In Sesat, when the Allspeak update is pushed, Tarwë lets Feris know: "We've made some adjustments to our translation magic so talking about certain things is less ambiguous. We're using a loanword from my language, námo, to refer to all sapient beings, and 'chattel slave' to refer to námor who can be bought and sold."

"Huh. And specifically can be, not should be available for, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"So you - will entirely disagree with this but you won't take issue with any definitions if I say chattel slaves aren't people, but you don't care if they're people, you only care if they're namor?"

"Essentially. The update goes both ways, I now hear a different phrase to translate for the word 'people' in the Sesati, so it should be somewhat less distracting."

Nod. "Speaking of, what did you find in their minds, beyond that they were definitely namor?"

"- I'm not personally able to read minds, I'm a kind of Elf that is only telepathic with certain species and not everyone, but my colleagues found in the volunteers they were able to check a variety of thoughts not dissimilar from any human in similarly stressful and unpleasant conditions. I can find the brief if you want more specific details."

"Yes, please."

The investigation included one current-at-the-time and three already-former Sesati slaves. The then-current Sesati slave aggressively tried to get a reaction out of the mindreader by recalling things that happened to them and thinking about the possibility that they'd be tortured to death if it seemed like Vanda Nossëo was making any progress on freeing them; they kept vacillating wildly between brittle affected indifference and misery that they were trying very hard to narrativize as insulted pride. At multiple points they deliberately suppressed the urge to fantasize about flaying their master alive. I have half a mind to just break all his goodies and go down fighting, is one of the last things in the transcript. Been keeping my head down and it's practically tolerable but no point in that now and besides, this isn't the only life I'll ever have, right?

One of the former Sesati slaves focused on how the desire for vengeance saw her through the years between her conviction and her escape, how she spent the time engaged in sabotage and resistance. She had a whole narrative about how she was a real person because she wasn't cowed and didn't choose slavery, she chose vengeance. She came across as slightly obsessed with how her rage made her a real person who deserved better, without ever quite being willing to contemplate any implications of that other than that it justified righteous indignation which proved she was a real person who deserved better... She could be gotten off that topic and onto the topic of how contemptible she found all of Sesat, or a couple of more cheerful topics like the fact that she recently started listening to death metal and the general adorableness of the dogs she works with. Maybe I'm not anyone, she thought, several times, mostly followed by dwelling on how her drive for vengeance proved otherwise but once she followed it up with, but neither are they, they're all just as bad or worse.

Another former Sesati slave had the subjective experience of not being an entire person, of missing pieces. She had the subjective experience of feeling a hole in her soul where hope and drive ought to be. Most of what she wanted out of the interview was to have someone believe her that what she did was for better reasons than anyone in Sesat would admit, though in fact she kept going back and forth about whether maybe she was lying to herself about being justified. She kept almost noticing pleasant implications of things and then flinching away from those thoughts as if they hurt worse than despair.

And the last former Sesati slave wouldn't think about Sesat at all. He wanted to think about how his current job could be replaced with a prestidigitator and it wouldn't matter since he could publish poetry and get basic income and maybe get a real education.

There are some margin notes about tentative diagnoses - in one footnote a staff therapist is very snarky about how she would take this guy as a pro bono patient if Vanda Nossëo would get off its collective ass - and some sidebars about the prognosis for things like this with better environments.

"You know, you've got one here that's innocent and one here that's not half so broken as it was supposed to be, if you just had one that was both at once you'd have yourself an argument."

"It's apparently pretty hard to get valid consent from the chattel slaves but if that's a real sticking point they can probably step up attempts. Aren't the ones who are born into it all innocent?"

"Well, not of being born into it, and I suppose it's not totally impossible they could have gotten up to things... but I suppose so. And the fact that now we're just looking for the combination of two traits that don't have to be mutually exclusive - it's not news that it's possible someone could frame someone else for something horrible, and then they could lay low and plot revenge, but we've always done the best we can to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent, and right now we have reason to think our best could start improving soon. Also this one was a saboteur, you could lean on that in your arguments but I don't think existing slaves will thank you if you do."

"Why would your best improve soon?"

"When we figure out a system we can trust for using your truth magic, or get more security cameras installed in more places, or if we can talk you into sharing the mindreading and we can use it on all our defendants..."

"I don't think it's within the licensing parameters of the truth spell to use it when enslavement is a possible sentence."

"You keep your magic so tightly controlled."

"Well - yes, otherwise someone would use it to annihilate planets or win wars we don't want to enable or feel more justified about enslaving other námor."

"You give the impression of being very specifically against chattel slavery in particular, more so than all sorts of social structures I expect you also think are atrocities, that are more tractable or worse or both."

"Part of being more tractable is that they're easier to solve a little at a time as people get richer and have more choices. A society considering it acceptable to buy and sell námor we don't know how to fix that way; the chattel slaves don't have the ability to get richer and take advantage of the choices."

"Do serfs?"

"Indirectly. Some of them have been dismissed as their labor becomes more replaceable and then they can go where they like. Slaves aren't getting released as robots and offplanet goods are introduced."

"Some of them have died, which is the same to you."

"People die a lot in places like this. Of old age, of disease, of hunger, or violence, of exposure, of accidents. It's recoverable, but also the amount of avoidable death in Sesat is not mostly people dying of their labor becoming less valuable."

"True, but I wouldn't think that other people also being dead would make it less satisfactory for you that eventually all Sesat's chattel slaves will die and you'll resurrect them and give them happy lives."