She's got some work to do.

Stella appears a blanket and gives Sable a momentary sense of pressure — a brief hug from the invisible woman. 

I think the staffing issues are the number one priority. All of this will be easier with more people on our side getting the word out, sorting mail, and being present to support our cause. I can sort your email inbox faster and better than you can — let's get some oceanic people on staff right away. Australians and New Zealanders first because you can talk to them without translation, look for staff with more languages when you can. I'll interview some people from Paupa New Guinea and greater Polynesia and Micronesia. Also we're almost certainly going to come under cyberattack soon so getting a good IT worker is important unless we want to offer up our whole inbox to criminals. 

There's a lot to do and not enough time but we'll figure it out. Breathe. You have me behind you. The world's not a toy puzzle you can solve in a hundred and twenty five moves, and we're making a difference whatever they say. If you need to take time away, you're absolutely allowed. You'd do the same for me. 

She gets to work.

Meanwhile, quiet-wings is texting back. 

That's kind of cool. Is there a reason why you didn't go full fox face? Didn't feel like it, bad for PR, what?

Sable snuggles into the blanket and takes a long, slow breath. "Thank you, Goddess. I'm using Google for our email, so we're reasonably safe on that front, and the website is just static HTML and CSS, so it doesn't have much attack surface, but absolutely worth getting an IT person. I agree that staffing is the top priority. Can you inspect someone's intentions if I make 'pray for Stella to evaluate you as a candidate' the final interview task?"

Sable starts filtering the volunteer application inbox by requested role. She bangs together a Google Form for clerical staffer applications and replies to everyone who looks interested in such a role with a link to it, then gives herself a moment to respond to quiet-wings again.

Didn't feel like it. A full snoot and fur all over doesn't quite fit the degree of human-adjacent I feel. Other choices are of course valid.

Then she gets back to the inboxes. All the supposed long-lost relations get deleted. Any actual long-lost relations would know her legal name and hit up her personal inbox, or message her parents.

Speaking of her parents, they get a quick email as well.

Hi Mom and Dad,

Yes, the foxgirl on the news is me. I lucked into being First Priestess for the new Goddess because we think alike about priorities and caring about people. Going to be a bit busy to go into detail, at least until we have enough staffers to keep up with the tide, so we'll catch up later, okay? Don't worry, I'm safe, Stella's protecting me. Can't go into detail for security reasons, but she put a lot of effort into it.

Love,

Sable

The death threats get forwarded to their nation's FBI-equivalent, as best she can determine from email headers and her bits of tracing skill.

Then it's back to the volunteer inbox, where she sets up another form for people offering to deal with non-profit bureaucracy issues and sends that off.

Seems like a waste of an opportunity to me. You could go full egyptian deity. Like Anubis. 

I could! I don't particularly want to, but I absolutely could. For that matter, you could if you wanted. If I was going to go Full Drama, though, I'd definitely go for wings, rather than Egyptian deity. The only reason I didn't is we haven't figured out a way to make flying with them practical yet. Hope the egg wrap is tasty, and lemme know when you're ready for lunch.

The interview requests get set aside for later decisions. The angry cultists get put in a folder and ignored. The transhumans get sorted into two piles, biologically possible vs not, and the possible ones get a form letter encouraging them to decide very clearly what they want their form to be and then pray about it at night, while the impossible ones get told that while their desired shape is valid, biology sadly does not allow such a form to be survivable yet. They are encouraged to either pray for a biologically possible compromise, or wait for mortal science to advance further and give Stella more material to work with.

The people begging for wishes to be granted are told that the ultimate decision on every request is in the Goddess's hands, and advised to follow the advice on How to Pray if they would like to improve their chances. The people demanding money are told that the Temple does not yet have money of its own, and that Stella does not counterfeit currency, but that if they pray about why they need money, the Goddess may see fit to answer their prayer with salable goods or some other solution.

You're doing good work, Sable.

I need your thoughts on something important, though. I need to decide what to do about Myanmar.

Most of the conflict in South America was unambiguous enough that I felt fine with just wishing away the cartels' weapons — large syndicates of criminals that are willing to resort to deliberate, organized violence to get what they want are still criminals, pretty much. They distribute narcotics and murder thousands of people every year, I have very little sympathy. I can feel justified in taking action to end la guerra contra narco in favor of the forces of law and order. But a lot of other wars we're going to get to soon are... messier. They're not easy simple things.

Myanmar, from what I can literally glean from wikipedia, is in the course of a heavy ethnic civil war where various marginalized ethnic groups have tried to negotiate with the sitting government for more rights and ultimately resorted to violence to try and achieve that end. To be fair, their government is literally a military junta. They've tried to sue for peace multiple times and get the laws passed they want to protect the minorities, but there are like a dozen rebellious factions and they can't all agree on a single slate of demands. Ceasefires have been repeatedly violated. It is, to say it bluntly, a political and military clusterfuck. There might have been an originally morally pure and good side here, but both sides now have hundreds of thousands of people's blood on their hands due to repeated failure of negotiations. The international community is trying to sue for peace, but you know how that goes with long running conflicts; these people have been fighting each other since 1948 and they're not likely to stop now. 

I'll refrain from going into detail on the kinds of prayers I'm getting from the place. It's not good. Both sides use child soldiers, and both sides have scattered a fuck-ton of landmines around in civilian areas. It's an ongoing humanitarian crisis, pretty much, and there's no "easy solution" while keeping the country intact. 

What do you think we should do about it? 

Nah, I'd want wings and Stella couldn't make them actually work.

Heading out of the library to wait for the food, talk to you soon when I'm back on the wifi.

Sable leans back in her chair and sighs. "Well that's quite the miserable fucking mess. Just brainstorming at this point, but can you target the landmines for vanishing, Goddess?"

She pulls up the policy wonk emails and filters for Myanmar. Has anyone kindly contributed a big chunky analysis of the situation?

No. The policy wonks have largely focused on the global economy, Ukraine, and Israel/Palestine.

"Policy wonks are no help here. Boo."

That's an obvious first step, yes, and I'd be able to do it. They are a war crime to employ. But they are unfortunately effective as a defense against attack, that's why they're used. As long as they're around they're killing and maiming people, but if I just remove them all I could end up making things worse. 

Second obvious idea, just disarm everyone — the problem here is that weapons keep getting into the country all the time. China, India, Israel, North Korea, the Philippines, Russia, and Ukraine were all recorded to be supplying weapons in 2019. If we just wipe out the stock that's present then whoever gets the weapons first wins. We could go so far as to wipe out weapons supply in all those places but at that point it's getting somewhat morally dubious to destroy weapons that might be used unethically and we're getting so fucking huge that there's no way something doesn't go wrong we haven't thought of. 

Third obvious idea, partition the country somehow with landforms. Put in fuckoff huge mountain ranges and separate all the combatants by allegiance and ethnicity, get the people being persecuted their own chunks of land. This might work but I feel like they'd figure out a way over the ranges somehow, and it'd destroy the geography. If you supplied enough temporary supplies it might work but it'd still be a clusterfuck. And it's politically poison and will separate many people from their relations etc etc. Think of East and West Germany and the Berlin Wall and all the pain that caused everyone who suffered it. Think of Israel and Palestine, too. 

Fourth obvious idea, number three but dump them all in an ocean somewhere with their own personal landmasses — the problem here is that without constant resupply from me and good distribution systems everybody starves, plus making a landmass the size of all of Myanmar is not trivial geopolitically, etc, etc, etc, Berlin Wall But Worse, What A Mess. I think I prefer keeping them in place and partitioning the country to this one. And if I keep doing that kind of thing I'm going to run out of ocean.

Fifth obvious idea, sue for peace. Make some gesture that makes the point that I can make them stop if I have to and try and bring all sides to the negotiating table to get things done. This has failed many times before despite international pressure. These people hate each other. It's also the only idea on this list that even moderately respects these people's independent desires to do things or not. I hate this one less than most of the options on this list but it's still unlikely to work. 

Sixth idea, do some form of negotiated partition of the country. They tried this one, it sort of happened but hasn't ended the fighting, but maybe if you put in fuckoff big mountain ranges that are easily defensible by small groups of people then maybe that fixes it. I hate this one less than just forcing it on everybody but it's still got that berlin wall factor. 

Any obvious ideas I've missed here?

"Clever Goddess figures her priestess out and jumps ahead. Yes, those ideas are where I was going with that question."

She laces her fingers behind her head. "Hm. Is allegiance even a divinely available property here? Presumably yes. The trouble is that you have to break people's willingness to murder each other around the same time as you break the ability or they'll just acquire the ability again. I feel like we're obligated to do either five or six. Mountain ranges are going to have environmental consequences. Walls are better, especially if you make 'em twice as tall as the Berlin wall for better defensibility."

"Ugh," she scowls, "probably the only option that respects their consent is five, with walls as something they can request in the negotiation, initiated by either mass disarmament or tying a starry ribbon around every gun with a letter explaining that they need to sit down and talk. If we go with disarmament, we're basically hoping the nations supplying guns can't do same-day turnaround and vanishing any shipments bound for Myanmar you find the next night. If we go with ribbons on guns, we're hoping the demonstration of your ability to reach out and touch every weapon in the region is sufficiently scary that they listen."

She shakes her head. "Can you do aggregate statistics of prayers? Or mental states of prayed-about populations?"

It's more instinctive than that. I think I could learn to, with training, but I don't have the capacity right now. And I can't read mental states of people who aren't praying to me. 

Thinking of doing vote-by-prayer? I think I could sense relative proportions that way but not finely, as I currently am. 

I think reaching out and touching every weapon to scare them into negotiating is a good idea. I was thinking of dyeing them all. Keep in mind they can't know if I've sabotaged them somehow. I could make the guns radioactive if I wanted, or poisonous, or make all the ammunition into blanks, or etc etc etc any number of sabotages.

My fundamental problem with this plan is that it amounts to declaring that I'm the Queen of the world. I'm asserting a monopoly on legitimate violence.

But I kind of already did that when I vanished all the drug lords' guns, so, you know. Too late now. 

She nods. "Yeah, it's definitely too late. Functionally you are queen of the world, and all other states continue to exist only to the extent that you allow them to. There's an argument that the two biggest sources of governmental problems are incompetence and having incentives for things other than human flourishing. Dunno if it's right, but it's an argument. And you don't have other incentives. You can't be removed from power, there's no way to inflict violence on you, and so your only concern is rearranging the world so it's no longer so full of suffering that your heart aches to see it, that way you can just live peacefully and enjoy the sight of happy flourishing people. In some ways you're the ideal queen of the world."

A low sigh. "There's a lot of good reason to keep other states around, in so far as they deign to not suck, what with the whole not wanting to micromanage everything deal, but at the end of the day you do hold a monopoly on force. You have the literal biggest stick, on top of an immunity to everyone else's sticks."

Don't flatter me too hard. I've already made mistakes before, and I'm going to make more again. I just hope they're small enough I can live with them. 

And the issue is I don't actually have a total monopoly on violence. During the daytime I'm helpless. There has to be a real structure solid enough to survive during the 12ish hours of every day when I'm not available to fix things. If I just deleted all the weapons in the world, do you think that'd end well? I sure don't think so. But I'm tempted every time I hear someone pray for — 

— sorry, I was about to. Elaborate on some of the things I've been hearing. 

I need to take a break. A real break. Not just lingering here in between thousands of emergencies. I need to set the work down for a little while. 

It hurts to have to.

I really shouldn't though. People are dying right now, I can feel them winking out mid-prayer — 

Let's just get Myanmar done and then I will rest. 

We're agreed on the nice-bows-around-weapons thing?