Flower-swan. Thoughtful. I think that the meaning I want for my name, is - something that can be built upon? I am not myself the future that Leareth wants all the people in the world to be able to build, but I can make it more possible for them to build something very good. 

:Well, much as certain problems should not be dawdled on just because solving them will be interesting, I do like having things to do. Hmm. You have the city metaphor but cities just sort of get built wherever - I guess often along rivers for water and shipping -:

I will think about it while you go do your other things, then. Warmth, affection.

:Mm-hm: And she goes and does other things among the nasty-smelling vats and checks in on her stash of monkeys while she's here too.

The first baby monkeys born, years ago, are now fully grown monkeys, and one of them is pregnant with grandchildren of the first two pairs. They're fluttering around their cages. The other population of monkeys-with-Gifts are chittering to each other and spying on the dining hall. 

...The Animal Mindspeaker on Leareth's staff who works with them tells Belrun that the monkeys with 'Mindspeech' - it's more like a variant on Empathy since they don't have much language, though they've developed a slightly more language-y version of it over time after he taught them hand signs to ask for particular foods from the non-Animal-Mindspeaking caretakers - seem to have noticed the new godpresence and are trying to talk to it. He wonders what the god thinks. 

"That's a good question, I'll ask!" She inquires of the god.

It is not very much like talking to humans and the amount I can communicate with them is much less, but it is interesting to try anyway. They are so curious.

:Do you think I'll be able to avoid ever needing to possess one? They're not people really but all else being equal...:

I can try to look further but I cannot see that much into the future yet. Are you hoping you will figure out a way to be immortal in your current body instead? 

:Fun as having wings and a tail might be, I'm not eager to trade up:

That makes sense. When I am bigger my Foresight will see further and I may be able to tell you.

:Thanks:

The god passes all of Leareth's tests over the next couple of days. At the cost of Leareth several times completely losing track of time while poking it and needing to be hauled out by Belrun to eat something. 

"What are you testing?"

It has the same problem of being pretty abstract to explain but Leareth can have a go. "Mostly I want to know that it matches the expected specifications for this stage, and that - it will verifiably remain stable along the dimensions that most matter, its goals and values, when it becomes a hundred times more powerful in other ways." 

"Seems, hm, limiting in some ways, but I guess the alternative is probably worse."

"It is less limiting than it sounds because the stability is - several levels up from specifics? It is stability on the level of 'the god will continue to think that the experience of conscious beings is important, rather than becoming inexplicably interested in rocks being the right colour' - I suppose that too is limiting, maybe we are somehow wrong that the wellbeing of sentient creatures is what is morally important, but, as one of said creatures myself..." 

"That would be a weird one to be wrong about. Although, hm, I guess 'experience' could be the wrong level of abstraction? Maybe the, uh, let's say 'actualization', of sentient creatures is the thing that matters, and true actualization would be very unpleasant experientially at least some of the time."

"Hmm. So I think 'experience' is a simplification of what is in fact in the specifications here. And even that would not necessarily be an impossible shift, just - a kind that would be harder and require much more evidence and back-and-forth in order for the god to be confident enough to update."

"Back and forth?"

"Attempting to communicate what the change would be and discuss it with humans and other species." 

"Actualization by consent of the actualized."

"Exactly." 

"It must have been so hard to get all of - how some things are better than other things - rendered as math."

"There is a reason this took me a thousand years of preparation!"