(In movies, of course, the actresses don't say that on-screen.  Some people who hear voices in their head do manage to be unaware of the probabilities.  You wouldn't want to emphasize to them, at this point in their thinking, that they were already diverging from the script.)

"Are you aware of any other cognitive distortions?  Such as might well occur even if the voices were real, if their method of contacting you imposed stress?  If the voices in your head agree that the situation is not time-critical, we usually prefer to take a general cognitive inventory first -"

"I am not aware of any other cognitive distortions, other than those associated with severe emotional stress, horror, dismay, sadness, disgust with myself.  Erler, I would - find it kinder - if you went ahead and performed the test.  The voice in my head says that it understands why I think I'm insane, but it wants me to hold myself together anyways.  It presented an argument about how important this scenario is, if it's real.  It's - stressful."

(It's not what standard intake procedure calls for.  But dath ilan has an un-Earthly attitude towards procedure, and towards kindness, and towards understanding that bureaucrats make exceptions in order to be kind.  Show most dath ilani a clever idea for a rule, and their first thought is of how that rule might go wrong, and what escape hatches need to be built around it for people it might not fit.)

"All right then.  Is the voice from a relatively advanced agency?  As seems implied from its ability to reach here and talk in your -"

"You do not need to walk me through the reasoning.  Yes, the voice claims to be from a technologically advanced human civilization, with better computers than ours, in fact, supposedly the person behind the voice is sitting in front of their version of a Network terminal right now, please just do the test."

Erler consults a sheet of paper to find the next question.  He asks it very carefully.  "To twelve decimal places, what is sin(214 + cos(177 + tan 98))?"

(It's easy to say out loud unambiguously in Baseline.)

The woman - who is not carrying any metal on herself, and accordingly should be free of any radio receivers, in her sealed room - starts to recite a number:  "Zero point one seven two two nine..."

(You might wonder, if you're from Earth, why Erler pronounced the question so carefully.  It's impossible for a mental patient to actually get the answer right, after all.  And - an Earthling might imagine - if Erler did claim a patient had gotten it right, wouldn't everyone promptly believe that he was lying or crazy?

This is why Erler does not know the correct answer himself, and is entering Helorm's answer into a numpad.

Erler is also tested with fake patients on a regular basis, to make sure he asks the question correctly.  And those fake patients sometimes give correct answers to the math question, to make sure the system is functioning correctly and would detect any correct answers given.

It's not that dath ilan thinks that any of their prospective mental patients are actually likely to be talking to powerful entities, when they hear voices inside their heads.

It's that Civilization has made representations to prospective mental patients that this test is fair.  So of course it's going to be fair.  It has not actually occurred to Helorm that this test might be faked.  If that thought did occur to her, she would correctly estimate that if the test was found to be faked, it would be a civilization-shaking scandal, and anyone who had anything to do with it any way would be fired, and the entire dath ilani Legislature and Keeper leadership would resign for bearing ultimate responsibility.  

The government is not supposed to defect in the Prisoner's Dilemma.  Not even the Epistemic Prisoner's Dilemma.  It doesn't matter how sure you are that you're right and the other person is wrong.  When Civilization promises cooperation to somebody in exchange for their own cooperation, Civilization cooperates with them, full stop.)

Erler finishes entering the numbers that Helorm recites.

He's not surprised when the screen goes blank immediately after.  Erler already suspected that this case was a drill; it's not usually the case that a mental patient is both aware of the seeming insanity and reporting a total absence of other detectable cognitive distortions.  That's more like the start of a book where the First Contact is actually real.

Erler is extremely surprised when the door to his own sealed room fails to unlock a few seconds later.

(The system doesn't think Erler himself is insane, to be clear.  It is considering that he may have been in contact with an unknown-magnitude infohazard.)

Helorm's telescreen flashes a blue CORRECT when she finishes reciting the numbers, just the way it happens in movies, and then goes black.

Oh.  Apparently she's insane in a way that fakes her sensory experiences.

"Tsi-imbi," Helorm says, her voice unwavering in her dignity.  "I experienced the screen saying the answer was correct."  In real life, the person on the other side of the screen should still be watching her, if she managed to get into the car at all.  Civilization will know what to do to take care of her from now on.

(An exception has been thrown from Civilization's normal processes.

That happens now and then, in a system the size of Civilization.

This particular exception has never been thrown before.  If you were reasoning through the circumstances of that exception in advance, you would reason that perhaps some enterprising person with unusual motivations had somehow arranged to disable the metal-detector or otherwise smuggle a radio transceiver through the system.  That's probably it, since the alternative is crazy.

The alternative is also much more important.  Actually, even somebody with that much spare time and ingenuity, starting to wreak havoc on Civilization, would also be important.  But the alternative is much more important than that, and Civilization was not in fact expecting this exception to be thrown at all.  Most people with that much spare time and ingenuity can find more fun ways to spend their time, with less extreme personal repercussions.

One situation is impossible, the other situation is improbable, and the very smart people of dath ilan know better than to think that in that situation they know which of the two must be the case.  This pathway was not predicted to execute at all, in Civilization's code, and that's why an exception is being thrown.)

The screen lights again, showing a grandfather-aged man with a much more serious expression.

"Exception handling.  I am Derrin.  Your answer was correct.  I realize you may now suspect you're immersively insane.  I observe that in such case you've already done everything that Civilization asked of you to handle that contigency.  In the name of Civilization, of sapience, and of the Light, I beg you to assume this situation is real and act accordingly.  Under the Algorithm, Civilization now asks you for your cheerful price: to report to me with total honesty and sustainably-best exactness everything said by the voice inside your head; and to transmit back my own words with total honesty and sustainably-best exactness; neither deliberately omitting nor deliberately adding nor changing, in either direction of transmission; your services as transceiver to last for the duration of this entire situation as reasonably defined; with payment understood to be conditional upon this situation proving to be a true First Contact situation."

Helorm shuts her eyes.  She hates this.  She does not want this.  She wishes this was over.  The hard part was supposed to be over thirty seconds ago, when she would get the verification question wrong.

She thinks, briefly, and then names an amount of money equal to 2^24 times the worth of an hour of unskilled labor.

(This is the dath ilani equivalent of saying "one billion dollars".  16,777,216 hours is a proverbial amount of wealth such that you can buy yourself, and all of your relatives and friends, everything that would make a sane person actually happy, for the rest of your lives.

Helorm isn't being greedy, just doing what she can to take things at face value for a little while longer.  If she named a small price, the Keeper might be worried she'd feel tempted to pursue things that weren't the good of Civilization; and nobody wants to spend any extra time thinking about that during an emergency situation.  2^24 is the amount that people name in movies, which happens because that decision seems obviously normal and correct to a dath ilani audience.

Obviously, before naming that amount under the Algorithm, Helorm mentally checked to make sure she'd actually go through with the cliche number as her cheerful price, regardless of any worries about whether her situation was real.  Mere worries about whether anything is real occupy a much lower level of priority than true-commitment.)

"Accepted.  Please transmit these words of mine, on behalf of Civilization:  Are there any time-sensitive emergencies in progress?"

[I'm now having the experience of talking to somebody from Exception Handling,] Helorm sends.  [He's bought my services as transceiver.  He says:  Are there any time-sensitive emergencies going on?]

The mysterious voice replies [No, apart from it being generally desirable that contact be handled efficiently.]

Helorm repeats this as best she can.  "The voice says no, apart from a nonspecific preference that contact situations including-this-situation be handled expeditiously."  Even if it's an imaginary situation, she did promise diligence under an algorithm more sacred than that.  "It's speaking not-Baseline into my head, and I feel like precise recodings would use a lot of extra code to capture nuances that aren't monosyllabically encodable in Baseline.  Would you rather I speak faster and get the translation not-quite-right?"

Derrin makes a hand-gesture that signifies Temporary Assent.  "Let's-do-that-for-now, if the nuance seems relatively-unimportant-in-your-own-best-judgment.  Transmit:  Who are you, what are your intentions?"

"I speak for a tiny subfaction within a parallel version of humanity," Helorm says, and pauses, listening to the voice in her head again.  "Our own intentions are positive-sum cooperation with dath ilan, under negotiated treaty conditions protecting this world, but we cannot speak for our world."

"How are you communicating with Helorm?"

"We don't have good theories of the underlying mechanism, and we'd expect even the very smart people of dath ilan to find the backstory bizarre.  We'd like to delay discussing that."

"Why Helorm in particular?" says the Keeper.  There are imaginable scenarios where that part matters a lot.

"We'd like to delay discussing that as well," Helorm repeats.  Uh huh, sure, Helorm thinks.

...she hopes she gets sedated sometime soon.  What's taking them so long?