"Oh no! Fuck, I am so sorry, I did not realize he was going to actually . . . Fuck. Me and my big mouth."

"I'd say it's not your fault but, uh, the universe does seem to have decided it was your fault."

"Why is that even the criterion. And, uh, what exactly does being Santa entail, do I just keep living my normal life three hundred and sixy-four days a year and then deliver presents in a TARDIS on Christmas Eve, or is there stuff the rest of the time too?"

"How else would we choose the next Santa? --What the job of Santa entails is basically up to you."

"I still have no sense of what the limits are, and what I can do that isn't 'give people orders'. What did the previous Santa do? It can't have been much or someone would have noticed. And that's another question, what happens if people find out about magic, why's it a secret?"

"Magic is secret because the previous Santa believed that believing in things without evidence is a touching and meaningful example of true faith."

"Well, that's obnoxious! Um. Sorry, I shouldn't speak ill of the dead."

"...I like you much better than previous Santa, so far."

"Thank you. Um. Circling back around to the magical slavery thing, since that did not get resolved. Can I just. Free all of you? Is there any reason not to do that? It seems like the obvious thing but I know I don't know a lot of relevant stuff." At least, thank all that is good in the world, Lev is not behaving in any way similarly to Dobby. 

"I'm not sure that we... can... be freed?"

Well, balls. "Then, uh, what do I need to know to behave in a decent and civilized manner about that. I can't actually afford to pay a thousand people unless Christmas has a budget or something." He is unsure how the previous Santa could have been doing a worse job at this than he's been doing so far but he expects the answer is unpleasant.

"...why would we need to be paid?"

"So you can eat? As fair compensation for your labor, I'm assuming even secret Christmas things required some amount of work? Or is this some sort of post-scarcity Communist situation where you can make anything you want by magic and ignore the rest of the economy, because that would be awesome."

"Elves produce food for elves. We don't-- they're gifts, we don't want to be paid for making gifts."

"That's--really sweet, actually." From a certain angle, this is all very Star Trek. He's in space, there are post-scarcity Communists, a friendly humanoid alien is delivering exposition, it could be a lot worse really.

"So is there, in fact, anything other than secrecy stopping you from ending scarcity on Earth? What magic can you do besides teleporting, how does it scale?"

"Well, most of our magic can only be used to spread joy and happiness to children around the time of the December Solstice, so that puts some limits on how well we can be used to end scarcity. And we can only do things in accordance with the Christmas spirit, which is set by the current Santa. Subconsciously, you don't get to declare that the spirit of Christmas is to end malaria unless you truly feel that in your heart."

Well, possibly having thousands of lives depend on whether his heart is pure enough isn't terrifying at all. But he can't not try it, in a sense he's already trying it, and--he's on the Moon. He's already done one impossible thing today, with Lev's help. Maybe he can do this thing too.

"Possibly my subconscious isn't up to scratch, but--it really feels like it ought to work? Christmas is about abundance, it's about having a feast in the middle of winter because you know you have enough supplies stored to last until the Sun comes back, it's about sharing what you have with your neighbor and giving each other presents and coating your whole house in art because you've gotten the upper hand on winter. I want to believe that I can make Christmas mean that, for the whole world."

"Well, when we get to the North Pole, we can see what changes you've started to make."

"I am excited and also nervous! Do you have some kind of Christmas Spirit monitoring system that can tell how pure my heart is?"

"No, but the Christmas spirit has changed, and we'll be able to reassign some of the Naughty/Nice cams to look for the first signs that it's changed and see what it's changing into. Movie producers, advertisers, that sort of thing."

"Naughty/nice cams? Are you telling me you actually spy on children? I  continue to have no right to tell you to do things but I would really appreciate it if you did less of that."

"We have a database on the actions of every child so that we can tell who's naughty and who's nice, and then we don't give presents to naughty children."

"How attached are you--like, you in particular and also elves in general, how attached are you to doing that? Because I totally get wanting to only give presents to people you like, but the spying is creepy and also the whole concept is kind of sad." He really hopes that was another thing that was mainly the previous Santa's idea and none of the elves care, because otherwise he's simultaneously obligated not to give them orders and obligated to get them to stop spying.

"We want to make human children happy. We don't really care if the human children misbehave."

"Okay, awesome, great. I'm pretty sure human children have to misbehave some to, like, function at all anyway. And now I'm curious about elf culture and also about whether you're as closely related to humans as you look. Sorry, bio student, my brain goes off on weird tangents sometimes."