She still has an awestruck audience. "We don't have that - the misalignment. The things that the Valar want us to do are also the things that are best for society and best for the individual."

"'Best for society and best for the individual'? That's interesting. You're saying there's no difference between what's best for your society and what's best for individuals? Why would an individual be better off following the law, rather than breaking it whenever you can get away with it? Surely there must be some circumstances in which the needs of the many are not aligned with the needs of the few, and you need to trade off between them."

"Well, a good society is one organized so that it's not in the interests of the individual to break the law - it should reward virtue and make vice unrewarding, it should encourage people in good habits and good character. A society that is opposed to the interests of its citizens isn't going to work very well."

"But that's just what's good for individuals as a whole - not for any specific individual. What's best for a specific person would be for them to be so powerful that they could exploit anyone else, but no one else could exploit them. It would be best for you if there were laws which punished the vice of your neighbours, but allowed you to do as you pleased. It is only the net effect of all individuals being just which is better than the net effect of all individuals being unjust. This is what I mean about a conflict between that which is good for an individual and what is good for society. Any time you choose an action not because it will make you better off, but because it will make people in general better off, you're acting for the good of society over the good of the individual."

"I think punishing vice is good for the individual," she says uncertainly, "since drinking to excess or, you know, sleeping around, are bad for the individual, make it harder to have a good life. I do get what you mean about everything else, though."

"But there are certainly ways to be unjust that do you no harm. If you robbed me and no one caught you, you would certainly be better off. The law only prevents us from robbing each other because the harm to one would be greater than the benefit to the other, so the net effect on society is negative. Even if the individual and social good are often aligned, they aren't always aligned, and knowing how to maintain the balance in cases of conflict is an important area of philosophy.

I'm afraid I can't tell you what the right answer is, though. I only know the debates about it by old, dead philosophers; not the modern position. I don't even know if there is a modern, consensus position - it might still be up in the air. All I know is that it's a problem people have been trying to address."

She nods. "If I robbed you and no one caught me, I'd eventually be punished when I died. So it'd still be better not to do it."

"...How would you be punished when you died? Would a god appear before you on your deathbed and say 'I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!', and then make your death very painful? That still seems like artificially created conditions, though. Punishment exists to push people in the direction of the societal good. The important thing about hypotheticals in which no one catches you is that they let you look at the natural consequences of actions, absent any corrective measure to bring you into line with what society needs."

"No, punishment is after you die, the afterlife is created by Eru and almost certainly is better if you're good in life."

"Uhhh, what is an 'afterlife'? If you're dead, how is anything... happening to you? In what sense is there a you after life?"

"...the soul? Elven souls go to Mandos, but ours only stop there on their way to Eru's plan."

"You believe in souls? That's so dum- actually, I don't know what you guys are made of, so I shouldn't be too quick to judge. For all I know, plant-eaters have souls. OK, noted.

Anyway, you wanted to know if our religions had anything in common. Do you see any parallels?"

"We also have one god, Eru Ilúvatar, who designated powerful agents - the Valar - to do the actual work of creation, though in the form of a song, not a machine, and it was the bad ones who disrupted its workings to change the fate of the world, not the good ones."

"Did any of the Valar give a book to either the Elves or the Men - or Dwarves, maybe - telling them how to live so that they might contribute to sustaining the world? Maybe something to do with singing?"

"They invited the Elves to Valinor to teach them everything, including probably how to sing songs with magic properties, lots of which got used in the war to save the world. They didn't give people books - that'd be stupid, most people weren't literate."

"Nashi taught his first set of followers how to write, so that they wouldn't forget any of the intricate, complicated details they needed for being computationally expensive."

"I think the Elves taught themselves to write," she says, "and then they certainly taught us. The Valar taught the Elves tons of things, and taught us a lot too, but not about how to keep the universe running, it runs just fine."

"Well, congrats on ending up in a universe that doesn't prefer to be lifeless. Anyway, to get back on track, what happened after the Valar defeated Melkor?"

"They invited the Elves to come to Valinor! The continent was very dangerous, there were still aftershocks and earthquakes, and all the awful monsters that had been unleashed during the fighting remained roaming freely, capturing and killing things. And there was no light in the world, but there was light in Valinor. Most of the Elves didn't trust the Valar and didn't take the offer, but a few did, came back, and persuaded as many of the others as they could."

"Why was there light in Valinor? Where did that come from?"

"Two giant Trees."

Gimlith is making a skeptical expression.

"They were planted by one of the Valier and they were thousands of feet tall and so bright they lit the whole continent."

"Those... That... trees that are thousands of feet tall? How could such a thing even support its own weight? And how did they produce light? And how could trees grow in darkness? If you tell me that each tree photosynthesised using the light of its neighbour, I'll drink my own blood."

She looks confused. "No, they're powerful divine magic."

Because "they're magic" is such a satisfying explanation... "OK, do go on."

"So many of the Elves then agreed to join the Valar in paradise, but it was a very long walk and some of them got lost along the way."