Humans have an afterlife! Eru doesn't tell them much about it but it's probably nice because Eru is nice! Humans don't have the same sort of soul as Elves, but they should still probably stop killing their babies? The Valar are less sure about that last bit and can ask Eru.

...she's not going to let this go on long enough for them to ask Eru. She will re-run this a bit looking for a way to get them to stop at "human souls differ".

...nah, once 'there's a debate ongoing about the fate of dead human babies' is brought to their attention the Valar really want to ask Eru the answer.

Isabella bounces this to Maitimë. They're probably going to notice sooner or later anyway -

Yeah. And they ask Eru things occasionally, it is not usually a disaster -

What I'm wondering is whether this is a good time to let them go ahead and hypothetically ask her about it, see what it does to the precognition.

Of tests of precognition interactions with Eru it seems relatively safe.

That was my thinking but I won't use the object level result for much and it might be a horrible idea; I'm torn.

If there weren't already psions trying it there sure will be now that Elves have gone and gotten involved in human religion.

Yes, but that only affects whether I should do it if the result will be broadly catastrophic, or innocuous, and not targeted at the offending psion.

Yeah. No special insight here.

I'm leaning check.

Okay. Please don't die; as established, humans can't be fetched back -

Do my best.

...rerun conversation with Valar, let it go on a bit -

And she falls out of the precognition.

Okay, well, I'm not dead, but apparently I can't predict Eru, fell out like I ran into another precog.

...congratulations on not being dead. That's inconvenient - means you can't see any bad Eru behavior -

Yes. But I'll notice not being able to see it, I guess - if my range stretches like it ought that means she doesn't do anything -

Could you tell the difference between 'she does something' and 'some other precog decides to mess everybody up by announcing on national television some event from a year forward -'

Oh, once the precog has announced it it doesn't interfere anymore, but no I couldn't tell the difference between this and a standard collision.

I don't think I understand exactly what makes for a standard collision -

If me and another precog make predictions that - communicate with each other, interact - we drop out before we get to that point. Same problem if I try to see what-happens-if-I-try-to-see-what-happens. It's a problem during eclipses because there are so many precogs all looking for the same kinds of things and they have procedures set up to make sure that we cover everything without 'backwash', there's a couple hypercogs who orchestrate all that.

So what could it mean that Eru counts?

I don't think it seems reasonable to assume that Eru looks at the future when and only when she's about to talk to the Valar, so I can't model her as exactly like an infinite precog, but it probably means she can shut me and other precogs down whenever she likes...

Great. Well, worth knowing, at least.