"Yeah, that's kind of how it works, we just keep wanting things till we're dead."

"Yeah. Anyway my numbers aren't totally random, I have six hundred two thousand seventeen emails at the nonce address I set up for this, I've sorted through two hundred and, uh, twelve? I think? of them, and came here with a list of a hundred twenty nine people who might consider it a favor to them if we could find them Yeerks, depending on what Yeerks are like, and from what I've learned I think only about fifteen of them would actually like you. It's not just the slavery thing, I don't know how much that even helps, and maybe the next two hundred emails will actually turn out to all be from people who don't mind, and I can run things by people more exactly in case some really specific nuance actually makes them more interested than I'm guessing from their answers to the survey..." Shrug.

Shrug. Seems like a shrug kinda situation.

"I do have fifteen people, though. And probably more if you paid them. And definitely more if I'm wrong about... the way that you relate to other people, I guess? Plus all the people who pity you and wish you didn't exist and will magnanimously do you a huge favor and constantly think about what righteous martyrs they are."

"That doesn't sound much harder to tune out than hating us but it would not be my first choice if I had choices. I'm not sure how I'd pay anyone anything though."

"You, personally, have been helping me figure this out and that's worth something, and I assume in general there's technology that could be sold or people who could teach alien languages or something. What would be your first choice?"

"I'd keep this one, I like him."

"Already?"

"- I mean, I knew him well enough to impersonate him flawlessly to his intimates from the first minute, if he had any intimates and they weren't demons?"

"You don't have to keep checking things in real time for that? That's really cool!"

"I mean, I do but that happens kind of in the background automatically."

"Still cool. So I still don't really get what makes you prefer one host or another but I assume asking again in different words isn't going to help. Different question. Do you know anyone who's in a really bad situation and would be a lot better off practically anywhere else?"

"Presumably anyone else who's still in the same hell he came from?"

"Well. Yeah. We're working on that. I meant Yeerks."

"...it's not awful to be in a Pool or anything. Anyone worse off than that is probably dead. Or maybe in the process of dying but I don't know of anyone currently in the process of dying."

Oh well in THAT case the Yeerk Empire is just evil with no redeeming sympathetic motives and any good they do is a complete coincidence.

"I'm glad to hear that."

<It's not torment, that doesn't mean we don't deserve better! There are gradations other than 'hell' and 'not hell'!>

That is - fine, that's totally fair, he never previously actually had the thought that if no one was being tortured it would be better if they were watching cartoons than if they were sitting around somewhere doing nothing in particular, because that's sort of like planning what style of crown he should wear after he's personally defeated every demon in the world and declared himself king of the place he came from. It's not worth the time it takes to think of it, but... yeah, it's not wrong.

Or maybe it is - that's not reflexive and contentless, this time - isn't it supposed to be just and right that the wicked be punished?

- And he doesn't care if that's just and right. Even if it's objectively wrong to say they deserve better, there's - something there that he agrees with - he wants better for them, whatever they deserve.

He doesn't really want to be thinking about how the Yeerks in particular should get to have fun. He wants to make some stupid conversation-ending reductio about how that logic implies the same is true for humans, only he can't make that sound properly stupid and absurd. And making up something to yell at Atsinni about to satisfy his desire to be mad about the whole thing wouldn't work, either, since Atsinni would see through it.

<I think you overweight that and it annoys me.>

<I think if everyone did things the - way you'd admire - they'd all go insane or run themselves into total resource poverty trying to fix whatever the worst problem they were aware of was. Or both!>

He doubts this in the manner of someone who has never had a good example of definitely not being insane or in poverty to notice any benefits from. It sounds very self-serving.

<I bet the people who made Avatar were not even sort of trying to solve the biggest problems they were aware of and they did a cool thing we benefited from.>

Wow, that's true, Avatar represents a huge waste of effort and resources. That sucks.

"You two having a chat?"

"He is sort of trying to construct moral philosophy from a state of total agnosticism about everything except that hell is bad unless it is just in which case he is probably against it anyway but more conflicted."