<Do you want me to go back in the pool for a bit...?>

That sounds horrible but so does just going about Ashkon's life. And then on the gripping hand -

<I don’t want you to base that decision on how I feel about it. I’m a horrible person and you don’t deserve to suffer for that.>

<I don't think you're a horrible person.>

The last time he got off it was because he had the leeway to slip away ostensibly to use the toilet, because he'd been allowed all the water he wanted, and it was because someone he'd been assigned to help teach had burst into tears and he felt something about that other than guilt or grief or even the grim determination to do what he'd been convinced needed to be done.

That's not even it, really. What's worse is that he knew even at the time that part of what he was trying to do was break wills, but they told him it was what had to be done to make people fit for Heaven and he so desperately wanted no one to ever be tortured - that's not it either. That's practically sympathetic.

He believed them. He loved them. He would pass untold days or weeks alone and in pain and then finally one of them would come for him and he'd be so desperately grateful to see them, so absolutely delighted that they deigned to pay attention to him at all. He was devoted to them. Of course he did whatever they wanted.

He's been telling everyone they were good at what they did, but they were barely competent. He's been telling himself that they were good at what they did, and that it was hard to figure out that they were lying - and that's not even wrong, it was hard to figure out that they were lying, but it shouldn't have taken knowing that.

Maybe he has the wrong definition of "horrible".

<I mean... that was pretty horrible. But I don't think it... reflects on you as you are now, very much, that you could be driven to that.>

But not because he's any better. Just because now the masters he adores and wouldn't dream of questioning happen to be kinder.

<Do you think you'd do - I'm sorry, is asking that the kind of thing that gives people nightmares?>

<I don't think I can have nightmares, at least not if I keep being a Yeerk.

I haven't really thought about what I'd do in Hell but sometimes I think about what it would have been like if I'd grown up during the Yeerk Empire.>

He's curious about that.

<The only way to do anything was to take whatever host you got assigned. Nobody could be very picky. There were a few consenting hosts... sort of... if you can be consenting once you'll be killed if you try to leave for fear you'd tell somebody. And then if you had a host you were in the military, there weren't civilian jobs basically at all. So even trying to amuse yourself in the Pool wound up propping up the whole thing. There was a movement to end all that... Ristrell's, she was a leading figure in it. But only a tiny percentage were in it. I don't think I'm that special. I definitely wouldn't have the idea myself and I doubt I'd have wound up looking like somebody they should bring in.>

He can see how that would annoy people who wanted to do something else with their lives. The Yeerks do seem like they’d be pretty decent as slaveowners go - maybe slavery is just always bad, though.

<I’m sorry. Why don’t you think you’d have the idea yourself?>

<Because almost nobody did. I'm not a particularly original ethical thinker.>

That seems like a particularly useless fault analysis that can’t possibly help with becoming someone who would do better.

But maybe Ashkon also doesn’t really have enough power or understand enough to be a moral agent. That would kind of suck but if it’s true then there’s nothing to be done about it.

<I can't quite wrap myself around how you think about morality and agency. I could probably generate words about it if I were trying to impersonate you but it doesn't make sense to me.>

<It's just - never mind.> Probably there's nothing he can say that would help. <What would you say if you were trying to impersonate me? About that or anything, really.>

<In what situation?>

Well, he sure has a stunning variety of great past experiences that he definitely wants to suggest Ashkon imagine having to live through. And then there are a few very specific situations where he remembers his exact actions, like the one and only time he's tried to make smalltalk with a neighbor on the balcony. Hmm.

<How would you panhandle as me?> This is an interesting one because his old strategy would just not work anymore. Thanks, Missut.

<If I imagine... uh... showing up back in the park, with you, like you never left in the first place except for how I'm there and you have all your body parts... and then I needed to pretend I was you but couldn't instead hide from you or do something other than panhandling... then I guess I'd make one of those cardboard signs. Probably just 'please help', most of the other things you could put on one would be lies.>

<...Would I go with "please help"? I guess there's nothing obviously better.> Snark would previously have clashed with the Tiny Tim vibe he was cultivating before and it might be sort of interesting to try it but he doesn't actually have ideas for that. <"Need gross sludge to irradiate slug friend"... probably not a good idea.> (Obviously most of the proceeds would go to Ashkon. There's only so much he could spend on black coffee and Pete isn't there anymore.)

<I think you would, at least to iterate from.>

<If I bothered to try anything but I guess I did specify that.> He could also just lie down and give up. It’s not like he’s any use to anyone other than Ashkon and this hypothetical specifies that they’re hiding how he’s useful to Ashkon.

<If I weren't hiding quite so much I think we could maybe figure out some kind of day laborer situation.>

<I thought you needed an address to get a real job in America.>

<I have a friend whose host was an undocumented immigrant in America and managed to do work and get paid for it but I don't know exactly how it worked.>

Imaginary shrug.

<They offered to let me borrow her for a look at what a more baseline sort of human is like, but I wanted to check with you first.>