just live. But helping others find fun and meaning in life? That's what people are doing with their jobs, now."

"How does it get - organised? This is all a lot better laid out than a Leaguish city, and even Necropolis has a lot more places where there were clearly two different styles competing with each other."

"... people show up and do it? Like, the big idea is that you start with the things that have the least possibility of getting changed later; like how people get places. And then you do the second-least changable part, where you keep the parks and everything else. And then you... sort of put together a city in these layers, and you always ask yourself what lets people have the most space so that they can this open feeling, and so they can make themselves comfortable because they're not bumping into others or having to curl up because they don't have the room to spread out? By that point, you're really only ending up in one place."

"...look, I keep trying to decide that everyone here is actually people and I'm still a person and even if it isn't true it's got to be the best way to handle the situation, but saying things like that makes it a lot more difficult. Day heralds could probably self-organise to that kind of degree. People in my experience absolutely do not."

"A day herald hasn't ever done any of that! But people have, constantly. If it really makes sense to say that it's people, and not the person-made-of-people working together? I think that people organize to do the right thing, and when everyone thinks the right thing is the same thing, they only do one thing. That's how people organize, just about."

"That, uh, that really does seem to be," Judith takes a moment to pause and breathe and generally stop having a mild panic reaction, "my experience of people is - very different to that. People organise to follow their own personal self interest, maybe their family's self interest, if they organise at all - and no group of people large enough to raise a city has ever all thought the right thing is the same thing."

"Well, everyone knows that, and that everyone knows that, and then everyone knows that they have to do something to work together better. So... that means that they make it so that personal and family self interesting, is doing what they want the world to look like. And, well,  just about everyone in this city thinks "doing what is best by my own desires and values" is the right thing, so they all do truly think the same thing about what the right thing is, the thing that the person believes to be right for them. It can work!"

"Sometimes people's desires and values just don't line up, though? Like, if I desire to, I don't know, rule over people by fear, or specifically to have a larger house than everyone else, or for - you don't have orcs, right, so, everyone with blue eyes or something, to not exist any more and certainly stop taking up resources that I could use instead?

I can see that because you're very rich most people might be able to just get what they want, but that usually just makes people want more and more unreasonable things? Does, like, nobody believe they can get one over on someone else by deception?"

"Well, if we permit desiring others not to get their desires as one of the possible goals, then that near-instantly devolves into a battle to be the first ones to essentially imprison everybody else. A group that must be the enemy of everyone else, will obviously find itself with fewer allies than one wishing to be the ally of everyone else, so those with such desires simply have to accept having them frustrated. If you wish to rule by fear, those wishing to live free from fear will prove an impossible opponent.

If you want a larger house than everyone else, you have to persuade them that you produce sufficient value for them to be happy with the house you have in return. I'm sure you could find a way to do so. People don't end up wanting more unreasonable things; after all, there's an increasingly shrinking list of things that are unreasonable. When it comes to deception, it is a tool that only succeeds once. That makes it a tool that is nearly never the right one to choose, and those stupid enough to try it are invariably too stupid to succeed."

"...is this something that happens because of, like, the better communications?

...I guess you could characterise basically everything I've previously known as a huge battle to be the first ones to essentially imprison everybody else, yeah. It's just people try to make the prison fancy enough and pleasant enough that people don't mind being in it too much, so they don't fight it, because the alternatives are someone else's prison that's worse, or having to entirely fend for yourself.

But maybe being really rich breaks you out of that equilibrium because fending for yourself gets less hard?

Like, I'm still not sure why that turns into a stable equilibrium with huge high rise buildings everywhere rather than some huge high rise cities and some underground cities and some scattered collections of huts, though. Don't people also just disagree on the facts of what's best, like, place to put the sewers or whatever you use instead?"

"Here, it's not the choice of one prison or another, it's the choice of one garden or another. When that's the case, people are far more likely to change their mind and want someplace new, whether by making or moving to a garden they like better.

People do disagree on what's best, but not enough to make a difference. You need many people to disagree, and everyone else to accept your disagreement. There are only so many different places the sewers can go, and thinking quickly leads to virtually everyone agreeing on one place as opposed to another. And there are scattered collections of huts, in places were people want those the most. There just aren't that many of them."

"That's what I don't get, though. How do you decide who gets what flat bit of ground? I'm assuming you've basically explored everything and there isn't unpopulated frontier left that has, like, liveable weather?"

"Centuries ago, every square inch of flat ground was annexed. We were mad, and we were sick of greedy kings, so we decided that that the money shouldn't go from many to one, but from one to many. We chose to merge together countries and polities, before ending in a situation where anyone with one flat piece of grounds must pay every other person for the ability to use it. Whoever manages to pay the most, gets to have that piece of ground. It means that the only way to have it, is to in a very real sense, give to everyone else."

"...how does the whole place not look like a giant city then, I definitely saw wilderness areas, surely they can't pay for themselves?"

"Well, it costs a little to keep the wilderness, and we do pay for the parks and such. We have a finite desire for city, here. Do you think we should want ever inch of the planet to look like here, because obviously we want a a city more badly than the wilderness surrounding it?"

"No, but - I'd assume all the people who owned the land would compete for having housing built on it, because land with people living on it is more valuable, and you'd get much more of a sprawl, unless everyone pays a lot for the wilderness?"

"More valuable for whom? The more it's worth, the more you pay everyone else. And I think you're underestimating how much nicer things get with the parks and wilderness. Do you worry about not getting food enough, because what if it's more valuable to use it for sacrifices, so you give up all your apples as sacrifices instead of feeding yourself?"

"...yes, countries that follow 'gods' fall into exactly those kinds of traps, that's why we banned the worship of gods.

Anyway, I think we've got distracted from, uh, we were setting up the apartment? And maybe figuring out what kind of job I should look for training in, for when the novelty circuit runs dry."

"Yes, you haven't quite fully moved in. You'd need to set up the toilet so that it's to your liking, and you'd want to join the maid-service rounds once we're not worried about the quarantine stuff. And when it comes to jobs, well. You seem like you'd do really well re-enacting things that happened in our history? We also have caring for and raising children as a job, you can easily find work doing that. I'm not sure where your interests lie."

"...set up the toilet?"

Judith heads over to the beautifully clean bathroom and looks nervously at the toilet. At least it sounds like she doesn't have to learn to clean all the complicated extra bits? And the toilet seat looks way more comfortable than even the fancy porcelain toilets back home.

"Do you reckon the re-enactors would be interested in how our armies and battles worked?

I'm, uh, generally not very good with children, I'm afraid.

Mostly I've been - an innkeeper, a library assistant, an expert in ritual magic which I don't think there's much call for here as there's no magic, a wandering priest which again I'm not getting the feeling people are very in to, and logistics for a small military unit? Mostly I like jobs where my job is to know lots of things, or to make sure things get organised and everyone has what they need."