"My archive droid, Tyrant, should have a lot of that type of stuff, too, especially any records..."

"It's a lot worse than you at explaining things, Lily, and most people don't like being told they're a dumb organic when they can't follow technical jargon."

"But asking Tyrant is overall a good idea. I can ask it for any relevant records and summarize them."

"Love a good summary."

"I'll try to provide, then."

"Tyrant can be kind of tough, but you've got this, Professor."

She laughs. "Thank you for the vote of confidence."

"If you can do Intro Ethics for more than a semester before passing it all off to the TAs, you can do anything."

She snorts. "I actually like teaching Intro Ethics. It's fun, and differently so from arguing with someone who's very thoroughly thought out their ethical code and come to somewhat bizarre conclusions."

"What's the most bizarre conclusion you've had to argue against?"

"Man, that's a tough pick..." She hums, then: "So there's some that are surface level bizarre, but ultimately trace to the student mistakenly projecting out what would be morally normal in their own culture or species. Human students can be more prone to this, since humans are a large majority of the population, but it also crops up in general in anyone who hasn't really been exposed to other cultures yet."

"The most actually bizarre was also, relatedly, the one time I had to restrain myself from telling a student to come back after they've taken a history class. She'd taken large fragments of some common dark side philosophies, with an emphasis on unchecked accumulation of personal power and rights of the powerful to control the weak, then stapled them onto an anarchist tendency and a moral end of general prosperity and stability. She firmly believed people would always do the right thing if given a chance. She then apparently never noticed any contradiction - you could make a coherent argument for two of those fairly easily, but she didn't successfully make the case for all three. There was also a lot of often contradictory elaboration on specific positions..."

"I think a lot of her argument originated in a cognitive dissonance. She believed that only good people deserve to be treated well, and that bad people deserve to be hurt, but couldn't stomach the idea of causing people to be hurt - so, all people are good, and then on top of that she had low tolerance for considering if she's done or believed something wrong. This very much carried through to all her positions."

"Sounds... frustrating."

"A bit."

"Good practice for dealing with frustration, though, I bet."

She snorts. "And having a bratty teenager is very good practice being patient."

"You only call me a brat when I'm right."

"Brat." A gust of wind ruffles Lily's hair.

Tayab chuckles.

Fay snorts.

Heh.

"So - I don't really want to do like, twenty questions interrogating you, so, uh - anything you want to know from us, I guess, we can answer..."

"Or we can plan out stuff like taking you guys to the movies. Or showing off magic... Or the super cool secret base we're going to build."

"This space expansion... Could we fit a hangar?"

"Hm... Depends. On how big you need, some of the characteristics of the space and geography, what external stresses it'll be under, and how stable and thorough I can make the anchors - and how long you want it to last. Very dramatic expansion is, in general, possible but also tricky to stabilize."

"And local air traffic regulations."

"That, too. And how to get things in and out of the hangar."

"Tch. So much for 'a wizard did it'. Just wave a wand and all problems vanish."