He stops typing for a few seconds, hands hovering above the keyboard, then resumes. "You have acquired Master Knives's permission?" he asks, trying not to sound too hopeful. His fingers are trembling, though, and he's starting to make more typos.

"Yep!"

"And when you say I should get my affairs and research in order...?"

"Pretty sure they want their snugglybuddy to take over instead, and she's fussy about, like. Scientific progress not being lost? And isn't specialized in your thing at all."

"I see. So Ms. Marlowe wishes for a writeup of my research and then," he swallows dryly, "you will kill me?" He's still not looking at her but he's having a harder time hiding his nervousness, or anxiety, or excitement, or something.

"Yep!"

"Very well. Then I believe you may proceed. I keep detailed records of everything I have done, including my reasoning, predictions, results, and the raw data, for an eventuality such as would incapacitate me, that others may continue or improve upon my research." His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows dryly once more. "Everything should be ready." He swaps out of what he was doing to start accessing some system files that require his personal authorisation. "I will give her root access to all of my files, so that she does not need to request Master Knives's permission for them, and then—" His breath hitches. "And then I will be ready."

Morgan gives a cheerful nod.

Elsewhere, someone might notice that Conrad has been vaporized.

Nai notices. Mostly he notices the drain on his gate, notices that it's not coming from him nor Yvette, and then... closes it. Doesn't let any more matter and energy from the higher dimension go in that direction. And not long after that, the connection is severed, and Conrad is no more.

...if Zash believed in souls he'd say something like that he hoped Conrad would get some rest, now. But he supposes nonexistence is almost that, and it is what the good doctor wanted, and had wanted for decades, so. Zash will. Try not to feel sad about it.

Yvette is mostly just disturbed about the speed at which murder was conducted. She was briefly concerned that it meant that he hadn't had the time to relay his research, but she just got admin access to stuff, so. He was probably just prepared. All the time. Which on reflection is very sad. Now that he's not going to hurt anyone else, she can really properly pity him.

Yeah, he just... actually was in fact prepared to go. Zash has a minor hypothesis here that maybe Conrad was subconsciously hoping this would happen if one of his experiments hated him enough, so that it wouldn't have been his fault and he wouldn't have been directly abandoning his duties to Nai.

...they do realise that this is the guy who performed horrific experiments on Tesla and was generally a terrible person, right? Why are they trying to make Nai feel bad for him.

[we're not trying to make you feel bad for him. personally, I just do feel bad for him and I have reasons for doing so and they, you know, exist in my head]

It's much easier to deal with their sisters when they do this. They don't go and be all compelling at him.

[...if it helps, I do think Conrad was a monster, both to Tesla and to all of his human subjects]

Yvette feels a bit bad for the doctor, but not very much. She does just uncomplicatedly think he was a horrible person who did awful things and that probably fits the definition of 'monster' or something. Objectively if someone had to have a torturous existence of a hundred years in an attempt to undo his mistakes, he's probably not a bad candidate to do that suffering? Something something justice or... something ... But she also doesn't really have much of a vindictive side. If she were to take issue with Nai it'd be about keeping him alive while he was doing monstrous things instead of feeling bad for his suffering.

Uh. That was maybe not a very cuddly thought. Sorry? She's pretty sure she already yelled at him about this already, she didn't mean to belabor her point.

He is not thinking about Knives right now and he will continue not to think about Knives right now. What work can they do that does not involve Knives?

Well, out of the three main things Yvette was thinking about earlier this morning, Elendira (and Legato) are in Morgan's capable hands for the moment, Nai wants to not deal with Knives for now, so disseminating research is the main bit, right? They should—uh. Nai, if Zash thinks about the locations of Brad's team's dead drops are you going to go fuck with them.

Are they killing plants?

No.

Are they hurting plants?

No.

Is Zash very sure of this.

Yes. They are trying to figure out ways for humans to not hurt plants, same as Nai, if from a different angle.