<I mean, we have pretty good intel about humans and things humans know? I think if the Yeerk Empire knew Hell existed because any of the reports on it were credible that would change the strategic picture enough that I'd have heard about it. There might be something that would be credible only with the information you add to the picture but I have absolutely no idea how to find it. You were alive a long time ago, maybe everything God said has been degraded to the point of being indistinguishable from insanity among people alive today.>

<...Does the Yeerk Empire not know because all several thousand of the people possessing people with firsthand knowledge of the hereafter haven't told anyone.> Maybe not, maybe he's the only one they've ever caught, but if he's a secret then why would he expect to know about anyone else.

<That is one way the Empire could fail to know, we haven't got enough humans to be sure we'd have grabbed one. Uh, besides you. I guess maybe we have twelve and all their Yeerks are doing the same thing as me.>

<Is there a way we could signal to them that we know, without making anything clear to people who don't know?>

<May...be? I can't think of anything obvious though.>

<Me neither.> Since after all his judgment is absolutely worthless and all his ideas are bad.

<Well, you know, it seems worth doing if it's feasible so think about it if you feel like it and maybe we can come up with something that would work at all between the two of us.>

<Do you really think it's really worth me thinking about it?> He figures it isn't, since he'll just come up with whatever answer the demons would want him to come up with, but then again he doesn't trust his own judgment in thinking that, either, so if Atsinni is sure then he'll try.

<I mean, I don't know but I don't think it can hurt anything, if you come up with something stupid I just won't do it.>

Ah, to imagine that if someone proposes a stupid plan you just won't.

Maybe Atsinni just has judgment that good. Maybe almost everyone does.

<Okay. I'll try.>

Cool.

As far as Atsinni is concerned they might as well spend the whole rest of the afternoon in this Barnes and Noble, they probably shouldn't do that every day because they'll get to be recognized but they can do it today. After they have seen all the photos he grabs a randomly selected Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Ugh, he doesn't feel the need to pay attention to that.

So, ideas. Ideas. The problem with trying to come up with ideas is that he can't trust his own judgment at all - okay, not not at all, he thinks the Hell thing is more likely than not. He thinks one plus one is two; he thinks two plus three is five; he thinks a lot of really easy things like that, things that he can be sure of. There's just - no obvious way to turn that into anything useful. Not literally always, if someone said they wanted to have two scribes copy four books of equal length and wanted to divide the work evenly then there'd be mathematically grounded answer, though maybe they should do something else instead like give all the books to the faster scribe and tell the other one to figure out how to make a printing press...

When he tries to just make up things that intuitively seem like good ideas he doesn't even get relevant ideas, just ideas for ways he could maim himself and speculation on how to keep it from healing.

So how would someone smarter reason something definitely correct out from first principles? He doesn't know, he's not someone smarter. How would a version of himself who had caught on to being in Hell a lot sooner do it? They... wouldn't, there weren't any opportunities to escape, there were only opportunities to resist and -

- instead of going anywhere useful this train of thought dead-ends in a flashback. 

Atsinni puts the book back on the shelf and takes them to the nearest mall restroom. <How would you write a story about it? Or, what would you expect to come next, if someone said 'let me tell you the story of how I...'>

It takes him a minute to get from noticing that that's a very sensible question to realizing it's aimed at him and he should consider it at all. He's - not, actually, shivering or hugging himself or breathing hard, and it makes him a little calmer but also less able to parse the here and now as more relevant than his memories.

<...Good question. Um.> He's instinctively stalling for time while he drags his thoughts back onto the topic, as though if he puts up a good enough front Atsinni will somehow not notice. <So someone says 'this is the story of how I identified the secretly dead hosts' - injure them, only that's rude and cruel, don't do that. Someone who wasn't damned could pray. I don't think the saints or God or the Blessed Virgin listen to me anymore but it wouldn't be me, anyway. Those don't feel like the ends to satisfying stories but I don't think being true is what makes stories satisfying. Hmm, really in a story if it's been told a few times over I think it goes, I don't know, something like 'I went into the woods and I met a mysterious stranger who told me to solve my problems by, uh, never telling anyone I met her and bathing my new spouse in rosewater while wearing this magic scarf.' And that would cause all the Yeerks to hatch into humans. By magic. I think maybe it depends on the type of story, though. Oh, maybe the most satisfying vaguely plausible way for a story to go is that someone jokes about it, and it's obviously a joke except it's so specific that people who know it's a real phenomenon wonder but people who don't have any reason to think "my host is damned and regenerates" is more likely than "my host is a selkie and can breathe water" don't think anything of it.>

<Well, I guess I could try creating a social atmosphere where people are making jokes of the form 'my host is a selkie and can breathe water' and then come in with the damned regenerating thing. I could try praying if that might work, I guess, but I'm not clear on how you could tell they were listening in the first place let alone how you could tell they stopped.>

<They don't answer my prayers but I guess maybe they never did in the first place, and maybe they listen and laugh at me.> Oh no, he was too certain of something in the face of no evidence, even after trying so hard to realize he doesn't know anything, that's awful. Maybe he's even wrong about them not answering his prayers! Only he's pretty sure the last time he believed in anything to do with saints he was humiliatingly wrong about it! Or maybe he wasn't! Maybe he is a space alien from the planet Jupiter who appeared out of nowhere with false memories two seconds ago!

Atsinni doesn't really know what to do with that. <Well, being ignored isn't a big deal, I can try it when we're home.>

<That makes sense.> His ability to notice things that don't make sense is obviously broken, how could he be from Jupiter and have just started existing. No, wait, he's just assuming he's on Earth. And that Earth isn't part of Jupiter. The gulf between his inward reaction and what Atsinni's body is doing is making everything feel unreal and disjointed and like there are absolutely no constraints on how ideas might relate to experiences or other ideas.

<I think it'd be worse all things considered if you were piloting the autonomics, you were so nauseous in the Pool.> They are done in the bathroom and head back out into the mall. Back to the bookstore, why not, this time he grabs a YA novel with a dragon on the cover.

Those things... happen. He exists and doesn't really react to things for long enough for a reasonably quick reader to get through several pages.

Atsinni isn't that quick at it, he's in no hurry to find out what happens at the end of this honestly not very well written dragon book, but he will sit in the B&N and page through it.

After a while he gets sort of interested in it. Dragon stories are different these days. Stories are different these days, but stories about dragons are additionally different in their own specific ways.

When the store is starting to empty out toward the end of the day Atsinni buys the partially-finished dragon book and heads out to get dinner at the Rainforest Café.

The Rainforest Café is really cool.

Even though they're going to eat a bacon cheeseburger there?