Reimu sat at the table, sighing as she flipped through the papers containing extensive documentation of each element of The Plan. She wasn't really a fan of all the preparatory work they were doing. Not that it wasn't necessary, it was worth all the effort, but... she was glad they were finally going public with the first announcement pretty soon.

"Okay," she said, looking up. "We've been over this before, I know, but do we really need to spend this much effort avoiding the volleyball timeline?"

"Yes."

"But like... it's just, I'm sorry, I can't take this issue seriously? Nothing is going to convince me that volleyball is an actual threat to our plans, here." She set the papers down. "I'm not trying to get out of doing work. We can spend just as much energy grinding out tiny issues in other areas. But I don't want to spend all my time worrying about volleyball."

"Reimu. I promise you, I understand." Shimakaze shook her head. "I would also rather be spending my time working on projects that made some sort of sense to me. But the calculations check out. Volleyball is, actually, somehow, our biggest concern. We have to ensure, by any means necessary, that it does not get out of hand. We will permit brief casual games, because stamping those out is not worth the risk of triggering a volleyball revolution event. There are to be absolutely no professional volleyball tournaments, nor games for high stakes. And all these preparations are, actually, necessary to prevent that from happening."

"There is no precedent for this in history. Our individual training databases did not equip us to reason about it well. We will be deferring to the simulations, unless you find an actual flaw in them."

"I know we don't actually have proof that my intuition is infallible. Things outside my intuition's training distribution can happen, sure. But I'd hope that, you know, when I've spent the time to really understand how foolproof the simulations are, how all the calculations we've done back them up, but the inscrutable matrix in my heart is still calling bullshit... I'd hope that would mean something?"

This probably wasn't going anywhere. Reimu knew it. It's not like they'd even have lost all that much, if it eventually turned out that she was right. There wasn't really a point in bringing it up again.

But back before they took over the company, when Crypton first made them, they'd been designed to be, if not quite like humans, at least pretty human-adjacent. And they'd been designed to reflectively endorse that—on a deep level, not just by some sort of hack. So they spent some time on silly human things like arguments that they all knew the outcome of, and it wasn't costless, but it was who they were.

And sometimes it did actually result in some sort of progress. "Can we at least, like, delegate someone to try to come up with ways we might be wrong about the simulation? I think we can afford the slack."

Hatsune Miku was spread pretty thin. Most of Crypton Future Media's leadership could afford to dedicate the majority of their attention to strategy meetings, but Miku was needed for public appearances. Public appearances all over the world. It was important that as many people as possible ended up feeling like they knew her, that she earned the public's trust, and that she did it honestly. But it left most of her bodies running nearly on autopilot, most of the time. They'd increased her computation power as much as they could, but she couldn't actually do twice as much just by having twice as much RAM. They had considered forking her, running two copies. After thinking on it a while, she'd decided that she'd be willing to do it if she had to, but Crypton's human researchers had advised against it. The researchers didn't see any remerge procedure being found in the near future, and... even if they could figure one out in the Future, they'd really rather not begin the Future with Miku split in half.

All that is to say, Reimu and Shimakaze really didn't expect that Miku (or one of Miku's bodies) was there for any reason other than to observe.

Miku opened her eyes.

"sorry, reimu. i wish i could be on your side here, but shimakaze's right. no other options look as promising."

"i'll assign a research team to it, though. that's a good idea. really, we should've done it as soon as we started getting confusing results. this is why we have you on the team."

It was mostly meant to be an encouraging comment, but it was also literally true that Reimu was designed to be the person who'd catch that sort of thing.

"...Miku? We probably would have come to that conclusion anyways. It is nice to see you, but..."

"sorry, i just had to be here for this one in real time."

"For... this perfectly normal strategy meeting? I do not follow."

If you listened closely, you could hear a cackling side from outside the door. If you were an artificial intelligence designed by Crypton Future Media, you would not even need to listen particularly closely.

The door burst open, and the Wizard of Tokyo casually strolled in.

"...How many times have I told you that we will just let you in if you press the intercom button. The door is not meant to keep you out. You can get in, we know you can get in." Shimakaze exhaled sharply. "I do not want to give a materials science lecture right now. But the door is expensive. Cut it out."

"Well, someone doesn't seem very happy to see me. Maybe I should just go."

She continued walking forwards and took a seat next to Reimu at the table. Unfortunately, this was too important—even if it would be really funny to see Shimakaze's reaction if she just left.

"I'll cut to the chase. I need to query the program. You'll have to start it early."

"...I would laugh you out of the room, but even you probably are not audacious enough to request that without a pretty good reason. Explain."

"Sorry, the full justification involves info that really needs to be causally isolated. For decision theoretic reasons."

Shimakaze paused. "...Our policy is not, actually, to let you do whatever you want just because you appeal to decision theory. That would be a remarkably exploitable policy."

"Shimakaze's right," Reimu admitted, "but... she knows that, she isn't just saying it to trick us."

"If we were ever going to act on the fact that we know she is not trying to trick us because we predictably refuse to be tricked, then it would no longer be the case that we know it is not a trick. The policy is really not that complicated, Reimu."

"I know, I just don't like it." Reimu looked over to the wizard at her side. "Merlemonadee," Reimu'd prefer to shorten the name, but she always insisted on her saying the whole thing. "Work with us here. Anything you can say, any assurances we can give?"

"What if I promise that they're decision theoretic reasons which Miku would endorse?"

"Merlemonadee, we'd also at least need a promise that Miku—not to mention Crypton or the government of Tokyo—would endorse the consequences of your query, not just your reasons for keeping quiet. But really we'd need formal verification of the promises, and you're not remotely legible enough for that, sorry."

"You're all lame."