"Not exactly," she says.  "The hypotheticals are a tool for learning about you, so I can explain how you think and feel to the Foundation.  But I hope that once I can explain you well enough, you and I and they can work out some way that you can live comfortably, and they can be sure you won't hurt anyone, and you can be sure that no one will hurt you.  Not all of the hypotheticals are possible even if the Foundation agreed to them.  But if you and I and the Foundation all work together we might be able to work out something like them for you."

Rumble.

"...You will not stay here until that happens."

"...No.  I'm sorry.  I'm - not a prisoner to the same extent that you are, but I'm still beholden to the Foundation.  They won't let me."

"The Foundation threatens you and tries to control you.  But you still cooperate with them."

"Yeah."

"I do not understand."

"...If I hadn't, I wouldn't be able to visit you at all.  The world is so big and so complicated, and it's hard for any one human to - reject any allies who are doing anything wrong, and still be in a position to fix any big problems.  If I refused to work with the Foundation at all they'd still keep me prisoner.  If I show them I'm willing to - meet them halfway - I can make things inside the Foundation a little better, from time to time, and I can try to convince other people inside the Foundation to do the same, and they won't write me off the way they would if I were someone who refused to work with them at all."

It considers this, rumblingly.

After it's been quite for a while:

"Humans always have someone controlling them and threatening them, in a way.  There are at least seven billion of us on Earth, did you know that?  And Earth is a big place but seven billion is a lot of people.  And we're not always that good at working together and not hurting each other.  So we put some humans in charge of the other humans, and they work together to decide what the rules are, or more like argue about what the rules should be sometimes, and they argue about how to enforce them.  And they hire some other people to enforce the rules, to figure out when people are breaking them and decide how they should be punished.  And the system doesn't always work very well, for humans, because we don't all agree on what the rules should be, and because some humans are just abusing the system to give themselves the power to do whatever they want and hurt the people they don't like - and I think a lot of people sort of do something like that without meaning to, when they decide what they think the rules should be.  But most people agree that having some rules, and having a system for fixing the bad rules and adding new ones that isn't just deciding to ignore the rules you don't like and make up your own, is better than having no rules at all."

"...It's kind of more complicated than that, especially how we got that way.  But that's my view on how it works now - that's why I think a lot of humans would agree to things that sound like being controlled and threatened."

"Mmm."

"Do humans decide to go into acid baths for this reason."

"...Not really."

"Humans sometimes put - other humans who are dangerous - into prisons, as a way of making sure they can't hurt other humans too much.  But human prisons aren't usually - the acid bath would be worse for a human than for you, it'd just kill them, but human prisons aren't for them what the acid bath is for you, just a human locked in a room in constant pain with nothing to distract them."

"You have given me new things to think about while I am in the acid bath.  But I do not know if they will become disgusting once I leave your presence."

"Even if they don't a human wouldn't consider that to be anywhere near enough.  I'm sorry.  I came into this imagining I was going to help you and - I just put off thinking at all about the fact that until I got them to change your containment procedures I'd have to send you back there after each interview.  It was stupid and thoughtless of me and I'm sorry."

"...How long has it been since the last time you were here."

"About twenty-two years."

"Will it be that long again before the next time I see you."

" - no!  No, god, I'm sorry - it'll be a few days, a week at most - a day is, there are 365 in a year, and a week is seven days -  "

" - you know what, this is ridiculous."  To the ceiling: "Dr. Salt, can you get in touch with the HCML for SCP-682 - actually can you just put me right through to her?"

"Sure thing," he says, and after a few moments -

"Researcher Fiftythree?  This is Roshanak Hijazi.  Is everything all right?"

She takes a deep breath to dispel some anxiety, and says, "Hi, Dr. Hijazi.  There's no emergency but we need to talk.  I've been speaking with 682 for the past hour or so and what I've been finding is that with my secondary anomaly calming down he's actually very easy to talk to."

"What is happening?"

"Sorry, 682 - I'm talking to Roshanak Hijazi, she works for the Foundation, she's in charge of - figuring out how to keep humans safe from you."

Rumbled acknowledgment.

"Anyway - Doctor, I understand completely why 682's comfort hasn't been a priority in the past.  But I've made an extraordinary amount of progress just in the course of this conversation, just by asking him about his perspective and providing him with ours in a situation he feels safe and comfortable in.  My secondary anomaly seems to cancel out a kind of - phobia or sensory sensitivity he has, toward living organisms and I think to some extent existing within three-dimensional space, and when that's not weighing on him I've found him conversational and even reasonable, given what he's told me of his life history.  I'm not claiming it would be practical to relax security, he can't promise to be safe around humans without me around right now and I realize it wouldn't be realistic to retool containment for him and for me simultaneously over the course of one conversation.  But what I'm hoping is that there are some very minor tweaks you can make today on your own recognizance, that would make his containment more tolerable without compromising security, in a way that - serves as a show of good faith such that I can keep making progress with him in future conversations."

"My understanding had been that this interview was just for the purpose of forming a profile on it."