And if I tried to talk to her I'd just get murdered. Alas.

What else do you know about what the drugs do?

The drugs seem to encode a template of how the brain should modify itself. They modify the parts of the brain most closely associated with mind-speech and also those parts of the brain associated with emotional processing. Based on my links with those who have, or have not taken the drugs and also certain references and allusions spread across a great many books I believe that the change to emotional processing emphasizes loyalty and sharply curtails compassion and empathy. It's possible that my patterns of thought have shifted enough that my clan would no longer be the target of my loyalty but I'm not comfortable placing that bet.

That was my thought, but yes, it would be very risky. Worth knowing to be a possibility in case you're caught, though.

I'm not sure I would be able to keep my change in perspective a secret even if my priorities remained the same. Faking my death as I did will not be looked upon kindly if it comes to light. That might be enough for my mother to force me to reveal everything I've kept secret.

I see.

The truth is that it hadn't occurred to me to make humans immortal, so I was more focused on their continuity as a species than their continuity as individuals. I knew when making the choice that I would only save a fraction of their population but they live such short lives that it seemed less important. Perhaps if I had been thinking along different lines I would have bet on convincing my clan, though again the idea of making the magic abandon the humans hadn't occurred to my mind.

I am familiar with people who value continuity of species. but I confess it's not my natural mode. I'm a little worried about their culture, which wouldn't survive all the extremity that the species might weather, but it seems potentially much more difficult for relatively little return to focus on that above and beyond saving more people.

Agreed, I want to save as many as we can. There were other aspects to my reasoning but they're less important at this time.

Might it be useful for me to know what they were anyway?

A lot of it was about risk tolerance. Expressing disagreement or unhappiness with the destruction of the humans would have put me under a great deal of scrutiny and it's possible it would have closed off this option until it was too late to save any of the humans. With this path I'm virtually guaranteed to save at least some humans, as long as we're not discovered. I'm wasn't just saving the humans for their sake either. If it comes to a conflict with my people, and I expect that eventually it will, I can't fight alone. More selfishly, I also wanted friends I could be honest with.

Conservatism with risks of this nature is reasonable. How will humans be able to help you?

I'd hope that some of the humans will bring a fresh perspective and allow me to improve on the technology of my species or come up with new uses for it. It'd also be useful to have skilled people available to operate the tools and weapons necessary to fight a war. Even just having you is an improvement on being alone because as you've already pointed out I have blind-spots. Ideas that simply don't occur to me. Intellectual diversity is a strength exclusive to larger groups of people.

You didn't think the short lifespans, when you weren't planning to affect those, would be an impediment to learning enough to help?

I was planning to awaken the mind-speech in them. I also planned to give them enough medical knowledge to extend their lifespans; I just didn't think of immortality. Between the two I didn't expect that they'd be less capable than my race. Given the rigid conformity of my race perhaps they'd even be better off. Most of our technologies were developed long ago.

Did your people not use the drugs then? - How long do your species live?

What history I know didn't explain. I just know that new developments in our technology are rare and have been for a long time. It's possible that they've always been rare, the history I had didn't stretch all the way back to my people's beginnings. My people live about four hundred years, though as I said with the way we pass down memories lifespan is a somewhat fuzzy concept.

Idle speculation. Probably doesn't inform what we need to do either way.

Agreed. In brighter news, my initial impression is that the Earth is being monitored only lightly. I'll still need to recheck as more time passes but hopefully I'll be able to scan the bulk of the humans, and enough of their creations to allow them to find their new home at least somewhat familiar. 

That's promising. Will you need to decide all at once which ones to save in their bodies and which to scan, or could you ask some humans for input?

The safest time to teleport humans won't be until shortly before their world is destroyed. I need to do it while space is still in flux from my mother setting in motion the destruction of their world to avoid detection. I can experiment with creating a human based on my scans now but I have no guarantees that it will work, and I'd prefer to experiment on willing subjects.

Are you losing much opportunity to refine the process you use to scan, if you don't try first?

As I said, I'm not familiar with the technical details of my people's technology. I understand a lot about what it does but improving it is probably beyond me with the time we have. When I scan something I get detailed information down to the atomic level. I can't scan more precisely than that from this distance. If the quality of information I have from my current scans is insufficient I don't have any alternatives which don't incur a high risk of discovery.

So the experiment wouldn't gain much anyway. Let's hope someone willing is in the batch you can save.

Agreed, I'm not sure what I'll decide if there are no volunteers. Perhaps I'll wait for your Valar and hope they require less experimentation than my methods.

They are likely to require a lot of time. Valar work very slowly. Your time dilation might be of exceptionally high value to them.