"How does that work, when working is a thing it does; we didn't cover that."

"...if Cam decided not to tell you how he may have had a reason for that, I'd want to talk to him."

" - Sure!  Uh, sure, yeah; I wasn't trying to, um - that sounds sensible."

"It might be he just didn't get around to it," says Alassëo reassuringly.

"Okay.  Um, do you have any other ideas for if it turns out there was a reason not to tell me?"

"We could... call in more Elves from New Valinor and you could talk to them without their being coached? - I guess if you are particularly suspicious you could suppose I was coaching them by osanwë."

"By what?"

"We can talk to each other's chips telepathically."

"Ah, 'kay.  And even without that I don't know there weren't a bunch of people in here planning stuff before, who stepped out just so they can come back in later."

"I... suppose. What do you think he's trying to trick you into doing, exactly?"

"I don't know specifically but I also don't know basically anything about what's going on here and it seems worth it to be really careful and not just assume things are working how people say they are just because it would be convenient and easy to go along with them.  And I have some idea of things that could go really horribly even if lots of features of the situation are as they present themselves, and don't want to - limit myself by being unimaginative.  - And the last time I went, 'No, surely not; I'm just imagining things; this is totally normal and this is a nice, regular person who I should not assume the worst of' I pretty nearly got super murdered, so."

"I'm so sorry to hear that," says Alassëo sympathetically.

"Thanks."

"Our war was in some ways caused by - naivetë," he says.

"Oh?"

"The Enemy had done terrible things before. Creating orcs, terrorizing the Elves of Endorë. The Valar imprisoned him for three Ages of the world - and then, when he said he was regretful and longed to atone for what he'd done, released him on parole - he was quiet for a while, and then -"

"Ah.  Yeah, that's the sort of mistake I'm trying to avoid.  Which probably opens me up to lots of other kinds of mistakes, but hopefully not anything too bad going forward what with time being stopped?  I don't know."

"What is it you mean to do?" Alassëo wonders.

"Just find stuff out, mostly, and come up with a plan based on that."

"A plan to do what?"

" - There's apparently a whole multiverse, and I don't think I can narrow it down to anything very specific yet?  Or do you mean - I want to, uh, prevent my world from being destroyed, and also all the other worlds, and generally make sure that people are able to live good lives, I guess."

"Is your world in danger of being destroyed?"

"I think it might be, yeah."

"If you need more people on that - the same way Cam can resurrect us would let him fork us, I think, we can't abandon our people but we could make more of ourselves."

"Gosh.  Well, thank you.  Um - should I go ask Cam about summoning now or did you have anything else?"