Extra shoes, wow. They could - nope he's not going to have opinions about things. Atsinni will get whatever Atsinni wants and he doesn't need to think about it.

Well if he's going to be that cagey about his opinions Atsinni can't throw him a bone even in this situation where he totally would because it doesn't involve compromising his ability to enjoy this desirable host body! He tells the employee he's been wearing nothing but flip-flops for a while and doesn't know how you're supposed to fit regular shoes, can he help, and gets fitted, and of his original shortlist of five styles of sneaker finds one that the store guy says fits him. They're white with gray piping. He is also going to buy these neon green alternative shoelaces, why not, and get the guy to put them in for him.

He has no opinions about that. Ideally he would not even have any thoughts. He wishes he couldn't even perceive the shoes.

<I think there's a fancy trick where you don't let your host access their own senses but I super do not know how to do it.>

<You don't have to. I'm sorry.> That would be so nice. Counterpoint: all of his preferences are wrong. Whatever, it apparently doesn't matter anyway.

<Well, if I run into someone who knows how I might as well ask.>

<Thank you.>

<You're welcome.>

Atsinni is simultaneously dramatically more solicitous than anyone else he can recall ever meeting and also the most openly horrible person he can recall ever meeting and it feels weird and dissonant even though there's no real puzzle there, just the fact that everyone else was secretly horrible. That thought seems like it might bother Atsinni and he regrets having it.

<I don't think it's that complicated. I'm a Yeerk. We're in the middle of a war for the survival of our entire species. Earth and the hosts on it are an indispensable resource because without taking them we are helpless and tiny. So we can't exactly cut it out with the whole slavery thing. The Andalites will find us here eventually, or corner us on another front and backup from here will be what wins or loses the war, or some other key thing will only work if we have the hosts and the industrial base to keep going. I don't want to die, or hang out useless and blind in the Pool while all my friends contribute to making sure we still exist next year. So they gave me you and I took you. But I don't have to be any more awful about it than that. I guess I could report you as having magical powers but I don't actually think they'd figure out how they work.>

<I don't think you treat me in a way that makes you horrible. I think the fact that when we talked about it you told me you weren't trying to do what's best for everyone and you didn't seem bothered about it, the fact that you didn't want to bother doing research on how bankers live even though you could either ask a friend who's possessing one or, if you couldn't, the information would also be useful to your people, and the fact that - I don't know - maybe it's the slavery thing but I never previously had the impression that non-demons who kept slaves had to invest that much specifically in measures to prevent suicide but I don't really know anything so maybe I just didn't know that - I don't know anything about the Andalites, and maybe they'd do horrible things to everyone if you don't stop them, but you just told me about your motivation for fighting them and it's "I don't want to die" and "I don't want to be useless and blind" and - I wouldn't want to die either, in your place, but you only just found out about Hell, so I'm a lot less sympathetic - or maybe that's not it, it's not how I'd put it if I had any filter here but I don't - I don't even know that you do horrible things, I just think you want to have fun and preserve the ability of your friends in particular to keep having fun and don't really weigh anything else - I don't know, though, you're an alien and I'm not very smart. I could be completely wrong about all of this.>

<I mean, if I weighed other stuff it seems like that would really prevent me from having fun and preserving the ability of my friends in particular to keep having fun, so, I can see what you're going for but have no particular incentive to go from here to there myself. I think you're doing some weird mix of like, ethics the way I was led to expect humans sometimes do it, and also being incredibly traumatized but not in the way I was led to expect humans to do it because nobody knew about having-been-to-Hell trauma.> They are going to sit in this Barnes and Noble and look through a photography book.

He would rather not have opinions about the photography book but in fact he thinks it's great.

<You also... seem to only be worried about Hell for yourself when it's - hm - when you were telling me you didn't want to die of me talking to someone, you don't seem like you care about it enough to do research on that instead of look at photographs. I think when I try to imagine being really selfish I still imagine caring about things besides having fun.>

<I didn't want to research how it affects bankers if I make the numbers in my account go up. I kind of doubt that's even the sort of thing humans actually know.>

<Why is that in particular confusing?>

<Well, banks get more complicated with computers and stuff, they're not just, like, a place with armed guards with a pile of silver coins in it these days. There's insurance, probably. Complicated financial... instruments. Of some kind. I think if any bankers were going to notice we'd have a stricter policy about hacking, or at least we'd have prioritized taking over some banks. You can pick the next book if you want, this seems like a good store to spend the afternoon in anyway, I just don't have enough practice at reading and talking to you at the same time.>

<See if there's anything useful about - I don't know what keywords they'll want to use but I remember not being surprised to have an afterlife and I remember priests existing, so it might be possible to find information about Hell, only I guess I'm not sure how to confirm that a book wasn't actually secretly written by demons - I don't know, it would be useful if you think you'd be able to tell if it was actually wrong or something. Maybe. If you don't think you could tell then I don't really care, photography is nice.>

<Yeah, I have no idea how I'd tell if a book was written by demons. I think some humans are aware demons exist but I also think some humans are aware Skrit Na exist and neither of these groups of people is a majority.>

<Maybe the humans who are aware Skrit Na exist would know more than the humans who aren't aware of that? Or maybe not, I wouldn't know. I don't think I've heard of Skrit Na before.>

<I don't know if they go by that name among humans they abduct. Sometimes they grab people and study them and take their stuff.>

That sounds bad but then again perhaps it is good, it's not like he knows what things are bad.

<It's so frustrating that you can't just trust someone enough to ask for help. Unless maybe they wouldn't be any good at helping anyway. That would also be frustrating but not in the same way.>

<Yeah, I have friends but not ones who'd be good at this thing you're interested in or who would definitely not turn me in for keeping you secret.>

<I don't really see why you're not also interested, at least while we don't know enough to rule out options like "you totally do go to Hell but only if you die on Earth" or - I don't even know what else - there could be something simple but - > Unfortunately they have to figure everything out from first principles since his information is untrustworthy.

<Wouldn't anyone who wrote a book be someone who escaped from Hell, like you? And you don't know anything useable.>

<I don't think so? It's... hm. First of all, I think I remember there being people who had information about Heaven and Hell that came from God - but maybe I remember wrong - I just think I remember hearing something like that before dying, but maybe not - and maybe I heard it but it wasn't true - anyway. It's not just that, though...>

It's hard to put the rest into words. He has a sense that he doesn't currently have usable information but if he weren't so stupid maybe he would; he's pretty inclined to blame himself for not figuring things out sooner, and he can't do that and think a smarter person wouldn't be able to use his observations somehow, if not his inferences. But he's not wedded to the idea that there was ever any way to do better; maybe it really is impossible. Maybe it's impossible for everyone, from all vantage points, only - this thought is labeled "only I should have been better at math" (he was once taught about functions, specifically to fuck with him, taught them as pairs of values that constituted solutions for functions like 7483x^3 + 0.093y^2 without the idea of graphs ever being suggested, as an illustration of how a question could have an infinitely complex answer impossible to fit in a human mind; he doesn't think of this whole incident in detail but it could have tipped him off, if he'd just managed to think of the right things on his own) - he's reluctant to conclude that it isn't possible to know things, because he really could have been better at math, and he mostly squares that circle by thinking other people are smarter. And maybe they're smarter in ways he could learn to emulate, or maybe they're not; and maybe his memory is too distorted and spotty to be of any use to a smarter person, or maybe it isn't; but he has no reason to be certain either way.

It seems like, also, there should be other ways of getting information, since they do send people to Earth and those people do things on Earth and it might be possible to piece together, not what those people say, but what effects they have on the world. And then, Heaven might or might not also be real, might or might not also be interventionist, which might or might not mean the effects that visitors have are a wash.

If they tell different lies to different people and multiple agents get captured, what then? Do lies have to relate to truth in some kind of way - like being able to produce enough supporting evidence - that if you know ten of the lies someone's told you know something true about them? How many of their agents are even deceived in the first place?

<...I don't know. I guess I think - concluding that all the information would come from a specific source and there's no way to use that source is more certainty than I can understand having? Maybe you have a reason for it.>