"- they told us to disperse, a couple of people wouldn't and got shot. I went to my sister's place. The television's one part static and one part reruns and one part propaganda. There's leaflets, sometimes, printed up in huge numbers to announce curfew changes or that they've pacified a province."

"Is Voa's own police force in any state to step back in if we suddenly relocate or arrest all the occupiers -"

"The police weren't hit too hard, I think, it was all military proper till they rolled in. Military proper and - palace security and such," he amends.

Nod. "If we just hand Voa right back over before Avalor's grown do you have a guess who takes charge?"

"- she's the only surviving heir to the Lines, I think, but there were collateral descendants who weren't home at the time and may have escaped - I didn't look into her history books to find out for sure -"

"That's everything I wanted to ask you. Do you have questions for us -"

"What's your stake in this?"

"We get to pick a fight with the villain in our history books. And idealism of various flavors - being repulsed at the idea of letting people suffer without starships, wanting to fix the tractable ones among your world's social problems, wanting to prove that we would have been ready to be a modern civilization forty years sooner if anyone had extended us the opportunity...future civilizations tend ludicrously idealistic, think of the most outlandish green you ever heard of and then take it much further. We're not - that - but I suppose it rubs off."

"...once I heard a green advocate for confiscating and adopting out all children instead of just unauthorized ones to introduce pressure against caring about one's genetic heritage in particular."

"Opposite direction, thankfully. Think - they abolished the death penalty, they all elect their leaders and weigh all the votes equally, they don't push the point too much but they're all caste abolitionists, when we go dismantle the Oahk Empire the humans on Revelation will want us to go into the factory farms and get all of the animals and give the animals to them so the animals can live out the rest of their lives in nice pastures having two baby cows apiece if that's what makes cows happiest."

"...how do they tell what makes, uh, cows, happy?"

"Animal behavioral research - we just switched to growing meat directly in vats, which is actually more efficient. It's not a difficult eccentricity to accommodate even though it's very silly."

"I could see it making some purple family farmers angry, but all right."

"Anyway, people want to intervene in your world because there's suffering there which we're in a position to alleviate. That's really it. When we have resurrection they'll do your family, for the same reason - they'll do everyone who ever died who might want to be alive under the conditions we can offer them, for the same reason -"

"Avalor's mother was pregnant," he says.

"If resurrection for some reason doesn't handle that gracefully there's another solution already available."

"Oh."

"Like I said, I'm not sure how much of this it'd be helpful for Avalor to know. But someday we'll get it."

"I think - 'endless possibilities being diligently looked into by people with good motives' is as much detail as would help."

"Sounds good. Is there anyone we should get for you -"

"Avalor says time isn't passing..."

"They won't worry, that's right. We'd have explained ourselves more otherwise, under the circumstances."

"Then no, not - not anyone alive, thank you."

"Of course. Take care."

He nods and goes back up.