...Augh, Cam appears on a piece of paper. That's plausible?

There weren't surviving witnesses to his death. Could have taken the chip and left some other melted bit of plastic.

What else does this imply about Enemy intel?

Not much more than 'he lived in Valinor for a hundred Years,' honestly, I was already assuming he had his fill of the political landscape. Means he certainly knows enough to guess that Nelyafinwe's useless for Silmaril reengineering which makes me a bit confused as to why he invited him to the parlay.

It is possible he thinks he has some leverage against me, Maitimo writes at that point.

They stare at each other for a solid few minutes. 

If that's the reason it is now obviated but I am not sure it was, Feanaro continues. 

.........not gonna ask.

"Thoughts on the parley?" he says aloud. 

"It is almost certainly a trap, I am inclined to not going absent confidence about what kind of trap and our ability to subvert it."

"Likewise. He threatened to fire on evacuees; credibly, do you think?"

"If I were him I'd have strategic reserves, although maybe not enough of them to get everybody if we managed simultaneous evac - lightleapers can't lightleap from a planetary surface, can they -?"

"Have to get up to speed.

I could design ones that didn't, but we're looking at a decade."

"...could pull spectacularly dangerous frame of reference tricks, shouldn't."

"It did occur to me to go 'so, how about that destructive uploading.' Also shouldn't."

"Less of an obviously terrible idea, it would make for a much more compact departure, but yeah shouldn't."

"Oh, not of the general populace, that's a hard sell. I meant so I can have ten years' of engineering work done by tomorrow."

"Oh. Or if the resurrection trick had worked there could just be a bunch of you, that'd also help, but it didn't."

"Yeah.

If you can make a bit-for-bit copy of an upload of a person which is fully functional it makes no sense that yours wouldn't be - uploads might work even though resurrection doesn't - or it is possible that my father's mind didn't come through because the Enemy was already done and - and hadn't left anything -"

"...I shouldn't have gotten a fake chip by aiming for the real one but it's possible I was sloppy."

"No, I mean the chip records most recent mental state and I don't know that that'd be distinguishable from 'vegetable' by the time the Enemy got bored."

"Also possible, although he did act indistinguishable from a regular basement dweller and that would be a coincidence even if he was vegetative."

"I should learn this language."

"...should I retry."

"Yes. Somewhere else please I'll be distracted from learning the language."

"Okay." Does Maitimo want to show him a good place.

Yes, he does. Empty room, right here. "Sorry," he says. "I'll talk to him about approaching resurrection more productively.  I don't think I'd handle it much better, learning it'd happened to him -"

"Yeah, I understand."

And Cam gives it a try - definitely the actual chip not a fake, definitely before uploading and not after, c'mon, Finwë.

...nope.