Arithnu blinks.

"…understood, Captain."

Griffie's connection to the bridge is closed for a bit, then a connection to Leonarda, sitting in a much smaller and emptier room opens.

"This connection will automatically terminate shortly, as per the previous protocol. This connection is secure, Fee isn't listening in."

The connection terminates, leaving only a single button in the center of the Griffie's screen to open the connection.

Griffie pokes the image of a button.

Leonarda, still in the small and empty room, appears on the screen.

"Well. I do hope this isn't some illusion or false memory such that I'm going to be knocked out before I even leave the room. Hello possibly-hallucinatory Griffith." she says with a sigh.

"I've never heard of the antimeme causing people to remember conversations that entirely didn't happen. Do you have further protocols, or shall I proceed from here using my best guesses as to what is most likely to cause successful transmission?"

"Not that you need to know at this point. Go ahead."

"Okay. I'm going to discuss a fake example first, since the thing where you have no idea what I'm talking about seems to have been helpful so far. Imagine that it was very dangerous to tell cats your name, but this was antimemetic, because cats wanted to know your name. Then, I might say 'Do not tell cats your name', and you might hear 'Do tell cats your name', or you might forget I said anything. Are you with me so far?"

"An antimeme that compels one to reach a fixed conclusion, including tampering with memories. The specific false example being the conclusion that one should tell cats one's name, obscuring the fact that one shouldn't tell cats one's name."

"You've got it! So, the antimeme I need to discuss is like that, but not with cats or name-sharing."

Leonarda nods.

"I think your world may be better at thinking about antimemes at all, because it appears to have lower exposure to the phenomenon than mine, and it has words like 'antimeme'. Antimeme antimeme antimeme. I can say it and it corresponds to a broadly-known concept! What do you think would be the correct procedure for trying to give you this information? Do not shy away from stating the extremely obvious."

Leonarda considers, tapping her tablet. "All right. I have an action here that will generate a number, either… what were the words you used? You had some reference to insects…"

"Cicadas. You can pick a name for those numbers, the name I used is not the name a mathematician in my culture would use."

"We call them 'prime'. I do not know if this will help, but it shall generate a number which is either prime or not, and it is rather difficult to tell for larger numbers. The number will also have a few other properties, making it difficult to generate or modify, I am not sure I can easily explain them to you. I will memorize it, but as it would be difficult even for our machines to quickly determine if it is prime, I will be completely incapable of doing so on my own. You will then say the topic. Your tablet will display either 'true' or 'false'. If it displays 'true', you will tell me the accurate statement. If it displays 'false', you will tell me what the antimeme will compel me to believe. You will not tell me which of these you are telling me. I shall then wait a bit, memorizing and considering the implications. I shall then be told the actual status of the number. This is in the hopes that whatever effect it is will have difficulty tampering with such a mathematically interlinked memory without leaving an extremely easy to detect trace."

"Wow, I like your world. I don't know anyone in my world who would have come up with that. Is this procedure obvious to you? I … if I give you information successfully I am tentatively going to consider myself to answer to you on domains you state are antimeme-related."

"Most of it was not, and was suggested to me. I also do not know if any of this will help at all. Nor am I even confident any of this is real."

She sighs. "Shall we begin?"

"Yes."

Leonarda taps her tablet.

Griffie's tablet displays "True."

"Never use a vorpal sword to fight a Jabberwock."

It takes Leonarda a few seconds to make the connection. "Never use a vorpal sword to fight a Jabberwock. A Jabberwock. From the poem. That… I don't know if that is the true version or the false version. Your horror at the poem… suggests that is the true version, since you would likely respond positively if we mysteriously had a poem that revealed a hard to express truth. Under that assumption, instead, multiple civilizations mysteriously have a poem giving us seemingly meaningless advice, that is actually bad advice. That… seems like a very good reason for alarm."

Griffie looks very happy and relieved. "I communicated the information! I actually communicated the information! What's more, you were capable of making excellent guesses about the information based on context! I was optimistic, given that you described the poem as nonsense poetry and had the word antimeme, but I am very glad that this worked with the first person I tried to communicate it to."

"…and what, exactly, does the poem mean? Not even in implications for us having it. It is a poem known for nonsense words, yet you assign the words from it a truth value. What is 'vorpal', what is 'brillig', and what is a 'jabberwock'?"