"I am concerned about a potential dynamic where - you want to have this all over with in three weeks, so even if I come up with a good idea, you will insist that the plot says you mustn't try to work around this self-imposed deadline of yours.

But I acknowledge that until I in fact have a good idea, I might be assuming this of you unfairly."

"I will be huddled in my bed-tent if anybody needs me.  Do not actually destroy Cheliax without giving me a final chance to explain why you should not, even if you should find all your own resources for it; I do consider that something that will interfere with my plans, based on information I gave you, as is prohibited by agreements we've already made."

"Understood. 

It's not - to be clear - that I want to, that I'd do it lightly. Everyone I love lives there, and I don't want to send them to Hell. But - but if I were a person anywhere else in the multiverse at all, I'd hope the person in my place would do whatever it took, to make you spend one extra week double-checking your assumptions and consulting other Powers about your plan."

"I have not in fact killed, of my own will, a single person, yet."

"That probably doesn't mean anything to you right now.  It wouldn't seem important on a scale of trying to destroy Pharasma's Creation.  Ask the Iomedaen to explain.  I - don't know how to say it to somebody from Cheliax, but Carmin will know how to say it, maybe, or Fe-Anar."

He turns and goes about back to his tent, his breathing not very steady.

She goes to Carmin. 

"How did it go?"

"....it worked for a little while, we talked about some things I thought we couldn't talk about and I did the pretend Keltham thing and managed to not feel like it's incredibly dangerous to give him any information about myself, so that was progress. 

But then he said that he - well, he said things that came across to me as if he was saying that he wouldn't entertain any plans to stop Cheliax invading Osirion or solve the children issue because he thinks the Plot is just telling him to attack Pharasma by then. And I -

- I don't have any idea what to do with that? What I was trying not to say to him is that I feel such intense contempt for anyone who would think about the world that way that I don't think I could possibly work with them.

There's clearly a bunch of forces at play here and some of them are gods and some of them might not even be gods. But I just don't believe, at all, that those forces want Keltham to go ahead with his plan in a couple of weeks, unless they in fact want the multiverse destroyed, or want a - pointless illustrative tragedy where Keltham tries and gets  unceremoniously squished.

Am I wrong.  Isn't that - if you were writing a story, with a character like Keltham, who went ahead and did this in a couple of weeks because he thought he was a character in a story and was supposed to do it then, how would that story end."

"...is this didactic fiction aimed at children in Mendev? Is it a serial published in the Absalom papers?"

" - I think Keltham thinks it's an ilani story? Probably I should just - calmly discuss this with him like I calmly discuss the merits of destroying the universe with him, it's not different, it's my job to calmly discuss with him every way he's being unfathomably monstrous - I hate him -"

"The story disagreement feels to you like another values disagreement, not just a factual disagreement about kinds of story?"

"I don't - I don't know how to put words to it -

- so one part of it is that I really do think a story where you rush ahead with your incredibly dangerous plan before you've properly checked if it even works and before you've explored all your alternatives, because you think you're in a story and you're supposed to rush ahead is a tragedy, it's a story where you lose. 

Another part of it is that - I proposed an experiment, the thing Keltham was saying didn't make any sense to me and I said, okay, let's try solving the current reason-to-rush and if that fails, I will change your mind in your direction about how the story works, and if it succeeds, then you can agree that you're not in the same story you thought you were in and your story assumptions didn't apply, and he said, he said, 

'Then I guess I have you to thank, Carissa, for Abrogail's substitution plot and the fact that I have an unknown number of children looming over me, to make it mysteriously impossible for me to take six months, as you might otherwise have been able to talk me into doing.

- I don't actually mean that, I would have talked me into doing that, without the deadline.'

And that's when - that's when I stopped being able to - I tried to translate that and pretend he'd said something that wasn't incredibly cruel and stupid but I couldn't think of any possible meaning that wasn't cruel and stupid - it felt like, like he was saying, that it was silly, that I was proposing a test, that he was so sure that no new information would possibly change his mind, that I was silly, for believing him when he taught us things about checking your beliefs against reality, because actually all you're supposed to do is fold the information in to your own explanation you already have for doing what you wanted to do, it was like I didn't know who I was talking to, I thought we'd been having an ilani conversation about how new evidence would change our minds and now he was mocking the entire idea -"
 

"Do you think he was actually doing that?"

"I have been trying and trying and I can't think what else it could possibly have been! I proposed a test, and he said that!! If that wasn't 'oh, no, I'm just going to back-interpret previous events as a test of this hypothesis that already confirmed what I want to believe, and refuse to conduct any more tests', what was he saying?"

"Did you ask him?"

"No. It would've been a good idea, but I could feel I was - getting emotional - it felt like such an impossible task, if all the ilani stuff wasn't even true, if we couldn't even test theories, if the answer to every proposed test I put to him was always going to be 'reality already proved me right' - and he hates it when I don't conceal my feelings well enough - I think it's not actually just that he doesn't take it into consideration, I think he sort of anti-takes-it-into-consideration - like, if you have feelings, about him destroying the universe not even to stop Hell but just because he thinks it's what the plot said to do next and he thinks if he doesn't do it the plot will give him even more incentive, then that definitely means you should be ignored, so, I didn't say any of that, I just said, 'You taking six months vastly improves the possible outcomes here!', I was, trying so hard, to be ilani,"

"You can - ask to pause, you know, when it seems like he's saying something horrifically immoral, ask for both of you to cool off -"

"Should've done that. But instead - uh, instead, when I said the thing about improving the possible outcomes, he said 'Nnnnooo, my being unable to take the blatant hint presented by the storyline about needing to resolve this before my children get ensouled, causes the story to be even harsher about giving me a time limit.  Retroactively, I'd expect, but that doesn't make a difference here.'

- and I - it just felt so clear, that, he'd already made up his mind, that he'd already made up his mind about this thing that was insane and not true, that he was not processing it as some probability that could update - you can, you know, be a coherent mind that cannot change its mind in response to any evidence, the math's not hard - and I could just see it, him going ahead in a couple of weeks because it was impossible to convince him that that wasn't what the story told him to do, and then Pharasma crushing him like a bug and Rovagug eating the world, and, and even if his plan is a good idea, we won't succeed without throwing some serious resources and effort at making sure the version of it we're doing is a version that has any hope of success, if we've consulted with entities that understand what we're trying to do, if we've, I don't know, Wished up more smart people smart enough to look over the wordings and understand the physics -

- it just felt so clear that for this not to be hopeless, for us to have even the slightest shard of a chance of success, it couldn't be something we were rushing blindly into in a couple of weeks. There are no victories down that road. I don't know, am I insane?"

"I would definitely expect much better results from a plan that we spent years working on than from a plan that we spent weeks working on. Though the countervailing factor is of course the element of surprise. Right now, lots of people suspect Keltham might have a crazy plan to let out Rovagug or something, but they mostly figure that even a very rich, very traumatized, very creative teenage boy who is a first-circle wizard can't actually let out Rovagug, and so they're not immediately throwing unprecedented resources at stopping him. If he starts demonstrating capabilities that suggest he's not at all best modeled as a first circle wizard, then they'll react very quickly."

" - oh. That'd be - the problem with my first pass plan to solve this, then. 

- I was thinking about how to cut this knot, and I realized, if Cheliax is destroyed, then no deadline. That's it; it's that simple. No babies, no war with Osirion, no Project Lawful trying to invent superweapons of its own. We have the three Wishes Keltham didn't use, and Osirion has their own Wish scroll. Instead of trying to argue Keltham out of something he cannot change his mind about - no Cheliax, no deadline. And Keltham, you know, he trips himself up on all kinds of complicated questions about whether destroying Cheliax is really and truly in his own not-threat-shaped best interests, but I just don't want the universe to be destroyed, and I could Wish a hole in the world where everyone I love lives, and then the universe is less likely to be destroyed."

"Iiiii think probably changing Keltham's mind about things is not actually literally impossible."

"I was trying to do it!! By every rule I know about!!"

"Yep! And still, you failing does not very strongly suggest that it's impossible."

"- you know, if you were Chelish, you would hurt me, when you said that, for being stupid, and I think I strongly prefer that."

"Too bad, kid. Look, I think convincing Keltham to take more time is a good plan. I suspect it is not actually impossible. If convincing Keltham to take more time actually requires destroying Cheliax, then yes, we should do it. But - you two talked for...about an hour and a half."

"But what if I can't convince him and then trillions of people die because I was not good enough at convincing people of true things."