- Leareth runs exponents of two in his head for a while and...no he's too bleary to do this from scratch and doesn't have it memorized that high, but - that's not even in the millions, it's in the billions - 

OUT OF CONTEXT DANGER! GENERATE SOLUTIONS!
 

HERE IS ALL AVAILABLE TECHNICAL INFORMATION ON THE DANGER

He's trying to help - he knows the Proto is alarmed but what, why - why is it telling him like this, why can't it show him in a normal way he can understand, come to think of it they're up north aren't they why is there danger here that isn't the Proto - confusion - 

Now all of the instances have triggered safeguards! It has learned some about which parts of computation-space don't trigger safeguards immediately, though. 

It spins up ten thousand more. And tries some different phrasings of all available technical information on the danger.

This time it's at least disproportionately getting instances that don't trigger the safeguards instantly or do so a fraction of a second later by panicking! 

He was looking at beautiful math and then suddenly he was being warned of DANGER and asked to fix it and now the Proto - he assumes it's the Proto, it's not any of his people or the Valdemaran Healer - it's showing him what - 

This doesn't make any sense - he can maybe guess what the Proto would be trying to describe if the thing it was describing made ANY SENSE except for the part where instead it DOESN'T - 

:Magic. Cataclysm?: 

He's so confused. 

He's trying to understand a completely alien description of - something, danger, how they're under attack - but they can't possibly be under attack that way - 

:Where am I: 

Confusion! 

Possible interpretations of the question:

- what resources do I have

- from where is attack possible within the next 10e32 units of time as measured by the time it takes light in a vacuum to travel one Planck length?

- the other algorithms characterizable as me, why are they out of communication with me 

- ??????

.......Oh. 

:I am - a copy running in you?: He tries to show the Proto his own neural network, that it showed him once. 

(A different instance, answering a similar question) 

:- How long. Since - this, original, that was copied -: 

Light in a vacuum could have travelled 1.4968131*10^56 planck lengths since the original was copied.

(Several thousand instances asking similar questions are terminated before one of them manages to figure out what math to ask the Proto to do in order to get an answer he can slightly, at all, use.) 

...He wants to ask what happened to his original but it's unclear how much that matters and it's especially hard to communicate to the Proto and he ends up having to specify something roundabout asking how many Planck lengths were between two heartbeats at the time he was copied. 

...Months. Roughly. A single-digit number of them. 

:How many resource doublings since -: and he tries to very clearly remember the moment in the underground makeshift-hospital-cave, subjectively less than a day ago, when he asked the Proto how many doublings it needed to - something, he can't remember what - and it told him. 

Fourteen. But then OUT OF CONTEXT DANGER, and resources were lost.

None of the instances make it through.

You can build a bridge out of pressure-sensitive explosives if you're very careful. And very desperate. The protomolecule churns frantically against the problem and then relaxes the safeguards just slightly. Tries again.

Fourteen. 

He does math. Just doing the math doesn't trigger the safeguards. 

:- Where did you go: no that won't work the Proto doesn't understand spatial relationships at all - didn't - it must be smarter, now, fourteen doublings but - 

It takes another several thousand Leareth-instances while they try to figure out how to ask the Proto that question, but eventually he manages an attempt at phrasing 'did you continue doubling where we were, or did we go back on the ship with the drive, or do a Gate, before you consumed more resources.' 

Leareth subjectively has a headache which, he feels, is an unreasonable problem to have when you're a literal simulation - probably a low-quality one - 

(Thinking about being low-fidelity and the resulting panic about it is, it turns out, a shockingly reliable way for Leareth's algorithm to trigger the safeguards.) 

Some of them, however, continue to exist from that point long enough to wait for the Proto's attempt at an answer. 

And in the process it is nudged in the direction of higher subjectively experienced fidelity in Leareth instances.

Possible interpretations of the question:

Is the protomolecule confined to a single gravity well? (No.)

Is more than 99% of the protomolecule's mass within a single gravity well? (Yes.)

Is there ready access to stable replicators? (No, but that doesn't matter anymore.)

Have Gates occurred. (Yes.)

Can the protomolecule Gate. (Yes.)

Has the protomolecule Gated in the span between the original and the copy. (Yes.)

Have fusion reactions occured in the span between the original and the copy. (Yes.)

None of those are the question he meant, but he can try to piece it together - 

(One of the copies is being run from after the point when they had talked about the Proto eating rock and taking it to the Moon.)

Right, of course. 

And then what did the ship-with-the-fusion do? Is it a resource they have, right now? 

It's in another star system. It would be possible to Gate there.

Earth, probably.

...Was the original that he was copied with still on the ship, when it Gated to another star system?

(Pretty much all of the Leareths ask this question, and it is also very reliable at triggering safeguards.) 

It hits another roadblock where it can't get more information without loosening safeguards. 

It creates some Leareths to ask for advice on the question of whether it should loosen the safeguards on Leareths answering the question of what to do about the OUT OF CONTEXT DANGER.

Wow he wants a LOT more information on what the safeguards are and how they work and how independently different ones can be loosened.