<Thank you. I recognize that additional constraints make an already difficult situation moreso. I think it would be very valuable, if at the end of this humans are - comprehensible to Andalites on this front. - related to that, you thought you could develop interworld travel with magic. How long would that probably take you?>

"It depends on how comprehensible your materials on your kind of inter-world travel are to me. With nothing more to go on than knowing it is possible, I think it would take a year. If your ship were operational and you could bring me to the other world, I could do it much more quickly, in weeks perhaps. I am hoping that an explanation of how your ships work would help me progress on this - but, of course, research is time-consuming and my mages and I will have many other demands on our time." 

<We can get there with the ship. It'd be very useful if we had the option of returning, for more people or for operations the Yeerks can't trace, and I don't think we'll be able to get the ship in and out with Yeerks controlling the airspace. But I am aware there will be many urgent priorities once we're there. Certainly we can explain how the ships work to you, though if you were doing this purely with technology there would be many, many prerequisites.>

That's it, that's definitely illegal. He's going to - worry about that later. If they win; if they lose he won't have to worry about it at all.

Leareth nods, thoughtful. "If we are only bringing people with certain Gifts, I can delegate nearly all of the logistics for it, and be here most of the time to work on travel. I would also very badly like the ability to travel freely, without requiring the support of your ship; if I do discover it, though, I will likely only teach it to a few of my people, since it would be especially bad for the Yeerks to capture someone and learn of this, and - it is difficult, but not entirely impossible, to capture a mage alive without giving them the opportunity to Final Strike. If the Yeerks notice that capability, I expect they would resort to drugs or other methods of rendering the target unconscious first." 

<That makes sense. If you do learn how to get back here, we could also erase the information from our ship's computers - ah, our ships do math, and all things that can be represented as math, which is most things - so that the Yeerks cannot find Velgarth from us.

Leareth's expression is suddenly a lot more animated. "Fascinating! I had wondered." Pause. "...I assume you know, via Melody, of my original plan in Velgarth before you came?" 

<She mentioned it. You should not mention it to Heralds, because their magically enforced code of ethics incapacitates them about it. Trying to do that with computers would be very very dangerous and it is illegal on my homeworld to attempt.>

"- Huh. Were there difficulties with people attempting it without sufficient due diligence? To be clear, I think it is also very dangerous to attempt here with magic, but is sufficiently difficult that no one else has ever come close to trying. And there is a reason why I have taken a thousand years to check all of my math." 

<People made progress towards attempting it without sufficient caution, yes. It is difficult but gets less difficult as your computers get more sophisticated. For example, I could tell the ship's computers to take 45 terabytes of data and learn patterns in the data according to some simple preexisting patterns for computer learning, and then let it think for a few days about the connections among the words, and I will get a system that exhibits notably clever behavior. It can write decent satirical news articles, for instance. So, what if you do that, but you give it a few years to think and a thousand times as much data?>

"I have no idea what you would get! I mean, presumably something very interesting, but - that is not exerting any control over what the resulting entity's goals will be, it is not even trying - can you even look at its thoughts and tell what decision-process it is following as it learns, it sounds as though maybe not. Did people really do that." Leareth looks genuinely kind of horrified at the concept. 

<People published proposals for it and then we discussed it and decided to make it illegal. You cannot tell anything about its decision-process, when you do it that way, and it cannot itself explicate it; it's just an extremely powerful predictor with lots of underlying processes that are useful for making predictions and nothing else.> He is reassured that Leareth thinks this is horrifying; it doesn't mean his god would work but at least he appreciates that it would need to.

Leareth is so horrified! "And you never - tried to work out a system where you could read its decision-process or query it and tell its intent? Or deliberately place particular goals? ...To be fair, I suppose, that element did take me six hundred years of theory to develop, but I would absolutely not have attempted this without it." 

<We have theory on that. I think there have been people working on it for hundreds of years, even. But it would still be a risk, and one I doubt we're ever likely to find acceptable, and even if we did it would not surprise me for some other actor to disagree and want to intervene. 

If we were losing the war badly enough it's not impossible that would change the calculus. But - you could lose the whole galaxy if you made a mistake.>

"I suppose it does reassure me somewhat, here, that Velgarth gods are intrinsically somewhat local, and - we have many existing ones, most of which of awful in some way but none of which present a threat to the entire galaxy." Shiver. 

He nods. <There are many powerful entities in the galaxy that are bounded in some fashion either in their interests or in their reach or in agreements among each other. But something we made on computers would potentially be subject only to the same bounds we are, and we can get to hundreds of inhabited planets.

The Yeerks do not have as advanced computing, and Seerow never spoke to them of this. We should not rule out that they'd be reckless enough to attempt it anyway if they were losing, of course.>

"I assume Earth does not have this technology?" 

<No. They're not even close. They are ahead of Velgarth but very primitive by both Andalite and Yeerk standards.>

Nod. "...Sorry, that was a digression because you had mentioned your ship does math for interworld transport. That might actually be quite useful to me. You have advanced computing but choose not to use it to make opaque superintelligences, then?" 

<Yes. It is useful for many other things.>

"I imagine so." Leareth is looking somewhat covetous. "All right. Fetchers and mages for ship repairs, Healers for Yeerk experiments, and you will show me your math so I can work on interworld transport. Anything else we should discuss now?" 

<At some point we should talk more about long-term objectives but if any of those things would benefit from being set in motion first, it does not need to be right now.>

"I would like to take a candlemark to communicate and delegate all of the preparations, since they would benefit from being set in motion as soon as possible, and then I can bring you some additional hands and we can discuss whatever you think is the next higher priority." 

<That sounds good. Thank you. I will try to make the engineers available at that time to talk with you about how hyperspace jumping works.>

"I am glad to be helping with this and improving your chances in this war." Leareth bows to him, and heads out, raising a Gate almost absentmindedly on the conference room door and vanishing into a stone hallway somewhere else. 

That - feels like it went well. Of course, he's not the one who is constantly mindreading everybody. 

He goes out and explains to the engineers that Leareth needs to know how hyperspace jumping works and may in fact be capable of the math considering that apparently he worked out a lot of AI theory on his own over six hundred years (of, presumably, wearing a bunch of different people as skins.)

They can call Sandra back to check them for mind control.