Edie was perusing the latest correspondence from her fork. She still should have been paying enough attention to realize that the door didn't go where it ought before it swung shut and she couldn't sense anyone else anymore, but she wasn't.
After opening and closing the door a couple times to make sure she hadn't just been abducted somehow, she looks around.
"Let's maybe not try things that involve telling Findekáno things we don't want Midnight to know, then..."
"So our options are 'completely disregard what he says he wants,' 'ask him what he wants and hope it's what he in fact wants and would want if all of his oaths were removed right now,' or 'bring in another Findekano and let him guess,' as far as I can tell."
"And we have somewhat limited options even if we had perfect divinatory knowledge of what he wanted."
They're working through exercises in the chemistry textbook.
"I fucking hate opponents who must be presumed to have no scruples and lots of game theory. I'm not confident we can safely improve on 'befriend Evil Maitimo, attempt reform' if that is actually a viable option at all."
"And I will never make that mistake again and that doesn't make any of the damage I did by making it this time correctable."
"What are they?"
"Stars collapsing. Isn't it lovely?"
"It's a very nice room. Thoughtful of Bar."
"And of Cam, he made a point of finding a way it could be a secret from him... I don't think he was pretending, either -"
"By far the most thoughtful person ever to destroy Valinor as a favor to the Enemy, I'm sure."
"Yeah."
"There's a lovely shower, go take a shower before bed."
"He asked me if we'd invented indoor plumbing yet. After I said we didn't have electricity." Laughter. "...you joining me -"
"No."
"Okay. Couple - couple minutes -"
"It's not your fault and I stopped judging you based on your alts awhile ago."
"Yes and you are clearly in pain and I wish that wasn't the case no matter how minimal my culpability - it is a good thing we can't actually find them, even if befriending him is the best approach I don't think I could do it -"
"I've been waffling on whether it was a good idea in retrospect to do the secret room thing..."
"How many possible room numbers are there once you've got the floor narrowed down, a thousand -"
"In cataloguing the shifty properties of my room's location I have observed rooms with up to seventeen digits."
"We could assume Bar gives people lower numbers preferentially based on what we got, but we could also assume that if the occupants don't want to be found it'll be six miles of maze to find a specific number if you can locate it at all."
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