I could probably undo it for other people but that's pretty sketchy really. A general mental opacity that happens to undo it feels less so.

I like my opacity.

Bot 0.1 is running its learning algorithm now.

What's your Tinker thing exactly?

I've been summarizing as 'robotics' but it's - stuff that does stuff without me, makes its own judgment calls somehow. Kind of a bitch to figure out.

Huh. But I see why you'd have an angle on a computer that can make artifacts, once I figure out the artifact that can let it.

Yeah!

He finds a problem with the project specifications, sends her better ones. 

And someone came up with the improvement I wanted for my necklace, I'm working on that now. The actual making-the-artifacts bit takes about a year and a half, that's why I'm so eager to have computers do it.

So it's not power-based?

I'm not a cape, I'm an Elf. Back home everyone can do it. I think the only reason humans can't is because they don't have osanwë and I think there's a way to do it without osanwë. But that doesn't get us far enough on its own, because we're going to need a lot of stuff and I am not sure humans would be any good at it even if it were possible for them. If computers can do it, though, we're all set.

The "think there's a way to do it without osanwë" part is what I was looking for.

One of the artifact descriptions I commissioned is an artifact that'd let the bearer make artifacts, yeah.

That could still have been power-based in the way I meant if you had to personally make that artifact. There's a guy whose power is conferring minor Thinker and Tinker powers on other people.

I have to make that artifact in the first place because I'm presently the only one here who can do it, but once it's made then whoever has it should be able to make new ones. But I think humans might not actually be patient enough for artifact-making.

You seem really down on humans.

They've been doing the software development. Plenty of them are smart. But I might actually be the most patient person on this planet and I'm approximately the least patient Elf.

What are Elves like? I made the bot summarize that thesis that guy wrote on your language but it was all linguistics no culture or anything.

I thought the language would be enough to convince people. Elves are -

well, if our world was ending in twenty years, every single person would be devoting all their resources to that and I wouldn't have to offer to do power tests and imprison villains for the PRT in order to get the resources I need to maybe fix things. Elves are much better at doing what they think they should be doing. And much better at long-term thinking. And less flexible, and less able to endure bad conditions, and we'd cope much worse with the whole thing where you die all the time, but still. Working on this is making me really miss working with people who'd just - do the right thing, relentlessly, because it was needed and they were there.

Most people can't intimidate their way into living in a uni library, you might find yourself less relentless if you had normal resource limitations.

I'd spend less time on this if I had to live in the woods and commute somewhere ugly for internet access but I'd still spend all the time I didn't need for survival on it. But probably part of it is that we have more time left over after doing the things we need to survive. But - only part of it. There are plenty of people whose full-time duty could be figuring out how to save the world. And if you triggered the entire population of Valinor there wouldn't be a single villain among them because the whole thing is just transparently, utterly stupid.

Your classification was ambiguous before the Protectorate nudged JHU into letting you be their library elf.

Valinor has never had a violent crime, so it didn't occur to me that being in a library after hours could conceivably be regarded as threatening. I didn't go to them because if they'd decided to grandstand it would've killed me.

Most villains don't start out as violent criminals except maybe implicitly. Also, 'resisting arrest' is considered a violent crime.

Well, if someone tried to arrest Elves then there'd be an epidemic of resisting arrest in Valinor but so far everyone's been sensible enough not to do that.

I think you're misattributing people doing what you want to their wanting it for the same reasons you do.

What do you mean?