"As an example of something else things could be important for."

"Sounds a lot harder to - keep - than mine. Harder to get in the first place, too, for that matter."

"Yes, it's both more challenging and higher-maintenance."

"Not a bad goal, though, as these things go."

"Thank you."

"...I know more about what things it's possible to have than I did before I met you. I really appreciate that."

"I am glad to help. Perhaps if nothing else while I am here I can explain electricity and such things."

"From the - 'interesting new uses of steel' category? That sounds like fun."

"Yes. Electricity is a way to make devices take actions without magic."

"Huh! Sounds useful. Maybe you should find someone who's a gadgety sort of person and explain it to them."

"Yes, I likely should. I think - hm, how to put this - I think that insofar as I have objections to how you run the world I can at least be confident that they won't be exacerbated if I provide the world with arbitrary advances, and that makes being here less stressful. I would have no such confidence if I encountered a world with a full-sized unrestrained Eru operating it."

"...I'm not sure I followed all that, can you say it again differently?"

"I don't think any more people get tortured if I teach your people electricity, whereas that is totally the sort of thing Eru for example would set up."

"Oh. Yes. I think - a lot of the things you seem to want for my empire are the same things I want, or near enough. Although maybe you have more complaints than you've been letting on."

"I also object to slavery but do not think I can solve that by withholding electricity either."

"—the slavery and the torture are related, that's part of what I meant about the laws of the empire working better if I follow them. People are better off if they know when to expect that sort of thing - they're still mostly terrified of coming to my attention, but back when I used to pick up whoever I felt like, it was much much worse."

"I suppose that makes sense."

"I probably don't need things to be nearly as bad as they are, and I don't mind if you try to improve them, but if you get it to the point where there aren't enough slaves for me to choose from, then I have to figure something else out and I don't know what it'll be."

"When you say you'd have to, what do you mean?"

"I mean I don't want to stop torturing people and I don't want to go back to the days when everyone was terrified they'd be next, so I'd have to find some other way to make it - obvious and predictable and legal and something that most people are safe from and know they're safe from."

"Why is it you don't want to stop?"

"Because it's fun. Right up there next to architecture among my favourite hobbies. —I don't think the part where they don't want to be there is necessary to the fun part, if that helps at all, you could plausibly solve this problem just by finding someone who thought being tortured by the Emperor seemed like a desirable lifestyle, but I've never run into such a person and I'm not sure they exist. It's not like they wouldn't know where I live, if they did."

"I'd know where to start asking around if I had access to my planet but I do not."

"Well. I can work on that."

"Thank you."