"- there are circumstances under which he'd go back to trying the leg thing, depends what you want to use him for once everything's under control, but it suffices for the moment -"

"Good. I'll have her turned out of the door as soon as we have coverage of the main bar, then."

The demon is sufficiently conflicted about his body plan that no hair or limbs start falling off.

He writes the GCP - "you were right. Has come to our attention that Swan has used the Imperius on nearly everyone who has come into contact with him since arrest, believe he modified his bone structure to qualify as a wand. Can't safely contain him. Will dismiss him, wanted you to have advance notice." 

It goes in the day's conjured packets; he can hardly ask Cam for the door.

As soon as his summoner is told to dismiss him he's back in Hell with no idea what happened and there are so many circles -

Now you pause everything, Timothy observes, staring searchingly at the place where Cam is gone -

                Yeah.

If -

               I know what you want to offer, I've been listening to you lay it out in your head. 

It's not a very complicated offer. If he'd been less distracted it'd be more persuasive, maybe. If he had answers to more questions about Yeerks it definitely would, but he's going off guesswork. He asks the questions anyway, though they usually aren't answered: do most Yeerks have hosts? If all Yeerks had hosts, what would happen? What part of this do you enjoy -

And then, the offer: if you let me prevent them from pausing our worlds, I will make sure you get everything you can possibly have without doing this to people. And if you don't, and I am ever presented with a chance - I have feelings about human extinction. It's worse than just the failure of human expansion. If I had to gamble double-or-nothing I wouldn't.

               Even if you win I'm not sure the Elves would let you carry out a genocide that you committed to for reasons of game theory.

They've never actually stopped me, you know. No one really approved when I broke in and threatened to kill two people, but that's all they did, disapprove. You can be sure of me. If the opportunity ever, ever presents itself you can be entirely sure that I mean this and I will do whatever it takes to achieve it. I will find every Yeerk planet and hole them if there isn't a better way, destruction is easy and you know I'd do it -

               You're not going to get a chance.

No personal risk, and maybe you save yourself and save your people. 

                Some personal risk, what if they do forensics and learn I drew a circle -

I draw it. With a light projector. Problem solved. 

                Let me think, he says, and dresses Timothy and goes downstairs.

The Yeerks pause the running worlds, and place a stunned Miranda in a paused Hazel, and Imperius Amriac into considering herself paid for her music and agreeing to be dismissed, and corral the chip Elves.

Chip Elves suicide if they get a chance, and don't last very long even if they can't. They have to keep the wizards unconscious while their Yeerks feed lest they do accidental magic somehow, but they're otherwise dramatically more useful hosts..

He teaches Fredrick's Yeerk the Imperius; he teaches Michael's Yeerk the Imperius. He teaches his parents' Yeerks. Theodore's in Jurassic Park, and Jurassic Park is paused. Aaron and Minor and Karen seem too young to pick it up. They make a pool out back, a big one, and start a hundred thousand infant Yeerks.

Timothy lists ways things could go wrong. Once all the chip Elves from any given world are dead it starts moving again. Mingling and Midnight's Ardas might still be moving and they have sane Valar. Anyone can walk through the door, as we learned today, and that includes people who can take you. And eventually, even if it takes a very very long time, all of the summoning you'll be doing will inch along all the other worlds - we're immortal, really and truly, and if it takes Cam ten thousand years to get out he will -

         We're not going to be doing very much summoning. In ten thousand years he'll find us spread across an octillion worlds -

And spend the rest of eternity chasing you down. You're kind of optimized for Bells to hate you and they're very persistent people.

          But you think they'll assent to giving us all morph with some Vala-imposed stringencies, or whatever you're imagining -

We are going to be omnipotent. I bet we can do even better than that. But I can promise not worse than that, yeah. They'll agree. They'd agree even if being predictably the sort of people who agree wasn't helpful in this circumstance -

          I think you and your confederates do too much thinking in those terms.

- I mean, yes, there are a couple hundred million worlds in which I commit hundreds of thousands of murders because I do too much thinking in those terms. 

         And the lesson from that is -

Well. If you don't let me draw my circle, and then I get found, then I go commit a genocide. I probably won't find it very satisfying. It will have innocent collateral damage. People won't trust me again. Cam'll - understand but he won't be okay with it and he'll be even less okay with the amount of - subterfuge - I have to do to pull it off without his interfering. I will destroy most of the things I care about, render myself permanently a liability on every project I care about, and make the world worse. There are millions of me in that state, and I can very easily imagine what it's like to be like them, and they want to die, and I won't have that choice. The thing I am doing is very likely to just end up making me the instrument of unthinkable horrors. But I'm doing it. 

          You've said. I don't think we'd be very happy in morph.

Timothy is patiently, quietly curious about why. Eventually -

         It'd be lonely.

Could have Yeerks inside other Yeerks who are morphed -

        Then those ones would be happy but the morphed ones would be lonely - this is one-sided, see -

Yes, I'd noticed. If it were a species with mind-reading would that solve it?

        Might help. We also don't want to be - tamed pets -

Timothy empathizes. We can give you your own dimension and then stay out of it. There might be a way to get a godspring to only turn redmages, would Yeerks like redmages?

       I think so. Could touch the prisoner ones and see -

Don't. Everything else you've done is fixable but that - no. Don't. But even if Godspring doesn't do it we could find a way to give every Yeerk the redmage thing and then you wouldn't be lonely. The redmage thing, and osanwë, and Elf senses, and a dimension all your own with thousands of habitable planets to go explore -

        The swing back and forth between - configuring yourself to murder all of us even the children - and trying to understand us -

I think that might be a wizard-from-1802 thing. I've never seen my alts do it. I am capable of deeply and fundamentally comprehending someone and also intending to destroy them and everything they hold dear. Had to be. Was going to rule the world.

They make Yeerks into daeva, despite the fact this lets time pass. They have Minor verify that the GCP had a thousand circles out for Cam and that Cam took one and that the soul Elves in Ganymede died as intended. 

They tell the redmages that Sunset's still alive, just paused. Timothy avoids them. 

The time-pausing effect isn't guaranteed, there are a lot of worlds chained to it and it might fail to cooperate somewhere. The genderswapped Arda's moving again, with its representative dead; I think a couple of the other Ardas we intervened with late are in the same state. If you're wrong and one of them has a portal to Sanity -

         I'll take the deal if I get to keep you.

No. 

        That sort of - changes your moral high ground, you know that? You can say 'I committed to genocide to give my society a chance to stop the Yeerks', that's one thing, 'I committed to genocide to avoid personally being -'

- the instrument of the enslavement of everyone I care about - look, I can't get anywhere on the 'getting your people the best deal the multiverse can offer you' thing while I'm Yeerked.

        They can verify that it's you writing things. 

No.

        I think you're going to agree eventually.

No. 

        I want to keep you because you're interesting. You see so much of people, it's almost like you infest them and -

Timothy's first instinct is to recoil in revulsion and declare it's nothing like that. He's been trying not to have those instincts. 

        You want me to do something that might end with your powerful allies storming this place, starving me out of your head, keeping me in a can until you think it's time to discharge your promise -

Things are going to end that way no matter what, it's just a question of how soon and how many people get hurt in the interim.

        How badly do you actually want this circle? I offered. You refused -

- you could keep me until we have the superior setup. You don't have to spend any time in a pool. If we win, you can have me right up until I have a nice consenting host to transfer you to.

        You can draw your circle.

Thank you. 

Ganymede has two new residents. 

She recognizes the demon. 

The demon's never seen her before in his life but there's no soul Elves and he can't make himself a violin and he doesn't like the channel the furniture angel has the TV turned to, so he'll nod at her if she wants to walk in his direction, why not.

"- you're the one who -"

Nod.

"This is going to sound insane but - were you meaning to do it in advance or was there like a - floaty thing -"

...blink.

She starts crying. 

...does she want a hug? He can't ask but he can hold out his arms a little.

Hug - sniffle - "I still don't know what happened do you know what happened can you - help me figure out how to look it up, or - or something -"

They confiscated his wand but he can make a wand-waving gesture.

"Yes! Yes! So what happened was I took a summons to pick a couple people up from Ganymede and - then that, and then on the way back I just - stopped. Taking them back. I didn't mean to decide to do that I don't know why I decided to do that -"

Ear-point gesture?

"Yeah, they were Elves -"

Nod. Wand-wave. There's a computer, if he clicks around enough he can find Minor's channel and a Recommended link about Hazel from there.

She reads it, crying. "- was that what happened to you too you didn't answer -"

Headshake.

"Well. Thank you - I've been asking everyone - do you need anything -"