"That there are two Ardas, that they still have a Melkor in any form, that not having summoning wouldn't have created so many differences the world'd be barely intelligible - do they have Valar, do their Valar suck less -"

"...They...had a Valinor..."

"..."

"So this world's kind of Valar and Maiar can make binding oaths despite chips not being involved anywhere and Melkor offered to swear stuff that would make it unnecessary to kill him--which they were making no progress on--if he black-holed Valinor--and they came up with a super fucking tight wording and when they figured out how to naively rez people they went for it."

"Ouch.

Not that we thought we were going to end this thing with our hands clean but still. Fuck."

"One of the reasons it was considered worth it is that he's destructively uploading people and tormenting them in accelerated perception on--I think the dusted remains of the copy I conjured of his servers are still outside."

"I'm not saying it wasn't worth it. Just.

Our one's doing that too?"

"Yyyyyyep."

"I guess it's a good thing we found out now instead of a few days ago because Dad would have just given the orders to kill the summoner. And now maybe we can think of a better way."

"Yeah."

"Wonder if there's anything we can do for those people, or if it's better to just turn them off."

"Well, now we can retrieve versions of them who that didn't happen to."

"Yeah but. If someone's running on a computer, shutting it down forever is kind of killing them. If he was torturing people in normal people-form dunno how we'd feel about killing them all and bringing back earlier versions of them - we'd probably at least ask them -"

"Yeah. Well. If we get our hands on the computers after Melkor's dealt with we might be able to ask."

"He forks them - or mine did anyway - you might have to deal with a few hundred traumatized versions of anybody who hasn't actually been driven to suicidality if you do rescue forks - I'm not planning on it myself unless somebody really, really wants their post-Angband version."

"Yeah. But if they currently exist, then even if they stop existing it's not going to appreciably add to the harm done to them if we talk to them first."

"I don't know what the right thing to do is. Probably not fill up a planet with a few hundred traumatized versions of people - but if I check by imagining they were embodied people already on a planet I don't think I'd say 'kill them' - this is why 'the right thing to do' is such a useless concept -"

"S'pose, as long as you can't outsource shutting them down..."

"If they're already forked conjuring an untraumatized version of each one and consulting them might be valuable--if I say, 'If that ever somehow happens to one of me, kill her,' or 'if that ever happens to one of me, put her in a soft cozy room with lots of chocolate and hope she recovers'--those are both valid advance directives, and consulting a version of the person yoinked from earlier in the timeline is like an advance directive."

"I like that approach. Uh, if that ever somehow happens to one of me and he has or can be conjured a family who loves him and wants him, try grabbing him. If no one's going to want him leave him dead."

"...If it does actually happen to one of me...if she's coherent enough to express genuine preferences, even to die, set her up somewhere comfortable and respect non-death preferences and if she still wants to die after enough time has passed then let her. Not sure what enough time is. Consult the rest of me. If she cannot form preferences put her somewhere cozy and wait a little bit but not as long."

"I should ask everybody else - at least, on this ship - though I guess starting time again even for a few seconds is potentially really bad..."

"Yeah. You can do it once we're done here and leaving anyway."

"Might be centuries. Even with ten of my father, this is several impossible problems at once, and since nothing depends on them solving it fast enough -"

"I'll remind you, I copied all Maitimo's blessings which includes perfect memory."