"Yes? At what step would you expect it to break down?"

"Oh, anywhere in the chain. If somebody breaks into my apartment and steals my computer, I probably don't know who it is. If somebody mugs me on my way home from work, they already know that I'm not going to appreciate that and telling them so won't help. I can also imagine examples of it looking exactly like it works while really, really not - there was this sub in school who used to harass me and a few of the other doms except the way he did it was he'd go up to us at mealtimes in the cafeteria and kneel at whoever he was bothering that day and then if we told him to go away he would do exactly what we said, for the moment anyway, but in context that was kind of - not solving the problem -"

"If someone broke in somewhere and stole something, we'd probably ask a Vala who it was. But that just doesn't happen, why would you do that when you can just get what you want? If someone were - we don't have anything analogous to that - but pressing a suit when her intended was disinterested, and he had tried telling her to stop, he'd come to me and then I'd figure out why she was doing that and convince her to stop."

"Well, we don't have Valar. We do have postcogs but there aren't enough of them for every case of burglary; so we have police. And people in my world cannot just get what they want - I'm a little skeptical that it's that simple here either, the books at least are rare, right? - and instead of having a you we have, again, police, who mostly skip 'convince' and go straight to 'insist'."

"How would you insist, though? And books are all property of the library, you can borrow them but you can't own them unless you wrote yourself one. But if someone took a book home and just kept it then they'd never be allowed into the library again, so it wouldn't be a very wise thing to do."

"Well, I am here postulating someone who does not mind going places where they are not welcome," says Isabella. "Insisting takes various forms - I didn't escalate that much with the sub who was harassing me, and if I had it would've been with school authorities and not police, but in theory it could have gotten to a legal order that he not be within a certain distance of me and then if he was anyway he'd get arrested and locked up for a bit."

"That seems extreme. And you don't even have a way to reembody people!"

"...the death penalty is only legal in some places and pretty much reserved for, like, murder...?"

"Wait, what happens to humans if you lock them up?"

"...they can't go anywhere? I mean, I could also go into prison conditions, which are pretty terrible except in like Scandinavia, but all being locked up implies is that they can't go anywhere."

"...Elves die. Within a month, perhaps a week, depending on conditions. We should make sure everybody knows that before any Elves go to your world."

"...yes. Although I'm not actually sure it would stop people from trying it if they thought an Elf had done something illegal."

"Well, then we would go fetch the dying Elf and we'd have an even bigger problem on our hands so let's think how to avoid that."

"Something in the neighborhood of diplomatic immunity, probably, I'm not confident that will guarantee no arrests - communication and execution of policy is never flawless even if everyone who needed to understood that there could not be any locked up Elves - but it'd probably get them out inside a week if there was a foulup."

"I expect Elves will abide by your laws just fine, but yes, something like that should be in place. The Elf would also probably be telling everyone within ten miles that they were being tortured to death, so -"

"Well, then the police station would have a protest on their hands, but protests tend not to do anything very quickly."

"What kinds of things are illegal in your world?"

"Murder rape kidnapping theft assault battery. Possession and distribution of certain addictive substances. Child abuse. Fraud, vandalism, concealed carry of firearms without a permit, reckless driving, underage consumption of alcohol, unlicensed hunting, unpaid overtime, public nudity, disturbance of the peace, copyright violation, neglect of safeword, incorrectly handled imports of produce, bicycling without a helmet, medical malpractice, photographing a ballot, parking in a handicapped spot without a placard, feeding someone who may be about to eclipse, setting off personal-use fireworks, interfering with the habitats of endangered species, use of psionic power to divine certain secret information, chewing gum in Singapore, certain forms of gambling, destruction of property, racketeering..."

"We might have to be careful how we handle this.

Rape is another thing that Elves die of. Humans don't?"

"...no. I mean, not by default, it would have to be separately violent or medically complicated in some way."

"I suppose if your dying is for real that's probably for the best."

"Yep."

"If humans come here and do some of those things the Valar will probably panic and react badly somehow."

"Most humans are perfectly nice people, but it's not an overwhelming margin of mostness."

"So we might want screening. Or supervision, though none of us can do anything about a mage or a psion, sounds like."