"Humans - I know you're not human but it's what you look like, sorry, - don't have it but ours works on them fine."

"I used to be human, it's fine - uh - okay, maybe you have a magic version of osanwë instead of a cyborg version of osanwë and yours works on people who don't have chips. Maybe you don't have chips." He checks. "You do not have a chip."

"A chip?"

"In Singularity and Abaddon Elves have these thingies in their brains that do all kinds of cool stuff and some less cool stuff and also osanwë but only chip-to-chip. Magic god thing Maiar and Valar have non-chip osanwë but the Elves don't."

"Okay. ...should I be careful not to read you, then, if you're not accustomed to it and don't habitually keep your thoughts private..."

"Yikes, that didn't even occur to me, yeah, none of that. How does one keep thoughts private?"

"I haven't been, humans in the empire aren't taught how to do it unless they're working on something important, so I don't assume everyone's sharing only what they intend - you just need a mental model to separate private from public - lots of people use visual or spatial metaphors, like storing some of your thoughts in a castle and putting some outside when you want someone to see them, or keeping them in the dark and shining light on specific ones - and then you practice until it's a matter of habit..."

"...okay. How do I test if I've got it or not?"

"I can try to read you and let you know if I'm sensing anything."

"Okay, try it?"

He listens to him. "I can tell you're present, can't tell what you're thinking. There is sometimes a natural way to fold the presence of a thinking person into the metaphor you're using - position yourself inside the castle, position the existence of a castle inside the castle..."

Cam chiplocks the fact that he exists. "Now?"

"Yep! Practice it until it's habit, sometimes it'll slip for people under stress and that's precisely when you wouldn't want it to slip."

"Will do. Okay, the metaphor I was using actually segues pretty well into demon-related infosec - uh, hang on a sec, lemme warn everybody that they need to do this, for all I know chipped people do it anyway but there might be a distinction of some kind -" He pulls his computer off his belt, sends off a message (Another mid-war-Arda, magic god style Valar, pre-electricity tech level, Valinor-to-Endorë is a water boat thing, Elf osanwë is magic and permits mindreading of unchipped persons unless private thoughts are distinguished by metaphor; visitor is a Findekáno) to whom it may concern, and segues from there into use of the computer to summarize the concept and talk about demon limitations.

"Huh, okay. So you can make ten of your kind of Elf but not of our kind of Elf?" Not that he wants ten of him, or thinks Maitimo'd want that. "And resurrect your kind but not our kind?"

"Yeah. I mean, unless there's another trick to doing pure biology or magic-and-biology based minds, but the chip trick won't work."

"Mandos can do it. Doesn't, very often, but can.  I should learn - everything between where my world is at and where the other worlds are at..."

"But you mustn't escalate the war. I mean, not all of it would automatically do that, but you've gotta be really careful not to."

"I wasn't planning to go back until we have a way to win it. The situation's stable right now, I'm not going to risk making it worse."

"Okay, cool, just wanted to reiterate that. I wasn't clear on what was holding the Enemy back when I showed up in my Arda and I knew a lot of tech the locals didn't... anyway."

"The orcs have swords. We have better swords. He hasn't escalated to whatever happens after swords but I have no desire to provoke him to do so."

"Allllll kindsa shit happens after swords."

"So you're not going to be very reassured that to all appearances we are winning."

"I mean, it's better than if it looks like you're losing, on the object level. You're not winning really hard, right? That would be when I'd expect him to pull out post-sword stuff."

"We are not winning really hard. Nice and slowly. It's coming up on three hundred years of essentially stalemate-where-we-control-everything-but-Angband-proper - I wonder if the King guessed, about the escalating..."