<If you want we could save up for you to get the ability to make magic items, and you could do that while I was doing other stuff. I think a few Elves have Yeerks to look after their bodies while they work on magical engineering full time.>

<How does that work?>

<We'd wear a ring or a necklace or something and you'd enchant it by thinking at it. They make immortality jewelry this way and universal magic contraception and a few other things.>

He's in favor of anything that results in fewer people being born and then potentially tortured for all eternity. And also things that prevent people from dying and potentially being tortured for all eternity. ...Supposedly neither of these things is actually a concern anymore, though.

<We can try to think of something that affects people who have been tortured more than my first idea, if you prefer, but I'm pretty sure Vanda Nossëo's going as fast as it can and I'm not sure there's an obvious way for one person to make it go faster.>

<Why not?>

<Because it's so big. There might be something they're waiting on more magic jewelry before they go ahead with doing, or more staff, or more something, but there'll be hundreds if not thousands or millions of people working on all those things.>

Even rescuing people a single day sooner would be something but he doesn't understand the explanation well enough to poke holes in it and anyway that seems to have been a fairly gentle indication that he should leave the whole idea alone and he has no reason to do anything other than be as convenient as possible for the people who have absolute power over him, however sour it feels to conclude that rescuing people isn't worth worrying about.

<No, it's a good idea, I just don't want to get your hopes up that it'll have a big obvious impact as opposed to slightly lowering the price of contraceptive jewelry in a way that improves the economy very slightly or frees up somebody who used to work on it for something else and probably eventually means something big happens four seconds earlier or with half a percent better certainty.>

Four seconds is enough time to rip off a fingernail.

<That’s worth a lot if there are billions of people affected but maybe not... enough to drown out everything else? I’m not sure I wouldn’t trade four more seconds for - I don’t know. Getting to spend an hour here instead of Lórien. Maybe not if - >

Maybe not if it was four seconds sampled from the worst stretch of time he’s ever been through, but he doesn’t manage to articulate that. He just - remembers, and that is the end of that train of thought.

<I'll see what the loan availability is like for buying the ability and the lessons.>

Oh yeah they were totally having a conversation about that. That is a thing they were doing. Probably that's a reasonable course of action? He doesn't have an opinion right now.

Yeah, Ashkon doesn't actually need his help to do that, nor to put on a recording of some Elf music that he is supposed to be learning for choir.

He’s not exactly excited about choir but he does like the music.

They should get to hug each other. Sure, Ashkon is arguably hugging his brain, and it’s great, but they really ought to have another physical thing to hug. Like a pillow or something.

Ashkon grabs the pillow off the bed.

!!!

Squish!

That’s amazing. He has good ideas sometimes.

It’s weird having Ashkon do exactly what he wants to do. He wants to squeeze the pillow, and he can’t, but he is. He tries to shift position to make it less uncanny but whatever, it’s not bad, it’s just weird. He’s so glad this is happening.

Askhon finds a pillow-snuggling position to continue studying in.

Meanwhile, of course, first contact is happening with a whole collection of worlds. There are a lot of hell dimensions to empty or improve, affecting an estimated thirty five billion or so humans. Most of them will be uncomplicated, as people already working in the hell rescue field in New Jerusalem and Elysium count these things - people with extensive life experience on Earth, who have been through very bad but very simple torment, sometimes people who would be fine where they are if they just had the materials to stop eating each other, sometimes people who would be fine with a free apartment and a referral to a spiritual counselor. Local resources can't handle all of those just because there are so many; if Vanda Nossëo can just offer ten billion studio apartments and conjure a few hundred tons of infrastructure and supplies then the problem isn't complicated.

Then there are the people who grew up feral. There aren't that many of them; New Jerusalem can handle them.

And then there are the people who were not merely hurt and who didn't merely fail to learn things; there are people who are loyal to demons, or who were loyal to demons and can't prove they aren't anymore, or who think everyone else might also secretly be demons, or whose ability to interact with other people peacefully is thoroughly ruined. New Jerusalem has resources for them, too. (The Bastion and the Dead Republic don't. They're welcome to immigrate once they can convincingly demonstrate that they're no longer likely to make horrible neighbors.) Most of New Jerusalem's strategy is to funnel them to an institution known as St Edith's.

A representative of St Edith's gets in touch with the diplomats from Vanda Nossëo. They're going to be swamped but they expect at worst they can keep some of the refugees unconscious for a few years. They can take the portalsnack off Vanda Nossëo's hands if need be, incidentally, not that they're suggesting that will be necessary but it's their job to offer. But really they're hoping with all the new kinds of magic on offer they'll be able to improve their procedures.

It is not at all hard to source a couple demons to make many identical-floorplan apartments in procedurally generated color schemes.

There is nonzero prior art on people who grew up feral in Vanda Nossëo - it came up in Limbo a lot back when child mortality was higher - but if New Jerusalem has a setup that works for them that's probably better.

The portalsnack decided he wanted to be a Yeerk host, according to this public list Tide puts out of who is understood to be supposed to have a Yeerk in them, so probably he doesn't need to go back but they can forward him an email. If they have any difficulty with keeping people unconscious they can work something out with the Poppy Gardens or provide stunners from Cube or something but probably they already know how to handle it at scale.

The representative of St Edith's inquires about Yeerks and then perks right up. "How many Yeerks are there? I'm thinking they're probably a cheaper way of dealing with this class of people - we can let them opt out, of course, but it'd solve so many problems."

"- well, there are millions, though a lot of them already have hosts, but, uh, not everyone wants a Yeerk."

"If they object then they're already doing better than many members of their reference class at identifying and expressing preferences, and of course even knowing whether they object gives us some information about which of them are more likely to secretly be loyal to their old masters."

"It's more of an 'affirmative consent' thing than an 'if they object' thing."