"Go in the peace of Christ, my son."

He leaves with a spring in his step that wasn't there before.

<That seemed like it helped. What a strange practice, though...>

<What’s strange about it?>

<None of the things you did were... to God? There were other humans there, not any gods, if your world-cluster even has gods which isn't obvious. The priest wasn't there at the time either. I don't relate to forgiveness in a way where it makes sense to go ask a stranger to ask an uninvolved deity to forgive me for things. I'm glad it made you feel better, though!>

<I honestly don’t care that much if God or Father Sullivan forgive me but I think I care a lot that he showed me... a way to respond to doing something wrong that’s not just about more suffering? And also isn't just ignoring it. Maybe it’s easier to pretend it’s about God because he’s not going to show up and say "oh, who cares, I deserve it" or "I hate you, nothing you do will ever be good enough and I just want you to suffer!" Only I have to wonder if I got a bad priest before or what, because now that I’ve seen that I couldn’t ever be tricked into thinking torture is a good kind of penance as long as I remember. - I think I remember God taking it personally when you hurt other people, though, I think that's in the Bible, but, you know, I'm a really awful source if you want to know about theology or morality.>

Ashkon being glad it made him feel better makes him feel all warm and fuzzy.

<I sent out some feelers to see if anyone has a memory necklace you could bother but everybody I talked to had to check with their hosts or friends and won't get back to me right away.>

<<3! Thanks. I can probably save up and buy one eventually.>

<Yeah, but then if you turn out not to like it we have to navigate selling it or returning it or something, borrowing it first seems sensible.>

<I guess.> It seems like it might be more emotionally difficult to part with it than to wait but who knows how likely he is to like it at all.

<If you'd rather wait that's fine, but they're really expensive.>

<No, I think you're right. It just might suck.>

<Yeah. Is there anything you can guess about how it might suck, like should we have something distracting lined up for right after or alternatively something relaxing to let you have space to process in?>

<I don't know. I'm worried it'll feel like losing a part of myself but maybe that's stupid because it's something I'm already missing and I'd be missing it less if I had a chance to remember things with the necklace. I would probably take notes if I trusted writing but I don't but... maybe I should trust it more or trust the necklace less, I don't know...>

<I generally trust writing but that's me.>

He remembers a suspicious number of times he's been punished for getting something wrong and discovered that he apparently misread something. Maybe that was the sleep deprivation. Maybe it wasn't. Either way, maybe things would be different now.

<The thing I'm worried about is that it could be changed or I could read it wrong. If it's the second thing, I could read it twice, but if it's the first thing, I don't what to do. There are people who can put illusions on pages - I don't know how that interacts with Allspeak, would they be able to match the language I wrote it in if they didn't speak it? I could change languages in some kind of order that only makes sense to me - and to you, though, so I guess you could do whatever - > Ashkon fucking with him is not a possibility he feels very concerned about but Ashkon being inadequately careful with his secrets seems more likely. < - oh, or maybe I could come up with a system where I write in a set of languages determined by how many different characters are in the thing I'm writing, that sounds ridiculously hard to arrange but equally hard to edit even if you know exactly how it works... I assume you don't do anything like that and just trust it anyway?>

<I think that I actually won't be able to use your chiplock, if you get one of those. But yeah, I don't do anything like that myself.>

He doesn't know enough about how those work to believe a chiplocked computer is actually trustworthy on any level - not just whether it's a real chiplock but whether that's a real thing that would really be safe - but maybe he could learn enough to believe at least that there is some kind of thing that works that way.

<One of us is being dumb but I don't know which. You're not doing something you've never really suffered for not doing, I'm trying to do something I've suffered a lot for not having done in the past... but we're not in our pasts.>

<Well, you have reason to think that the security of your writing may have changed, and I don't. But I don't think you're being dumb so much as - gradual, in how much you adjust, so that you know if you go too far you won't go very much too far. Does that make sense?>

<It makes sense. It seems like you also sort of have a reason to think that? In that you're not one of the scariest and most invasive and gaslighty people around anymore. And I guess - I hope nothing happens to you? But there was a time before anything had happened to me. I think.>

<I have an idea of what to look out for, but... I don't even write anything very sensitive.>

<Yeah.>