"Okay.  Sorry.  Take your time."

"Do not know.  If my memories of being something else before this are real, the thing I was would have been willing.  There is more to me now.  I do not know."

"When you try to escape, what are you hoping will happen if you succeed?"

"That I will be out of this prison, away from disgusting things that might try to destroy me at any moment, and that I can look for the least disgusting part of this place I can find."

"Can you tell me what exactly you mean by this place?"

"This place full of meat in which everything is geometrical."

So, the universe?

"In the memories you're not sure you have of being something before this, there was no meat and things weren't geometrical?"

"Think so.  There was no meat.  Geometry is not as disgusting as meat but it enables many of the disgusting things about meat, and if I really was something before I was this I was something that did not need to think about geometry."

"I see."

"Another hypothetical.  ...Sometimes humans find things disgusting and frightening, in what might be a similar way to how you find things in this universe disgusting and frightening.  Usually bugs - very small animals that are a very different kind of animal than us.  Sometimes those humans... feel that disgust and fear but don't want to feel it.  Does that make sense?"

"...Maybe."

"It's sort of like they wish they could feel about disgusting things the way you feel about them when I'm around, instead of the way you feel when I'm not."

"...That makes sense.  What is the hypothetical?"

"I'm coming to it.  The thing is, these humans don't have people like me - I guess in the analogy it'd be a magic bug that could talk to them, that made them less afraid of other bugs.  So they get other humans to help them, by... letting them interact with the bugs they're afraid of, in a place where they feel safe.  First they just look at a bug in a tank, then they look at the bug in an open tank, and they gradually work their way up to touching it and letting it crawl on them.  And if they do it slowly, and they have people they trust giving them emotional support, they can feel less and less disgusted and afraid of bugs, and eventually when they see a bug in their house they don't have to feel disgusted or afraid of it at all.  Does that make sense?"

"Think so."

"So here's the hypothetical.  If you could do something like that - there's not another creature like you that we know of out there, but if I could help you go through that process yourself with humans and other things about the universe - and it would be hard and scary but at the end of it you wouldn't have to feel disgusted by the things about this universe all the time - would you want that?"

"Hard to imagine disgusting things not being disgusting.  But I like it when you are near me.  If this would make it feel like you were near me even when you were not... I think that would be good."

She can't help smiling a little.

"What do you think you'd do if I went away and left you in this room?"

"I can hear and feel humans inside the walls of this prison.  I would want to get away from them."

"I'm sorry it's hard for you to be here."

"Part of the reason I can't promise you any of these things - there are a lot of reasons, but this is one of them - is because I have to make sure all the humans in this place are safe.  I know they hurt you to be around, but they don't want to be destroyed just like you don't want to be destroyed, and just like I wouldn't want to be destroyed.  And just like you wouldn't like it if I were destroyed, and vice versa, humans don't like it when other humans they like are destroyed."

It rumbles quietly in acknowledgment.

"Part of the Foundation's job is to keep people and things that are likely to destroy humans away from the people they're likely to destroy.  Right now I'm working with the Foundation, but I'm also one of the people they're containing.  The same effect that makes you more comfortable around me has the opposite effect on other humans - it makes them afraid of me, and makes them want to hurt me.  But another effect I have makes anything they do to me happen to them, and it heals on me instantly, so they just wind up hurting themselves.  Even though I don't want to hurt anyone, I have to stay away from other humans, so the Foundation keeps me in a special building where I can live on my own, and talk to other people with technology so I don't have to be near them, and I don't wind up hurting anyone."

"But they will not do things like this for me.  Why do they fear me more than you?"

"It's easier for them to see that I don't them any harm.  I don't attack people myself, and when they figured out ways of talking to me that didn't let me affect them, they saw that I behaved just like an ordinary human.  Right now all the Foundation knows about you is that you hate humans, and think they're disgusting, and want to kill them.  Every time you've had a chance to kill them, you've taken it.  So they think if they ever gave you another chance, you'd just kill more of them."

"Part of what I'm doing by asking you all these hypothetical questions is trying to figure out why you think humans are disgusting, and whether there are any circumstances in which you wouldn't find them disgusting, or in which you wouldn't want to kill them.  If there are, and if we can bring them about, I can try to convince the other humans in the Foundation to work on putting you in those situations, instead of just trapping you in an acid bath and herding you back into it whenever you try to escape."

"...You cannot promise the hypotheticals because you need to convince other humans to allow them," it says, "but once you convince them you can implement them?"