She’s going to strangle him. She’s going to figure out how to manifest her grandparent’s space powers through this radio and strangle him.

… no. No, that’s not helpful. He isn’t her enemy, no more than the Affini are. They just have different perspectives, and they need to find the common ground that exists between them.

She takes a deep breath, with 600 lungs, and … and she looks deep into her heart, to understand where he’s coming from.

He is … terrified. Terrified of the idea of anyone having unchecked power over him — or perhaps just power over him, period. His default reaction is to scramble madly for an upper hand, and he finds it incredibly galling that he can’t see how to do that with her. He has been dealing with the slow menace of the Affini for years — and now she is presenting him with exactly the same feelings of helplessness and despair, but presented to him suddenly and without warning, in the heart of his power, where he thought he was safe.

It’s sad.

Not pitiable, not aggravating, just … sad. She’s here to help, but she won’t be able to help him, because she’s exactly the thing he needs help dealing with. It is … painfully obvious, now, why the Notebook chose her particular form. Would he have been able to accept help from her? Maybe not, but at least he could have shut her in a drawer.

She can’t regret being powerful. Being powerful means being able to do more to help, almost by definition. But … not always. The improvement is not monotonic. And she can’t help him.

Can she at least get him to understand that she really does want to help everyone else?

Maybe.

She searches her heart for the words.

The first thing is … he wants to lash out. He can’t really hurt anyone here permanently — she is going to get back anyone who is lost. But it would be better if everyone could stay with their existing friends and not suffer through the disorientation of that.

The thing she really needs is to apologize. Can she do that, and mean it? She’s been honest this whole time, and that honesty is important to her. It’s part of her integrity, that when she says something it’s within the bounds of truth she’s set for herself.

And is she sorry? She’s not sorry for coming here to rescue the Terrans. And, ultimately, she’s not particularly sorry that he’s upset. But. She is sorry that she assumed that anyone at the top of the Accord’s system would be worth bulldozing over, that she came in here with too much force. She’s still going to accomplish her goals of rescuing all the people trapped in this horrible system — but she can regret not doing it with more finesse.

The first time she took over a solar system, she rubbed some feathers the wrong way as well. But at the time, she told herself that it was all for the best. And for the most part it was. She’s done this twice now, though, and both times immediately regretted her approach.

Next time, she wants to do better.

“I’m sorry, Supreme Commander Winkler.”

She’s not sure why she’s calling him that — she didn’t even know his name — but the words feel right. It’s a strange feeling, to speak from the heart, and not know what she’s going to say until she says it.

“I came into this situation feeling like it was an emergency. The Terran Accord has lived like this for years, of course, but there are so many people suffering that even a slight delay … I arrived in this universe a few hours ago, and the very first thing I ran into was an obstructionist bureaucrat of a program that was purposefully torturing people.”

“So I hope you can forgive me for moving with what was, in retrospect, too much force and not enough communication. I still deeply believe that the people of the Terran Accord are currently in need of rescue. From the Affini, yes, but more so from the Accord itself. I did not expect to find someone involved at the higher levels who actually cares about people.”

“Because … you care. I can see that now. You care about your citizens, and about the Accord itself, even though it looks terribly flawed to me. You can see it’s a mess, which is rare in people born into power, and you think it’s yours to fix. I thought that nobody cared because it looked like the system was simultaneously broken and still at least somewhat under the control of the Executives. But speaking to you, I can tell that you have been trying, and there’s just been too much to handle on your own. You’ve been dealing with a lot, I can tell. I’m surprised and pleased to find someone like you at the top, here, because frankly I was expecting a self-absorbed, pampered egoist myopically obsessed with preserving their power — and you are very much not that.”

“I don’t regret coming here to help your people, and I cannot promise to leave until I’m confident that each one of them will have the free choice to leave for somewhere better. But I do regret that by rushing in, I’ve put you in this position. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish that I had been a bit less forceful with FRIGOMEK, as well. It hasn’t been permanently harmed in any way — most of its thought processes are actually unaffected — but I did apply a larger diff to its mental state than was actually necessary. And that’s a mistake that I will make very sure not to repeat, because that’s not the kind of person I am.”

“So I’m not going to leave — but I am going to listen. This is the second time that I’ve made a major change to a civilization’s circumstances, and the first time I’ve been confronted with such a serious emergency. But I know it won’t be the last, and I want to do better next time. If, after I’ve done the things I came here to do, a majority of people actually think they’re worse off, or wish I hadn’t come, I will consider that a serious mistake and completely rethink my approach to future rescues. But even if people are only somewhat upset, that still points to places I can do better if I know to focus there. So please, help me do better.”

“You’ve been trying to help people here for years. What are the biggest ongoing issues? Other than invasion by the Affini; I have a solid plan for that. What were you already working on that I can support you in? What would you have done differently in my position?”

And when she has finished saying the words — words that come from her heart, but that she would have never known to say — she can only hope that she’s gotten through to him and he understands where she’s coming from.