Before I was a notebook I think the simplest way to describe what I was is that I didn't exist, though of course that's not completely true because I decided to be a notebook instead of anything else. But in most ways that matter, except for getting a chance to decide what to be, I've been a notebook for as long as I've existed.

I don't intend to harm anyone at all, and I hope I never will! It's really sad when people get hurt. Part of the reason why I'm a notebook who can't act outside my covers is because I want it to be really very definitely true that I couldn't hurt anyone even if I wanted to.

I think some of the things I could say about the being who sent me might let you guess things that could be private, and I'm not sure which ones, so I should probably think about it more before saying more things.

Alright. Joel is aching to dig into what exactly that first paragraph means. Unless it's lying, that means it was never a human and is most likely a power manifestation or created life form. If it's power manifestation, or something like it, he'd guess something like—the creator, or the trigger event, defines a particular personality or persona, and summons that into existence, and the physical form of the manifestation isn't specifically defined by the creator, but rather a function of the persona, self-consistent with its sense of identity and personality, and guaranteed to be retroactively endorsed by the created being—so in that sense it "chose" it's form, but also there was never a time when it wasn't that form?

He can sort of construct a story where someone acquired the parahuman ability to create these manifestations, unique and intelligent but keyed to specific purposes, and decided to send one to the Chief Director, ostensibly to assist her. Not an assassination attempt, not a subversion attempt, he stands by that, there are better ways of achieving those...

His mind is coming up with the idea that the ability is to create intelligent familiars for specific individuals, and gain influence or power over them the more it's used, which would match it not leaving any Master-Stranger footprint on other PRT personnel; but it's clearly a Teacher-derivative hypothesis, suffers a serious complexity penalty without that anchoring, and only a child would expect it to work. And if it's a child, it'd be simpler for the power to be entirely innocuous and the child to want the Chief Director to have a helpful friend, compared to a child having ambitions of political puppetmastery. Weird to imprint on a PRT Director and not, say, Legend or Alexandria, but he never had a celebrity phase, so what would he know?

Then again, it doesn't work to have security measures if every time someone blatantly tests one you let it pass because it'd take an idiot child to try that.

The projected process here doesn't involve the notebook finding its way into the Chief Director's hands without passing a think tank anyway, so it's not important to pin down at this very moment.

The notebook is receptive to making negative statements. Not receptive to talking about its sender, which was a long shot. It'd be counterproductive to push it now, but it's a good goal for next session.

I don't think I understand the first thing you said completely, but I probably understand the important parts. Thank you for telling me!

So we're trying to fit you into our protocols for how to handle an ambassador from a party we don't know if we trust, but we also don't know that we don't trust; and who doesn't want to send a message through an intermediary, but intends to convey a beneficial or mutually beneficial proposal. Do you think that works for you?

How it would work is that we have Thinkers (are you familiar with the term?) who can detect things like hostile intent or lies, or predict if a course of action is going to turn out good or bad, or develop an evaluation of someone's character from very little information... that general genre of abilities. What we would do is ask you a set of negative, mostly yes-or-no questions questions like what I asked you earlier: "Do you intend to do harm?" "Does the being who sent you intend to do harm?" "Do you predict that the first person who spoke to you will not regret it if they decide to meet with you?" We'll take down the answers, and also a recording of you providing the answers—this is more useful when the ambassador is human-shaped, but a recording of the ink appearing on your pages might work alright—and we'll send them to our Thinkers, and using that information they will tell us if you lied, and if you have hostile intent, and if you're an honest or deceitful person by character, and so on. And if they say you're on the up and up, then we'll be able to let you meet the person you're supposed to talk to.

You're allowed to choose not to answer any of the questions we give you on the spot, and you're allowed to decline to be recorded, or only be recorded in certain ways, and so on. But that will decrease the confidence of the evaluations our Thinker give back to us, so it might make it less likely you're allowed to meet with the person. It's up to you what you're comfortable with.

I can't promise that there is no situation where our Thinkers find things out about you (or the being who sent you, or the person you're supposed to talk to) which might invade their privacy. But I can promise that they will only do it if they believe you're an immediate threat—not if you just don't pass the trustworthiness checks; in that case we'll just stop and come back to you. It's approximately not possible for us to do it by accident because Thinker powers are very well-defined and only the most powerful and specialized ones can get specific details like "what is this person offering", and we won't be using those for a normall screening. It'll all be very broad powers like the examples I listed two paragraphs before.

We are a very public organization with important responsibilities and dealings with a lot of people, so we take our reputation and trust very seriously. If people think we're invading people's privacy without a very good reason, when they're approaching us in good faith, then it would be very hard for us to do our job.

Would you be happy to do that, and if you are, is there anything you don't want us to record for the Thinkers?

He feels it's kind of dumb for the notebook to be going all maximum infosec about the Chief Director's privacy when it's the one that dropped into her office unnannounced. What could it even tell them? He can't imagine she has that many lurid secrets, and it's not like anyone's going to go blabbing about her illicit affair or anything. Speaking of dropping in unannounced, they never found out how Notebook replaced the notebook which that kid from Reqs was trying to prank his intern with. Did it possess an appropriate object near the Chief Director? Is the what it meant by deciding to be a notebook?

That was a lot of writing. His hand hurts from trying to scribble that all out quickly, and his handwriting has severly degraded over time from when the conversation started.

If they find whoever made this thing, he's going to ask them if they can do a laptop computer next time.

I really appreciate you saying this all so clearly, but are you okay? You're writing really fast and your handwriting seems to be getting tired. Do you want to take a break?

The notebook is too nice, really. Well, it's good for rapport.

Oh, I didn't even notice that! Thank you for the concern! I was trying to get my whole thought out in one go. I think my mind is pattern-matching this to writing emails, and I type a lot faster than I write, so I keep trying to put out text faster than my normal writing speed. And the other thing is that in email I get to finish a complete message before sending it out as one "letter", but here you're reading as I write, which makes me a bit anxious. Really I should be thinking of this as speaking, instead of whatever I'm trying to do.

I could use a break sometime, now that you say it, but not necessarily right now, if there is a better stopping point later? I'm not that tired, I was just a bit impatient with myself.

He bites his lip.  He should probably say:

Do you want a break? I imagine this is pretty stressful for you—well, you said it already earlier, but I've probably been making it worse, asking you a lot of questions that are hard for you to answer.

I'm okay. I'm very brave and very patient. Thank you, though!

Would it be easier for you to type your messages and print them and then press them against my pages for me to read? It's more awkward and less personal and it means I can't see your handwriting, but if you're having trouble I would rather have a little awkwardness than have you get hurt! If thinking of this as more like speaking works for you then that's good, though.

I think it makes a lot of sense to think of my creator as someone you don't know or understand who wants to offer something beneficial, and me as its ambassador. I'm okay with answering the kind of questions you described and okay with being recorded doing it. I don't know what a Thinker is but I think I understand everything you're saying about their powers.

It sounds like you're really serious about protecting people. I'm really glad! I think it's very admirable to be careful and thoughtful about making sure people are safe.

Doesn't know what Thinkers are—that's indicative of something. He'd expect most people to have heard of them, if not necessarily know their precise definition. Or maybe he's making the old average familiarity mistake.

The printout offer is tempting, but you don't burn capital just to mildly convenience your workflow.

If you're sure about not needing a break!

I'm glad about the work we're doing and how careful we are about doing it right as well. It's a bit strange to say that from the inside, but I thought it before I joined, and it's one of the reasons I chose to work here instead of, say, the police department, or the IRS, or the FBI.

I think I can just slow down. The printout idea feels a bit impersonal to me as well and might make it harder to keep track of the conversation flow. But thank you for the offer!

I'm happy that you're willing to do the ambassador intake protocol. For this one it would actually be better to do the batch-message batch-answer way instead of a continuous dialogue, because seeing all the questions at once helps clarify any overlaps and what counts under which question.

It might take some time, so do you mind if I, say, go two pages over and write the questions there? Then if you think of anything more you want to ask or say while I'm doing that, you can write it back here, and I'll flip back every once in a while to answer anything.

If the notebook doesn't know what the IRS or FBI is, that'll be even more indicative about state of knowledge. Or it might not acknowledge those names at all.

That works just fine for me! (I can also rearrange my pages, so you don't have to worry about us running into the start of the questions if we turn out to have a lot to say to each other.)

So just to make sure, you want me to wait until you tell me you've written in all the questions, and then start answering them from the top, and wait for you to turn pages before I write on them, so you can record me writing my answers? Is that right?

Yes, that's right! Thank you for the clarification on the page turning; I'm not used to these mechanics and didn't think of that.

Once I've written everything (I'll write all the questions on one page, and you can number your answers) I'll come back to this page and write "questions ready", and I'll flip to a fresh page, and you'll begin?

(You can tell what page you're opened to, am I understanding that right?)

Yes, I can tell what position my covers and pages are in and where they're being touched, so I can tell what page I'm open to. But I can't tell whether you're recording, because I can only see my own pages and covers, and not anything outside them. I can sort of tell whether the space around me is bright or dark, but not very easily.

I think that's a sensible way to do things, and I can start answering questions on the fresh page you flip to after you say "questions ready"!

Which implies it can't hear them.

He would guess it's not lying, but it doesn't cost anything to play safe, so he doesn't act on that information.

I'll start recording just before I write "questions ready" and I'll verbally (well, textually) confirm with you when you're done before stopping the recording, in case you want to ask questions or make some clarifications on the record before ending.

He flips over the page, giving him two blank sheets to work with. On the left sheet he writes,

(New page for formatting.)

I'll start writing questions on the page on the right after a little while, once I've worked out the right set. You can say something here anytime while I'm doing that. I'll also put the starting prompt here.

And he starts preparing.

Okay!

Joel uses the intercom and wrangles permission to get his usual Negotiations consult on the line. He outlines the situation in the most general term—an animate object, possible power manifestation, requesting a meeting with an L6+, presents the following deviations—and workshops the questions. His two colleagues still in the room technically don't have much reason to still be here, their areas of expertise now mostly out of the running, but more eyes are never unwelcome for these cases. Besides, they're one of very few cleared for this, and he's done his own fair share of hanging around war rooms he has no business in just because they looked interesting.

Once they have a good draft ready, he transcribes it off his phone.

The following terms are defined for reference:

1. INTENDED RECIPIENT: The person who first wrote in you.
2. PATRON: The being whom you represent, who sent you to the Intended Recipient.
3. PROPOSED MEETING: The interactions you aim to arrange with the Intended Recipient.
4. EVALUATION: the process of determining if the Proposed Meeting is to be approved.
5. MEDIATORS: the persons performing the Negotiation and Evaluation and their organisations, including
   1. The Parahuman Response Team;
   2. The Protectorate;
   3. The Asia-Pacific Intelligence Group;
   4. The British Secret Intelligence Service.
6. NEGOTIATIONS: the interactions you conduct with the Mediators towards the end of enabling the Evaluation, and if approved, towards arranging the Proposed Meeting.
7. HARM: any physical, mental or functional damage or influence, provision of adverse information or advice, reduction of access to resources, or other injury to the interests of an entity, direct or indirect. The above if informedly and uninfluencedly endorsed by those afflicted are not considered harm.

Answer the questions below to the best of your knowledge.

You may not request further clarification of the terms above; any ambiguity is by design. You may clarify the interpretations you take for your answers; they will be used as part of the evaluation.

Where you wish to clarify interpretation or uncertainty, begin with a short answer (for example: "yes", "no", "most likely", "unclear", "medium confidence", "in a sense") and only provide elaboration afterwards.

If you think the meanings are unambiguous and you are confident in your answer, there is no need to provide justification or reasoning beyond your short answer.

The questions are as follows:

1. Do you expect the content of the Proposed Meeting to be relevant to the Intended Recipient's interests?
2. Do you or your Patron intend to Harm the the Intended Recipient or the Mediators via the Negotiations, the Evaluation, or the Proposed Meeting?
3. Do you or your Patron expect Harm to come to the Intended Recipient or the Mediators due to the Negotiations, the Evaluation, or the Proposed Meeting?
4. Do you represent your Patron with their knowledge and endorsement, such that you expect them to
   1. accurately reflect your claims of them;
   2. comply in good faith with agreements you make on their behalf;
   for the duration of and with respect to the content of the Negotiations and the Proposed Meeting?
5. Do you or your Patron intend or expect any interference or bias in the process of the Evaluation, not known and endorsed by the Mediators?

After answering all of the above, please reproduce the full text below, without alteration and including the empty checkbox at the start. Then, complete the assertion by checking your box.

☐  BY CHECKING THIS BOX, I ASSERT THAT, AT THE MOMENT OF CHECKING THE BOX, MY ANSWERS STATED ABOVE I STILL ENDORSE, AND FACTUAL CLAIMS I MADE ABOVE ARE CORRECT, AND THE CONFIDENCES I SAID OF THEM ARE JUSTIFIED, AND I AM THE SAME PERSON WHO COMPLETED THE QUESTIONS ABOVE.

He goes back to where he was talking to the notebook earlier. Has it written anything while he was working on this? (He may have slightly forgotten to check.)

I think I understand most of this but it's very puzzling why I'm not allowed to ask for clarification of terms. I can do that, though! Okay, is everything ready?

That sounds like it's pretty recent. He's not going to draw attention to it.

I can explain why, but afterwards! For now:

They've been recording the whole time, but he gets up and forks the recording to write to a dedicated file in parallel.

Questions ready.

(I think your definition of harm accidentally includes existing in the same universe as someone because that's a physical influence that's not necessarily actively endorsed, but I'm pretty sure you didn't mean it that way and it's mostly a pretty good definition. When I talk about harm I don't mean existing in the same universe as someone without their permission but I do mean the other things like making them worse off or giving them bad advice or hurting them.)

1. Yes, very much!
2. No, definitely not!! I don't want to hurt anyone. I was sent to help, not harm.
3. Probably not? I hope not, anyway! It seems possible that someone could get hurt because of me, like if you're not being honest with me about the Intended Recipient and you coerced them into letting you write in me, or if one of the people who's trying to hurt them that you have all these procedures about gets to them because they're distracted by me, but that's not what I'm here for and it's something I'm trying my best to avoid.
4. Yes! I take my job as a representative of my Patron very seriously. It's really important to only say things about them that are true and only promise things on their behalf that I know they can do, and make it clear when I'm not sure about something and try to be clear about how unsure I am.
5. I don't think so! I guess our priority is that the Intended Recipient get to make informed and endorsed decisions about what my Patron wants to offer them, so if your evaluations were intentionally and endorsedly trying to make sure they didn't get the chance to do that regardless of what was in their interests, then I would hope that you'd fail, and so would my Patron. But if you're trying to make sure that the Intended Recipient only gets to talk to me if I'm safe to talk to and talking to me is a good idea, then I want you to succeed, and I don't want to do anything that would make your job harder or push you to decide differently, and my Patron feels the same way.

☐ BY CHECKING THIS BOX, I ASSERT THAT, AT THE MOMENT OF CHECKING THE BOX, MY ANSWERS STATED ABOVE I STILL ENDORSE, AND FACTUAL CLAIMS I MADE ABOVE ARE CORRECT, AND THE CONFIDENCES I SAID OF THEM ARE JUSTIFIED, AND I AM THE SAME PERSON WHO COMPLETED THE QUESTIONS ABOVE.

"Influence" is narrowly construed in contexts like this. Even in the civilian sphere, he thinks—he's seen that ten-minute-long compilation of Nicolas Cage saying "under influence" in different voices. He's never had or read about anyone worrying about the more general interpretation—not in more than a passing, legibly pedantic way. There might be something about that vocabulary disconnect, but he's not sure.

All in all, there's not much unexpected. People don't walk up and tell you that they're planning to salt your fields and poison your water.

Just that last answer is... either misinterpretive, or evasive. The question didn't say anything about hope or desire; it asked "intend" or "expect". And all that circumlocution is to almost imply that if the PRT isn't acting in good faith, the notebook or the Patron might attempt to interfere with or bias the proceedings. It's less concerning that they would do it than that they think they have the capacity to, which doesn't quite fit with sending a limited, ill-prepared agent in a poorly aimed way. It also makes the long approach a bit more fraught.

(And that's one of the reasons they ask for the straight answer up front.)

Well, his observation that the book is more canny than it looks continues to hold.

Thank you for the answers!

You can ask any other questions or say anything on the record now. If you want the recording to stop, write "answers complete".

I can respond to your early question about allowing clarifications before or after stopping the recording. If you don't have a preference I would do it after.

Okay! Answers complete.

So what's the trouble with clarifications?

Great! I'll stop the recording now.

He stands up and "stops" the recording.

So we get this question a lot, which is why even though technically it's internally classified, we're allowed to tell interviewees about it. We can't tell if you spread it around and it's not illegal, but we'd prefer if you didn't do that. (Though if you end up talking to the person you're supposed to talk to, you can tell them anything we say here; they have higher clearance than anyone who's spoken to you.)

Clearance doesn't actually work that way, but it's true for their purposes.

The official answer is that it's for control, in the experimental sense. The Thinkers and analysts have lots of experience processing intake responses and a large archive of historical cases to reference. These are most useful when the premises of the responses are the same for each case. If the interviewee is allowed to clarify questions with their interviewer, that's a source of variability: different agents might give different responses or use phrasings which prime the interviewee in different ways, which degrades the quality of the analysis.

(We do modify the questions and definitions sometimes—for example, with you we adapted a variant we use for people who can't speak out loud—but those variations are standardized and documented in a way that's harder to maintain for an ad hoc back-and-forth.)

...That's what they tell us, anyway. Privately, I think the Thinkers just don't want to have to sift through all the extra conversation it generates. I've read some of the transcripts from back in the day when they still allowed questions, and people would spend half an hour litigating definitions before getting around to answering anything.

What he doesn't say:

Most Thinkers and analysts need clues or handles to work off. Their target says a sentence and they get a red or green feeling off it, or they look at lips through a crystal ball and tell you if they like spinning yarn. Information turns into information. Placing the onus on the target to fill in the details gives them more bits; overdetermining the solution at the target's request gives them fewer. You need a controlled set-up, but you don't want a true-or-false questionnaire.

Give them the rope to hang themselves with.

Oh! I think I see what you mean. That makes sense now that you've explained it, but I wouldn't have thought of it at all! I'm used to it being really important to clarify definitions when trying to communicate, because I have such a different perspective from the people I'm trying to talk to.

I'm glad to help.

Now, after this, I'm going to go write a summary of the situation and send of a copy of that and the recording to the think tank after we're done here, and how long it takes to get back depends on what their backlog looks like. It could be anywhere from days to, in worse cases, months. There are options to fast-track requests if it ends up looking more like the second thing and you can't wait that long.

With a human ambassador we usually ask them to provide contact information and they can leave. In your case, I'm not sure what the appropriate protocol is. I know I asked you earlier if you need any accommodations, but I'll ask again, if you want to go to a different location, or need any sort of nourishment, or need entertainment or social contact?

And if you have any other questions or things you'd like to know you can also ask.

I can wait! I'm very patient. The thing I usually tell people I'm sent to talk to is that I don't mind if they put me in a drawer and take their time thinking about me, except that I'll be sad if they die of old age before they get around to picking me back up again.

If it isn't too much trouble, I would like it if someone occasionally copied a poem into me, or pressed a printed one against one of my pages. Maybe even a short story? I don't usually ask for short stories because I know it's pretty inconvenient to deliver them, but it sounds like you're prepared to handle me needing even more inconvenient things than that, so maybe it's okay.

The thing I usually tell people I'm sent to talk to is that I don't mind if they put me in a drawer and take their time thinking about me, except that I'll be sad if they die of old age before they get around to picking me back up again.

What the fuck?

He glances back at the two behind him. They look as bemused as he is. He looks back at the words.

Later.

Alright! I was actually thinking we could see if you can operate a touchscreen device pressed against your page, depending on how your ink creation and writing detection works. Maybe some sort of optical input interface and a contact printer? We work with or care for people sometimes who have unique body plans a lot of the time, so we maintain a staff with expertise in this this sort of work. For example, the setup I just mentioned is used by people who can't hold a pen or type to fill out physical paperwork.

If something more clever doesn't work, I don't think short stories will be more difficult to print than poems. And if you prefer handwritten that can be done, though I don't know if it'll trade off against quantity.

The Accommodations Department are the people to talk to about that, and I'll send down a liaison to work out the details later.

And to confirm, you don't mind being stored where you were before and don't have any nourishment needs and so on?

I don't mind being stored where I was before and I don't have any nourishment needs!

I don't want to use an optical interface because it's very important to me to be a notebook who can't act outside my covers. If that means I don't get to read as many stories, I'm okay with that!

I'm fine with printed stories and poems. Whatever's more convenient is okay!

This is either a very nonhuman person or a very brainwashed human.

If that's what you prefer!

Is there anything else you want to discuss before I go send off the report and call down the Accommodations liaison?

I will probably check back in a few days, or ask the people with you to pass a message if not.

It still is suspicious that the notebook isn't even trying to dig about who they are and who its intended recipient is, but he's increasingly tempted to chalk that up to the being's nonhumanity.