Carissa really hopes this is not Cayden Cailean betraying them all - no, she should make predictions. 20% Cayden Cailean betraying them all. ..;.30%.

"Gregoria, you said you thought you got six problems, I assume the sixth one was #6?"

"Yeah, and I'm not totally sure I got it right, but  it's just, uh, if you can predict your future predictions you could just change to having those now."

"Yeah, that's not exactly right.  If you could coherently predict your future predictions they would be your current predictions, would be more exact."

"But if I'm giving my own interpretations, I should probably go more in order..."

Asmodia starts by giving a less incoherent and rambly version of what she said to Sevar one-and-a-half days ago, about Keltham's problem #1.

At the point where Asmodia describes how, with the full headband on, she could almost see the thoughts inside herself sort of warping and twisting to try to reach out to other things she believed or observed, and claim credit for having predicted them, even though they wouldn't really have predicted that, in order to hold themselves in place, Keltham starts to look a little worried.

"Did I get that part wrong?"

"No, it's just - keep going."

On to #2, then!

"We all know already, because Keltham already showed us, how, if something's only a hundredth as likely as something else, you need to see something that's one hundred times more likely, given that thing, in order to believe it."

"So the thing is - I'm not sure how to say this, it's hard to convey, what I was seeing with the headband on - that's like - the equivalent of logic, but governing the things that people usually argue about.  It's, the equivalent of which conclusions follow from which premises, for things that aren't true across all worlds.  It's why Keltham complains that our books don't make any sense.  The books say, this thing happened, that isn't all that unlikely, and they don't say how likely it is in other worlds or prove it's less likely there, and then the book says, well, therefore you must be in this world.  The book he's reading doesn't even put a probability on that - just jumps there - even with the headband off, when I took out a book and tried to read it, I realized the way it must have read to Keltham -"

"You need, depending on how you look at it, two or three pieces of information, to feed into a Lawful reasoning step that goes from observing something, to a probable conclusion about it.  You need to know how relatively likely two theories seemed to be, compared to each other, before the evidence - I'm not sure where the very first probabilities come from before there's any evidence at all, but don't tell me yet, Keltham, I want to see if I can get that on my own - and you need to know how much probability both of those theories put, on something you saw.  In principle you just have to know, how much more likely the sight is, in one case, than in the other, but I don't see how you'd often end up knowing the ratio without knowing the pieces -"

"When I was hoping I could calm down after taking off the artifact headband, I took a random history book in our new library, and flipped through until I got somewhere interesting at all.  It was about the assassination of the Prefect of Tandak fifty years ago.  The author argued that the assassin probably came from Whitemarch because of which gate they'd used to enter the city, which is the gate you'd use if you arrived at a harbor that ships from Whitemarch use, and the author didn't say anything about whether any other prefectures also sent ships to that harbor or who else used that gate.  It was like that thought hadn't occurred to them at all.  Were they trying to fool the reader?  Then that sure only works to fool very stupid and unLawful readers, doesn't it?  Was it put out by a government office in Taldor telling people what they're supposed to think?  Maybe, but even then, you'd think - they should at least bother to lie about that, about no other prefectures sending ships to that harbor - if you don't include the probabilities of other prefectures sending ships to that harbor, it's like - you're not even bothering to argue, you might as well print the whole chapter just saying 'Whitemarch did it' and it would say the same thing -"

"Nothing we've thought in Golarion up until this point has been remotely Lawful.  We've been talking gibberish from the standpoint of any Lawful outsiders trying to listen to anything we say."

"And it's not just about the big things that are in history books, it's like - looking into the dining hall to see the food there - it would look and smell the same with a Major Illusion, the reason you believe you're actually going to find food there, is because how unlikely it is that anybody would bother to cast Major Illusion on the dining hall, how normal it is for there to be food there, it's not that the sight and smell of food is overpowering evidence that there's no illusion, it's no evidence at all against the illusion, it's just that the illusion was very unlikely to start and stays just as unlikely after you see the evidence."

"With the artifact headband on I could see it, there was like - I could see the structure of the Law overlaid on things, not always, not constantly, because I had no practice, but when I considered any one step of reasoning I could see it there - I could see how the Law was supposed to work, and that my own thoughts weren't fitting into the framework, and I didn't have enough time to correct them all, but I could see how everything I was thinking was completely wrong in the light of that -"

"Asmodia.  Stop."

"Um... I don't think I'm about to hurt myself any further, I'm not as smart now as I was when I had the artifact headband -"

"What you're describing - the Law overlying everything, your own thoughts constantly being held up to that standard and being found wanting, bad, all wrong everywhere, not just on special important occasions when you need to figure out something that matters hugely, but constantly in everyday life - isn't the standard way dath ilani kids are advised to think about things.  It's the start of a path that people are advised to think about very carefully, and warned about what potentially happens along it, before they decide to actually go there.  The usual rule in dath ilan is that you don't do it because it seems like a vaguely good idea, you do it because you find that you just can't be any other way and still hold yourself together."

"What you're describing isn't - the form of the Law itself, of which there's only one - but a way that people can relate to that Law, of which there are several - and the relationship you're describing isn't one that works for everyone.  It's famously one that only works well or healthily for relatively few people."

"The dath ilani call them Keepers."

Meritxell is so murderously jealous.

Probability that Asmodia betrays them. ....Five percent? She has a lot more to lose and less to gain by it than Cayden Cailean. But, well, a Keeper wouldn't participate in this. She's not sure what they'd do instead. Die, she guesses; that's the only real alternative. And Asmodia doesn't even mind dying, if she gets to stop existing after that. 

If Asmodia saw an opportunity to sell Keltham to Osirion for the fanciest headband Nefreti Clepati could make, she would.

That's a depressing line of thought so instead she worries about Cayden Cailean. It seems appropriate to worry about something you've just assessed as having a 30 percent chance of causing you and everyone you know to die horribly. She's not even sure she made the call the Grand High Priestess would have; obviously the process the Grand High Priestess uses is something more complicated than 'when gods offer you trades that they claim are mutually beneficial, take them'. Cayden is opposed to them. He says this won't work against them, that He won't use Pilar against them, but he's Chaotic, he could lie. 

She's so confused about what Cayden wants. It all seemed so clear, when she was trying to talk the girls into not being scared of Hell; that Asmodeus's victory was so obvious that unlikely gods were backing him. But it doesn't - she doesn't -

The alternative set of theories is that Cayden thinks that Asmodeus will lose and Chaotic Good will triumph. And it's kind of easy to think of ways that might be so.

This failed at cheering her up or distracting her from Asmodia's impending betrayal/surprisingly good lecture at all.

"Do you think - is it just Wisdom, that makes people Keepers, would lots more of them be if they got high-end headbands?"

"The problem is - I'm guessing, because this is something we all didn't spend a lot of time thinking about for obvious reasons - is that the Keeper structures and styles of thinking are maybe not that hard to invent, they are just hard to live with and survive."

"I'm now finding it a lot more plausible that yes, in fact, Asmodia did manage to rewire her brain using the artifact headband and now requires a +6 Wisdom headband in order to function, because that is basically roughly the sort of thing you might expect to be true, given the huge numbers of warning signs posted all over the Keepers and everything to do with them, not that we went around asking."

"Should we - not be using Fox's Cunning and Owl's Wisdom to do our homework," says Gregoria.

Maybe Gregoria was very sure that alterGregoria would say that but it's still fucking inconvenient what with Asmodia not actually having brain damage.  Fuck her life, this is the other reason why you don't lie to Keltham.

...probably.  She probably doesn't have brain damage.  She thought she was fine after Security lit her hand on fire.

No, she definitely doesn't have brain damage.  Keltham didn't predict this in advance or he would have warned people about it.  Keltham believes this because he's acting on false information.

"That'd be a very obvious precaution but if Asmodia spontaneously starts talking like a Keeper as soon as she's augmented far enough that has a lot of worrying implications, none of which I've thought through at this point."

Pilar, speak out as soon as Keltham says something that really horrifies you, and remember, even if he's teacher in this classroom he doesn't know anything about Asmodeus and nobody except Aspexia is allowed to correct you in matters of faith.  Don't literally tell him about Hell, but aside from that worry less about hiding your Conspiracy than you usually would.

This is going to take more force of will than anything you've done before, not so much to persuade Keltham, which cannot be done by being forceful at him, but for you to actually say what you feel, to be truthful at him.

Security, tap Pilar with Splendour now.

"What sort of worrying implications are we talking about here?" alterAsmodia says, sounding a bit nervous.

Real-Asmodia is trying to figure out exactly how inconvenient it is if they have to do their augmentations in secret, how much damage that potentially does to their illusion of the Ordinary, and is not liking the answer.  She has to talk Keltham out of this, somehow, it's just why would alterAsmodia do that -

"If you started generating Keeper thinking spontaneously - and if that wasn't true, now would be a great time to admit it and tell me you had some other good reason for not telling me earlier, which is a lot easier to say to dath ilani than I think Golarion people may realize - then the obvious thought is that trying-to-be-a-Keeper is in some sense the default thing, the natural way people end up relating to Law if not shaped otherwise, but one that makes most people who try it fall apart inside.  In which case my dath ilani education was very carefully crafted not to turn me into a Keeper.  And I got the education that's tuned to turn people only as smart as I am into not-a-Keeper.  And when I amped up my Owl's Wisdom I started to see past it."

"I wouldn't even be saying this out loud except, first of all, basic containment on the dangerous-information has already been disrupted, second, I am not in fact competent to emit dath ilani education that doesn't turn people into damaged not-actually-Keepers and everyone here has already been exposed."

"But since in Golarion you also have no training in not thinking about things you'd rather not think about, I suggest, to whoever with authority is reading this transcript, putting all transcripts of today's lectures especially under high Security classification, and attach a warning especially to people with artifact-grade headbands that looking at today's transcripts comes with a risk of possible brain damage.  If you don't have the authority to do that, immediately escalate this issue to somebody who does."

"All of this is literally my thinking in the first minute and pending my spending longer thinking on this.  I'm being blindsided here."

Carissa thinks this is - good? Like, it's not what she expected to happen, but not only is Keltham going to be wary of enhancement he's going to be supportive of the Project keeping some secrets from its highest ranks, and he's going to be doing lots of narrowing down in the direction of this theory which might not even be false and which doesn't speak poorly of Cheliax at all.

Of course there's probably about to be another twist that makes this a disaster. 

(Security taps Pilar, and gives Carissa a heads-up.)

Nobody has actually gotten around to telling Asmodia that she's in the middle of an Otolmens event, what with Pilar's curse not saying to do that and also her having not been read in on what an Otolmens is!

"What warnings do you get on not trying to be Keepers, like, why shouldn't most people try that, according to the official story?"

"Keepers are constantly going around thinking of themselves as failing, as broken, which is apparently somehow healthy and fine for them, even if it isn't for most brain-typical people, and doesn't wear on their nerves at all.  And more importantly there's - structures of human thinking, of motivation - human minds are just not designed to work the way Keepers try to make their minds work - Taldane doesn't have words for the syndromes I want to talk about, which is maybe itself something of a warning sign.  The destruction of your desires to do things by questioning those desires too much; never perceiving yourself as having any good options and all roads leading into failure -"

Keltham proceeds, in all deadly grim seriousness, and without apparently the slightest inkling of what anyone here might think of this terrifying risk, to inform his class of Chelish students, inside Cheliax, that failed Keepers supposedly end up very unhappy and two-thirds eventually go into early cryonic suspension.

Carissa is totally sincerely and uncomplicatedly appalled at the thought, because it's like getting turned into a statue, on purpose, because you're so miserable you'd rather be a statue. Even Hell can't do that to people unless they're incredibly weakminded.