"Think it's a strategic thing combined with bad background assumptions? Like, 'if someone is more powerful than me, defying them is not a good way to get what I want, obeying them and then figuring out how I can make them want it is the way to get what I want'. Not 'I take orders because of course I do.' I don't think."

"I guess that's a little better, sort of."

"I wish half their conversation wasn't over osanwë, I wonder if it's whenever they're looking at something together and it's faster - can't be deliberate caution on sensitive stuff..."

"Well, it could be but that assigns him a really high level of just-in-case paranoia and very good planting-information-to-mislead skill."

"And not mislead us in a direction that seems useful to him, either. He doesn't come out looking good in the transcripts we have -"

"Are we sure he knows what good looks like."

"If I found myself in a weird parallel world where everyone considered unspecified aspects of my conduct appalling but liked my boyfriend fine I would just do exactly what he was doing until I had more information. 

...I guess maybe he thinks he's doing that.

Actually getting him to be less evil is pretty much inevitably going to involve teaching him how to look less evil."

"Maybe he won't encounter the concept of bugs in that time." Anything new on the transcript?

Findekáno teaches him how the computer works. "Don't think they'll give you one."

"Mmhmm."

"I'm sorry. I should have shut up and refused to answer and waited them out - at least you know it was a sincere mistake -"

"And we fixed it," Maitimo says, "can't happen again."

"Thank you. I can try to convince them to give you one, in a couple weeks, once I'm less - skittish - around them -"

"Once we know more about what they'll find convincing. Chemistry?"

They work through the chemistry textbook. 

"Is there any really compelling reason not to give him a computer besides 'fuck that guy' - he's willing to run up a tab, Bar can give him the nonchiplocked kind anyway -"

"I think it's just 'fuck that guy' but it's a very forceful 'fuck that guy'."

"Yeah, I just mean, if it's a useful bargaining chip somehow."

"It probably will be. 

- I don't actually know how to pretend to like people, I just find it easy to actually like them. I think I will find it easier to actually like him than to convincingly fake it."

"But you can, like, compartmentalize that...?"

"Yes, definitely, and also hurt people who I like if it's the right thing to do, except since I met him that latter tendency has seemed like less of a straight-up advantage..."

Nod.

"And usually I have non-instrumental reasons to want to like someone, I've never met someone who I actually preferred to hate before."

"Never?"

"Well, the Valar? But they're nutty millions-of-years-old kangaroo-lizard-daeva, it's a bit different."

"I run into people I would naturally dislike all the time."

"I think most people do.

...if it helps, I virtually never run into people I want."

"That is flattering."

Smile. Weak smile.

Sigh. Wingsnug.

"How goes the magic music?"