And the sway magic, however it works, seems to accept this as valid enough reasoning to transfer "ownership" of the image.

She rips it in half. There is barely a change in sway.

"Seems to be the same," he says. "No or little change."

Rip again! There is more of a change now.

He reports as such!

Each new rip seems to be twice as effective as the previous one, after they get going.

"Which. Makes sense, once you think about it."

"Sort of? If it's related to how difficult it'd be to reassemble the original image or something."

After the pieces are fairly small there might be a bit more sway still but if so it's pretty diluted.

"Okay I wanna try ripping one in half then gluing the halves together. Or maybe more than half, maybe like eighths."

"Could try half first, then quarters and then eighths or something?" Pause. "Also see if ripping it into thirds each time, then ninths, acts to be three times as effective each time? Uh, probably difficult to tear in three beyond a certain point but still, and I might be able to do it if you can keep ownership while I damage it."

"Yeah maybe. Do you have glue or tape or whatever?"

He has both, in case for some reason the different stuff affects things.

Also masking tape, if sticking something opaque but removable over it affects things.

They will probably need more printed pictures!

Gluing bits together recovers some but not all of the sway, and there is not enough granularity to the feeling to let Theo distinguish between glue and transparent tape, and it only becomes obvious that the masking tape is different by the time they've ripped the pictures a fair number of times.

(Theo prints more pictures! Also pauses briefly in response to his alarm, again.)

He reports the data that he can, but it's rather difficult to tell the difference between small levels of desire to obey and not hurt someone. The big changes are pretty noticeable when he's specifically looking for them and knows they should occur, especially since he's being told to look.

He is! He's a good boy. Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? Theo is!

… Theo is not in fact a dog, and will object slightly to this treatment when the sway is gone between tests.

"I was just joking, but I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he says, mildly. With a slightly raised eyebrow, looking very slightly disapproving and vaguely amused.

(On with the tests?)

On with the tests!

If Theo gives Sadde a picture he's planning to take back to cut in thirds Sadde never gets ownership.

Hm. Oh well. Sadde can just cut it up herself.

Yep. And then it works as expected, to the extent it does.

Cool.

Do they maybe want to test the 'photo on a USB' versus 'holding the paper copy' thing, then? After testing various methods of destruction that seem more effective the more permanently they destroy the image (unsurprisingly)?

Sure!

And it turns out the photo on a USB provides significantly more sway than the paper copy.

He reports this! "But there could be a lot of reasons. Like because the paper is possibly an easier medium to destroy. Or the system just automatically prefers electronic versions. Or because you can make a copy of it without losing the quality, like, at all. Or a bunch of things."

"Did you test if having two copies of the same thing helps?"

"Yeah, it didn't. Not if it was literally the same file duplicated, at least."