[It seems to me there is an argument that Alloran ought be moved secretly to somewhere that is not the Andalite homeworld. I suppose it depends how many inconvenient precautions he wishes to take, though]

Another long pause. 

[How is Alloran?]

Mhalir had never fooled himself by thinking Alloran would be all right even if he someday freed him. Though it sounds like at least he was fairly functional, if he was able to slip around Mhalir's inevitable paranoid precautions as well as the Andalites' protection and kill him. 

[He relearned how to move over the course of about six months. He managed to learn Gift-usage in secret so he could assassinate you. He is with his family. He was very happy, when he killed you.]

Probably there's an appropriate emotion to be feeling about this. Mhalir doesn't know what it is. In practice he just feels tired, which has to be entirely psychological rather than physical since he's now an emulated brain on a computer. He should at some point talk to Cayaldwin about the exact level of detail of the simulation, maybe he does still need to rest, but Matirin seems unlikely to know that. 

[I am glad he is with his family] he says, relieved that he doesn't have to pick an expression or tone of voice to go with that. [I know I did something inexcusable, by enslaving him. There are many things I could say to defend my choices, but I think I will not bother.] 

[We talked about it some before. We did not see exactly eye to eye but I was trying to persuade my people that they should not kill you.]

Mhalir spends thirty seconds fiddling to find the right keyword in his searchable but increasingly unwieldy notes file, it's so obnoxious not having eyes or hands and he definitely misses the tail too but he's getting used to it. A little. 

[Cayaldwin implied that the Velgarth humans did not want the Andalites to kill all the Yeerks] he says finally, once he's checked that this was, in fact, true. [Why did they care]

[I think that most people when they have a little bit of distance from being actively at war and afraid are against murdering innocent people let alone whole species full of them.]

[I am not sure if this question is going to make any sense, but. Who is Leareth? What is Leareth? I have only the context on him from brief conversation and his notes, but I have never met any human like him]

[He is immortal and several thousand years old. He ran an organization on Velgarth with which he meant to fight the Velgarth gods, extraplanar entities who meddle in the world and keep the tech level limited. He is an unusual human but I think he is a good one. It was being in his head that persuaded you that you should surrender.]

What. 

[I confess I am incredibly curious what arguments he made] Mhalir says eventually. [I will ask him, of course, but I would also like to know if you have an impression of why I was inclined to listen to him]

[You said that he reminded you very strongly - of yourself. Of your goals and hopes. And being several thousand years old he had a memory of a time when he was attacked by a mentor who he had trusted, and he fought back, and the cataclysm that his opponent unleashed when it became apparent he would lose nearly destroyed the whole world and did destroy its richest and most knowledgeable civilization. The lesson he took away was that in a situation like that one should surrender.

I think being in his head might have also made it apparent that trying to win by force was no longer a good idea. He is very powerful and had made arrangements such that his Gifts could not be used if captured, and he returns to life when killed, and he was afraid that Earth would be destroyed, if things went badly enough, but I do not think there was a real chance he would permit us to rip the whole galaxy apart between us. And he would not have let us kill you all, even if we had been inclined to, which I had persuaded him we were not.]

It's way too much to absorb all at once. Mhalir manages to relay it verbatim to his notes file, which is getting to be such a mess, he needs some kind of folder structure in there but probably Matirin won't know how to set that up and he needs to wait for Cayaldwin to make requests. It's very annoying. It's such a trivial request and it feels rude to ask for help with it, except that there's literally no possible way he can do it unaided, with the tools he has right now.

It shouldn't at all be the most consequential thought, but the one rising to the surface is: 

[Really. The lesson he took was to surrender. I would have thought the lesson was to stop trusting mentors.]

[I am sorry about Seerow. There is an ongoing inquiry. It has released a statement to the effect that those Yeerks opposed to enslaving other peoples were never our enemy.]

[There was an inquiry?]

Mhalir is very surprised and isn't sure he should be, it's less surprising than many other aspects here.

[I suppose it does not really matter if I was opposed to enslaving people then. Given my actions later.]

[I think it matters. But - obviously at this point there is not going to be a trial, so in that sense it matters less.]

[Were you planning to tell the Andalite government that this worked? It seems it might be simpler not to]

[It will definitely be simpler not to and I do not plan to.]

[Thank you]

And he's not sure what to say next but wants to keep talking, mostly because the silent empty nothingness is awful. Having something to read makes it a little better but he still feels incredibly helpless - and lonely - when he imagines that he might try to speak and have no one there to answer. 

...Honestly, there's no particular reason not to just say that. His position right now is already one of utter dependence on the people who, for some reason that he's not yet ready to feel he understands, spent months of research time to bring him back, even just in this limited form and without any of the context his other self had.

[Can you or someone else stay here] he asks. [It is distressing to have no way to communicate. I would like to talk to Cayaldwin about our research progress before I died, but I do not want to push him if interacting with me right now reminds me of his loss.] 

[Yes of course] he says immediately. [I would find it very distressing and we can do a rotation, for now, and eventually probably set up a way for you to communicate with us through our brain chips, at which point it will not even be very inconvenient.]

[That would be very good. Thank you.] 

Mhalir is still confused, but not in a way he expects to find purchase on by asking more questions right now. Mainly his mind is churning over the question of how to ask Cayaldwin not to murder Alloran. It feels like how he responds, there, will be informative.

He doesn't say anything else for a bit. 

Matirin morphs Mindspeech so he can reschedule his meetings for the day. Things come up reasonably often; it won't be suspicious.

Mhalir asks for news articles or summaries on various topics, over the next while. He attempts to organize his notes using the horrible interface, makes a list at the very top where he can find it reliably for improvements to request.

His initial mood was calm, matter-of-fact about the situation he finds himself in, but now that the initial flood of information is past and he's settling in, he's increasingly not-calm about it. He feels, not claustrophobic exactly, that's not a common Yeerk experience, but very very trapped. And alone, there are people he can talk to but they might as well be in another world and the talking channel is so narrow, when he's used to drawing in all of someone's thoughts and memories and dreams.

He literally doesn't have the capacity for any physical panic-reaction, which is almost more unsettling. 

For a while he's just less talkative, trying to read the news and think through it anyway but distracted. It's fixable, he reminds himself, if he's clever and persistent he can make a lot of improvements to the situation - but it's going to take so long... 

[Matirin are you there]

[Yes.]

[I seem to be having a hard time with something I am not sure what I just feel very trapped]

[Maybe I should talk to Cayaldwin or Leareth and see if they can help but I am not sure if they can help] 

The words convey no emotion, of course, it's just words. 

[That makes sense.]

[This is the reason that when Andalites tried backups we found it not worth it.]

[I do think we'll be able to get you a physical body eventually.]

[I predict you do not want me to turn the computer off until then but it is an option if you did want that.]

[This is much better than not existing.]

[I think I mostly need a notes interface that is less horrible.]

[I do not want you to turn the computer off.]

[For one thing we can probably do it faster if I am helping.]

Pause. 

[Actually it is somewhat better now, I think it helps just to remind myself I can communicate.]