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the problem of evil
Leareth in Cascadia
Permalink Mark Unread

Lev is in his study looking for a confidential file.

You are not, in general, supposed to lose confidential documents. But the floor of Lev's study is covered with layers of books he bought, books he accidentally stole from the library, papers, files, dissertations, forms signed and unsigned, pens, batteries, broken laptops, and similar detritus. If an archaeologist wished to do an excavation, he could come up with a pretty good reconstruction of Lev's career from his floor. 

And so there is a file that contains the personal information of the last dozen traitors the Eyes caught in a sting off Closet; it was supposed to be on Lev's desk, with the other things he is working on; it is not on Lev's desk; he has no idea where it is. He is pretty sure it is somewhere on his floor and was not walked off with by a Canadian spy or a member of one of the dozens of half-hearted resistance groups. He is not sure at all, however, that the Eyes will agree, and he does not at all want to be subject to his own work. 

You are commanded to pray without ceasing. For once in his life, Lev is following a commandment. He is praying without ceasing that he finds this file.

He thinks darn, considers the situation, and then escalates to damn

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The Gate feels wrong from the beginning, but Leareth remains calm and finishes the casting. A modified Gate-spell that routes through several other planes, in order to avoid detection and cross shields, is bound to feel odd – and will be a powerful tool in his arsenal, if he can sort out the problems. 

This time, it works. He can't actually see the destination, though, only a shimmering curtain. Intriguing, but not alarming. Checking his personal shielding a final time, he steps across. 

...Definitely not his personal cache in the South. Leareth staggers, about ten times as drained as he ought to be from a five-hundred-mile Gate. The light from the threshold behind him winks out. 

The room isn't completely dissimilar from his record-keep; it has more than enough paper, though without any of the organization. The decor is unfamiliar, and the man currently bent over searching the floor is wearing clothing that doesn't look right for any nation on Velgarth. Even stranger, his Othersight finds no hint of ambient magic – no set-spells, no artifacts, not even natural flows.

Still, Leareth is an immortal 2000-year-old mage, with all the attendant experience, and his poise isn't easily shattered. He clears his throat, even as he Reaches out with a mental probe, checking the stranger's mind for shields. 

"My apologies," he says, in the common trade-tongue. "I appear to have come here by accident. I did not mean to intrude." 

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Lev yelps. 

His mind is completely unshielded. He's thinking oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus, halfway between an expression of surprise and a prayer, and then he thinks it's probably just a LARPer who's lost. (The word "LARPer" is linked to a concept of people who enjoy dressing up in clothes like Leareth's and hitting each other with pretend swords made of some material Leareth finds unfamiliar.)

"You need to get out of here, I work with the Eyes," he says. "I'm not going to report you, I know it's an accident, but you could get in real trouble being here." ("Real trouble" comes along with a half-visualized image of a face contorted in pain and blood dripping down someone's side.) 

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Leareth...is very confused. Based on the man's utter shock, though, stealth is a lost cause. He might as well be upfront, without revealing any more than he needs to. 

"I will leave as promptly as I can," he says, exerting significant effort to stay upright. "I think that my Gate may have traveled further than I intended, and I require a moment's rest." He's starting to worry that he might need a lot more than that, given that he still can't find a node or ley-line anywhere nearby to replenish his reserves of mage-energy. "If you know of somewhere with stronger ambient magic, I can depart sooner. Also, what kingdom is this, and who or what are the Eyes?"

He keeps his probe resting on the unshielded mind, hoping to pick up answers to his questions even if the man – Lev? – isn't willing to speak them.

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Lev briefly considers then discards the hypothesis that the LARPer is staying in character and concludes that this person is probably schizophrenic and (the sound of screams and sobbing) definitely does not need to be found by the Eyes particularly those of the Eyes who believe in spiritual warfare against demons. He then notes the man's relatively organized speech and expressive face, which is unlikely although not impossible in a schizophrenic or other psychotic. The man also doesn't know where he is or what the Eyes are-- some weird form of brain damage, maybe? Lev considers how stupid he would feel if God dropped someone who could actually do magic in the world and he assumed they were psychotic right away and didn't check. 

"...I was not previously aware that there was magic in the world. Is there a way you can do magic for me right now-- preferably something very obvious, like levitating something-- so I can confirm it with my own eyes?" 

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Leareth blinks. He seems to have landed in a place where a clearly well-educated man hasn't heard of magic. He knows of kingdoms where magic is banned, considered taboo, but none where a person would consider insanity and extreme dedication to some sort of game-play as hypotheses before thinking to run the obvious test – and not actually expect him to pass it. 

Well, if he has to be accidentally stranded somewhere incredibly distant, at least he's been lucky enough to stumble into someone smart

"Will this do?" he says, summoning a tiny mage-light in his palm, then sending it to hover in the air between them. "I can demonstrate a shield or an illusion if you wish."

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He hears himself say "no, that's fine, I don't want you to use up more of whatever resource you use to do magic before you know whether we can replenish it here" but mostly he's thinking magic! magic magic! magic magic magic magic magic!!!!!!!

...Or alternately he's gone terribly insane but if that's the case presumably it will be sorted out soon enough.

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...That was easy. Leareth doesn't expect most people to so readily change their minds in response to new information. A pleasing surprise. 

"That is considerate of you," Leareth says. "The energy I use for small magics such as this, my body will replenish naturally with food and sleep, so you need not worry." Finding enough power to Gate home – in what he's starting to expect is an entirely different world that, as far as he can tell, lacks magic entirely – is another story, but he can figure that out later. Secure the immediate situation first.

"I gather these 'Eyes' are some sort of local authority," he says, "that will not respond well to my presence? I would prefer to avoid any conflict, and I do not wish to jeopardize your safety either. Is there a different place I should be?" 

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"...okay, so, the first thing we need to figure out is whether your magic comes some neutral feature of your dimension-- I assume you're from a different dimension entirely, we know enough about physics to know our universe doesn't have magic -- or from God or from" (a woman's voice crying please please please I'll say anything just let me go) "demons."

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Leareth is increasingly concerned about the local governance situation, which he puts aside for now. If it proves necessary, he suspects that blood-power would still work here, and he is skilled in mundane hand-to-hand combat. He would prefer not to have to kill Lev in order to fuel his defensive spells. 

"A sensible question," he says, looking around for a place to sit. "In my world, magic is a natural force, fueled by energy that is produced by living things and other phenomena – it does not come from the gods, though they make use of it for their own purposes. Demons can be summoned with magic from the Abyssal Plane, but are not its source. I can directly perceive mage-energy, as can anyone in my world who is mage-gifted. It appears that my magic has the usual effects here, at least for small spells. However, I cannot see that there is any ambient power, aside from what I have in my reserves." 

Permalink Mark Unread

All right, so he's probably not going to be in danger from the Eyes just because he does magic, although when he meets the Eyes Lev is not going to introduce him to Christine, just to be on the safe side. 

Lev tries to think of a good reason to get out of his office. There's a camera, and almost certainly no one's watching, but almost certainly is not certainly and he doesn't want this man to be introduced to whatever bored Eye happens to be on duty and watching a random psychologist's office today. And if they decide to lie about something he does not want taped evidence that they lied. Leaving now is suspicious, but a transcript of everything he's saying is worse.  

"We should get you some food to help you replenish your magic," he says, and hopes like hell that either this guy's magic includes telepathy or he's used to working with the secret police. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Leareth is not at all happy to pick up from Lev's thoughts that records are being made of their discussion. He is also increasingly curious about the apparent capabilities of this civilization. Given the lack of magic, how are they implementing watchers and listeners at a distance?

Lev's surface thoughts do not contain enough context to figure out what a 'psychologist' is, or why Christine is especially concerning. He is, however, pleased by Lev's situational awareness. 

"Food would be appreciated," he says, for the benefit of the watchers and listeners. He tries to catch Lev's gaze. "I am going to try a different spell, to see if it works here." 

This time, instead of merely brushing Lev's mind with his probe, he Reaches deeper. Mindspeech with the un-Gifted isn't easy, but back in Velgarth, it is possible for someone with his skill. 

:Can you hear me?: he sends. 

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He briefly grins but manages to turn away from the camera before it catches any of it and put on a neutral face before looking away is suspicious.

:Yes. If the Eyes think you're making deals with demons they're going to torture you and then kill you. It'll be safe to talk at the restaurant.:

 

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"Did it happen?"

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Leareth keeps his own face neutral. "I am afraid not." 

:I am glad to have that information: he sends. :Again, I apologize for any danger I may be causing you. I will of course use my full capabilities to defend both of us if any befalls you as a result of my presence: 

Not a particularly costly promise to make – he has no intention of giving up his one source of information, and given the lack of power, his prospects for Gating back without a local's active cooperation seem poor.

Although, he is starting to consider whether he wants to Gate home at the first opportunity. His plans are at a stage where they will keep in his absence, and each new fact he learns is more alarming. It is possible this world requires his intervention more than his homeland, right now.

:Is this way of speaking tiring for you?: he sends. :I would like to better understand these 'Eyes' and their role in your society – and your position here – but I will wait until we reach a safe location if you prefer: 

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:Doesn't seem tiring right now but I'm not a great actor so we should probably wait until we're at the restaurant anyway, I'll make suspicious facial expressions. Glad it's not limited, I was trying to send you the most important thing.:

"I'd ask what you want to eat but I am pretty sure you have no idea what the kinds of food here are. Uh, spicy or not spicy, meat or vegetarian-- probably we don't have the same sets of spices at all--"

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"Are there many vegetarians in your world?" If so, it's among his first positive impressions of this place, aside from Lev himself. "I am not particular. My main preference is not to walk far, unless there is another kind of transport available – do you have horses here?" Gates aren't normally this draining, but he supposes it makes sense that Gating to another world would take a lot out of a person. 

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"...oh man, medieval guy, you are going to love cars. --Do you have a name? I'm Lev Aarons."

Lev walks out of his office, quietly pleased that they made enough small talk that leaving was not obviously suspicious.

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"You can call me Leareth." He follows Lev out of the room, into a hallway that also looks like nowhere he's ever seen. "What is a 'car'? Or is it simpler to wait and see for myself?" 

He is busy wondering how to tactfully bring up 'does your civilization need to be conquered by someone who will run it better'? Lev Aarons so far appears to be a surprisingly open-minded specimen of the human species, but this is still a potentially awkward subject for a first meeting. 

Permalink Mark Unread

He bounces. 

"I get to explain cars to someone! This is so cool!" (They get a weird look from a passing undergraduate.) "Let me think what you know-- so you know how wood stores energy that becomes fire? All animals and humans do. In the past, in our world, there was a worldwide flood, and a lot of animals were crushed under the rock so intensely that their bodies turned into this very very energy-dense substance called oil. We put it in machines called cars. Uh, this is wrong but it's close enough to right to give you an idea-- we light it on fire and this makes a cylinder of metal rise, the same way that fire sometimes makes a piece of ash float in the air, and then we put it out really quickly and the cylinder drops, and that turns the wheel, and so you can have transportation that goes very very fast without any horses. Incredibly fast. I can go as far as a person can walk in a day in-- uh, our time system probably isn't the same-- in less than the time it takes you to have a meal, and that's not even going particularly fast."

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"--Sorry, I used to be a teacher and I miss it."

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Leareth, to his own surprise, finds himself smiling. “No, no, please, you need not apologize at all. It was an excellent explanation. Very clear.” And flavored by the obvious delight in Lev’s eyes and surface thoughts. “You were a teacher? I am sorry to hear this is no longer your profession, then. You would be skilled, I think.”
He pauses - no reason not to say it, really. “I wrote a treatise on systems of education, once. A long time ago.” In another lifetime. Many lifetimes ago, in fact.

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"In this culture, people who study academic subjects to a high level also teach less experienced people. But I graduated and now I'm a psychologist-- that's a person who studies brains-- for the Eyes. I'm blessed to get a chance to serve God in such an important way."

He thinks loudly and very deliberately, I torture people for a living. Or, not directly. I look at their files and figure out the best way to torture them. 

"I'd be interested to talk about your treatise! Psychology is, unfortunately, one of the areas where our society has not advanced much since your technology level."

Same loud deliberate thought, with a touch of longing: Since you can read minds, I'd expect you'd be more advanced than us. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Leareth takes a long moment to gather his thoughts. He has a feeling that pressing Lev on exactly what kind of being his 'God' is and why he feels obliged to 'serve' Them isn't a safe conversation to have in public. He's known plenty of priests, of course, but this isn't – he can't figure out how Lev thinks or feels about it. The disconnect between his spoken words and his deliberately projected surface thoughts...

"The difficulty with my world," he said, "is that our institutions of scholarship are limited. I have my personal research programs, of course," and for now he could elide over exactly how many centuries those had been running for, "and some nations, at various times, have had their own organizations. However, we do not exactly have a comparable field to your 'psychology'. The total number of people who have the powers that I do is small, and most are occupied in other roles, most often military."

He smiles slightly. "If I had a reliable method of travel between my world and yours, I would lend you a Mindhealer whom I have worked with. She is very skilled, and this is much more her field of interest. I can perhaps answer some of your questions, though." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yes, that'd probably happen. About one percent of our population is engaged in growing food, so there are a lot of people who can just study. --Although that doesn't actually mean we know more than you, for complicated reasons."

:I don't know what a Mindhealer does but it's probably a good idea to keep you reading minds secret for now, though.:

They are now approaching Lev's car.

Permalink Mark Unread

...Leareth stops walking, because he really, really should have thought of that, just because they're no longer in Lev's workplace with known listeners-at-a-distance doesn't mean no one is listening now. He's being sloppy

Stopping dead in the middle of the path is going to look suspicious too. Leareth struggles for a cover. "One percent? How? That is – I think there is no kingdom in my entire world with less than three-quarters of the population engaged in farming."

He forces his legs to keep moving, and Reaches again, which takes substantially more effort than it should. :You are correct. I was not thinking: 

Which is uncharacteristic, he generally isn't prone to sloppiness, not once he's used to a new body. Maybe he's more fatigued by the Gate than he realized. Does his mind feel sluggish? Hard to tell, but then again, his mind is exactly what he would use to notice. 

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"You know, I don't actually know-- there's a couple things that were important but I don't know whether the most important thing was using, uh, things like cars to help with the farming, or our really good fertilizers and pesticides, or what." 

Lev opens the door of the car with a key and gestures for Leareth to get in. 

:There's a spycam in my car, it's not safe there either. Uh, I don't know how to explain cameras.: He attempts to assemble the concept of a 'camera' and shove it into Leareth's head to see if that works. 

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...Ouch. Lev is surprisingly adept at shaping his thoughts for someone un-Gifted, and now Leareth has a hazy mental image and concept-sense of what a camera is, and also the beginnings of a headache. :We have something similar in my world: he sends. :We use a spell called scrying. It does require a mage, which limits its use:

"Cars for farming?" he says out loud, stepping into the car and sitting. It's quite comfortable. "I see how that would make a difference. Our mages can do very rapid work, including in farming, but we have few relative to the population."

Similar to scrying versus cameras. Leareth has always imagined that a world without magic would be a more egalitarian one, if kings and emperors couldn't draw on retinues of mages, but it's becoming clear now how a mundane tool like a 'camera' could be a powerful aid to an authoritarian government. 

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:Oh, so that works. I should try to send you other concepts maybe.:

"I'm, uh, not sure if this is going to make sense to you," he says, gesturing to the seatbelt, "but you need to take this thing and pull it across your torso and then snap it into this thing right here, because we're going to be going at like forty miles an hour and if the car crashes into something and you don't have a seatbelt you will die. --A mile is a little more than five thousand human feet lined up in a row, an hour is a twenty-fourth of a day."

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Leareth makes a face. :I can shield, you know: He pulls the strange belt across his torso anyway, though, might as well not put any more strain on his shield-talismans than he needs to – they may not be easy to re-power if he drains them. 

He does some mental math. "Assuming our days are the same length, I think one of your hours is not too far from one of our 'candlemarks'. A mile... That is very fast."

A Companion of Valdemar might be able to move that fast, briefly, but there are about a hundred of them in one kingdom of half a million people. Here, they've already passed quite a number of other cars. He decides not to try to explain Companions right now, it's not like it's immediately relevant. 

Leareth leans back and closes his eyes. Probably there's something important that he's forgetting to check, or ask, or plan for, but he isn't sure what and he's tired. Lev seems benevolent enough – and excited about cars and minds and treatises, in a deeply endearing way – and probably won't murder him if he lets his guard down for a couple of minutes. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Actually, I had no idea that you could shield, or that shielding is possible. Is it unpleasant to be sent a concept? If it is, I won't unless it's important.

"Cars are very fast! We let our sixteen-year-olds drive them which seems to me like rather poor judgment."

He starts driving! It does not immediately seem to be faster than a horse.

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"We let our sixteen-year-olds have magic powers," Leareth says dryly. "Well, not let exactly, it just happens. I could give you a very long list of problems this has caused." 

:It is not bothersome to be sent concepts: he sends, before realizing this isn't exactly true. :At least, I think it ought not ordinarily be. I am...finding this unusually difficult, for some reason. Perhaps eating something will help: 

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"That sounds terrifying!"

Outside the window, the grass and sky and buildings all begin to blur together. 

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"Sometimes, yes." 

They are moving quite alarmingly quickly now. Leareth tries to count the buildings passing by, estimating numbers. In addition to the strange architecture, there are a lot of them, and many are shockingly tall. 

"What is the total population of your world?" he finally thinks to ask. The real question of 'why is everything here the way it is' feels too complicated to dig into now, especially given the watchers and listeners. 

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"Five billion. --Uh, is that a number you have, I don't actually know how advanced your math is, a billion is a thousand thousand thousands."

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Leareth smiles despite himself. "I am familiar with the quantity 'a billion'. I am less familiar with this number applied to population sizes. The entire known world where I am from does not exceed one hundred million. It is a...challenge and personal project of mine, to at some point reach ten million people in a single land empire."

(He briefly flirts with the idea of siphoning off some of those extravagant-numbered lives into his own world, so as to skip the empire-building step entirely – it would only be one in five hundred! and it isn't as though he would be snatching them away from wonderful lives of flourishing – before concluding that, assuming this is a correct cost tradeoff to make, it's definitely a future plan and not a now plan. Intriguing, though.)

"How much longer until we reach our destination?" he says. They must have traveled miles by now, but hard to estimate how large a single city might be in a world like this. "I can save my more involved questions for when you are not busy driving a car." And, hopefully, for a place without cameras. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eh, here's good," he says, pulling into a parking lot in front of a building with large cryptic letters on it that spell CPK. "I'm going to introduce you to pizza. --Ten million is pretty small for a country here. Canada is nine million people and Gilead would probably crush them if we invaded, they just can't field a large enough army."

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...Leareth is suddenly very, very curious about how mass-produced devices such as cars and cameras - and the absence of combat mages - might affect military operations.

”Is Gilead considering invading this Canada?” he asks. “Oh, to clarify - we are in Gilead now? What are the neighboring nations?” :And which are allies or enemies: he adds in Mindspeech. :Assuming that is the right question: It’s starting to sink in that local geopolitics might look very different from what he’s used to.

“If you would rather explain ‘pizza’, though,” he adds, “that is also fine with me.”

Permalink Mark Unread

He glances around for drones and doesn't see any. :It should be safe to talk openly now. This conversation is strange enough everyone will assume we're playing a game.:

Lev walks through the doors; they slide open automatically when he walks through. He steals a napkin from a podium near the doors, takes a pen out of his pocket, sits on a bench, and sketches a map of America. "This is the continent we're on, it's called North America," he says, adding a compass rose. He draws a line partway up. "This is Canada." Line separating the east from the west. "This is Gilead. Mexico is here, Deseret is here, Cascadia is here. We're in Boston, which is here." He adds a dot on the Eastern coast, far away from any of the neighboring nations. "Gilead is going to invade Canada at some point, but probably in twenty years or so. Their population is falling and the average age of their residents is rising, so the longer we wait the easier they will be to invade." 

 

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Maps. Good. Leareth already feels more oriented.

“...Why is their population falling? Are there difficulties with their farming practices?” A pause. “What would be the goal of this invasion - further territory, or something else?” One might say that twenty years out is a long time for planning a future attack, but Leareth is hardly one to talk.

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"...Some of the technologies we used to make all the things you've seen so far put a substance called bitoxiphosphene into the air, which destroys the female reproductive system. Women can't have babies, or they miscarry, or they have babies and the babies die, and it all gets worse as they age. Canada wants women to get an education and get married before they have children, so many women don't start having kids until they're 27, and at that point they're lucky to have one that survives its first month out of the womb."

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Oh. Oh. An important piece of context that Leareth would really have preferred to know sooner. His mind churns ahead, trying to chain through the implications - what would that mean, what would it do...

Well, if this Canada is the exception, he can guess. “This is why your government is...the way that it is? How long has this been the situation?”

Leareth realizes he knows little of the rate of development in this society; over two thousand years, he’s seen a dozen empires rise and fall, with very different rates of change-over-time. The Haighlei, for example, are...better not spoken of. 

“How does the timing compare to, oh, when your cars and cameras were first built?” he adds.

Permalink Mark Unread

A waitress takes them to a table; they sit down. She leaves them two pieces of paper covered with a strange transparent substance Leareth has never seen before.

"The fertility crisis started in earnest about a hundred years ago; the previous government was overthrown when I was a baby, about thirty years ago. In the past Deseret, Cascadia, this bit of Mexico" (he draws a dashed line) "and this bit of Canada" (he draws a dashed line around a bit at the very top) "were all part of a single country also called America. Cars were built about fifty years before the fertility crisis got off the ground, cameras-- I don't know how old cameras are-- video cameras that can watch you can't be more than sixty or seventy years old."

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Leareth starts to ask more about video cameras, and then stops.

"Could I write some notes on the other side of this?" he asks, touching the napkin. It's occurred to him that even if whatever strange phenomenon lets him and Lev understand one another with no difficulty extends to writing, it almost certainly can't handle of his personal ciphers. He badly needs to make a list; they're finally in a safe place to speak and it's time to dive into the really important questions. The ones leading up to 'what would it take, exactly, to fix the things wrong with your world'. 

Not that he's committed to that path, he doesn't have ten years to spare much less a century, but he might as well check for easy solutions.  

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"You can have your own," Lev says, and hands him a stack of napkins from the side of the table.

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Leareth works on making notes for a few minutes. He covers several napkins. 

"I wished to prioritize my questions," he says finally. "I have a better order now for the important ones. First, however, how do we actually obtain food?" He hasn't quite been able to glimpse the answer in Lev's surface thoughts. "Also – this is not an important question – how does this pen work? The ink is already inside?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

A waitress comes by and leaves them glasses of water. Lev says, "we'll have two coffees, white corn guacamole, a pear and gorgonzola pizza, and a mushroom pepperoni sausage pizza." She writes it down and leaves, and he says "like that."

"I don't know how pens work in detail, but the ink is inside, yeah. One exploded on me once."

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Leareth winces. "Exploded? Did it harm you?" He sets aside the pen just in case, even though it shouldn't be able to get through his shields, and takes a sip from his glass. Water is a good idea. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nope. Just ruined my shirt. So what's your first question?"

(If Leareth is still watching Lev's mind, he might notice the half-formed thought that Leareth is handsome and has a very interesting way of approaching things, and then a no slamming down on it.)

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(Leareth is only half paying attention; he catches the 'interesting approach', and the warmth, and is momentarily pleased, but he's mostly focused on his questions list.)

"I am trying to understand your metaphysics," he says. "You lack magic, but you have – one God? Many gods? It was not entirely clear. Also, demons were mentioned. I wish to know more of your current scholarly understanding of these phenomena." He smiles slightly. "I understand if it is not complete. My own research, in my homeworld, has been a very long and arduous process." 

:There is a part I am not sure we ought to discuss out loud, even here: he adds, keeping his mindvoice very neutral. :Your God or gods – what is Their relationship to your government, and to the Eyes you have spoken of? Do They...participate...in the current order of things?: 

Permalink Mark Unread

"One God," Lev says, "made up of three Persons. Uh, it's best not to try to understand how that works, any explanation that makes sense is a heresy, we just assume that the inner workings of the all-powerful all-knowing being who created the universe are kind of mysterious. Angels and demons are both kinds of spirits-- angels are the spirits that obeyed God, while demons are the spirits that disobeyed him."

:God intervenes in the world regularly but doesn't really play a role in governance except by, like, answering people's prayers for wisdom and guidance.:

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Leareth is now substantially more confused than he was thirty seconds ago. He's starting to wonder if there's a wider cultural gulf here than he's realized. 

"Could you clarify 'heresy'?" he says. "We also have the concept, but I am wondering if it means something different here." :What types of interventions does God perform, and what are the mechanics of answering prayers with wisdom or guidance – no, pause on that. Back up a step: He scrawls a cryptic note, and then stares past Lev and thinks for a long moment. :What is your best understanding of this God's goals?: 

Permalink Mark Unread

"'Heresy' means-- some incorrect beliefs about religion. Ones that are wrong but aren't so wrong as to be a different religion entirely."

:Uh. This is kind of complicated but mostly He wants us to accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior so that we can spend forever in Heaven instead of being in Hell?:

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Leareth is following with increasing bafflement until the final word, at which point he goes very still.

He knows the term in his own world - mythology of underworlds, representing autumn and winter, lands where dead spirits roam, none of it anything his studies have confirmed as true - but, from the flickers he picks up in Lev’s surface thoughts, he has an unpleasant suspicion that this “Hell” is different.

Instinctively and without thinking to ask, he dives deeper with his mental probe, searching for more details in Lev’s mind.

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Hell is a place of eternal torment, suffering, shame, contempt, and destruction! It is described in the Bible as being a place of unquenchable fire but this is probably a metaphor and not literal actual fire. Still, Lev's mental image of the place involves a lot of flames and brimstone and a surprisingly accurate view of the probable activities, mostly because of his work. 

Lev is absolutely, earthshakingly confident that he is going to go there. 

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"...what was that."

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About ten seconds later, Leareth remembers to breathe. 

"An...accident," he says. "I apologize and will explain soon. A moment, please." He closes his eyes, and thinks hard. It seems there are multiple levels to the wrong assumptions he's been making. 

:Just to make sure that I am understanding you: he sends finally. Not that he thinks he could have misunderstood, not mind-to-mind. :You are saying that the God of this world holds as Their paramount goal that all sentient beings worship this being 'Jesus Christ–: at some point he needs to clarify what 'personal savior' means, and probably also what 'Heaven' involves, but that point is so very obviously not now, :and that if they do not do so, they will, on their deaths, be permanently relegated to a realm of eternal torment?:

He tries hard to keep the overtones of horror out of his mindvoice, because this topic is more fraught than he's been thinking. Because Lev, with his quick mind and curiosity and so obviously prosocial motivations, Lev who didn't for a moment consider turning over an unexpected visitor to the local authorities despite the risk to himself, thinks that he is going to spend the rest of eternity being tortured, and Leareth may have the self-control that comes from millennia of practice, but he's a little shaken up right now, and if he dwells too much on this he might burn something down. 

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:Well, I'm not sure that us having faith in Jesus is His most important goal-- I think He wants us to love Him and be His children and grow in knowledge and faith-- but it's a prerequisite for the other things. And if you don't then you're going to go to Hell. --I'm pretty sure that's true of your world too, although you might be earlier in the story of salvation.: 

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...What. 

Leareth doesn't see how that could possibly be true of his world. He's looked for hell-like realms although nothing even comparable to this monstrosity and there's nowhere to put them that he hasn't checked. This 'God' would have to be an ontologically different type of being from the gods he knows for it to even be a coherent claim, but if there's even a chance it's true then he needs to completely re-evaluate all of his priorities. He has about a billion questions including what it even means to be earlier in the story of salvation, but the nitty-gritty details can wait.

The one thought he quickly puts aside is that Lev is completely, utterly certain of everything he's saying, and maybe he's right – if there's a 'God' with an ontologically greater set of powers over multiple worlds then maybe this isn't a power that can be defeated by a man, immortal mage or not. Leareth puts this thought aside because five seconds after learning of a problem is far too early to consider giving up.

The confusing part is that, from what he can tell, Lev is...well, he isn't not upset about it, but he isn't, like any sane person should be, blazingly furious that his world is currently in the clutches of an evil god. He seems resigned. 

Leareth leans forward, holding eye contact. :Lev, listen to me. Please try not to react too obviously: The worst part is, he expects what he's about to say to be surprising. That Lev may even be angry. Possibly he should take longer to plan his speech, but he's pretty sure that the appropriate response here is immediate, not delayed by the several weeks it would take him to wrap his mind around this. 

:This is not the conversation I expected to have: he sends. :I had been planning to ask if your world is in need of a person to conquer the current administration and run things better. However, this is no longer my priority. What I wish to say is – Lev Aarons, you are NOT going to Hell. I cannot promise the same for every human currently alive in this world, because my resources are not infinite and a difficult problem may take a very long time to solve – however, I swear, by every star in the sky, that no matter what happens, I will not allow this to happen to you. I will take you to my world if necessary; I will find a way to make you immortal if I must: It occurs to him that Lev won't necessarily be happy about either of these, but right now, he doesn't care – he needs an ally here, if he's to have any hope of facing the horrifying scope of this problem. :I have fought gods before over much smaller atrocities. A long time ago, I made a vow that I would not cease my work until I had ensured the flourishing of every sentient being, and this vow applies to your world as much as to mine. I will personally ensure the destruction of your shockingly evil 'God', and free the souls already in this Hell, as soon as I can: 

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:Don't make promises you can't keep.:

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It's possible that Lev doesn't understand the gravity involved when someone like Leareth makes a promise. Which he can't be blamed for, Leareth hasn't given him much to work with. Usually he would be more cautious about revealing his background, but plotting to personally murder God is a time to make bold strides when it comes to forging alliances.

:First of all: he sends, :I suspect that reality would look different if your 'God' had full power over my world as well. For context: I became immortal about two thousand years ago – our years, that is, I am not sure if your years are different. I did this to secure my ability to continue fixing things, because it was clear that somebody needed to. I will not deny having faced interference, however, it would seem quite surprising for your God to have allowed me to remain alive for this long if They had a choice. Even if They are in fact voluntarily allowing it for reasons of Their own, the same would likely apply to you, and this would buy us time to work: 

He looks away for a few moments, gathering his thoughts. 

:Secondly: he goes on, :I acknowledge that perhaps I cannot keep this promise in every possible world. I have found most things to be within my capabilities, before, but the future is not always like the past. However. The right time to give up on a difficult task, if ever, is after you have exhausted every option multiple times. We are not at that point. The correct response to a world – or universe – in the grip of an evil God, is not resignation. It is defiance. I am going to do this either way, but it will be easier if I have your cooperation: He shakes his head slightly. :If you fear retaliation, well, it would be hard for this to make your God's treatment of you any worse: 

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Lev makes a point of studying the menu. 

:..I have to say I would very strongly prefer not to be tortured for eternity for my lack of faith. I need time to think, and... privacy. It is difficult to think things through if I know you are watching my brain. I think I am going to set aside this issue for now and I can answer your questions and then I am going to go back to my apartment and think.:

In the back of Lev's mind: he made a promise to save me from Hell and he wants to fight God and he has such a good face and-- NO. 

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Leareth nods, neutrally. 

:Of course: he sends as soon as Lev's words are done, and immediately backs off from the link. It's understandably invasive, and asymmetrical; his Thoughtsensing Gift and Lev's lack thereof means that he can read the man's surface thoughts without Lev being able to see his thoughts in return. He's surprised how tolerant Lev has been so far. 

"I also require time to think," he says lightly. "I will make some notes now, and then – if you would like privacy, is there a place I can wait without drawing suspicion? If you have libraries here, that would be ideal." He glances down at himself; he's wearing his usual black tunic, although not the cloak. "Also, my clothing does not blend in. I ought to perhaps address this, since it seems I am to be here longer than I initially thought." 

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"...To be clear I don't mind if you read my mind now, it seems useful that you can grab explanations of Hell without me having to, like, explain them. But it does make it harder to get actual complicated thinking done. I'm happy to answer your questions though, and we should probably eat first and get you some clothes and then I can show you libraries."

The food arrives! There is a vegetable thing on a plate with some sort of hard bread, and two pieces of circular bread covered with tomato sauce, cheese, meat and vegetables. 

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"You don't have the printing press probably! You are going to LOVE libraries. And the INTERNET."

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Leareth considers whether to ask questions or eat first, and decides he can do both if he asks in Mindspeech, which Lev did just explicitly agree to. He watches to see what Lev does with the food, and then imitates him, picking up a triangle-shaped piece from one of the bread-circles and holding it in both hands.

The food is...good. It's somehow more intensely food-like than anything he's eaten before. 

:Some of our civilizations have had printing presses: he sends. :I founded one of them, actually. Tell me about this Internet?: It's a safer topic than Hell, and he needs time to figure out the right questions anyway. 

 

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:Um. Computers are hard to explain. But basically we taught machines how to do math and then learned how to represent all sorts of things as numbers, pictures and words and sounds, and then we linked the machines together so they can send them to each other, and there is more information than you could imagine on any possible topic. Libraries and libraries of information are created every second so you'd never be able to read it all.: He takes one of the hard bread things and dips it in the vegetable stuff. :A surprising percentage of it is cat pictures.:

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Leareth, again, finds himself staring at Lev with the food halfway to his mouth. 

:It seems I continue failing to be sufficiently curious about your world: he sends finally. :That is incredible!  We have nothing so sophisticated even with magic: The ways it impacts society...he can't even begin to guess, simpler to ask. He shakes his head. :I wish to know more. Education, governance, trade, war, how have all of these changed? How long has this 'Internet' existed – since before or after your birthrate crisis?: 

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:Internet is after the fertility crisis! Many children go to school at least partially on the Internet-- like, their parents help with their problem sets, but you can videotape lectures by the best teachers and have everyone watch them. Lots of people buy things online and have them delivered by machines with humans barely involved in the process at all. I don't know much about war. As regards governance... well, imagine arguing about politics with millions of people at once. It's terrible. I try not to get involved.

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:I...see. My brief hopes that it would make administration easier are sadly unfounded, then: Which, really, he ought to have known better. :A more educated populace, however, might result in interesting differences from my world: 

Leareth is pleased to see that Lev seems to have found his balance again after the unavoidably awkward interaction around God and Hell and certain vows that he can't ever set down. He isn't sure whether he wants Lev to finish his private thinking quickly, or take a week – after millennia of practice, he's skilled at quickly adjusting to new circumstances, but this is a...bigger shift than usual.

:Systems of government: he sends. :Which are common, and how do they work? I am starting to suspect that monarchies may not be the default, as in my world: 

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:In the rich world, it's mostly democracies: people vote for their leaders, who serve a fixed term and can be voted out of office if they do a poor job. Just talking about this continent-- Gilead is allegedly a democracy but in practice the elections are rigged and who is in charge is mostly decided by internal politics stuff; they vote for specific individuals to run specific branches of government, like education or agriculture, and one person to run the whole government. In Mexico, the most powerful part of the government is the president, who's kind of like a temporary king elected by the people. In Canada the most powerful part of government is the parliament, where districts that each contain a similarly-sized population vote for someone to represent them, and then the parliament passes laws. In Cascadia, they have a parliament, but they also have the forecasters, whose job is to predict what will happen if the government passes certain laws. So the parliament is supposed to determine what the citizens value, and the forecasters are supposed to figure out how to get it. The courts decide whether people broke the law. In Canada, Mexico, and Cascadia, but not Gilead, the courts can also get rid of a law if they think it violates people's basic rights. --Uh, all of this is really an oversimplification but if we get into political science it will take forever.: 

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Leareth has eaten as much of the food as he can manage for now, which turns out to be most of a bread-circle and some of the hard-bread-with-vegetable-stuff. It's very good, and also salty enough that he's very glad the waitress discreetly came by to refill their water glasses. Salt is probably less of a rare commodity in a civilization with their capacities. 

He nods. :It seems most efficient that I do some reading of my own, now that I have the basics: He glances at the mysterious notes he's been keeping on a napkin. :Before I forget – do you have any helpful pointers for where and how to obtain more information about your God, in a library or on the Internet? I am guessing it may be too conspicuous to speak to a priest-scholar, if you have suchlike, but if there are texts written...: 

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A grimace flashes before he smooths his face into a neutral expression. 

:You're going to run into issues because there's censorship. Most explanations of why other people are wrong are only allowed to people aged 18 and over. It involves explaining what other people believe and why, you see. And you can't find out what other religions and worldviews believe in their own words unless you're an academic or an Eye or have some other really good reason to need it, or else a lot of pull. You can get around the censorship but it's hard and it might attract attention from the Eyes.:

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Leareth controls his own frustrated sigh. 

:Then it is probably safest that I learn this from you: he sends. :Since I assume that you do have this information? I am not yet competent to evade censorship without arousing suspicion. I can make headway on other background research in the meantime; thanks to you, I know where to begin, though please do tell me if anything else you have mentioned is also under censorship:

He smiles, and pushes gratitude into his mindvoice along with the words. :Had I stumbled onto anybody as helpful as you in any of my previous starting-points, back in my own world, things would have been ever so much easier: 

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eeeeeeee he's helpful-- NO

:Sexually explicit material is censored-- artistic nudity and sex education guides and things like that are 18-locked, pornography is banned. Things you can use to commit acts of terrorism or violence are banned. Some criticism of the Gilead government is censored: you can talk about the tax policies all you want but saying the secret police shouldn't disappear people gets you censored. Arguments about certain other controversial topics, like ones that say it's okay to kill babies or commit suicide or engage in sodomy, are censored the way that arguments about the nonexistence of God are censored. I thiiiink that's everything but might have forgotten something.:

 

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Leareth is nodding along and scribbling a list, it seems people are people everywhere at least when it comes to bizarre prudery about sex, banning criticism is something he would consider if he were to run a totalitarian government – wait, what?

:I...see: he sends once Lev is done. :I will confess, I am mystified as to why suicide of all things considered a religious sin in the same way as infanticide. I could say the same for sodomy except that many religions of my homeland are baffling in the same way. In any case, I will make sure not to press on any of these topics: He pauses. :I have not thought to ask about the legal and social position of women in this society. Given the reproductive difficulties, I imagine it is a restrictive one. Is there anything I ought to know to avoid a conspicuous faux pas in a library?:

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Many religions of his homeland are baffling-- okay no Lev does not even want to begin the daydream half-formed from that thought. 

:Every worldview in our society disapproves of suicide. Except Cascadians. Cascadians like suicide because keeping disabled people alive is expensive.: His disapproval is evident in his thought. :It's not that restrictive for women? It's mostly about keeping them safe. Women want different things than men do.:

He thinks. :My first thought is 'you can't offend women as long as you behave reasonably,' but then I remembered that I shouldn't assume your definition of reasonable and mine is the same anyway. You probably shouldn't talk to people in the library anyway, you can't pass as a person who is from here, someone's going to mention television and you're going to be like 'what's a television'. Fortunately, the norm in libraries is mostly not to talk. I should give you headphones, anyone who tries to talk to you while you're wearing headphones is being really rude and you can gesture to your ear and glare at them. You should avoid touching people you don't know as much as you can, but anything you can reasonably do by accident doesn't cause offense. You should usually leave about four feet between you and anyone else, but if there isn't an empty seat far away from anyone it's okay to sit next to them, and you can pass people if there's not a lot of space. Say 'excuse me.':

Leareth may catch the interesting sensation of Lev running through everything he remembers from his anthropology classes to try to think of more norms that differ between cultures.

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Leareth does notice Lev's mental search. He is intrigued by the idea of literal classes on cultural differences. He also notices, distantly, the pattern of half-cut-off surface thoughts. Probably this is due to some other baffling cultural difference – something to do with religious norms? Lev has to have actual trauma from growing up in a world under the dominion of an evil God, Leareth can't see how anyone could not. At some point maybe he can think of a tactful way to ask about it, but there are higher priorities. 

Leareth adds a few more lines to his napkin-list, and stands up. :Noted. I will do my best to avoid missteps – oh. I would generally read the surface thoughts of people nearby, in an undercover situation. It seems very likely that, as nobody in your world is Gifted, no one will be able to detect passive mental probes. However, if you would prefer I not do this for another reason, I can refrain:

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:That seems like the best option. We should take you to my house to get clothes and then drop you off at the library.:

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Leareth approves of this plan, and will follow Lev for a while and keep thinking.

He follows Lev outside to his car, and they start moving very fast again, and a period of time later that Leareth isn’t quite sure of because he’s busy mapping out a research agenda, they stop at another building.

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Lev takes him inside his house, gives him a pair of jeans and a shirt like Lev's and privacy to change, shows him headphones, and then takes him to the library. 

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Leareth finds the clothing strange, but comfortable enough. 

At the library, with headphones in place to ward off conversation from strangers, he fills in the gaps in Lev’s explanation of ‘computers’ by skimming nearby surface thoughts. He will start with the general historical background of the main nearby nations that Lev mentioned; he’s especially intrigued by the description of Cascadia, but unsure how much to expect censorship and misleading information.

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About thirty years ago, there was an attack during the State of the Union address, which was when the president of the United States of America was addressing Congress (the legislative body). Nearly the entire government died. The Gileadites, the most popular sect in the country at the time, took over and made the country a theocracy. In the chaos, Cascadia-- the area of the country with the strongest political disagreements from Gilead-- seceded. The Gileadite government responded by dropping nuclear weapons on the three largest cities in Cascadia, which killed two million people. 

The general sentiment of the documents he finds is that this was clearly justifiable: after all, it was a war, and the American government had used nukes in World War II and everyone agrees that that was justified because the Imperial Japanese were awful. While Cascadians are nowhere near as bad as the Imperial Japanese, they are definitely awful. Their government murders the old and the sick and unwanted babies. Women are trafficked into sex slavery and gestational slavery. Children are addicted to drugs and their lives are ruined; Cascadia is the primary source of drug trafficking into Gilead. Babies are bought and sold like they're objects. The nuclear family has been destroyed: homosexuals can get married, and men can marry as many wives as they want, and children commonly have as many as five legal parents. As you'd expect from the previous two sentences, children are often neglected and abused without anyone who is especially responsible for them. Pedophilia is basically socially acceptable, and children are routinely raped by adults. Christians are persecuted and imprisoned for simply trying to leave out their beliefs. Anything would be justified to destroy a society this awful. 

In the chaos, Mexico, Deseret, and Hawaii also seceded, and Canada acquired Alaska. Mexico and Deseret seem to follow different forms of the Christian religion, with different beliefs. Deseret also has socially acceptable pedophilia and rape, but the sections on the evils of Mexico and Deseret are mostly devoted to their heretical beliefs and oppression of true Christians rather than any of their laws. 

Canada's population has not quite halved in the past hundred years. Their current total fertility rate is a little more than one. There are various attempts to discuss what they should do about this crisis, but Canadians seem to find most of the proposals deeply objectionable, as they prefer for women to be educated and have careers before having children, and don't want to traffic women into gestational slavery. This is, Gileadite sources claim, proof that following God's law gives you the best results; He commanded that women be mothers first because following His will makes societies work best.  

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Lev sits in a corner of the library. 

Okay, so, Leareth.

..............having a very attractive man vow to save him from Hell within half an hour of meeting him is extremely extremely attractive. Leareth was reading his mind so presumably he saw-- which aaaaaaaaaaaaa-- but fortunately he doesn't seem at all inclined to comment so maybe they will just both pretend that Lev is not same-sex-attracted and everything will be fine. 

Except Leareth will keep making faces. And Lev can do some of the things he's trained himself to do-- keep his eyes on the floor and shut down his thoughts-- but the problem is not really Leareth's face, it's the whole thing where Leareth is the sort of person who vows to save strangers from Hell, and if Lev is going to keep interacting with Leareth he is going to keep having a crush on Leareth and his emotional purity is going to go out the window.

...This is possibly not the most important problem here. 

Lev has been acting mostly on impulse so far. Mostly he's been trying to preserve his options. Once Leareth has been introduced to the Eyes, it will completely eliminate all chance of keeping him secret, so it makes sense to hide Leareth until he's sure of what he wants to do about it. Unfortunately, now is the time to think about what he wants to do about it. 

Leareth wants to start a single-handed war against God.

On one hand, this is pretty much the most obvious sin you could imagine. It's the sort of sin you'd have the villain commit in a particularly unsubtle children's science fiction novel.  It's the literal version of the thing that sin is, at its base. Sin is choosing to have something else be more important than God. Sin is deciding you know better than God does. Sin is rebellion. Sin is Lucifer saying to God: I will not serve.

If Lev were a good Christian, he would be calling the Eyes now and get Leareth arrested.

On the other hand, Lev is... not a good Christian.

He knows what happens to people who are caught by the Eyes. He can... avoid thinking about it most of the time. His job is interesting, it pays well, and he has an opportunity to understand how people work that people outside the Eyes would never get to experience. When he's in the flow and thinking about how to break people he can almost manage to think about them as hypotheticals, thought experiments. Almost a game. Understand a person as well as you can, so you know exactly what will make them break. 

(The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.)

He... does not want to see Leareth begging for mercy. He does not want to watch Leareth crawl. The man is, it is obvious from a short acquaintance, brave and noble and proud; to make the man weep for forgiveness would be like defacing a sculpture, or destroying a mountain.

Lev is going to go to Hell. He is intellectually proud. He simply cannot be sure of what he hopes for or certain of what he does not see. He knows God exists, but he cannot have faith in anything. It is not that he has doubts. It is that he is doubt formed into a roughly human shape, and he cares more about his mind than about God. 

God is going to win. You don't win a war against an all-powerful, all-knowing being. God's perfect justice will be served, and Lev will be tortured for all eternity. But that will happen no matter what he does. So... he might as well do what he likes. He is not presently particularly invested in fighting a doomed war against Heaven, but he wants to be friends with the sort of person who would. (However perverted the desire becomes, at its core it is a desire to be friends.) And he wants to understand Leareth's magic, and Leareth's world. And... it is a treacherous sort of hope... but while you do not win a war against an omnipotent being, in one option he is definitely going to Hell no matter what, and in the other option he only has to be fundamentally wrong about everything he believes in order to not go to Hell. Which is not that big of a speculation. After all, a few hours ago he didn't think magic existed. Lev expects he is fundamentally wrong about things quite a lot. 

"Sorry, Jesus," Lev says quietly. "If You wanted a different outcome, You shouldn't have made me."

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Leareth is deeply unsure what to think.

The main issue is that he doesn’t know how far to trust the information sourced from Gilead. The biases are going to be woven in and he doesn’t have enough context yet to recognize them.

Gileadite society seems to be run in a not-unreasonable way, in terms of maintaining population under the constraints they face. Leareth is less convinced of Cascadia’s depravity; at worst, the Gileadite depiction of their choices would seem ill-advised in a world under reign by an evil God.

...Leareth would, under usual circumstances, be able to make some headway on reasoning out the likely biases and accounting for them. These are not usual circumstances. He feels increasingly as though his head is full of glue, and...okay he should probably find Lev soon while he’s still capable of basic navigation inside a library.

He finds Lev in a corner. “Can we go,” he manages. 

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"Yes. Did you get the answers you wanted?"

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“Some. Maybe. Not sure. I wish to ask- Later.” Leareth shakes his head and reaches out with a mental probe. :Something feels wrong. Cannot think. I need to rest: 

He should probably ask Lev what he concluded during his private thinking time, but that sounds like a complicated conversation. And from his brief glimpse of surface thoughts, he suspects he can guess the answer.

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:Maybe being in a world without a lot of magic isn't good for you. We can go back to my place, you can take my bed.:

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This seems like a good plan.

:I will require more information on a number of subjects: Leareth sends as he follows Lev toward the door. :No offense, but I do not trust your government’s sources to be unbiased. Especially on matters of, well, your God and Their goals, which will be especially key to ou- to my plans: He almost says ‘our’, but Lev hasn’t, in fact, stated his intentions yet.

A thought occurs to him. :Lev, I suspect the other nearby nation-states to at least have different biases, which might allow me to triangulate better toward the truth:  He pauses, unsure, and then forges ahead, keeping his mental probe resting on Lev’s mind to gauge his reaction. :Cascadia in particular. Is there a reason I - or we - could not go there to directly consult their sources?:

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:God's a He. --It's going to be hard to get us to Cascadia. Legally, to leave the country you have to have certain paperwork and pay a vacation fee that they'll refund when you return. You don't legally exist, so you can't fill out the paperwork. And they'd probably just deny my vacation fee outright because I'm an Eye and they're afraid I'd defect. We could hire a coyote, but that's expensive, and we don't have anyone on the Cascadian end to make sure we get a reputable one. And if we get caught both of us are going to go into a black site prison and never be seen again.:

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Leareth thinks for a moment. Tries to. Thinking is still mysteriously difficult.

:I can use magic?: he suggests. :If we can travel to near a border, I can cross while concealed by an illusion, if you give directions, and then I can raise a short-range Gate to bring you over. I ought to be able to manage that from reserves alone once I have rested:

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:That should be possible but it might take a while for me to get the time off work.:

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:I understand: Leareth shakes his head, still trying to clear it. :It is not yet a finished plan in any case. I...should perhaps not be finalizing plans when my mind is like this- oh: Dawning fear. :Lev, if it is lack of magic, I am not sure it will improve with rest: 

It’s a very unpleasant thought, because what is he supposed to do about it? He can’t leave - not without murdering a dozen strangers for blood-power; he has a feeling Lev would disapprove and he wants, needs, Lev’s alliance for his plans here to succeed-

:I did not ask: he sends. He’s being so disorganized today. :Your conclusion. Are you in?:

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:I don't expect you to win but I don't want you to be tortured and I'm probably going to Hell either way so... there's not exactly much to lose. --You should try resting either way before you worry about it. Is there something else you can do to get magic back?:

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:...Yes, but it is not very ethical and I would prefer to try the obvious things first: He closes his eyes, checking. :My reserves do seem to be replenishing. I think my magic is not so impaired, it is more...the ability to hold a thread of thought: He shrugs. :I did attempt what turns out to have been a shockingly long-range Gate earlier today, and have not really rested. Sleeping ought to help:

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"Do you want to head back?"

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“Yes, I think that is a good idea.”

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More cars!

Lev presses a button on the car, and music starts playing. A woman's voice is crooning about how she's washed in the blood of the Lamb. 

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Leareth rubs his eyes. He probably isn’t hallucinating the music. “Lev, what is this song about?” Surely not blood-magic, which as far as he knows has never been a phenomenon in Lev’s world until his own arrival. “Is it cultural context I am missing?”

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Oh Christ he's going to have to explain salvation to Leareth. 

"So six thousand years ago, everything was perfect. And then humanity disobeyed God and brought sin and suffering and death into the world. Ever since then, humanity has been fundamentally twisted so that we choose evil rather than God. In order to reconcile God to us and let us go to Heaven, God incarnated as a human being called Jesus Christ. He was tortured to death on a cross, and after three days he came back to life. Now, as long as you have faith in Him, you will be saved and go to Heaven. The song says 'washed in the blood of' because her sin has been made clean by Christ's blood. The Lamb thing is a metaphor: in Judaism, the religion that God used to teach us about him before Christianity, lambs were sacrificed to get rid of sin."

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...What.

Leareth sighs and leans back in the seat. “I think that perhaps I need to reason about this when I am better rested. Currently all I can conclude is that your world’s metaphysics makes no sense.”

He stares out the window at the blurred scenery racing by. “I am going to want access to primary sources on this. Is there a sacred priesthood that communes with God and keeps His lore. Oracles? Or original records, I suppose, that would do as well.”

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"Uh. God wrote a book? Called The Bible. Everyone's supposed to interpret it for themselves."

:Although of course if you interpret it for yourself in a way the Gileadites don't like you'll regret it.:

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"Oh. Why did you not say that immediately?"

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"Having some context of the broad story of salvation can make the Bible easier to understand and interpret."

:Because it's thousands of pages long and an appalling percentage of it is devoted to genealogies and instructions for the treatment of leprosy.:

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"I see." :I...was not sure what to expect a book literally written by God to be like, but not that: 

Leareth is trying to figure out if there are inferences to be made about this God's goals from His interest in...geneologies, and leprosy? While mysteriously glue-headed is probably not the best time to try to analyze a god's psychology. 

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:There are also poetic bits.:

Lev's surface thoughts are a jumble of memorized Bible verses. Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Test all things; hold fast to what is good. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son that it may be saved. And there are images-- of a shepherd hunting endlessly for his lost sheep, a father rejoicing at the return of his long-lost child, a man helping a stranger at the side of the road.

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:Your God cares a shocking amount about marriage: Leareth sends. :The rest... Yes, I suppose that is more how I expect a deity to communicate:

Privately, he’s thinking that this is a God with an incredible level of ego. A weakness that can be exploited, maybe?

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:Not... as much as you might think? Those are the verses I happened to memorize because I'm same-sex attracted.:

Surface thoughts: OVERWHELMING SHAME.

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:Oh: 

That...makes sense of a number of small notes of confusion - in particular, all the thoughts that cut off into NO.

He really ought to say something, he disapproves of shame existing as an emotion and he especially dislikes picking it up from Lev. He’s not at his most eloquent right now, though, and he’s...still trying to catch up with the fact that those mystifying cut-off thoughts were mostly about him.

:Needless to say: he sends, :I think that your God forfeited any right to have sane people care what He values when He decided to create an entire torture realm for people who do not love Him fervently enough. Can we agree on that?:

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:He still made us. It's not... good to ignore the user manual for being a human, even if the person who created it was a torturer.:

When will this conversation be over.

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Leareth can make the conversation be over now. They’re nearly back to Lev’s house, anyway.

Leareth has a feeling he failed to handle that especially well, but he doubts any additional attempts will improve it.

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Lev's surface thoughts are all SHAME, SHAME, HUMILIATION AND SHAME as he shows Leareth where the bed is.

(The bed is somewhat absurdly soft.)

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Leareth is so, so poorly equipped for being reassuring about this. He...doesn’t understand shame, as an emotion. It seem so unhelpful and pointless to him.

He’s pretty sure that telling Lev ‘I think your emotions are stupid’ will not make anything better.

He...can go to sleep and give Lev some space to process without Leareth watching his brain. That’s probably the respectful thing to do here.

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Lev does not actually process in any sort of useful way.

He does buy Leareth his own clothes, get himself an air mattress, and leave the Bible, the Moody Bible Commentary, An Introduction to the Christian Faith, and Mere Christianity by his bedside table.

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Leareth wakes up a number of hours later, and finds himself alone in the bedroom. With books!

Remembering Lev’s comments on the Bible’s length and dry content, he decides to start with Mere Christianity. (He wonders briefly how it works that he can read the written language of Lev’s world without difficulty. It’s probably some sort of world-shifting-magic thing, and is one of the less interesting parts of the current situation, so he sets it aside.)

Before he starts to read, he discreetly Reaches out to see if Lev is nearby, and if the content of his surface thoughts is still OVERWHELMING SHAME.

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The contents of Lev's surface thoughts are about whether you get better results if you have spiders crawl on arachnophobes regularly or instead conspicuously don't show them spiders, and if it's the second thing whether you should additionally roll a cart of spiders past them occasionally while talking about how you're going to be putting them on someone else.

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...At least it’s different than before? Leareth decides that reading the book is easier than trying to trace down exactly what kind of ‘better results’ Lev is hoping to obtain via strategic deployment of spiders.

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The first section of the book explains that everyone in every culture agrees that there are certain moral laws that go beyond arbitrary opinion. These moral laws could only come from God, who created humanity and put it in them. But this creates a problem, because everyone has failed the moral law, and perfect justice can't make an exception for one person. We certainly wouldn't want it to make an exception for other people!

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Leareth does not think this is at all an obvious argument. Certain ethical principles are agreed-upon as more than arbitrary opinion because they are consistent - because they involve treating all beings with minds and preferences with equal value. Isn’t that all you need? 

He considers this sufficiently self-evident that it’s hard to even figure out where he disagrees with the book’s premise.

He’s also confused by the claim that everyone has failed the moral law. This seems like a maladaptive way for morality to be set up even if, in this world, it somehow was metaphysically created by God. Maybe the book will explain more clearly if he keeps reading.

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The book considers "everyone has failed the moral law" to be extremely obvious and does not elaborate on it.

The next section discusses the identity of God. Some people believe God is the universe, but this seems incorrect, because the universe is obviously not perfectly good. Other people believe God is separate from the universe. Some of the people who think God is separate from the universe believe evil is just as powerful as good, but this seems wrong, because evil is clearly just spoiled good. Christianity is clearly correct because it is the only religion that is right about both of those things about God. It is hard to imagine why an all-good God would make such a fundamentally broken universe, but the answer is free will. God has to let people choose to make mistakes, because if you can't make mistakes, then you can't actually become a good person. At the end of the section, Jesus Christ is introduced. The book believes that the only way to be truly virtuous is to worship Jesus Christ. 

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The book makes a large number of assertions that it seems to consider very obvious, but which are not at all self-evident to Leareth. In particular, he can’t figure out how worshipping this ‘Jesus Christ’ is supposed to, by definition, result in behaving in more virtuous ways. There must be some additional cultural gulf that he’s still missing.

(Leareth also hates the concept of ‘virtue’ in general, but that’s really a separate disagreement.)

He considers trying the primary source material, the Bible itself, but decides to put on the clothes left out for him and go find Lev instead. 

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Lev is surrounded by papers. It looks something like a tornado swept through a library.

(Most of his house gives you that impression, actually.)

He's progressed to writing a letter about how they should really let him do randomized controlled trials of, for example, what the best way to torture people with their phobias is. It has the potential to contribute greatly to science and he'd be a lot better at torturing people if they let him.

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Leareth clears his throat. “Good morning - is it morning? I read this book and I have questions. What are you working on?” 

(He can see what Lev is working on, from the splayed papers and surface thoughts; the actual question he wants answered is why.)

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Blink blink. 

"--Sorry. I'm doing my job."

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“I see.” He switches to Mindspeech. :I assume you need to keep performing your role to avoid suspicion. Unless you would prefer to simply disappear now, that is. My magical reserves are sufficiently recovered that I am confident I can keep both of us undercover:

(This is what Leareth has gathered to date: Lev’s professional role involves...understanding minds, in order for the ‘Eyes’ of the authoritarian government to use more effective torture. It’s actually a clever idea; it probably stabilizes their power over the nation. Lev finds his job intellectually interesting. Lev, however, does not like torture or people suffering. He avoids thinking about it and when he does think about it the flinches are obvious. Leareth knows that he doesn’t fully understand Lev, but his current theory is that Lev has believed he is powerless - against the government or God - for a long time, and so is resigned to it. Leareth wonders if he’s open to changing his stance on this, now that he has a new ally and resource on his side.)

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:Having contacts in the Eyes seems extremely useful to your plans. I don't know how we'd get money unless we ran to Cascadia:

Lev is vaguely concerned about all the sex trafficking and murder in Cascadia, and has vague mental images of people having sex in public next to redwoods and eating their pets and similar uncomfortable behavior.

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:It is true that there is option value there: Leareth agrees. He glances around. :First, how openly can we speak here? Second, is now a good time to ask you some things or are you busy?:

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:Backyard:, Lev says, and leads him out there. "What did you have to say?"

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Leareth leans against the wall. “I think I am running into some kind of cultural barrier, regarding the sources you provided me.” He holds up Mere Christianity. “This is an intensely frustrating book! It keeps making axiomatic statements without justification, which seem incoherent or flat-out wrong to me. So I assume I am missing some prerequisite concept, and perhaps a mental concept-transfer from you will help before I dive into the primary material.”

He folds his arms, and switches back to Mindspeech. :Also. I apologize for my bluntness, here; I wish to address the fact that you are frequently experiencing shame while around me. I assume this is because you experience attraction toward me and believe this is against God’s will?: He tries to meet Lev’s eyes. :I will probably say the wrong thing, now, because of missing cultural context, but I shall do my best. In my opinion, who one is attracted to is, in itself, not the category of thing to which ethical rules apply, any more than they apply to, say, your preferred type of ‘pizza’. One can of course act toward people in ways that lead to offense or distress, but I assure you, I am neither offended or distressed by your attraction. I am mildly distressed by your thoughts being full of shame, it is distracting and adds friction to our working relationship, and I would like to fix that if possible: 

(Leareth lets out his breath, wondering what new and fascinating kind of faux pas he’ll have managed to make this time.)

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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Lev's thoughts are an extremely confused jumble much of which is internal screaming, but Leareth can probably pick out that:

-I am neither offended or distressed by your attraction is, as far as Lev knows, the closest anyone has ever come to being attracted to him
-Lev is under the impression that ever having been attracted to anyone other than his future wife will distress her and make her jealous, and make their marriage less likely to be happy
-Lev is under the impression that ever having had a crush on anyone other than his future wife will have the same effect
-Lev does not particularly mind committing sexual sins, all things considered, except that he wants his future wife to be happy and thinks committing sexual sins will make this much much less likely
-the entire concept of Lev being attracted to anyone, not just men, is associated with overwhelming shame and insecurity

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Well, that is one very inconvenient piece of cultural context, that he managed to miss entirely because it’s stupid.

”I am going to stop reading your mind for the next thirty seconds,” Leareth says, very calmly, “and then I will try starting that over.”

(Privately, he’s thinking a number of curse-words in various languages, and things such as why does everyone I want to ally with to save the world have some kind of horrible trauma and you would think he’d know how to handle it by now after all those years talking to Vanyel but he still feels out of his depth.)

:Listen to me: he sends finally. :Lev, I can say with great confidence that the cultural script you have been taught for how relationships work is deeply unhealthy, psychologically unrealistic and almost certainly does not represent what people actually do in successful relationships. Most likely no one tries except for a few people like you who earnestly think rules are meant to be followed: That...probably isn’t the most tactful way of saying it, oops. :I am this confident because I have two thousand years worth of understanding on how people work, and I have learned enough to judge that the people of your world are no different: 

He shrugs. :It will probably sound very arrogant to ask you to believe me because I know people better than you. I am not sure what else to say, though: 

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More confused and vaguely hopeful jumble of thoughts, then:

:Well, you can read minds.:

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:Are we resolved, then?:  Leareth straightens up from the walk. :I apologize for my lack of tact: he adds. :It is predictable that a society with the birthrate issues that yours has would end up with strict and bizarre relationship norms. I could have tread more carefully here and embarrassed you less if I had foreseen this better: 

He waits, hoping Lev’s surface thoughts will settle into something vaguely coherent.

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Warm and fuzzy feelings about how Leareth is so good and patient with him and helpful and nice and-- (Lev is kind of starving for any sort of positive attention at all.) 

Curiosity about how relationships work if it is not the way that Lev was taught. He's mentally running through a couple other scripts, all of which also seem to be psychologically unrealistic and deeply unhealthy.

Worry that it is bad that they're pausing Leareth's plans to deal with Lev's psychological issues. Worry that Leareth will be uncomfortable seeing all the thoughts about how great he is. Worry that maybe Leareth is wrong and getting to just have warm and fuzzy feelings about Leareth is going to break his future relationship somehow. Except he is not sure how he could get married to someone if he is also single-handedly fighting a war against God, so possibly he should just think about how Leareth is so kind and makes such interesting facial expressions.

Vague acknowledgement that he would be much much more likely to turn Leareth in if he didn't have a crush on him.

Lev is clearly trying to partition his thoughts and emotions so that they are easier to read.

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All of those are much easier for Leareth to interface with than vague overwhelming shame. 

:I am not uncomfortable: he sends. :The cost to my plans of pausing for ten minutes in order to avoid copious future awkwardness is very worth it:

He hesitates. :I am...also probably not the best person to describe how healthy relationships work, because I am two thousand years old and very unusual in multiple ways and I have, in fact, never been married- well, never married for love: he corrects. :Some alliance-marriages in there. Different script, can be workable but I think is not what you wish for. I think there is no one correct way, it is simply whatever works to satisfy both people’s preferences: 

Lev is blinking at him.

:I am grateful you do not wish to turn me in: Leareth adds. :I respect you; you possess the rare trait of changing your mind in response to evidence. In fact, you demonstrating it again now. I am very glad that it was your office I stumbled into. I value your alliance:

(This is approximately the closest category of relationship that Leareth has, which is hopefully clear to Lev from his mind voice.)

:Now: Leareth finishes, :whenever you are ready, I am still hoping you can attempt to transfer whatever concept of morality I am missing, so that I can make sense of your books:

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"Excuse me," he says.

He goes into the living room, smooshes his head into the couch, and spends five minutes accidentally broadcasting an enormous quantity of happiness in every direction.

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Leareth waits for a minute in the backyard, and then sneaks past to Lev’s bedroom and takes out the Moody Bible Commentary. He’s shielding just enough that Lev’s emotions are present but not distracting.

He’s...still kind of confused, but at least this was a positive sort of bizarre surprise. Leareth is smiling slightly to himself.

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He recovers enough to think, although he is still very smiley.

Then he attempts to push the concept of sin to Leareth.

Sin is transgression against God; sin is rebellion; sin is prioritizing something else over God; sin is failing to love God with your whole heart and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. All humans inherited sin from Adam, a fundamental twisted nature that makes them want to disobey God. And because of this every day everyone commits dozens of sins every day, like lying and getting angry and lusting and keeping your money instead of giving it to the poor. Humans are fundamentally broken, and only God can heal them. 

(Pride is the worst of all sins, and Lev is proud. Proud of his intellectual achievements, proud of his mind, proud of his doubts; he is unwilling, in the last analysis, to turn over his mind to God. So he is going to Hell.)

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That sure is a concept that Leareth did not previously have a mental bucket for. He’s pretty sure that’s because it is, also, stupid; he doesn’t endorse the part where he feels almost soiled by having it in his head, it is important cultural context, and yet.

(He wishes momentarily that he could rip it out of Lev’s head wholesale; it has to be contributing to his, well, issues.)

:I understand the concept: he admits to Lev. :Thank you for your help. I am still trying to decide if I think it is philosophically coherent. Are there by any chance different schools of interpretation?: He can’t quite hide the expression of distaste. :Sometimes different lens on a concept can clarify it. So far this sounds much more like what a jealous and petty human dictator would declare, not an omnipotent deity. I am confused:

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:Yes, lots and lots and lots. But I think the-- basic outline is still the same? Also it's not just about disobeying God, God loves us and all His commandments are for our greater benefit, so when we disobey Him we're really just hurting ourselves.:

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:A strange sort of love: Leareth doesn’t, quite, manage not to roll his eyes. :You would think, if your God loved humankind, he could have NOT BUILT A TORTURE REALM:

...Oops. He didn’t mean to mind-shout like that, it’s just, apparently he has some emotions about this. Somehow all the poetic bits just make the Hell part more horrifying.

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:I think the idea is that we choose the torture realm, and because He cares about our free will so much He'll let us choose the torture realm over him.:

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Leareth slowly brings a hand to his forehead.

:Look: he sends, finally. :I know it seems normal ho you, and there are components that do resemble love or caring, but I think that anyone coming in from the outside, with any kind of objectivity, would not hesitate for an instant to call such a value-set evil. Not simply misaligned with my final goal of universal flourishing, but monstrous:

He sighs heavily. :Monstrous, and also baffling. I have no idea why an all-powerful God would choose to communicate these priorities to humankind. Perhaps if worship is a resource for Him, analogous to magic... But this is surely not even the path that maximizes worship and love! If He chooses commandments that are psychologically unrealistic, He has to know that people will be unhappy and as a result have less mental bandwidth to love Him:

He scratches his head. :Unless... If free will itself is the resource, if He is trying to maximize meaningful choices made by sentient beings: Leareth shrugs. :Perhaps, but I do not know how to operationalize that, and this setup still does not seem like it ought to be the optimal point:

Leareth’s mind keeps drifting back to an earlier point, a half-glimpsed thought.

:I like your pride: he sends, slowly, choosing his words with care. :How you treat puzzles as for solving. How you cannot stop trying to understand. That is - you are - are a light in the world, that burns brighter than most, and I would not wish to see that extinguished: He looks past Lev’s shoulder. :If your God would call that a sin, this alone is enough to know that I will never be on His side:

(He is, maybe, making some effort to say nice things to Lev. It has such a hugely disproportionate payoff, which is satisfying and seems efficient.)

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If he keeps saying these things then Lev's brain is going to be sparkling with happiness and much less useful for conveying messages. 

:I am not sure that He... has... a goal? Really? I think He just is Goodness and this is what Goodness would do. It is good to show mercy, it is good to punish wrongdoers, it is good to value free will, it is good to help people become better. The reason not sinning is psychologically unrealistic for us is that... original sin fundamentally warped our nature away from the good.:

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This just keeps getting weirder.

:Is ‘Good’ considered an ontologically fundamental entity or substance in your world?: he sends. :Because I am fairly sure that is not how our metaphysics works. Also, that does still describe goal-directed behavior, just for a bizarre goal that I am not sure is philosophically coherent:

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:I think so? God is Goodness, Goodness is God, they are the same thing. --Uh, I'm not a theologian.:

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:Perhaps I need to talk to a theologian, then: He sighs. :Or take a pause from this. It is making my head hurt: Leareth is finding it hard to tell if the glue is back in his head or if the concepts really just don’t make sense. 

:Could skip to something more concrete: he suggests. :Mechanics of your world itself. No magic, but direct interference from your God. You said six thousand years old. Humans here were created by God fully formed, then? What more is known of this and are their primary sources other than your God’s verbose autobiography? What do your scholars know of the physical locations of Heaven and Hell?: 

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:Heaven and Hell are spiritual places, not physical, they don't have locations. Humans were created fully formed. There aren't any primary sources other than the Bible, but we can study the world and understand what happened-- for example, we know where humans were created in part because human civilization started there a few centuries later.:

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:I see. We also have other spiritual planes in my world - ordinary people cannot travel there, but a mage such as myself can project their mind. Perhaps I should experiment to see if I can also visit your Heaven or Hell: 

He makes a face. :First, however, I ought to read the primary source - this Bible. I imagine it will take many hours, so if you need to go to your workplace to minimize suspicion, now would do well: 

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:Seems like a good idea. We should also figure out an explanation for why you're in my house, because otherwise it looks really suspicious. Especially since they know I'm same-sex-attracted.:

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...If Leareth’s head were working right, he would have thought of that. Definitely. 

:Do you have ideas? I am not sure what sorts of cover story would be considered un-suspicious:

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:It's hard, because I can't claim you're a friend from work because... the Eyes know who else is an Eye.:

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:I see. Are there departments other than the Eyes, where you might plausibly be assigned to work with a representative?: He smiles slightly. :I have never known of a government sufficiently transparent and well-coordinated that this could not be done somewhere without discovery. Though, of course, your computers may make this more challenging:

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:...I mean, I probably could claim you were from a black site and then no one would ask too many questions... they'd all think you were someone else's secret. It's risky but we should probably take more risks because you have magic and they don't know about it. We should get someone to make you documents. Asher, probably.:

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Leareth nods his approval, and watches Lev’s surface thoughts a few moments longer, trying to gauge how confident he really is - and any additional information about this ‘Asher’.

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Lev is kind of terrified about committing treason but thinks this is well within the bounds of the kinds of treason he's observed being committed without an unusually high risk of the treason-committer being sent to a black site.

Asher is tall and good-looking and dark-skinned like a Haighlei. Lev's surface thoughts report that he is VERY ANNOYING. He is incredibly smart and good at math and charismatic and funny and everyone likes him and he's great at leading prayers and he speaks four languages and he's constantly embroiled in fourteen intrigues at once all of which always end with him looking squeaky-clean and he was formerly a track star and still does runs shirtless sometimes past Lev's office window. It is perhaps possible for Leareth to work out that the emotion Lev identifies as 'hatred' is actually 'attraction.'

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Leareth is pretty sure that if they do get caught committing treason, he has some tricks the Eyes won’t expect, though of course it’s better to maintain their cover. 

He restrains a smirk at Lev’s thoughts regarding Asher, and decides not to say that Asher sounds like someone he will get along with rather well. :Good: he sends instead. :Shall we go now?:

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:Probably tomorrow morning.:

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Leareth will read the Bible for a while, then. Maybe it will even help him patch any remaining gaping cultural blind spots.

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The first section of the Bible is an early history of the world. Lev left out that the rebellion was eating fruit. And that God killed off nearly everyone in the entire world in a giant flood for being sinful, and the rainbow is a promise he won't do it again. And God raining fire and brimstone on two cities for being wicked and turned a woman into a pillar of salt for looking back.

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Honestly that sounds a lot like the petty-tyrant behavior Leareth has come to expect from this God. He’s...still pretty confused about the why. Lev’s God is supposedly omnipotent, but it seems like He often ends up not getting what He wants and retaliating.

Maybe it’s because of the free will thing. Leareth is confused about the free will thing as well. He wonders if Lev’s world has any philosophers with clarifying things to say on the matter.

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And in the morning they can go to see Asher.

(Well, actually, the afternoon. Asher does not so much with mornings.) 

When they enter, he's sitting with his feet on the desk looking at his fingernails. "You're a bit of an unusual person to have an early meeting."

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Leareth blinks, trying to figure out which of them Asher is addressing, and Reaches out with a light probe to check the man’s surface thoughts for clarity.

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Asher thinks this meeting is going to be incredibly boring and is mostly thinking about quantum physics. He was talking to Lev, because he hasn't seen Leareth before, and Lev is a psychologist who typically steers clear of more complex politics. 

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"I need full documents for my friend here," Lev says, trying to sound like he knows what he is doing and definitely is not committing treason in any way.

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Leareth just barely manages not to dive into Asher’s mind with a deeper probe - which, empirically, people in this world will notice - just out of sheer curiosity about what ‘quantum mechanics’ is. The Bible hasn’t mentioned it at all and it sounds important.

He stays politely silent as Lev makes his request. :Lev, please think it to me if there is a script I need to follow:

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:I have literally no idea what I'm doing!:

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...well that's new. Asher stops thinking about quantum mechanics.

"Didn't know you did undercover work."

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"Yes. Because I'm good at undercover work," Lev says, trying his best to sound bored and annoyed and not terrified.

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:It is all right: Leareth sends reassuringly. :We can do this: He's taken much larger risks before – though not so far from home and his resources. 

Leareth immediately turns into someone who is definitely an undercover spy from a 'black site', for whom this is an ordinary, slightly tedious part of his day-to-day, who holds civil respect toward Asher as a fellow competent professional, and is utterly confident that this meeting will go the way he wants. He shapes his expression and posture accordingly, and dips his chin slightly toward Asher. 

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"...I don't provide documents."

(Which is to say that he doesn't provide documents for the Eyes. He has a very rewarding business providing them for transsexuals, criminals, ex-Handmaids, and people who would like to disappear.)

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:Lev: Leareth sends, without glancing over at the other man. :Are we telling him we are ‘transsexuals, criminals, ex-Handmaids, and people who would like to disappear’? Or are we playing it that I am official but for undisclosed reasons to do with secrecy of the mission we cannot go through the Eyes’ standard channels? I suppose we could imply I am doing an internal investigation, if that is plausible, but I wanted to check your plan first:

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:Second seems safer.:

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Leareth takes a half-step forward and leans in, meeting Asher’s eyes. “We are aware that this is not, ah, the usual pathway,” he says, perfectly level. “However, there are reasons that we cannot work via the official channels.” A knowing look. “Thus, we would appreciate your assistance.” He says it politely, confidently, and with a hint of boredom. 

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That's interesting.

If Leareth could follow Asher's private thoughts right now he'd learn quite a lot about the secret organizational structure of the Eyes, as Asher attempts to slot them in.

"If I happen to know someone who knows someone who can do unofficial work," Asher says, in an equally bored tone, "they will no doubt require their usual fee."

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"We can afford it," Lev says, and internally grimaces about the state of his marriage savings account.

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Leareth swears internally - he’s picking up some fascinating edges of fragments, but Asher’s mind moves fast and he has no idea how to parse any of it.

He nods briskly in Asher’s direction, letting the faintest hint of impatience show, as though his mind has already moved on to more important matters.

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"You got a name?"

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Leareth has ascertained some time ago that people in Lev’s world go by given names and surnames which don’t quite match the schema in his homeland. He could choose a name to fit in, but he’s worried he won’t reliably respond to it.

”Leareth,” he says, and reaches at random for a name from the ‘Bible’ he’s been so recently reading. “Abraham Leareth.”

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"Interesting name. For a second there I thought you were Mormon. --Suppose I can't rule it out."

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Leareth gives him a polite, blank stare. He can’t grab enough context from Asher’s surface thoughts to figure out the relevance of ‘Mormon’. :Lev, what does he mean?:

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:They believe different things about what God is like. 'Leareth' sounds Mormon because Mormons all have incredibly weird names to our ears.:

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"Without saying whether I know anything about getting fake documentation, I'd speculate that there is a procedure for getting documentation that ensures safety and anonymity for everyone involved, and that I'd expect people getting undercover identities to know about. And if someone comes directly to me to get their documentation-- if I were the sort of person who makes fake documents, which of course I am not, I'm just spitballing here-- I'd guess they were probably a particularly badly done attempt to test my loyalty and turn them in for the reward."

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aaaaaaaa this is not a fact lev knew at all

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In hindsight this isn’t surprising at all. Leareth isn’t sure how much he ought to downgrade his trust in Lev’s general judgement, given Lev’s utter failure to see it coming. He mentally upgrades his assessment of Asher’s competence a few notches.

Plans flash through his mind. Knock the man unconscious with magic and run? No, he’ll remember Lev’s visit and might act against him. Attempt to block the memories of the last 5 min? He’s not a Mindhealer, he’ll botch it. Literally place a compulsion-spell? Maybe, but Leareth needs a lot more context to finagle that, and he’s far from having exhausted his options.

:Lev, stay calm: Leareth sends, and then Reaches to check Asher’s surface thoughts. He dares one more step - uses his magic to create a sharp thump from the window, a moment’s distraction, and then dives in deeper. Lev caught him at it, but Lev knew he was a mage; if Asher notices anything even with the diversion, he’ll be hard-pressed to land on that hypothesis.

Procedure, he prompts, a bare whisper of thought that, distracted, Asher should have a very hard time distinguishing from his own thoughts. Asher’s done his homework, here. Where do legitimate agents usually go? 

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Legitimate agents who need a fake ID wouldn't go through Asher; they'd go to an underground ring the Eyes are bribing, don't bother to prosecute, and have blackmail material on. There are ways to put your fake ID into the Eyes' computer system so that it looks like a real person when someone runs a check on you. That's Asher's value-add. Because he's an Eye, he can put fake IDs for dissidents through the same procedures that the fake agents use. His services are very expensive. 

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Leareth does some very, very fast thinking, while continuing to look mildly at Asher, wearing a mask of boredom beginning to leak irritation. 

:Lev: he sends, words limited only by the speed of thought. :I need a story for why we cannot use the usual method here, which is apparently to go through a secret criminal organization that the Eyes are bribing and have levers against. One option is to claim that we are investigating...hmm, we cannot say the ring itself, since the Eyes have an agreement not to prosecute. We could be infiltrating a 'target' that we cannot specify for security reasons, but which is few enough degrees of separation from said underground crime group that we cannot risk leaking any warning of our approach. Perhaps we let it be ambiguous whether this target is within the Eyes. What do you think?: 

He hesitates. :If we are not sure whether our story will be convincing enough, one thing my magic can do, which I have not mentioned, is to place compulsion-spells. A very mild compulsion could nonetheless help render a slightly suspicious tale more believable: 

Whether or not Asher notices Leareth's swift mental probe will give him more information about how risky that would be. Compulsions generally aren't noticeable from the inside, but a sufficiently quick-witted person might suspect, and Asher...has no shortage of wits. Leareth has placed thousands of compulsions, if not millions, and he's hardly squeamish about it, but somehow the idea of using one on someone intelligent is distasteful. 

:Another option: he adds, still lightning-fast; less than ten seconds have passed. :We bring him in on our secret, and request his help: Asher's little side business hints that his relationship with the Eyes may be somewhat more complicated than earnest loyalty. He knows a great many more of the Eyes' secrets than Lev. Leareth can't predict Asher's reaction to such an offer – he hasn't managed to get near Asher's feelings about God – but he is honestly very tempted by the idea of Asher joining their tiny alliance against an evil God. 

Still, it's a huge risk to take. :Lev, you know him better. How do you think he would respond?: 

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Asher blinks. Something feels strange about his brain, but he doesn't know what it could be. Anyway, he should be focusing on these people trying to get him executed for treason.

(If Leareth pokes around a bit, he'll notice that Asher is deeply and profoundly bored.)

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:I don't know that he's loyal to anything. He's not a true believer in Cascadia or Canada or a true believer in Gilead. I think he just likes money.:

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:I think: Leareth sends to Lev, :that we can offer him something even better: Something interesting, for once. And if the man's only loyalty is to hard coin – well, Leareth has never had any qualms about working with mercenaries, some of his world's best armies rely on them. He's sure that, especially with the advice of someone like Asher, he can find a way to turn his unknown-to-this-world Gifts into adequate piles of money.

:However, this is not a good place to have that conversation: he adds. :The man is aware enough of his own mind to have slightly noticed my intrusion, though he does not suspect yet: How could he? Given what he knows, it's an incredibly unlikely explanation. :I doubt I can use a mild compulsion to slip us by without suspicion. Instead, I propose that we give our cover story, and I slip in a Mindspeech note to meet us later if he wishes to know more: 

Aaaaand he's been silent for too long already. Lev isn't loudly vetoing the plan, so Leareth forges ahead. 

"As I already said," Leareth says with a flicker of impatience, "there are good reasons why we cannot use the standard procedure for this type of request. There are certain related parties that, if they come to hear of it, would cause difficulties, and as I'm sure you know, some less savory types of, ah, service providers, cannot be expected to be perfectly trustworthy, no matter how strong the hold on them." He slips in something that isn't quite a wink. "And, as stated, we can afford it. I do understand that a person who could provide what we need via a different route – we are of course not claiming that you are such a person – might wish for time to consider it, and to make certain checks, if they are concerned about tests of their loyalty."  

Leareth rests a probe on Asher's mind, a little more firmly. :Do not react: Asher's surely a skilled enough actor to obey. :If you wish to learn of an interesting secret – and perhaps to secure a much larger payment – be outside the nearby CPK tonight at sundown: It's the first place he can think of that isn't Lev's apartment or office. :Come alone and without listening devices: He's going to need to spend the next few hours quickly experimenting with ways that his magic can detect or, at worst, destroy such artifacts. 

He holds his Thoughtsensing open to sense Asher's response, readying his power to slam down a compulsion if the man reacts poorly, hoping that he won't need to use it. 

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Well, that's new.

...Honestly, if they have telepathy, they don't have to give him money, he would totally just show up to find out what all this is about.

He keeps his faces perfectly blank and thinks as distinctly as possible absolutelySee you there.

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:That was easier than expected: Leareth sends to Lev, reassuring. :He is curious enough to meet us later – I told him to come to the restaurant where you took me earlier: And he and Lev can show up concealed by illusion, just in case Asher is under watch by the Eyes, or shows up with thugs to arrest them, or something else unexpected happens. 

To Asher, he gives a terse nod. "I understand if you cannot help us. We will be going, then." 

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"It's unfortunate! I wish you the best of luck in understanding correct procedure."

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Once they're outside, Lev says :Not a great start to my first attempt at spystuff.:

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:We knew we were going to be improvising. This will be far more valuable than I expected if it gains us an ally, even a hired one – though I suspect Asher is a mercenary who might be paid in interesting puzzles as well as money, and he is unlikely to find a better source to betray us to: Mindreading is useful.

Leareth keeps his expression neutral, but he's smiling internally. :What is 'quantum mechanics'? I caught him thinking about it but it was not exactly a good time to ask: 

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:The study of the fundamental particles that make up the universe. They're very very small-- like, an atom is as small compared to a person as a person is to a star. Uh. Do you know how big stars are? --Does your world even have stars like ours?:

There's an image of a sun rotating around a disc carried on the back of four elephants carried on the back of a turtle.

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:We are not exactly sure how stars work in our world: Leareth admits. :From observations our astronomers can make, the current best understanding is that our world is a very large sphere of rock, rotating around a star – our sun – and that most likely other stars are similar but extremely distant. Well, many societies over time: including most of the extant ones, :have thought that the sun rotated around the world, but I personally find the other theory more compelling. I am fairly sure turtles and...what is that thick-legged creature? In any case I am fairly sure they are not involved:

:We do have the concept of 'atom': he adds, :in terms of fundamental particles that make up mundane matter, but scholars understand very little beyond that. It may of course be different between our worlds, however, I would be delighted if there were treatises you could share: 

After he catches up on the Bible. Understanding God is the first priority here. 

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:You saw that?: (They get in Lev's car.) :That's not real, it's from a story about a work where magic exists. I guess that's what I think of when I think of worlds that have an alternative sun arrangement. --We named atoms atoms but it turns out they're made of several kinds of even more fundamental particles and that's what quantum mechanics studies.:

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:I see: Amusing. :Does your sun work the way I described for ours, then, or a different way? There must be a great deal of scholarship on the topic, in a civilization this advanced: 

Leareth is enjoying the conversation. And wondering if Asher will prove to be this interesting to talk to once he’s not playing dumb in the role of an Eye. Assuming he agrees to join their cause, that is. Leareth needs to brainstorm ways to gauge his willingness before revealing a dangerous amount. 

And atoms. :Even smaller fundamental particles?: He’s...almost awed. It might be the first time in centuries that he’s experienced that emotion. :How do your scholars even study that? Atoms are far too small to see:

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:Yeah, that's basically right, although we know more about the composition of the sun and exactly how large it is and how far away and so on. We study the fundamental particles partially by doing math and partially by building giant underground tubes larger than cities and smashing atoms into each other at incredibly high speeds and then using machines to look at what comes out.:

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:...You can do that? And use it to understand what matter is made of?: All right, fine, Leareth is awed now and if they didn’t have an evil God to fight already he would be instantly dropping everything in order to learn about this and try to replicate it in his own world. 

:This is probably a digression: he admits, :unless the science of atoms is likely to be relevant in fighting God:

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:Uh, I think physicists do say it is useful for understanding the mind of God but I'm unclear on how much that's just for grant applications.:

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:We ought to make a prioritized list. I need to read more of the Bible and better understand the geopolitics and history of your world and experiment with how my magic works here and research how to access Hell. Also we must plan our approach for meeting with Asher tonight: It’s in not too many hours. :I am not sure what else it makes sense for you to work on, although given Asher’s response it may be valuable to consider other potential allies:

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:The other corrupt Eye I know is Jay Goodman?:

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Leareth is distracted thinking about research strategies for finding Hell. :Give me a description?:

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:Uh, he seems to fundamentally not understand that there is a reason one might say true things rather than false things. The higher-ups really like him and it creates a huge problem for everyone because he keeps declaring stuff and then everyone has to scramble to make it happen. Like he said I was going to talk to the ambassador from Israel because I'm of Jewish descent and I had to spend twelve hours cramming everything there is to know about Middle East politics.:

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:...I mean no offense, but that description is the opposite of what I wish for in an ally. I suppose having the esteem of your superiors could be an advantage: 

Leareth leans against the car window. It’s becoming inexplicably hard to think again. :I am missing multiple pieces of cultural context. Israel is a nation-state? The Middle East must be a region, I gather the one where Israel is located. Jewish is...your ethnic origins? What does it have to do with politics of the Middle East?: He’s thoroughly detailed from planning now, and slightly annoyed about it.

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:Sorry, it's not important. Israel is the country people of my ethnic origin come from, and it's in the Middle East.:

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:I see: Are they almost back to Lev’s apartment?

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They are!

:Sorry, I'm not very helpful. I'm not really much for the... talking... to people.:

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:I have found your help very valuable so far: Lev led him to Asher - who, from initial appearances, is much more for the talking to people, and hopefully can give Leareth his next wave of contacts. (Either willingly, or dragged out of his brain, they have a God to kill and Leareth isn’t fussy at this point.)

:Asher would have made a much worse initial introduction to this world: he sends, thoughtful. :I am glad you are the one I collided with first:

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:How so?:

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Leareth was mostly musing out loud, and has to stop and think for a moment.

:Well, I am not sure, but I suspect I would have made a poor first impression due to my complete lack of context on anything, and that he might have seen fit to exploit this in some way for his own gain. Perhaps I unfairly malign him - we will see - and in this hypothetical I doubt he would succeed at plotting behind my back since I can literally read his mind: Though not as well as most people; Asher thinks fast. :Nonetheless. Your immediate reaction was to protect me, which I appreciate:

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:Yeah, well, torture's bad.:

They go inside Lev's house.

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Leareth isn’t sure how he managed not to notice earlier that Lev’s house is a disaster. It’s not dirty, but it is messy, there are objects strewn everywhere and he isn’t sure how he’s supposed to think when he has to look at it.

Probably Lev prefers it this way or something, and it would be rude to just start cleaning up without asking. “Lev, do you mind if I organize one of the rooms?” he says out loud. “I find clutter distracting. Also, do you have plans for a meal?” His magical reserves will thank him for eating regularly.

:I thought it might be good to have innocuous conversations out loud: he sends. :Less suspicious  than continuous silence, if the Eyes are listening:

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"I was probably going to order takeout. I'm a guy, I don't cook. --Sure, you can organize things. I think better in cluttered rooms but I can always go to my office."

:Good idea.:

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“Takeout sounds acceptable. ...Is it that much of a cultural universal that men do not cook? Amusing.” He glances around. “Inconvenient that we have opposite environmental requirements for working. Perhaps I can just take the bedroom and make a work area there as well. Can you determine how many hours are left until sunset?”

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"Uh, God made men and women with fundamentally different natures which manifest as men not cooking." :Although it might be different for you.: "And it's about four hours until sunset."

He batches up the information about how to read a clock and pushes it to Leareth.

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:I assume the cause is different in our world and it is not a cultural universal, merely common: 

Clock-reading is a smaller mind-dump than previous concepts and easy to absorb. Leareth goes to tidy the bedroom enough to not be distracting (mostly by moving items on the floor that clearly belong to Lev out into the hall, he leaves drawers and cabinets alone). Once it’s acceptably uncluttered, he picks up the Bible again, periodically checking the wall clock.

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Genesis continues! Bronze Age people make decisions! God delivers prophecies and miracles and famines! God appears to be exclusively concerned with the doings of one particular family and more-or-less uninterested in the entire rest of the world.

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Leareth is mildly confused but assumes this will be relevant later for some reason, takes notes, and keeps reading.

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Exodus! God disapproves of slavery. God expresses His disapproval of slavery via assorted plagues of bugs and not by, for example, teleporting the slaves away.

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It’s a very petty-tyrant sort of choice and so Leareth isn’t surprised. The God of Lev’s world seems to make a distressing percentage of His choices in high-stakes historical moments based on what will make a...memorable story. (Leareth wouldn’t deign to call the Bible a good or even a well-crafted story; leaving aside the interminable no-longer-applicable laws and genealogies, it’s terribly paced.)

Well, it’s not like the gods of his world really understand human storytelling either.

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Exodus continues! God expresses his disapproval of slavery by murdering every single one of the Egyptian firstborns. 

This causes the local political leader to let the slaves go, finally. Then God issues everyone some commandments. There are ten of them, but the numbering system isn't super clear. They include: no murder, no adultery, no being jealous of other people's things, no stealing, no bearing false witness, no worshiping idols, no using God's name in vain, no worshiping Gods other than God, respect your parents, and rest one day out of seven. 

There's some more petty tyrannical nonsense with a golden calf.

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...Are there other Gods? The commandment doesn't make a lot of sense without it. Leareth wonders if some kind of forbidden magic happens if one uses God's name in vain, and how he could test it. He also isn't sure if 'bearing false witness' means any kind of lying, or only lying in the context of a judiciary system, or something else.

Leareth is also hungry. Is food available yet? 

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Yep! Lev brings him some oddly cooked rice with eggs in it and some sort of noodle dish.

Leviticus consists entirely of God's commandments for the people of Israel. There are, as promised, many instructions for the treatment of leprosy. There are also lots of instructions about which animals should be sacrificed for which holidays and when which events happen. Lots of things result in the death penalty, including both homosexuality and wizardry. God promises various harsh punishments for the violation of the laws, such as laying waste to their cities and bringing their land into desolation. God also seems mysteriously okay with slavery now as long as the Israelites are not the ones who are enslaved. Also, mysteriously okay with genocide. 

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Leareth is baffled as to why God would bother to ban wizardry in a world that lacks magic. Is he not the first mage to be accidentally slipped in from some other world? Since Lev is nearby, Leareth goes ahead and asks him. 

While he's at it, he's also curious what leprosy is and whether it's still a problem. The word is unfamiliar to him and he doesn't recognize the descriptions. He assumes an advanced civilization would have dealt with it by now but he doesn't know much about the state of medicine here.

And what about the holidays and various other highly specific laws, for example regarding diet and clothing? If they're still in practice, he hasn't observed any sign of it, but it could be important cultural context for avoiding standing out. 

Leareth makes several additions to the 'proof that God is evil' tally, not that it needs more items, 'Hell exists' is sufficiently weighty all by itself. 

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:Uh, I think it's like... summoning demons? Not magic like the kind you do. Leprosy in the Bible is a word used to refer to all kinds of rashes and mold-- that's why a house can get leprosy-- and now we know that those are a bunch of different things. The holidays and highly specific laws are practiced by Jewish people-- the descendants of the Israelites-- but not by Christians. When Jesus came, He commanded us to continue to follow the moral law but not to follow the ceremonial laws.:

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:...How much more of this is left before I reach the part about Jesus?: Leareth is a fast reader and he isn't in that much of a hurry, but he's starting to find the Bible a bit tedious. Also, they're down to two hours before sunset, and at some point he needs to switch from background reading to plotting their approach. :Is there an abridged version?: 

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:A lot, the part about Jesus is the New Testament. Uh, I'm not... sure... that there is? I guess missionaries might have something. You could try reading Mark, maybe? Mark is short.:

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:Good, I will do that for the next–: he glances at the clock, :hour, and then we can make plans for talking to Asher. You know him better so perhaps you can think over what approach might be convincing to him: 

Leareth hunts through until he finds 'Mark'. He's remembering Lev's short version, which he jotted down later in his notes: In order to reconcile God to us and let us go to Heaven, God incarnated as a human being called Jesus Christ. He was tortured to death on a cross, and after three days he came back to life. Now, as long as you have faith in Him, you will be saved and go to Heaven.

Maybe Mark will explain better the details of how that worked, but he's not hopeful at this point. Based on His writing to date, God is terrible at writing explanations that make sense from a human perspective.

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Jesus wanders around collecting disciples, performing miracles and giving sermons. He teaches that divorce is wrong, that young children are models for sinless behavior, that rich men shall not enter the kingdom of God, that you should obey the government, that loving your neighbor is the most important commandment, and that the end of days will come bringing God's retribution on the unjust and the return of the Messiah. Jesus institutes a sort of pseudo-cannibalistic ritual, is tried for blasphemy, declares himself to be the son of God, is crucified, dies, and is buried. Three days later he appears resurrected.

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This doesn't provide much clarity.

Leareth thinks it is incredibly self-evident that children are NOT models for sinless behavior, and are instead at a developmental stage where it doesn't make sense to level moral judgment against them for acts of selfishness. (Not that Leareth is pro moral judgment in general, but he groks the societal purpose of deontological and virtue-ethics-based moral systems, as simplified heuristics that people can coordinate around).

The pseudo-cannibalistic ritual, combined with the literal death and resurrection of a god incarnated in mortal form, definitely sounds like blood-magic, at least in a thematic sort of way. Leareth hasn't actually tested whether blood-magic works here, although presumably it does – his Othersenses show Lev as having a glow of life-force, and people here have spirits that can be separated from their bodies. (Leareth's current best understanding of blood-magic in his world is that it involves releasing the energy that holds a body and soul together, although he could be wrong.) 

Note: find a way to test whether the symbolic-Jesus-cannibalism ritual involves some kind of blood-power-fueled magical binding or compulsion. He wouldn't put it past Lev's God to sneak in something like that. 

It's an hour to sunset, though, so first he should go find Lev and finalize their plan to meet Asher. 

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Lev is getting some work done!

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Leareth stands in the doorway and waits. Finally, out of curiosity, he reaches out and brushes Lev's surface thoughts, at the same time as he clears his throat. :Lev, we need to plan and then go: 

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Lev's surface thoughts are entirely consumed with trying to understand the research on whether operantly conditioning a phobia is easier if it is a phobia humans are predisposed to have, which is probably much less horrifying and more interesting if you don't know what he'd be planning on using it for.

Blink blink. 

"Yeah, that's a good idea-- sorry, I lose situational awareness when I'm working, just say something."

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"I understand. The most intelligent people I know are all like that." Leareth leans against the wall. :My thought is that we drive there, and arrange to leave your car some distance away in a place without watchers or cameras, and then I conceal us with an illusion while we approach. I can make contact with Asher using Mindspeech again, and I would suggest we – hmm. Is the area in front of the restaurant under surveillance? If not, I can slip Asher under our illusion as well. If it is, then I can give him directions until we reach a place where it would pass unseen, and then do the same. We can then walk to the nearest restaurant or other place without watchers or listeners, and speak. What do you think?:

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:The area in front of the restaurant has security cameras to detect thieves, but no one is likely to look at it unless they have some specific reason to believe it's important, and even then they'd expect it to be a glitch. This seems like a solid plan.:

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:Let’s go, then:

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Asher is waiting in front of the restaurant. 

Someone invented telepathy. This is very interesting, and does not at all accord with Asher's understanding of physics. 

Perhaps the secret research department was not as much of a boondoggle as Asher had thought 

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Lev parks the car several blocks away. Leareth covers them both with an illusion; moving, it leaves a slight shimmer in the air, but certainly not one that should be noticeable with a camera’s resolution.

Again, Leareth lightly touches Asher’s surface thoughts. :Please remain calm. Start walking, to the left. In a moment you will be invisible: Pause, while he weaves together the illusion; it’s starting to strain his concentration, holding both. :There. Keep walking. You are now invisible, so take caution not to collide with anybody else, since this would be rather suspicious:

Leareth is awfully curious what Asher’s reaction will be to the invisibility, and whether he’ll find it more or less surprising than telepathy.

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:We are significantly more technologically advanced than I thought. Or you're magic.:

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:Well, I am very impressed that you figured out how to answer with no instruction: Leareth is smiling to himself. :We are going to relocate to a better place for conversation, and then I will explain: He pauses to reach for Lev’s mind. :Remind me where we had decided was a good place to stop?:

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There's a park a few blocks away with no people and only a few cameras. 

(Lev is curious whether Leareth is familiar with parks; in their world parks mostly started existing in the nineteenth century as, for complicated reasons, a product of anti-immigrant sentiment.)

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Leareth is happy to assuage Lev’s curiosity. :We have public places in our cities, monuments or fountains and suchlike, but I am not sure this is analogous. What is the connection here with immigrants?:

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:They were invented to try to civilize immigrants with the power of nature. Didn't super work. We kept them around because if you live in a city it's nice to have a place to do sports and go on walks and have picnics.:

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:An intriguing idea: Perhaps worth introducing at home. 

...And now they're at the park, and Leareth mentally instructs Asher toward a particular bench, and then drops the illusions. They don't take a lot of power, magically speaking, but he doesn't have much to spare either, and they do take ongoing mental effort, as does holding a three-way conversation in Mindspeech with two non-Thoughtsensers. 

(He does, however, keep his Thoughtsensing open and a light probe on Asher's surface thoughts.) 

"Thank you for venturing to meet us," he says, while he weaves some light tripwire-wards around the perimeter of the park. They won't stop anyone from entering, that would take far too much energy and be conspicuous, but they'll have warning.

"Your second guess was correct," Leareth says. "I have magical abilities. This is because I am from another world, and through some accident have ended up here." 

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"...you're consorting with demons?"

Asher is not going to fuck with demons. He's not a perfect person but he's assured of his salvation and he is not going to do anything that involves any demons

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Leareth conceals a sigh. 

"No. have not had any engagement with demons of my world aside from banishing them; also, I am fairly sure they are not at all the same beings as demons from your world, given that it would be stupid and unhelpful to 'consort' with one. At this point, I doubt that my world even shares the same God as yours. Where I hail from, magic is simply a natural force and some people are born with the potential to wield it. Lev has also had no involvement with demons, in terms of my arrival here, which I believe to be the result of a magical experiment that went awry." 

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Asher is completely fucking aware that people can lie about consorting with demons! And there are two sources of magical power which are God and Satan and this sure does not sound like someone who is talking to God.

He begins to come up with a lie for Leareth, pauses, thinks about it, and says:

"...I assume you're reading my mind right now."

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"Well, yes. I am not a fool, and it would be stupid not to, given that we are going out on a limb here. I may consider agreeing to stop once I am more confident you will not betray us. Note that this is not the only precaution I am taking." (Mostly true; the wards are the only other precaution that he's currently taking, though he did use Thoughtsensing to check that nobody was following them, but there are a number of other options he can pull out if he's willing to exhaust himself).

Leareth smiles thinly. "So, Asher. Why do you believe what you believe? What is your reason for thinking that all magic must inevitably come from either your God or Satan?" A pause. "Also, since you are so assured of your salvation, do you think you could clarify for me what the 'God is Goodness, Goodness is God' part means? It is metaphysically very confusing and the Bible has not made it any clearer. You can...sort of try to think the concept at me, if conveying it in words is too complex." 

An aside to Lev: :Do let me know if you think a particular argument would hold weight for him, or feel free to jump in: 

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"You can probably get a better explanation from my head than you can in words."

Asher does not in fact know why magic must all come from God or Satan. He'd say that he believes it the same way he believes the world is round, but actually he does know several clever proofs of the world being round because he takes an interest in physics and he has taken no such interest in philosophy or theology. Every intelligent person Asher has ever interacted with has believed God existed. Where else would the world come from?

Asher is not sure this is a deep philosophical argument, but he thinks that you can see the nature of an artist from what they create, and the Being that created humanity and sunrises and ethics and so on must be good. And if that Being insists that He is actually Ultimate Goodness, well, Asher doesn't really see fit to contradict it. 

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Interesting. 

"Where I come from," Leareth says levelly, "most well-read scholars do not believe that our gods created the world, but rather that they came to exist within it at some point, as did our species and others at later points. They wield the magic of my world, and perhaps do so with greater power than mortals, but they were never the source of it. That being said, it does seem that the gods I know may be ontologically distinct types of entity from your God, so I cannot speak to your world, only to mine." 

Pause to frame the next words. Leareth glances around, checks his wards and extends his Othersenses, making sure that they are in fact alone. Just in case, he concentrates briefly and weaves a sound-barrier around them. (There might be microphones in those trees.) 

"I think," he says slowly, "that you are correct. Actions speak louder than words, and one can see the nature of an artist from what they have wrought. The being that created Hell, and decreed that all sentient beings will be condemned to eternal torment unless they demonstrate enough adoration – and does so even though this is knowably an unmeetable standard, that many will fail to meet it and be tortured forever – to my eyes, such a being is a petty tyrant. I do not care what else They have created, the good does not outweigh the bad. What are your thoughts on this?" 

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"I think I'm not omniscient and omnibenevolent and neither is the Gileadite government. I can trust that it's all sorted out in a reasonable way even if I don't understand how the heck it is."

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"I...see." 

(Leareth wants to know what Asher is really thinking, he's already in contact with Asher's mind and now he has some keywords to dig deeper. Asher is probably going to notice him probing toward feelings about the Eyes and the Gileadite administration and their relationship with God. At this point Leareth doesn't care.) 

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Looking in Asher's brain really, really pisses him off. He is aware that decking a telepathic magician is not going to end well for him and this is essentially the only thing keeping him from doing it. 

Whatever faith Asher has in the Gileadite government, being one of the Eyes for five years has destroyed it. All governments, by Asher's estimate, are about the same. Deseret worships demons, Cascadia murders kids, Canada is going extinct, and don't get him started on Europe. He just has the privilege to see where his government goes wrong right up close and personal. When he reflects on what God must think of it, when he doesn't often, he alternately assumes that His judgment is going to rain down on Gilead at some point or that this is all part of some complicated plan which Asher is too small to understand. 

(Asher, Leareth might gather, is not the world's most reflective person about matters of religion.)

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Leareth backs off from Asher's thoughts, lifting a hand. "I will leave your mind alone now unless and until you say otherwise. I have enough additional precautions in place." He's quickly adding a few extras. It helps a lot that Asher, un-Gifted, can't get a message out to his allies without being noticed nearly as easily. (And he hasn't seen any specific plan in Asher's thoughts to do so.) 

He remains silent for a long moment, thinking. 

"I believe you," he says finally. "It does seem plausible that government in your world is materially better than this one, when weighing up all the gains and harms," though, lacking any specifics, he also finds it plausible that one of the others is much better, or somehow even worse. 

Leareth looks into Asher's eyes. "When I first landed in this world, I quickly noticed this fact, and my initial reasoning was that I would need to intervene. Perhaps your world is like this, but it is not inevitable; I have seen, and been personally involved, with nations that held far greater flourishing. If I came here to ask you the flaws of the Gileadite government, with the intention of repairing them – is that a mission you would wish to join?" A slight smile. "My impression is that you would be well-suited to the task." 

(He told the truth, and he isn't reading Asher's mind. He's not shielding either though, which means that he's likely to pick up emphatic thoughts or emotions anyway). 

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The emphatic thought is that he does not trust that this guy is not going to read his mind more. 

"I don't fuck with people who summon demons."

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Leareth hides a sigh. 

"I am not sure what to say. I am, personally, fairly sure that I have not consorted with demons as a method to obtain my magic, and therefore that your ontology of the world is incomplete; just because all intelligent people you know agree on a certain understanding, does not mean that there are realms none of you had any way to know of.

"I did not intend to end up in this world, but now that I am here, I do not intend to leave until I address certain problems. Such as your government, eventually, and those of the other nations. However, another priority interceded, which is that your God of Ultimate Goodness is responsible for," and he wishes he'd brought a written list, "a torture world, murdering a very large number of past people, and – if reported correctly – allowing or perhaps supporting some bizarre scheme that warped human nature toward motives and actions that He has declared unvirtuous. And then eternally torturing people for failing to meet His standard. Also, going by the Bible, I would grant Him the blame for some very incompetently run civilizations." 

Think some more, and try not to scowl. 

"So yes," he says finally, "I am here to fight God. I am better prepared for this task than you might expect. It is, of course, the penultimate sin according to everything you believe, and besides which, it would not be unreasonable to declare it foolhardy and doomed to failure. Nonetheless. I request that you spend at least ninety seconds, as counted by myself, reflecting on what I have said. Truly looking at the world you were born into, at what you see around you, and deciding where you stand." 

And Leareth hesitates, for quite a long time. 

"Also," he says finally, "you...would be welcome to read my mind in return. I can hold a link that lets you do so, though you cannot go much deeper than surface thoughts. I cannot prove this method to you, of course, but I will tell you that a Mindtouch is impossible to fake in my world, and by common sense you ought to expect something so complex and changing to be extremely difficult to counterfeit. So. Consider, and my offer is open." His lips twitch. "I expect my mind to hold much that is of interest to you." 

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On the one hand, this is definitely what Satan sounds like. On the other hand, he could get information that he could take back to his superiors. Wise like a serpent, as they say. On the third hand, the Devil is the Prince of Lies, and this person seems to be at least a Marquis. On the fourth and deciding hand, he is soooooo bored.

"I would be interested in that."

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:Wait, penultimate sin? What's the ultimate sin? --Uh, general suggestion, 'I'm going to fight God' doesn't work very well as a pitch to get people on your side. Especially if they already think you are a demon.:

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:I assume that 'become God' would be the ultimate sin: Leareth sends back, rather snappishly. :Also, what do you want me to do, lie to him? Have him find out later that my true mission is something completely different from what I said? The world in which he will be the most valuable ally to us is the one where he has all of the information we do and is on board. Besides which, that pitch convinced YOU: 

...Possibly because Lev is pretty sure that he's going to Hell, as opposed to Asher, who is bizarrely secure in his belief that he's saved.

Leareth resists the urge to rub his temples. He doesn't have a headache, exactly, but the weird feeling of being not-quite-able-to-think is back. He isn't sure how much of it is because talking to Asher is starting to feel like addressing a brick wall...and he would rather that not be foremost among his surface thoughts when he lets the man read them. Reframe. Asher is...exactly what one would expect, for a clever, observant, politically astute person living in a world like this one.

He breathes in and out, checks the wards around the park once more, and then lowers his shields, and shapes his end of a mindlink, but without reaching with a probe. He stretches out a hand. "It is only really possible to hold a two-way link with someone un-Gifted like yourself if we are in physical contact. So. Up to you. If you are curious about something in particular, you can ask in ordinary speech, or think it very loudly." 

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Asher reaches out and takes his hand.

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Lev keeps his thoughts about Leareth's opinions to himself.

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Leareth is, right now, thinking about his own world (flashes of medieval-esque cities and long gravel roads and a crystal focus-stone in his hands), and the various ways in which it's both more and less frustrating than this one. It doesn't have cars, which are so useful, and it seems like every time he tries to make something like that exist, the gods flatten all his plans and it's so inconvenient. On the other hand, they don't put dead people in a torturerealm for the rest of eternity, which does, in fact, count for something. That's it, really, that's the difference – the gods of his world aren't actually evil, they're just very inconvenient and he would like them to stop being at some point so he can get around to building the world of peace and plenty that he was working on two thousand years ago except they keep getting in his way – all right, to be fair, not succeeding two thousand years ago is largely on him because he made some truly idiotic choices. 

He's also thinking that he's pretty sure Asher still thinks he's a demon, and he's still not sure what demons in this world are supposed to be like, since they obviously aren't (an image of randomly placed limbs and eyes) the extremely stupid Abyssal beings that he's used to the word referring to. The fact that demons are supposed to be supernaturally charismatic is...sort of flattering, in this context. 

He's waiting to see if Asher has specific questions, and distantly irritated at the creeping fogginess, it's the worst time to be struggling to think and he's vaguely worried that there's something in this world doing it to him, something is wrong with him... 

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Asher is keeping open the hypothesis that Leareth is just lying to him, but he a.so has a concept of worlds with gods. He has read some novels in which there are various gods who ultimately serve the Creator. Leareth going to war with the servants of the Creator does not exactly thrill him but would be an improvement on him being a demon. Also, he is pretty sure that even in those novels people either get their powers from God or from Satan. 

Demons are spirits, fallen angels who chose to be proud and not serve God. They don't have bodies unless they possess someone. (Asher feels sympathy for whatever person's body Leareth is walking around in, assuming Leareth is a demon). They are charismatic and magical and evil. 

Asher is curious about Leareth's world's equivalent of the Creator god, and about Leareth's past idiotic choices, and about what happens to dead people who aren't saved if they aren't tortured. He's also curious about what would happen if he tried to expel Leareth from his body through prayer, although Asher wouldn't be that surprised if it didn't work, because (a couple of rather salacious memories flash through his head, of Asher with men and with women and looking at pictures available on the Internet) Asher has committed rather a lot of sins he has not really repented of.

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One of the hypotheses Leareth has considered for how to square the supposedly truly-omnipotent God of Lev's world with the powerful-but-far-from-omnipotent gods of his own world is that they have some sort of subsidiary relationship. He wishes he could think of a way to test this. If Lev's God created his world, then in a technical sense his powers probably do come from that God, just at the end of a long chain of cause-and-effect encompassing the entire world-history. Overall, though, he still thinks that Lev's God behaves in very confusing ways for a genuinely omnipotent being, and the simplest answer is that He isn't. 

Leareth is still annoyed about pride supposedly being a vice according to this God's ontology. He thinks pride is a valuable human quality, thank you (a dozen examples of various clever and interesting scholars he's known very quickly flash to mind). 

Leareth isn't sure that his world has a Creator god; it's possible, it's even possible that said god is one of the existing pantheon, but if so they don't advertise it. The religion practiced under Vkandis Sunlord in Karse might be the only one he knows of that claims their god literally created the world as opposed to just inhabiting it as a divine being. Personally he thinks that probably Vkandis didn't create the world; He doesn't seem any more powerful than neighbouring gods. 

Leareth's past questionable decisions include trying to act as advisor to the King in an ancient empire, making some clumsy attempts at consequentialist policy (he was young, okay), and drawing enough attention to himself that his own childhood teacher, afraid that he's making a power grab, starts a war against him. Further poor choices include not immediately de-escalating, although to be fair he didn't know at the time that said previous teacher had weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction go off, there's an apocalypse that...isn't accidental, exactly, but no one involved meant for it to be as bad as it was. Leareth survives because he's immortal. His teacher doesn't. He's still pretty miffed at reality over that part. 

Leareth has done a lot of research into the afterlife! This is relevant because (a block in his thoughts, steering back to the main topic). It seems to be different under the reign of different gods, but the general outline is that spirits leave the bodies of the deceased and end up in the spirit plane, where they float around for a while before being sent back, 'reincarnated' and attached to new bodies. The spirits themselves aren't precisely people. Missing a brain, they don't have most of the components necessary for thinking or true sentience. They can probably have basic experiences of a sort, so they could be tortured if a god wanted, but based on his attempts to research something so difficult to test, being dead is mostly a peaceful, restful, and boring experience.

Leareth is extremely curious what would happen if someone tried to expel him from his body! Mostly because he's been hankering after any glimpse of magic in this world in order to figure out how it works, but also because (another block in his thoughts). It's too bad that maybe Asher can't do it, although he's confused because he thought the salvation thing was binary. Also, he's irritated again that this God wants to declare normal human sexuality a sin, it's so...pointless...compared to more important things like murder or the fact that no one does anything about children starving as long as it's happening far away, although to be fair he hasn't checked and maybe that's different in Lev and Asher's world and people just are more virtuous than in his. Then again, he's pretty sure the Gileadite government is constantly committing things that really ought to be sins, so...take that back. 

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See, "pride is a virtue" is one of those thoughts that make Asher suspicious that Leareth is a demon.

If none of Leareth's world's gods are the true creator God, then it does seem likely that they're servants of the one true God; perhaps God hasn't revealed himself to them yet. On Earth the world existed for four thousand years before God decided to reveal Himself fully. God enjoys being mysterious for some reason. 

Past questionable decisions seem not notably demonic and also very... person-shaped. Asher is pretty uncertain of this hypothesis though because demons might be better at pretending to be people than Asher is at catching them. 

The blocks in Leareth's thoughts are very suspicious and definitely increase Asher's probability that Leareth is a demon.

Reincarnation is interesting; it's not how the afterlife works in Asher's world, but he doesn't think there's any specific reason why the afterlife has to work the same in every universe. And everyone in his world is going to be reincarnated once; it's called the resurrection of the body. You do get to keep your memories though. 

Asher is very willing to try expelling Leareth from his body, he's just not certain that it will work. Salvation is binary, Asher is saved, but justification is different from sanctification. Justification eliminates all your penalties for sin, but it doesn't actually stop you from sinning, as convenient as that would be. Sanctification is the process of God turning you into someone who would not commit sins, and it's a process that continues over your entire life. Asher is not very sanctified really and it is possible that God does not wish to give him the ability to expel demons.

Murder, people not doing things about children starving as long as it is far away, and the Gileadite government are all definitely ongoing problems. Asher agrees that sex is not one of the most important sins and it is silly how people treat it like one, although probably he is not aware of the true horror of sexual sins because he keeps committing them. (This is not a thought he is particularly upset or guilty about. Asher does not, in general, seem to be a person who is particularly interested in guilt.)

Asher seems unusually adept at holding several contradictory hypotheses in his mind and noticing what he would predict from each of them, and working out the implications of one hypothesis without necessarily accepting it.

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To his own surprise, Leareth finds himself smiling slightly. 

:You know, I am not much in favour of guilt either. Also, it is interesting that you think I could be a demon even though I am obviously not aware of it in my thoughts currently, and we are discussing the topic. If this is a thing which your Satan could do, then I suppose have no way of knowing for sure that I am not a demon: 

He frowns, and thinks for a while. :I can lower the block, if you wish. It is a deliberate protective mechanism but one that is under my voluntary control. You will perhaps not find the contents behind it especially reassuring, however, I do in fact wish to know to what extent you find them points in favour of my being a demon – you are obviously very clever and skilled at reasoning from evidence. I would like to test this if possible, since if I am somehow a demon then this has implications: He pauses. :Would you like me to lower the block now?: 

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:I should feel guilty, probably, I just don't. Not that sanctified yet, I guess. --I have no idea how your magic works, remember, you could have two layers of thoughts one of which you're not showing me. I think demons are pretty much always aware that they are demons. I am curious about lowering the block but if you're a human you probably don't want to show me and if you're a demon it's calculated to be the maximally persuasive lie.:

With his mouth, Asher says "Satan, I command you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to leave my presence with all your demons, and I bring the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ between us."

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Nothing happens. 

Leareth isn't surprised that it doesn't work. He is, however, surprised that he can't sense anything whatsoever. No flows of magic. No flows of anything, with any of his Othersenses. Nothing budges in the glow of Asher's life-force or the very faint traces of living plants around them, which is all his mage-sight can ever pick up on in this world. Even if Asher isn't sanctified enough for it to work, he should've thought it would feel like something – that God would at least reach in some tiny finger of god-energies and check. 

:I do not want to lower the block, exactly, no: he sends. :It is a protective mechanism – in my world, there are many who can read minds, and I cannot always assume my shields to be the strongest – but it is also an area of some...vulnerability...for me: Though not exactly the obvious convincing-lie that a demon would come up with. 

:I am relieved that you think a demon would know they are one: he sends, :since figuring out whether I could be one – whether perhaps all mages in my world are – sounds very confusing and fraught. That being said, I do wish to know why you believe what you believe, and in particular think it likely to hold also in another universe. If your God is the overlord of my world and its gods, I could imagine it being the case that mages there are either granted our powers by God or by your Satan, and I am not sure how to distinguish those hypotheses from each other or from the one where my world is truly separate and under its own laws: 

Leareth rubs the back of his neck. Honestly, he's wishing that he felt supernaturally convincing; instead, his head hurts and he feels strangely and urgently in need of a nap. Which will have to wait. 'While Asher is reading his thoughts' is really the worst time for them to mysteriously stop working. He wants to mull on the right question to ask regarding how sanctification works and how God turning a person into someone who can't commit sins squares with free will, which is apparently also very important to God. He wants to figure out how the one resurrection of the body would work and what it implies. There are a lot of questions. 

:I am not sure that I want to fight your God: he sends finally. :I am still in the information-gathering stage. Mainly I wish there to stop being people tortured in Hell, and I am having difficulty obtaining clear information about your God's goals or why it seems that He is on board with Hell existing: 

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:You could get your powers from demons without knowing but you wouldn't be a demon without knowing, I don't think. And I imagine powers that come from demons would be... kind of obvious? God is not trying to trick you up. Healing people or getting prophecies from God or, I don't know, manipulating the weather so there aren't famines are probably good. Human sacrifice is probably bad. --Uh, the second two things are hard, can I gather up concepts I understand and dump them into your brain.:

 

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Lev is scrolling through social media on his phone. He did not really anticipate that rebelling against God would be this boring.

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:Yes, that would be fine: 

Leareth is thinking about kinds of magic in his world. He's spent a lot of effort perfecting the kind of magic that manipulates the weather to prevent famines, or revitalizes the soil when it stops producing, or transports goods long distances when there's a famine in one regions but others have some crops left over. In the Eastern Empire he estimates that over the centuries he tried to stay involved before giving up on it, the work he initiated saved somewhere between five and twenty million lives. Then again, there was some amount of human sacrifice involved – mostly in the early days after the Cataclysm, when nothing worked and it was that or let the chaotic weather kill all the peasants' crops and leave tens of thousands of people starving. Seems like a wash overall.

He doesn't have the Gift of Healing now but he has in some of his lives, and he's directed scholarship into lifesaving magics as well, as well as the more general background cause of preventing disease through sanitation. Prophecies... Well, there is the Foresight dream. Unclear where the gods of his world are going with that one – sticking him in a captive dream-set with a youngster from a stereotypically moral kingdom who's destined to kill him in the future, give them the next decade to argue about ethics...

Also, the gods of his world haven't exactly been on board with his humanitarian work. (Flickers of memory, a dozen suspiciously unlucky failures of various projects, or deaths of his past incarnations.) So he's not sure how to feel about the implications of them being servants of the larger God. 

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Asher attempts to pass along to Leareth the Kalam cosmological argument.

Assuming Leareth isn't just lying, it seems like Leareth is probably drawing on demonic magic, which is Not Great. Human sacrifice, Asher is pretty sure, is demonic.

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Leareth...is trying to figure out whether the Kalam cosmological argument is actually watertight. Or whether he fully understands it. He needs to go off and mull on it at some point when his mind is fully working

:I am not sure Occam's Razor – that is a wonderfully useful term, by the way: he's posited a similar arguments but he didn't have a good word for it, :in any case, it is a strong heuristic, but I am not sure it is strong enough to fully determine this argument. I am also...not sure it is fully known that free will is the only thing that has effects not fully determined by its causes. I will think on it: 

He frowns. :If the reason blood sacrifice works in my world is demonic in origin, then it is built in on the level of how magic works at all, and not with specific mages. There are schools that abhor it, and mages who never touch it their entire lives, but they could, their Gifts are the same as mine: 

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:...huh. I have no idea what that implies about your magic and whether it's in general evil. It's weird for people to be born with demonic gifts, I think... it might be that your world's magic is just entirely different from my world's. Perhaps it was corrupted by original sin in some fashion which lets you do blood magic?:

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:I think it must be different. My magic seems to work at all here, which is interesting, but I have not sensed any magic native to this world at all – this does mean it is not present, necessarily, it might only mean that it is a force my existing senses cannot detect, in the same way human eyes cannot see all colours of light. In my world, there is ambient background magic in most places, generated naturally by living things but not in a way that harms them at all, and mages can take it in and use it: 

He brings to mind a memory of looking at a verdant meadow with mage-sight, holding it up in his thoughts so that Asher can see it as clearly as possible. :Here, I can sense some life-energy, but none of it is in the usual form that I would be able to use, so I have only the energy that my own body can generate internally: He turns his mage-sight on the park, then on Asher, holding up that image in his thoughts as well. :I have not tested whether blood-sacrifice works here, because in fact I prefer NOT killing people unless it is the only way to save a greater number of lives elsewhere: 

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Asher's thoughts are mostly very very confused. 

:I have no idea what is going on and I should probably pray about it and get back to you.:

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Finally. 

:I understand: Leareth sends, and he pulls his hand back and quickly raises his shields. And then reaches for Lev's mind. :I need to go. Something is wrong. I...do not feel good: 

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:We can go-- do you know what's wrong?:

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:No: Another fact that he's not very happy about. :Not my magic. Just... Tired. My head hurts and I cannot think properly. Not something I recall having experienced before: 

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:Could it be that our world is bad for you in some way? You're not human the way we are.: 

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:Could be bitoxiphosphene.:

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:...Oh: That does seem possible. :I am not sure how to test that theory. Or what to do about it if you are right. Could you...say the appropriate things to Asher, and get us out of here, please?: 

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Lev has never said the appropriate things to anyone in his life. 

"...uh, see you around?"

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Asher is too lost in thought to notice.

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Leareth nods to Asher without speaking (it's unclear if Asher notices), and follows Lev and just barely thinks to cast an illusion over both of them, and a minimal tracking-ward on Asher. It won't read his thoughts – he does intend to keep that promise, he wouldn't have made it if he didn't consider it worthwhile – or impede his movements in any way, but he'll be able to maintain a vague sense of where Asher is, and it can serve as an anchor if he later decides he wants to scry on the man.

He doesn't trust Asher yet; Asher doesn't trust him yet and thinks he's a demon and it's all very understandable from within the frame of his worldview but it could be dangerous. Leareth is pretty sure that he didn't handle the entire conversation optimally. It...would be easier not to make mistakes if he could think straight. 

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:I don't know at all how we'd test whether you're sensitive to anything, we've pumped a lot of stuff into the air that wouldn't exist in your air. You can test for some things by going to the wilderness but lots of stuff is just-- everywhere. I guess we could get you a scuba tank and have you breathe from it? --Scuba tanks let you bring air with you when you go swimming so you can be under the water for longer, they don't put pollutants in it.:

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:...That is a clever idea: Leareth really hopes Lev remembers where they're going, because right now he can't produce words and keep his sense of direction at the same time. :I mean to put air in a tank and breathe underwater at all. But also to use this as a test. Is it complicated to obtain a scuba tank?:

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Lev is internally glowing about being complimented.

:I think they're pretty cheap to rent? Might be hard to get one in Boston, not a lot of scuba diving here. It's something people are more likely to do in the tropics. I guess you can Gate.:

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:I can only Gate to a place I have visited before, and it is exhausting – I could make it one way, I think, if I did know the destination, but it would exhaust my reserves and my body would need days to replenish unaided, there is no external source of energy here: 

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:...okay then probably no Gate. But I bet we have some scuba divers, it's a big place.:

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:I hope that it works: He really isn't sure what he's going to do otherwise. :Maybe sleep will help: It is kind of late at this point; fatigue doesn't usually hit him like this, but combined with a complete and utter lack of ambient magic...

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Well, they can get home and he can get to sleep and see if that helps.

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Leareth lets Lev do the navigating, and once they're back to Lev's house he heads for the bedroom and sits down on the bed and puts his head in his hands; it's finally all right to drop his poise. Is there anything urgent he needs to deal with before sleep...? Wards, checked, there. Food, seems important. "Lev, I should probably eat something." 

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Lev opens up an appliance in the corner of his kitchen, retrieves a cardboard box, opens it, and puts the stuff in it in another smaller box on the counter. 

Once the smaller box dings, he brings it to Leareth, and Leareth has mashed potatoes, vegetables, and meatloaf on a flimsy plate made out of some kind of stiff paper.

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It's not particularly tasty, especially not compared to the pizza from before, but he eats it and then puts the weird paper plate on the floor and lies down on the bed, fully clothed and without bothering to pull the blankets over himself. He's asleep within seconds. 

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Oh no Leareth is VERY good and it is nice to watch him sleep.

Lev goes to sleep on the couch.

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Leareth wakes to the sunrise. He feels...about 20% more capable of forming coherent thoughts, and he tries to take some notes on the conversation with Asher before wandering out into the living room to see if Lev is awake. 

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Lev is awake!

:I was thinking about how to visit Cascadia without any documents and I realized I don't know what your magic can do.:

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Leareth sits down. "Oh. I can go through and explain different techniques that could be helpful here. It is quite widely varied, although anything high-power is not feasible," unless he wants to test whether blood-magic works here, and actually it sounds complicated to find a non-suspicious way of murdering people. And like something that would only convince Asher more that he was a demon. It's a tricky question whether or not the dubious probability of getting Asher on their side as an ally is worth forsaking any really powerful magic, but it's a choice they can't undo, so might as well see whether the low-powered options give them anything. 

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"The basic problem is that you don't have documents, and I am clearly incompetent at getting you documents, and any way of getting to Cascadia involves at least one step where someone looks at your documents and checks whether they're real. --Once we're in Cascadia getting you documents will be easy, I think, we'd just have to go talk to a coyote, and they're a totally legal profession."

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"It would be very convenient if I could Gate," Leareth says. "Unfortunately I need to have visited the destination, and...while I could possibly Gate several hundred miles on reserves alone if I rested and did no casting for a day before, I would be exhausted on arrival and in no state to do anything useful for several days." It's so incredibly irritating, being in a world where he can't just grab magic from convenient nearby nodes or at least pick it up slowly from his surroundings. 

Low-power magics that might help with the problem of transportation, then...

"I can cast illusions," he offers. "That is the obvious one; I could go undercover as somebody else, if we were able to obtain their documents. Or even to see their documents long enough that I could create a convincing illusion of them from a blank piece of paper. I can also cast compulsions, and while I preferred to avoid this with Asher, I would not hesitate to use them on people who are not potential allies. Both compulsions and illusions need minimal power, however, they do rely on concentration, so I would feel more comfortable with a plan that required them if I were...better able to think than I am currently." He lifts a hand to rub his temple. "Do you have any medicines that treat headaches?" 

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Lev brings him some pills and some water. "This is ibuprofen, we have other stuff that treats headaches if that doesn't work. --Going undercover as someone else is possible, but might run into problems if the person is in two places at once according to the computer system. On the other hand, it doesn't have to be our problem."

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Leareth looks at the pills a bit dubiously, but goes ahead and swallows them. 

"...If we can bluff our way past the documents check," he says slowly, "possibly via the judicious use of compulsions, then we will be outside of Gilead's jurisdiction, correct? And resolving the discrepancy in the computer system will be the problem of whoever I choose to go undercover as?" 

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"Yep. Except that people will know that I'm traveling with you so it might be my problem. --I guess not if we're on an airplane and we buy our tickets separately, possibly with the help of the judicious use of compulsions."

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"...Is it going to cause any trouble for you simply going to Cascadia at all, regardless of whether we are noted to be traveling together? I was not sure if this is something where you would need special authorization from the government." 

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"--Prooooobably not but to be on the safe side we might want to steal two people's identities, which isn't that much harder than stealing one person's. And then we can travel together, which is easier."

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Nod. "I am not sure what we need to steal an identity," what a weird phrase, actually, "but if documents, and my knowing their physical appearance, are sufficient, then it would perhaps be possible to break in to wherever a document is kept and replace the stolen document with a durable illusion, in which case we would have the real copy. This would be safer in cases where my illusions cannot duplicate some feature. I am unsure how it would affect resolving the in-two-places computer error, and whether the effect would be in our favour."

He thinks for a moment. "I can cast an illusion that would last at least several days, up to a week, but not months. I am unsure how long we would be in Cascadia." 

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"Mostly documents are kept inside people's houses. We'll also need their credit cards which are, uh, bits of plastic that let you take out loans. We could probably drop the illusion safely once we're in Cascadia. --You know whose identity we should steal? Jay Goodman's. He works with the Eyes and being in two places at once probably won't be the weirdest thing that's happened with his accounts this week."

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Leareth smiles slightly. "Perfect. Is there somebody who would be unsurprising or minimally suspicious as a travel partner accompanying him? A romantic partner, perhaps...?" 

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"He has a wife but I'm not sure I could be a woman... his personal assistant, maybe. Or one of those very pretty Bible translators he always has around."

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Leareth doesn’t bother to poke at his confusion around 'very pretty Bible translators', he's got...limited energy right now. "Do you know where Jay Goodman and...any one of the people you mentioned, I suppose, live?"

Probably breaking into houses here is harder than just 'do a line-of-sight Gate in while under an illusion when no one is home.' "In my world, people with access to magic will often keep wards on their homes that will detect intruders, and sometimes directly, er, dissuade them. Is this something that your world has via technology, and would the people in question have it?" 

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"I can look it up probably. --There are motion sensors and cameras and things, but they go off on accident all the time, as long as no one can see you it's not a problem I don't think? And most people keep their documents in their bedroom where they wouldn't have a security camera anyway."

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"That makes sense. I think my plan would be to hide nearby under illusion, use scrying to locate the bedroom, and either do a line-of-sight Gate in if I can locate a window, or a," slightly riskier but he doesn't say that out loud, "blind Gate on what I expect is the right bearing. I can put up an illusion-barrier around the visual signs of the Gate, and magical leakage should not actually matter since nobody here can sense it."

He checks his reserves. "I ought to be able to manage two very short-range Gates in a single day, to get in and out at each house; the energy cost of maintaining a Gate is much less than of raising it and I assume it will not take long to search a bedroom. I would want to prepare a set-spell in advance on two pieces of paper, whether we go the route of stealing the original document and leaving a duplicate or of taking the duplicate ourselves. The difficulty will be if the item is in a locked box or drawer that I cannot manage to grab with my spell-imitation of Fetching – that is short-distance teleportation of objects. I would fall back on using a tiny blind Gate to simply reach in, but while I can cast simple magics at the same time as holding an active Gate, but I cannot manage two Gates at once. Either way, I am likely to be very tired after this, so it would be preferable to put off the departure for another day." 

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"You'll want a wallet which looks something like this," he says, showing Leareth his wallet, "people don't normally lock up their ID cards because they have to access it all the time. --We might want to go in when people are sleeping so that their wallet won't be on them."

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Leareth examines Lev's wallet. "Do you think that you could obtain for me, a piece of material in the right size that would be similar to the touch? It will be a much simpler and lower-powered spell if I need only change the visual appearance. I suppose I could illusion one of your cards to look like theirs instead, but I imagine that you need them. My thought is that it will be easier to take only the cards I need, the personal identification and the credit card, since mocking up an illusion of the entire wallet would be a much more challenging spell and I do not wish to linger if I am doing it when they are present and sleeping." 

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"I can find my canceled credit cards around here somewhere pretty easily? I am, uh. Bad at throwing things out."

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"Thank you, that would be quite helpful." Leareth does not say 'yes, I noticed.' "Do you have any considerations to bring on whether to take the originals with us or not?" 

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"Leaving the originals seems better so that we don't have to go back and get my credit cards from people, or else keep up the illusion forever."

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“That makes sense. If there is any component I cannot duplicate magically, I suppose we can bluff our way through, or use compulsions.”

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"Would there be? Are there things you can't make with illusion magic?"

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"I could not, for example, make a car," Leareth clarifies. "Since I do not know how it works inside, and I am assuming that there are many other unknown unknowns in my understanding, when it comes to your world. For this, in order to save on power requirement and time to cast, I am planning to duplicate the visual elements only. I think that this ought to serve fine for quick inspection, but if the agents who check it will verify by touch that the raised print matches the letters exactly, or if some other part of the structure is relevant, then I am less sure."

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"...yeah they scan a code on it to check whether it's a fake, and I don't know how that thing works. Fuck. Maybe we should take the originals."

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"In which case we ought not use yours as the base," Leareth points out. "Perhaps we can return in time that I can break in again and swap them, but we cannot bet on it. Is there any card of comparable size and feel that is more...generic, and that most people would have on them?" Slight shrug. "If they use it daily and then it vanishes after a week, it would be harder to connect to your disappearance and they might assume they had lost– oh, I had forgotten that the decoy may not work in other uses either if I cannot duplicate this code, which would mean they notice sooner." Still better than having Lev's name all over it, though.