"I can't -"

"Then take a step aside and let me finish this."

"Your alts really did say -"

"I believe you. Talk them out of it."

He makes a face.

"Please."

Sigh. Pop.

He gets back to work.

I'm sort of curious if I could beat Felix in a fight, Sibyl remarks on the channel dedicated to fretting about Fredrick. Metaphorically, I mean.

It might be good to know. 

I can get you transcripts if you can get me transcripts.

Sure. I am inclined to drop it until we are done with slavery, he has a point there - or Felix does -

Jokes about roles aside you realize you weren't that far off from when Earths normally find slavery ending without help, right?

Fifty more years in the Americas and the thing that replaced it did not involve vastly more mobility or freedom. I did look it up.

Yeah, but close enough that if Vanda Nossëo shows up and does the Vanda Nossëo thing it's not going to be a huge disaster, this is not a super difficult needle to thread.

Fair enough. 

Give me warning before the next time you bug him about it and we'll see what we shall see.

Will do.

They buy out slaves, zip around to have hard-for-anyone-but-Fredrick-to-parse interactions with the indigenous Americans, invite over Vanda Nossëo to make the Caribbean a member state. Some of the Vanda Nossëo representatives are reds; Fredrick sets them to greeting and acclimating arriving ex-slaves. And Timothy writes Sybil "what happens if I bring it up with him now -"

She looks.

He shows up an hour-and-change later and bounces the conversation to an Elf so she can see the whole thing -

"I want a date and time."

      "I understand. I'm not sure how much longer this will take and I want to make sure nothing gets lost when the luck runs out - and if you're going to hold me prisoner for a month then I can't even do non-Felix-influenced followup on the things I have in progress -"

"You're moving the goalposts."

     "You're the one moving the goalposts, I said when slavery was ended everywhere and it's not, not yet. But yes, a cost of doing things this way is that it's very hard to abruptly vanish on your plans, one doesn't know all the dependencies clearly enough to tell someone else how to follow through. And yet the results are good, I have not talked anyone else into an addiction, I have not done weird things that make the world dependent on my continued Felix-sustained involvement. There is no rush."

"I don't know if you have done weird things that make the world dependent on your continued Felix-sustained involvement! I am not sure how I'd tell and I don't think you'd know!"

      "All of the damage if I stop will be of the ordinary 'relationships I was cultivating were harmed, treaties that needed my continuous nudging to go through fail, people who would have grown up into extraordinary assets to their community die in random accidents I would have incidentally prevented' -"

"Do you know how often you do that last -"

     "I think about a tenth of what I do is about something like that."

"None of those will stop being true when slavery's ended."

    "They won't. It is going to be a costly month. I think I'll be miserable. But -"

"But if Felix is that good, the sooner we know it's safe to use like this the better, so we can leverage it everywhere -"

    "You could test that without me. You could even test that without any Felix at all, you have Sibyl -"

"Your present state rather deters people from experimenting."

     "That's absurd and you know it. My present state is 'getting lots of things done very fast with fewer resources than you have' and it has in any event very little bearing on the sort of experiments you'd want to do."

"It's given you different priorities than you usually have."

    "These have always been my priorities. Thinking you were dead might have made them more salient, but this is what I always wanted."

"Your alts -"

     "Are willing to sacrifice a few years' progress in this world for the information that Felix can be quit. I understand why they are and even why it's right but these people trust me and it's very hard to compromise them to prove something that's already obvious to me, which is that not being on Felix will be deeply unpleasant but only because being on Felix is so useful. We had a deal, Timothy -"

"Vanda Nossëo can take it from here!"

     "They don't know how much they're losing through institutional clumsiness but it's a lot -"

"Then quit, and convince everyone, and then they can start using it."

      "I don't really believe you that you'll be convinced. What'll convince you -"

"- depends. If you go back to normal and nothing explodes here that'll help a lot."

     "Then hire a long-term precog and check that and stop putting me through this."

"I also want my actual boyfriend, off drugs, not just the information that he would handle withdrawal tolerably."

     "I think it's a mistake to mix the personal in with the strategic like that."

"Maybe Felix shouldn't have maneuvered me into kissing you."

     "Do you regret it?"

" - I wish I hadn't left you, I wish I'd - I'm sorry -"

     "I love you. I thought - forever -"

"Please just give me a date -"

    "Please stop asking."

So it doesn't kick her out outright. What Elf wants to carry this back to Timothy?

She'll bounce it. 

" - so I guess we could try a hundred conversations, though I have kind of already had a hundred conversations -"

"You could hire someone longer-term to ask about whatever you're curious about, that's not a bad idea -"

"I'm a little worried that as long as he's actually in the real world on Felix things will 'go well for him' in a sense that includes our success at hiring a precog or the specifics of what we ask them or how we parse what we get."