Oh, uh, most people have, like, consciences, and I just find it way easier to imagine having a mini copy of Bella telling me to do stuff instead of that? I told her when we were like eight and she was like 'so I'm your shoulder angel that's the best thing I ever heard' so, 'shoulder Bella'. ...There's a thing where consciences are represented as angels on people's shoulders. Angels are, uh - wow, this is hard, make Bella explain you angels if you care.

I might. Thank you for letting me know, anyway.

Anytime.

The Valar take the portal well and are temporarily dissuaded from trying to tamper with any ongoing projects and can't resurrect humans like Elves but can make them unaging and are willing to do that once they hear magic can do it anyway. The palace gets electricity. Maitimë is delighted. She works on reading human erotica without her ears going even a little pink.

Humans have produced a truly stunning variety of erotica.

She has perfect control over her body. 

Some of it's pretty hot, though.

Like the approximately 30% of it with two girls involved? That some of it?

Yes, yes, she has a crush on Isabella and is a long way away from being mature enough to get married. 

Human erotica has no particular comment on her maturity. Humans are just different, obviously. This sixty-chapter NC-17 fanfiction about the courtship, marriage, and childrearing practices of these two female television characters is definitely all about how humans are different.

They have sex before marriage and have paperwork marriages and magic can give you children? Wow. Anthropologically fascinating.

Isabella has found a psychiatric psion who can treat compulsive behavior, and one who works in criminal justice doing behavior blocks but is willing to freelance (most of his advertising is aimed at non-offending pedophiles who wish to keep it that way), and one who does memory mods.

Perfect. They can do some hypothetical tests of how that works with oaths whenever Isabella's free.

Results are kinda disturbing.

Behavior blocks work. However, you can't agree to one that will stop you from taking actions you're sworn to. You can agree to one that will stop you from taking actions you're about to swear to, but will then frantically attempt to withdraw consent for the block before it happens.

Memory alteration has predictable results.

Compulsions are merely really uncomfortable, not actually effective, in the presence of negative oaths.

That last result is good, it means that if a certain murderer swears not to do that there's no obvious mechanism to get around that.

"Assuming the oath is real in the first place, and oath alteration that's expressly intended as that from the first attempt to pick up the skill instead of a repurposing doesn't work either, yeah."

It'll take some time to check the latter but they can start screening psions now, they have the money for it. She thanks the ones Isabella rounded up.

Fourteenish-year-olds graduate from control training in clumps but not all at once; they dribble in at a rate that is reasonably paced for interviewing any of them who are potentially interested in a decade of guaranteed money for trying to develop a skill and more to use it a whole lot if they turn up with it.

She loves interviewing people, it's so much fun.

There's a bunch to choose from. Eclipses hit people of all demographics; there's plenty of kids who don't really have a way to eat regularly if they don't find something that'll pay them on prospect alone, now that they're out of training and don't get the free Ensure dribbled down their throats in virtuality anymore.

She would love to give every human a way to eat but she needs to pick ones who will be really careful and consent-respecting.

Eclipses hit people of all demographics and... the median human fourteen year old is not super clear on this concept? Not totally unfamiliar, they do throw in safety sorts of classes in during training.

Well, she'll pick a couple who are bright and well-intentioned and she'll just make a point of spending lots of time with them.

And then she'll mope about not currently having the resources to cure world hunger because giving all of these kids a couple thousand dollars is not the best way to do that but it is awfully tempting.

"You okay?" Isabella asks Moping Maitimë.

"Yes. Material scarcity is terrible can we make it stop."

"Eventually. Some optimistic estimates suggested the invention of virtuality alone could do it eventually."