" - that's a good idea."

"Are there operations that work that way?"

"One he can do by hand will not be very secure against determined hacking, but unless someone here is very good at mental math and can't avoid doing it, it should let us check without accidentally learning the name if we don't already know it. I don't think I will compulsively reverse-engineer the hash, so maybe - she -" he points at Rirosseth - "should only relay to me while we try this, to limit exposure to risk. Do they have a phonetic alphabet?"

"They ask if you have something called a 'phonetic alphabet'."

"We do."

"They want you to write it out fairly big so they can see it through their spying mechanism, and assign numbers to each letter, and then do math to the numbers that correspond to your name, so they can see if they get the same answer with their guess."

"Okay." So he will teach them his world's alphabet.

" - that's Quenya."

"Not promising about whether our guess is right."

"Well, let's try it anyway."

Math ensues.

"They say it's the same number."

"Wow. Okay."

"So now I tell them to do the gate thing?"

"I think so."

Unless you have another idea I think the gate is the next step.

"Have to leave the Dome. Who all is coming with - Anaander -"

"I think by rights I should be considered less disposable than the proper cyborgs," she says, standing up.

"What, are you an improper cyborg?"

"The things in my brain that connect me to the rest of me aren't going to be doing a full backup while there's nothing to back up to, I don't think. I am not very bothered about this because I don't care about this thread of experience very much."

"It's a problem that has to do with knowing things. If a chip Elf dies and then gets a new body they will still know things. If you die and we get a new bit of you and tell it everything you know except the thing it shouldn't know then that is different. I don't think memory magic would work worse on you than on them but killing you will work better on you than on them if the memory magic does not do it."

"You could fork them from five minutes ago, probably."

"I could, yeah. Is there something I could be making to back you up to?"

"That's an interesting question. You can't make the kind of ship that Rubelite is, right?"

"I assume I can make one and it just will mysteriously fail to be a person."

"Huh. That's what I'd normally use, if I didn't have any more me, a ship AI or a station AI. I guess it might still suffice for that while failing to be a person."