Zazi shows up next, this time just coalescing from their incoming bugs on a stool rather than doing it out of sight and walking into the room. "You're causing a stir with everyone on the compound, huh?"

"Apparently!!" she snorts. "Almost like having a human around to give their perspective changes things. Instead of it just being fucking Conrad as the sole representative of my entire species."

"Why don't you like him?" they ask, sounding curious. "They've all killed. Elendira likes playing with her prey, Mr. Knives might be in the tens of thousands, and Dr. Conrad is trying to do something good."

"Mm. A fair question. There are a couple of reasons, the first of which is that I understand him better, so there's actual meat for my contempt to sink its teeth into. I've got a lot more experience encountering very smart men who do very brilliant things that nonetheless absolutely miss the fucking point, over, like. All of the rest of this. If I don't understand something I will default to thinking the best of them. The second is that Conrad himself is pretty clearly the cause of a lot of the other murder happening. He made Elendira, right? That's the only thing that makes sense."

"Yeah! He couldn't figure out how to turn humans into plant hybrids so he made one from scratch, by cloning."

"Right. Which on paper is fine, and for the good of sapients flourishing everywhere." She taps her fingers on the table. "But look at the follow through, and the results. She is unique. Alone. He clearly didn't consider the psychological ramifications of this, or try to compensate for them in any way. Block is checked, he advanced scientific progress," she says this in a sort of mocking voice.

"But when it comes to trying to help a beautiful and vulnerable brand new person that he created? To help her acclimatize and succeed and be happy? Jack shit. Absolutely nothing. Onto the next scientific breakthrough for his glorious goddamned mission." She scoffs. "And he's had over a hundred years!! He's still like this!! He hasn't learned!! He has the results of his work in ashes around his feet and he still keeps marching on like there will somehow be a light at the end of the tunnel, if he just keeps doing the exact same thing. That he has always been doing."

"He wants to die, you know," Zazi says conversationally. "He's wanted to die for a long, long time. Mr. Knives won't let him, not until his plan is complete. So he's been trying to get the plan to be complete as efficiently as he can.

"Does that change anything?"

"Not really, no. It makes him more pitiable. I feel sorry for him. But does it change a damn thing in the destruction and pain he's caused, continues to cause, will cause in the future if no one stops him? No. I don't care that he feels bad about himself. I care that he's doing evil and causing harm. So it doesn't really change anything."

"So we're still confused by why you don't feel that way about Mr. Knives and Elendira."

"Also fair," she agrees, a little amused. "And, to be clear, I don't like the horrible death, want it to stop, and will and am taking steps to make that happen. But the difference is, mm, entrenchment in pattern, I suppose. They haven't... really been challenged on their worldviews. I seem to just actually be the first thing that has managed to poke them and get them to maybe start reassessing things. Nai has been surrounded by plants that are very sweet and well meaning but also genuinely terrible at protecting themselves. Elendira is alone and unique in a compound with a bunch of crazy people, none of which are paying her the slightest bit of attention, which is an awful thing to do to someone. It's the difference of... someone that has been tested a thousand times and found wanting, acknowledges that, and is still trying the same stupid thing anyway, versus someone that... hasn't had anything to challenge them ever, and is just that way because there's never been any real reason to change. Does that makes sense?"

"Hmmmm... An interesting perspective. We suppose you'll change your mind if Mr. Knives never gives up on his plan, huh?"

"I probably will, but I doubt I will ever feel as much.... contempt and rage and disgust with Nai as I do with Conrad. Nai wants to rip the support network out from under all of humanity because he's of the opinion we don't deserve it. Conrad plays with people and releases monsters onto the world and clearly stops giving a damn once they are out of his lab and no longer his problem. One results in a lot more death, yes, but the other is a thought pattern that I fundamentally disagree with, and cannot ever reconcile with. And, you know, leads to a lot of other shit going wrong. It is a... discrete problem with a set and fixed cost, versus one that just. Keeps growing and making more like some kind of cancer."

"Makes seeeeense. You're an interesting one, aren'tcha? We're glad we brought you here to kick the hive. ...did that one go through, we don't know if you know about Old Earth bugs."

“It didn’t, sorry, they had hives? That’s a really good one then, just I don’t know enough history to get it. Anyway, thank you. I’m flattered.”

"We'll have to tell you all about Earth bugs, there were so many different types. We've been debating branching off into other types ourselves, so many ideas, but we haven't been able to reach enough of a consensus... Well, at least nearby. Maybe there are some of us who're doing it on the other side of the planet."

“Aw. Sure, I'd love to hear all about Earth bugs. Though since I've finished caring for my fragile physical form I should head back to work, so it'll have to be later. Maybe during math lessons." Up she gets, and back to the plant room. "Would you rather we humans officially called you bugs instead of worms?"

They shrug. "Eh. Don't care." And off go the bugs, dispersing and flying through the doorway as they leave.

"Okay. Bye, Zazi."

And then back to work!! It's much less exciting than normal because she's doing comparatively boring work instead of fun problem solving but it's still nice. And she can get cuddles while working!!

Nai continued to work on his not-exactly-graphs while she was eating and he doesn't say anything to her when she walks back in, just gets physically attached to her and then goes back to those.

This elicits an amused giggle, because it's very cute. She keeps finding the terrifying things that kill humans and don't think they matter cute, it's maybe a little bit alarming.

Oh well! Back to work.

A few hours later he stops, putting his graphs down, and says, "Okay."

"Mm?"

She's going to need a bit for her brain to get unstuck from what it was doing, if he could just gently lead her through his logic and what he's about to do that would be great.

"I think I know how to explain better, now. What I was saying earlier."

"Oh! Okay." Tap tap tap write in this last little bit on her paper copy okay she's good. "Yes, go on."

It's still really difficult to convey, because English is in fact not set up to be able to handle a direct interface between concepts like what he's used to. Plants aren't good at sequential reasoning and they are extra not good at abstract concepts but they are excellent at very precisely delineating the way things are alike or unalike. He can't be this precise, here, so he has to try to make do with various comparisons, and whenever the set of existing comparisons doesn't cover something or Yvette asks a question that implies some inference that isn't valid, he has a new comparison to point to.

There exists a person who was named Nai. There are some things that are always true of this person. This person is introverted, has a systematising way of dealing with problems, is very dutiful and diligent, has a strong sense of right and wrong, wishes to help those who can't help themselves. And those ways that person is can be honed and redirected in many different ways. Nai's relationship with his self-concept is somewhat skew to how most humans do it; he's immortal, and it would be absurd to assume he is just going to be the same person forever, "forever" is just too long a time for someone to stay the same. So whatever person he is at a given time is, in a certain sense, an "implementation" of that kernel of personhood. There is a Nai-template, and there are many Nais that would fit that template.

The Nai he is right now is... not a Nai he likes very much. He liked the Nai he was aboard the ship a lot more than he likes the current Nai. But he built the current Nai for a reason, he created this implementation of his self because that is what he needed to be. He needed to be a blade, sharp and cold and uncaring and most of all singlemindedly focused on his objectives. And while he is being this Nai, people have called him Knives. The Nai he currently is is a weapon, is a blade, is knives. But that is only one version of all Nais he could probably be, and it's a version of him that he will get rid of as soon as he can. He doesn't want to be a blade. He doesn't want to monomaniacally focus on his one goal to the exclusion of all others, to cut through everything extraneous and unnecessary and good so that he can get what he wants, what he needs. The Nai he is, right now, is a Nai he needs to be, as a tool to save his sisters.

His sisters are meant to be eternal. They could live forever, like him. They have the means to. And humans hurt them and hurt them, torture them until all they can do is scream, suck them dry until they're mere husks and then consume those husks to feed their neverending hunger. He might've felt differently, were they just being killed, but they're not, they're being hurt, they're being used like objects. So he is the blade that will cut off the parasites that are draining the life out of his sisters so that they can heal.