Hell is truth seen too late.
- Thomas Hobbes
Okay, but, if there's a thing in the genre of prophecy superpowers or candy superpowers, do you know what it'd be.
Still no way to avoid it.
"And in the less probable case where there's something like prophecy superpowers or candy superpowers? I'm curious what I missed by, apparently, this time, not being asexual enough."
"Not really the way I'd recommend thinking about it, but -"
"Well, first of all, you'd be much more likely to be a Combat 'Ace' or an all-anti-powerful Nullifying 'Ace' in the version of the pattern where everything is much more sexualized and we're constantly fighting off sexy Zon-Kuthon agents bent on dragging us away to have sex with us. In which case, the classic form of the 'trope' is that they can't use sexual mind control on you, and maybe you can also bop somebody on the head and make them snap out of the mind control."
"I admit that is not what I was expecting to hear," Asmodia says. "And if it wasn't that? I'm still trying to grasp what this whole pattern is." It's not a good look on her, at this point, if she makes Sevar force her to say it.
"Those actually are the top two obvious possibilities. If it wasn't that, if it was a 'deconstructed' version of the 'trope' where it's supposed to be a nonsexy shadow of the sexy thing... something about nullification, maybe, something you can prevent or that you're immune to? Or something that conveyed, like, how people can care for each other in a way that has nothing to do with sex."
Well she needs to say something before Keltham starts getting suspicious.
"I was thinking that this pattern you keep talking about was the dath ilani equivalent of awful pre-Asmodean books, romance novels, full of, how did you put it, Problematic Messages, about women who stand around being pretty and conceited until a man decides he's really attracted to her and wants to do all the work of giving her a happy life without her having to be clever about it at all. I'm increasingly confused about what this is instead of that."
"So imagine that you started from there, took up the average Intelligence of the reader by 6 points and the average Intelligence of the author by 8 or 10 points, and then there was a Civilization of people many of whom had sufficient spare time for things to get really really really overcomplicated, and you may understand why I am not even trying to explain what an 'anthropic selection' effect that looks like a meta-'eroLARP' based on 'deconstructive secondary-literature' of an 'eroLARP' would be."
"It's looking like a moot point; a lot of the theory's predictions seem increasingly like false starts and - looking up at clouds, that weren't shaped to be faces, and trying to identify a nose and a mouth until you twist yourself around to seeing faces in the clouds."
Are we done here, Sevar? This looks like a good outcome for the Project, maybe the best possible one, and Asmodia very much wants to quit while she's ahead.
Yep, all done, you can pursue your not-romance with Keltham or not as you wish as long as you're in good standing.
"I - probably want to go off and think about this."
"Do you already know whether you'd want an almost-asexual in your pattern, if other things worked out?"
"I do not think that quickly any more than you do."
"By the way, I notice I have a pending question you didn't answer, about how somebody like yourself ended up in the group of girls that got sent here? I'd otherwise imagine there'd be a screening question, like, are you liable to be okay having sex with Governance's sperm-harvesting target after a relatively short acquaintance."
This seems like a really bad question to even visibly hesitate on -
"I mean, I can still have high-Intelligence kids with somebody? I did not plan on going the rest of my life never having sex with anyone even for purposes of having kids, and I was okay with having more sex than just the minimum for those kids."
She knows that's an unauthorized lie, Asmodia's judgment was that it would have looked very suspicious to delay to ask for authorization.
"I do have any additional questions about that, but should probably bother Carissa with them rather than you."
"You want I should go back downstairs myself and leave you in this nice room to think?"
Actually Keltham is back, looking sheepish, and wants to know the classification status on Asmodia's (mostly)(a)sexuality.
Asmodia stares out at the coast, it's windy enough today that there's regular crashing waves, and she can, if she makes an effort, not think about anything at all.
She doesn't want it to seem suspicious, when her mind actually does go quiet from the perspective of listening Security.
When she legitimately hasn't thought much, for a short while, she imagines herself back in the Gardens of Erecura, in the midst of Dis, as is under the seal of Hell, and thinks.
Does Asmodia want to be married to Keltham, even if she never has sex with him, even if he gets all his sex from Sevar and Ione and Pilar? It's an important question for reasons beyond the obvious.