Sigh.

"So in other words, you're really sorry but you haven't learned a thing."

"In other words, the specific problem you solved was idiosyncratic to Eidolon's powers and personality, and the general problems you alluded to earlier are much more difficult to fix than you believe they are and trade off against much more important goals. The math's been done."

"I see."

"Okay, seriously, at least fix your spam filter, I'll do it for you if you let me."

"—I suppose having an AI doing it has even less false positives, doesn't it. I'm sure the Protectorate would find this option agreeable."

"It'll take longer if you don't want it to be part of Rete but I can do it either way."

"They will probably contact you soon."

"Does the fact that his list of complaints included any elements where I could get you to change your mind by saying 'okay, seriously' cause you to question your decisionmaking process at all."

"It was not the 'okay, seriously' that changed anything, it was the offer of previously unavailable resources—you are, as far as I know, the only currently living AI Tinker. Do you have more of those?"

"In general I can be asked for quotes on contract work."

"And my whole world has resources that could have stopped this."

"Your whole world is, to the best of my knowledge, completely inaccessible."

"Were you trying? When was this, were you going to greet the king with 'hi, we've been ignoring your son almost completely since he showed up but uh he's over there' or with 'oh, the prince, you just missed him, he's dying a painful death in Walled Baltimore'."

"Entertain the 'competent and with many resources' hypothesis again, please."

" - you looked into trying it as soon as I showed up, your Thinker anticipated the Valar'd be more disastrous than I'm anticipating? But then 'inaccessible' would be the wrong word... some balance gets tipped if you get interdimensional help? The person who can do portals is really important and somehow particularly untrustworthy with the information Arda exists? It couldn't be that you are competent and have many resources but don't have anyone who can read linguistics papers and accordingly didn't manage to notice I was actually from another world.

You really are lucky I didn't die, if they found you after I'd died and learned you had precogs my father would realize he should cause torturing me to death to have foreseeably been a bad solution.  And Elves whose children you've tortured to death are nicer than humans whose children you've tortured to death but they're not friendly."

"None of those hypotheses are correct, but they're in approximately the right ballpark."

"Were you going to confirm if I guessed it? If so, why not tell us?"

"The correct hypothesis is that your world is literally inaccessible, and that with the information we have the hypothesis that you have a grab-bag of powers, including language-related ones, as demonstrated by your skill with them, and made-up memories is still not that unlikely."

"Would you like more information."

"At this point I actually think it's more likely you're from another world than not."

"I hope you're not expecting me to congratulate you."

"No, I'm not. I'm apologizing and stretching the limits of what I can tell you and giving you even more blackmail material than you already had to thank you. You have as much goodwill from me as I can give. But I could not give you everything even if I wanted to, and I'm hoping you'll at least consider the possibility that there are other people doing their best out there, too, and that not every constraint of action and trust is possible for you to guess."

"I believe you that you're doing your best. Your best isn't good enough. And our best is."

"I'm afraid we'll have to disagree, then." He shakes his head. "I think none of us will get anything more out of this conversation."