"Oh, I actually don't know and have never heard before meeting you most of the words in the poem either. I am concerned about that. Jabberwocks are a species of strange and powerful long-necked evil dragons with power over air and fire. I'll draw you a picture with some rough measurements. 'Vorpal' is a property of blades including swords that one can apply when crafting one. It allegedly makes the blades unusually useful for beheading one's foes. I don't even know if it actually does that. Vorpal blades will be marketed as vorpal blades. Don't buy one. If you are fighting a Jabberwock, don't use any blades you didn't bring with you, even if you 'conveniently' find one. There are means beyond that of identifying them, but they rely on tools you don't have. Jabberwocks, Jubjub Birds, Bandersnatches, Thrasfyrs, and Sards are all types of powerful beings known as the Tane. All of the beings listed except for the Jubjub Birds are evil. Jubjub Birds are instead animal-like, very hungry, and typically indifferent as to whether they eat people or not. I've made friends with one, though. If you have the opportunity to do the same I'd recommend it."

"There is also an actively good member of the Tane, known as the Ulas, who is unmentioned in these poems. If you ever encounter an unusually stealthy mountain covered in bells, it is probably the Ulas. You may want to spend as much time working with them as possible before you lose track of them."

"Yes… dragons were one of those things I meant to ask you about. Evil firebreathing giant lizard monsters with wings that hoard treasure? You have those?"

"Many of them breathe things besides fire, and many of them aren't evil, but yes, we have those."

"Naturally. And… how, precisely, is a mountain covered in bells stealthy?"

"That's a good question and I don't know the answer. Both the Ulas and very powerful governments have agreed that they want the governments to keep track of the Ulas, because, among other reasons, the Ulas dislikes accidentally stepping on people. Their combined efforts have failed. There is currently a bounty available for telling the governments where the Ulas is. Uh, the Ulas does apparently feel the need to pace, most mountains don't do that. My friend wonders if the issue is antimemes, but that's more of a name than an explanation."

"Well, I'm going to continue this conversation on the off chance this is real, but 'antimemes can't fake realistic conversations' is currently my best guess. I hope somehow Art can figure that out while he is in charge."

"That's fair. I probably shouldn't argue with you about this topic, it wouldn't be very nice. Shall I go into more detail about the nature of the antimeme, or do you want to ask me more questions?"

Leonarda looks down at her tablet. "Ah. As I suspected. 'True'. Assuming, of course, that this is not all a hallucination. Anyway, please, continue."

"Okay. So. What I have been calling the 'vorpal secret' is, in every book I have read about the subject and every person I have talked to about the subject who knew more than me, considered to be information which many individuals are capable of knowing, but which fundamentally cannot be distributed to societies. Also, the belief that vorpal swords are necessary to kill Jabberwocks is extremely widespread, even to people who otherwise wouldn't know a lot about specific weapons to use against specific sorts of monsters."

"Your society seems like it might be capable of developing institutions for circumventing that, though? You have the right vocabulary for talking about the issue on the meta-level, so if you kept trying to tell someone something and they were fundamentally incapable of hearing it, you might tell them 'the topic appears to be an antimeme', and they would understand the concept. You're sufficiently not-exposed to the object level that you don't even know what a vorpal sword is, which might also help. You plausibly have higher levels of math education, so it might be harder for most of your members to fail to notice suspicious traits of Jabberwock statistics. I feel … cautiously optimistic here?"

"And even societies that have never heard of a Jabberwock end up with poems that talk about vorpal swords killing them. That… is an ability. So, if I post this on the big network for sharing information… then… what happens?"

"Uh. In my experience, there are books in libraries about it and everyone just ignores them except people who already have reason to look? But … your world is currently not in a state of confidently believing you need a vorpal sword to fight a Jabberwock. That's potentially fragile. If I were you I would want to try distributing information in a way that's less likely to disrupt that."

"…I am going to look this up to see if we already have such documents when I'm out. Am I ready to leave? I can request leave, and you can confirm if so."

"You should also show me those search results, if you can show them to me. And I think now is a fine time for you to ask to leave. We can always have more private conversations later."

Leonarda taps her tablet, and a request for release appears on Griffith's tablet.

"Repeat what I told you and its truth value one more time, for me?"

"Jabberwocks exist. Jabberwocky, which talks about one being slain by a vorpal blade, is bad advice. Don't use a vorpal blade against a Jabberwock. Also, for some reason, societies can't learn this fact."

"Very good. Thank you."

Griffie approves the request for release from information containment.

Leonarda stands up, bringing her tablet and opens the door. "Art, unless I'm hallucinating, I'm still in charge, so get back in your chair."

"Yes captain."

Leonarda and Arithnu settle back on the bridge. 

"Oh, and do you want the non-dangerous and much easier to share antimeme? I can tell all of you about this one, no special procedures needed, the effect is much milder. Your world doesn't seem to have been affected by it at all, so it's not urgent, just, I'm pretty sure I told you that I was looking for signs of it, so if you're worrying about me not explaining it I can."

"Sure. Why not."

"Powerful monsters called 'Fulgati'. They destroy cities with a focus on killing the populace and destroying records. People tend to forget about specific destructive acts they do, out of horror, but the concept of the Fulgati is itself perfectly memorable. It's just that people who see them in action tend to rationalize it as a natural disaster after the fact. But none of your city-destruction incidents match their attack pattern. They'd probably really hate the mercurials, so if they were able to get this deep into outer space, they'd definitely have attacked mercurial cities."

"Griffith, what is a 'star' to you?" Silvia asks, finally looking up from her work.

"Stars involve the interplay between positive and negative energy in the distant points of outer space, where the influence of the material elements is weaker. That's the thing you've seen where my stuff keeps disintegrating. Stars pulse, move, and exert currents on each other, sometimes dimming enough to become non-viewable, and sometimes they stop or start existing. I've already described the orbital behavior of the slowest stars. Most stars orbit at rates similar to the sun's orbit, but aren't synchronized with it, it wouldn't be surprising for a randomly selected star to orbit at below half or more than twice the speed of the sun. Stars are influenced by other planes, so if you monitor them closely you can get a vague statistical sense of other planes. The closest non-sun star is estimated to be about 250 million miles away. Most stars appear to be at least trillions of miles away, though our instruments aren't precise enough to tell how far they are. They're believed to be omnidirectional emitters, but who could test that? I guess you could."

"Nobody confidently knows why the sun is where it is. No deity plausibly claims to have created the sun or the stars, though there are deities associated with phenomena like sunrises and constellations."

"Oh. And then there's my implausible claims about pre-war stuff that I don't have evidence for. The night sky used to be a lot brighter, and the stars were swirls. Some of your stars were smaller swirls, and your sky is brighter than ours, by the way."