"Not the exact total number? You're almost always in separate sims. And I—that's sort of a weird question? Pain comes up sometimes as a side effect, or a diagnostic, or to teach you about a mental movement, or something. I never really thought about it as the point of what they're doing.

Like, if the implant happens to be painful, then part of what the surgery achieves is you having endured ten-out-of-ten pain for the sake of something that you want, something that betters you. And then what betters you is not only the device, but the glow of achievement, or—probably—the safety of having been shattered and defeated but also held throughout. It's a layer on top of the thing, not the purpose of the thing itself? You're not...alone with it like you used to be. In a way, ordinary pain starts to feel like Her attending presence, like whenever you hurt from now on, it is with Her standing between you and it. But not just about pain, right, She's attending whatever you're doing, making it purposeful."

Wow, this is extremely something out of the kind of romance novel you don't read on the train. And the disclaimers in the front of those novels saying "please don't try to do this in real life" hit different when you meet someone who actually needs them.

"That makes a lot of sense as a thing to want from someone. But I'm concerned about the fact that other people who are also you didn't expect you to want it. Should I let the three of you talk it out privately and come to some sort of agreement on what things are good for a David?" Approximately nobody wants to admit to their repressed sexual desires in front of a cloud of glitter they just met. Probably not in front of their sibling either but maybe Anda will get lucky and Alioth will infer that themself.

⁂: "What's so criminal about liking something people didn't expect? Life doesn't all have to make sense in advance."

D1: "Okay but this isn't about getting a new hobby like you're some kind of middle-aged sunhopper; it's about getting pulled into a psycho plant cult! You were kidnapped!!"

⁂: "You don't have to control everything that happens to you! You don't have to plan what to like next, who you're going to be next, pick things out a day in advance to make sure you stay the same person! That's what you don't understand! Sometimes stuff just happens and you grow because of it! Sometimes luck is what makes it happen, sometimes it's people."

D2: "I don't know what this David's problem is, but as far as 'good for Davids' is concerned, this is so many levels of yikes beyond anything I would ever want. And I kinda don't want to be in the same room as him either."

⁂: "Well, as soon as you're done kidnapping me to save me from being kidnapped, I'll get out of your hair!" David⁂ snaps.

"Hey!" bellows Alioth. "I think we're all a little freaked out right now because of the Affini thing and our brain juices are making us say dumb stuff. You-David," she points. "I'm guessing you remember when you left for Fovos? I wasn't psyched about that! I told you why I thought it was a terrible idea! And then I threw you a going-away party because I care about what you want. I'm sorry I like, pulled you out of a situation you wanted to be in because it looked like my baby brother was kidnapped and maybe—worse. I was doing the best job I could based on knowing nothing and I got it wrong."

"And you two! I can't think of something more embarrassing than watching myself go through a breakup meltdown about a space alien who kidnapped and maybe tortured me! But like, this other David⁂ is a real person who is going through it right now, and you're all like a couple weeks out from being the same person, and you're all my brother. Everyone cut each other some slack so I can think for one second about how to fix this!" She bites her lip thoughtfully and glances at Anda.

(private channel to Alioth) Thank you Alioth, you're so awesome. 

"I'm coming to this from a position of not really knowing any of you, so if I made any decisions it would just be because I have the power to implement my decisions and not because I have any reason to believe my decisions are the best ones. But David⁂, if I'm understanding you right, the key things for you are that Imago loves you, and you believe the things you're doing with Imago are making you stronger. Can you tell me more about the ways you're becoming stronger? Maybe if the other Davids hear about them they'll understand that that's the sort of thing that they want some-David to have." And maybe it will become clear that they have in fact become weaker, because that's what happens a lot of the time, but it's hard to be sure with aliens.

" . . . Also, most possible ways someone can get stronger are ways I can make someone stronger. If that's a factor in anything."

⁂: "Ugh, no offense, but you can't just swap out a whole relationship based on eternal trust and mutual growth and say that your knockoff version is the same thing. It just isn't. I liked—being able to see myself at my worst and bear it. I saw how small I had been, how small I had made my plans. I liked that I didn't have to stand alone— there is so much more you can do in a partnership where you can actually depend on someone to be absolutely loving and absolutely capable. You can tear through all the layers you've put up to avoiding looking at yourself too closely, you don't have to hold yourself so tightly, you don't have to have a fallback plan or even a Plan A. They are preparing you for godhood, eventually. To be loved and enhanced and honed until you are equal in depth to them, ready to do what they do. And they say that by the time you get there, you'll believe you deserve it, and you'll be right."

"Oh yeah no, for sure, I wasn't trying to suggest I could fill her role in your life, just that if you wanted anything in the self-enhancements area while you were here I could do that. I feel like that explanation didn't cause me to understand the ways in which you had already become stronger? Or is the idea that you haven't become stronger yet, but you will? Possibly this conversation would benefit from Imago being in the room and able to share their perspective."

David⁂'s face is an unreadable twist of emotions. "You can—reach out to Her? I...I wish I knew if She wanted—"

"Absolutely not!" David interjects, horrified. "Anda, you don't know about the Affini, but if half the the things we've heard about them are true—they are living infohazards. Not just the nanobots and the pheremones and the uploading—they can talk you around to anything. You can't let them be here—I wouldn't even risk eavesdropping on them in your position. It's that dangerous."

"I take that kind of danger seriously. Suppose I forked myself, with one of the forks having all my defensive abilities but none of my general-purpose stuff, put a kill switch in that fork that the other fork could trigger at will, sent the killswitched one to go talk to Imago from several light-years away and report back, and then the non-compromised one interrogated the compromised one under lie detecting magic? Does that sound like a sufficient set of precautions? Are there additional precautions you can imagine being useful?"

"Oh. Huh. I kind of worry if you let a compromised copy of you talk to you, that's almost as bad? Allie?"

"Mmm, good point, but I think copying Anda's on the right track...if there was a way you could do like, a multiple choice form? Or talk to your copy in the form of multiple choice questions, so you don't actually have a conversation with the copy of you, but just get back one of the answers you offered?"

"Are we sure they can't upload and copy, uh." Gesticulates. "Glitter? I'd prefer the Affini not imprison and reverse engineer our superpowered ally in a torture dungeon."

"Not if they don't know where you are and you're light years away! I mean, probably."

"I can monitor surrounding space for nanobots and teleport if anything is suspicious. And be in another galaxy. If they could get people from arbitrarily far away, wouldn't they have already gotten everybody?" 

That is...a good point. "Okay, I guess as long as you're far away, it seems...at least like you're managing the risk. Uh, just how far does your"—fingers on temples—"telepathy thing reach?"

"Anywhere." And then there are two clouds of blue glitter--

One of whom promptly adopts a different form for distinguishability. (This one has been nerfed eight ways from Sunday including the loss of mint powers and not having a coin stash, but that's not visible to anyone else in the room.)

Whoa.

⁂: "If you do reach Her, please ask what She wants with me, okay? I don't think I'm—I don't think I could do it myself."

"I will." The little unicorn trots out the door, in a gliding manner reminiscent of a video game rather than a way that suggests the feet and the floor are in any way necessary for the motion, to request that a David hold the door for a bit. 

"I should go be in the bar in case this still manages to go pear-shaped," says the glitter one.

And the unicorn sticks a soft little nose out the door for 0.01 seconds and then is somewhere on the far side of the Local Group.

Hello, Imago? I am an alien and I would like to speak with you.

Ah, individuation—the pareidolia of the spirit. Selves are but potted plants to the Affini: the unnaturally solitary individuation of life. A desolate illusion without inner anatomy or outer milieu.

Lush is the interior of an Affini organism, grown wild and full of intermixed selves and living archives and sapient co-routines like so much vetch and ryegrass. Call for one, and all shall answer.

A mind calls out a name. Thus a face flickers, and in nanoseconds, a self politely coalesces. No, not that one: it shall be assertive, but not cloying. Candid, diplomatic, and firm. Whoever can speak across the void is a willpower that must be met with a demonstration of equal footing. Perhaps the voice will speak to the grief that now howls through the Affini race: for the first time in the long dying of stars, the dark tide has taken one of their own.

Hello, alien. You've caught me a bit by surprise, I'll admit—but a welcome one. My name is Yavanah, part of Imago's soul. What shall we speak about?

The humans named David.

Most of them wished to leave your system; I extracted them. One did not speak to me and was in pain. I guessed at their desires on the advice of the others, and guessed wrong. I wish to understand them, and you, and not be wrong again.

I think we may owe you our gratitude then. We have felt very frightened today, finding our loved ones irretrievably erased from reality. Even the many failsafe personal copies we carry with us were corrupted. It has never happened before, and we did not understand how it could be so, or how we would begin to make ourselves safe again. What I am understanding is that our David Greens are all still extant, that you do not mean them, or us, harm, and that we have some hope of shedding light on how this came to pass.