Amethyst takes a deep breath, and then she says six things at once. It’s different, to do things with multiple of herselves that are directly interacting. When she was working separately, it was easy to pretend that she was still doing things in a more-or-less linear way, but now there’s no denying it. It’s a strange feeling, and she expects it to feel unsettling, but instead it just feels … easy. Right. Entirely within the scope of what she can do with the Spirit at her back. She relaxes into it, and converses.

“So what is the etiquette or conversational protocol for talking like this?”

“Oh! If you can stay in sync remotely, do you want to come on a tour of the station?”

“Since we have a bit higher bandwidth now, I think we should maybe dig into the exact nuances of what we both want other people’s lives to be like …”

“You say you’re worried that my actions with PACNA are going to cause problems — would you go into a little more detail on what you’re expecting?”

“Would you mind telling me a bit about how you actually treat Terrans once you’ve uploaded them?

“Is there anything else that you want to talk about right now?”

“How about this? I’ll tell you one of my favorite ways to manage a first-time meeting among affini, and then we can reshape it so you’re comfortable. I like to have a diverse set of connections going at once so as to minimize confusion: where one way of talking fails, the others can help to route around the difficulties. So start with the Standard Three: one pair entirely communicating with words, one pair communicating with a suitable touch-based language, one pair enjoying an activity together to create useful analogies. Throw in one pair alone to ground themselves and enjoy observing the others. And of course one pair drugging and fucking each other senseless~ It’s a great way to get to know someone for the first time, as well as get a lot of work done.”  

She blinks. Well, at least the aliens are consistent about drugging people.

“I think I am … not interested in either of us drugging the other. I am immune to most drugs, and I don’t particularly enjoy the thought of drugging you — although it would be an interesting biochemistry challenge, to try and improvise something that would affect you,” she begins, thoughtfully turning the FTL-space transfer diagram she had been working with in her fingers. On the other hand, Miss Daisy is gorgeous. Deliberately, superhumanly so, which also means she must understand at least a little what appeals to humans, even if she has different ideas about consent. She thinks about objecting on the basis that sex between aliens is likely to be difficult to do well without a lot more knowledge … but she got a bunch of magic sex powers, so, uh, almost certainly it will go fine.

“I am down for having some nice consensual sex — meaning asking for and receiving explicit, revocable consent before attempting any new particular act,” she continues. “If you’d still be interested in that, I have the suspicion that I’d quite enjoy it.”

She looks Miss Daisy up and down appreciatively.

 “Although I sort of doubt that it will be that much of a productivity booster.”

Some light seems to shift behind Daisy’s eyes as she raises her eyebrows. And the six of her say:

“Then let’s you and me go for a walk among your lovely station, and talk about the future: just what we intend to do with the terran cuties we’ve uploaded, and what our longer term plans are and how you might help.”

“Then let’s you and me start a little lesson about our language of touch; if we make progress, I’d love to chat about our respective thoughts about drugs, and if not, it’s rather fun in its own right. Some things you can say with either a thousand words or a single touch, and they’re relevant to this conversation.”

“Then let’s you and me sit back and enjoy it all, and focus on the bigger picture.”

“Then let’s you and me talk about something serious: the treatment of all the cuties in this system.”

“Then let’s you and me talk about something serious: we’re worried about causing needless suffering by your actions here. The reasons are sensitive, so before we can truly discuss them, we need to come to terms about how you’ll use the information we provide.”

“~I think you might be surprised just how productive sex can be~”.

“Sure, that seems like a good place to start,” she agrees. “What kind of assurances would you need from me in order to be comfortable sharing that information? In my home civilization, I would offer to abide by a nondisclosure agreement, and pay for insurance to cover the case of breaking it, but we don’t exactly have any financial institutions in common.”

She could say more about her reputation for trustworthiness, but Miss Daisy won’t have a frame of reference for that either.

“I’ve done some negotiations before involving sensitive data, and my preferred way is for myself and my negotiating partner to each create a copy of themselves, who then meet together in an isolated simulation. They discuss among themselves ~all the secrets~, and what they intend to do with the information, as openly and honestly as they can. Then at the end, they both have to agree to leave the simulation together. If they can’t come to an agreement, then both of them are killed.”

“A lot of times it can take a few tries to get it right. For example if there’s a few areas that the pair can’t find agreement on, they can choose to leave a message saying to avoid that area in future discussions, before killing themselves. But eventually you are able to come to know the things your partner is actually willing to share with you.”

“I have a beautiful and self-verifying design for a basic physics simulation that can serve as an appropriate meeting place, or we could use one of your own.”

Amethyst purses her lips.

“I’m definitely open to that kind of negotiation in principle,” she agrees. “But there are some practical difficulties. What have you noticed about the computational complexity of the abilities I’ve displayed?” she asks.

Because it’s no secret that she’s doing things that aren’t possible with conventional computing, if you look. Some of her Spirit-given powers have to solve NP-hard problems, or worse, just to operate.

“We’re very impressed that you were able to get PACNA on your side so quickly. It’s an art form to craft just the right sort of appeal to someone, and while in theory PACNA is “open to suggestion” as it were, as far as we can tell it’s totally infeasible to craft a suggestion that works as robustly as whatever you must have done.”

She nods. “Yes, exactly. So without giving too much away, it suffices to say that the procedure you’ve described would not actually be sufficient to carry out negotiations without me learning the details of whatever it is you would like to keep confidential. Would you accept negotiating with a close fork of mine, where the procedure would be sufficient to remain secure? We have less than a day’s worth of effective divergence, but we are not literally the same person any more.”

Thank goodness Cedar hasn’t joined up using Chaser Six When yet. She pings Cedar to ask whether she’d agree to take part in negotiations, and gets back a thumbs up.

Daisy’s core flashes and her vines shudder slightly in anticipation. If Amethyst can see the various pinhole wormholes in her core she might notice them rearranging themselves as more attention and sensation comes online.

“~That is a truly surprising thing! One of the great pleasures of this world is to encounter the truly new. It’s a “heady” feeling to be on the precipice of the unknown – I’ve felt it before, hiding parts of myself from myself and having to reinvent them, but it’s a rare treat to encounter it in the Real. I’d be delighted to learn more~ 

A ‘fork’ can be perfectly fine, as long as you include the relevant differences; a day is barely anything!”

She has been keeping an eye on the more exotic parts of Miss Daisy’s anatomy, so she does see the wormholes rearranging themselves, but she can’t read much into the significance.

She smiles. “I’m full of surprises,” she promises with a wink. “And yes, I will send my fork in with all the data I have access to, and you can discuss the mechanism I alluded to in detail in the simulation.”

She puts up a diagram of a simple secure multiparty zero-knowledge computation protocol.

“Obviously we don’t want to use one or the other person’s substrate. Will using this protocol to run your physics sim suffice?”

Daisy shares a program that implements a “Meeting Room”: It’s optimized for simulating both Affini and Human minds in accelerated time, and as part of its physics implementation it has facilities for analyzing the truthfulness of statements made as well as maintaining the “comfiness” of the participants. It’s not the kind of place where people can hurt each other; just talk, and even that with some protections in place concerning speech. The only connection between the Meeting Room and the Real is a mechanism to make statements that both must consent to; either participant is free to kill themselves at any time. It comes with various proofs attached as to its function.

“... what fascinating physics. You’ve clearly done this before,” Amethyst remarks. She quickly briefs Cedar, and then flash-fabricates a bunch of computational hardware to run her part of the room.

Cedar and Daisy find themselves in a room that does not exist in any particular physical place — not even in the way a simulation is located inside the computer that simulates it, since the room is shared between two vastly different computational substrates at different ends of the galaxy.

The ‘room’ is a raised wall on the outer surface of an Affini Core World station. The constellations of the Triangulum Galaxy burn bright, and threads of vine and metal stretch across the entire solar system; you can walk from one planet to another here, if you had enough patience. The floor is covered in throw pillows on top of bare earth. Cedar finds that she has access to the analysis software described previously; she can trace the patterns of information that flow through Daisy’s mind and determine general truthfulness and sentiment. From this perspective, Daisy’s mind seems suspiciously…. human, though there’s also a lot of more alien stuff going on too. It’s almost as if you took a few human brains and literally stitched them together on top of other even stranger things. 

Cedar looks quite a bit like Amethyst — but perhaps like a version of Amethyst rendered through a dirty glass by a less skilled painter. The resemblance is clear, but she lacks the almost weaponized beauty that her fork can bring to bear. Her mind is very nearly that of a perfectly ordinary human — the only exception is a set of algorithms that interface with her visual and motor cortices, to help her understand body language better than she would unassisted. Her extra algorithms are not nearly as thoroughly attached as Daisy’s are, but they are still part of her self concept, in the way that glasses find their way into the body plan of humans unfortunate enough to need them from childhood.

Daisy smiles. “You, I can trust.”

“First off, thanks for your efforts in trying to improve the lives of the cuties in the Terran Accord. I can tell your heart’s in the right place. You in fact remind me of myself when I was a LOT younger.”

“But we’re worried that in the end your actions might cause more harm than good. We’re already assimilating the Terran Accord as quickly as we can under necessary conditions of perfect stealth. This is all going according to a plan that has been worked out among our existing human and library florets. To go any faster or more conspicuously is to risk trillions of human lives.”

“That being said, your ability to make PACNA into your first floret is fascinating. It shouldn’t have been possible in the first place. While I’m concerned that you may not be meeting PACNA’s needs according to our standards, we might be able to, together, heal the Terran Accord faster than we could do on our own.” 

She leans back against one of the pillows and lets out a deep breath. “Whew. Alright, that’s a lot. Let me see …”

“Replying to your last point first — I’m certain that we’ll be able to heal the Terran Accord faster than we could individually. That’s the whole point of mutually beneficial trades. How about this: let’s both lay out our complete capabilities, and then see what that suggests in terms of better coordinated strategies. I’m pretty sure that we can do multiple things that you think are impossible. And while the reverse might be true too, even if it isn’t, I think you have plenty of existing local physics knowledge and industrial capacity that would be nice to have a full understanding of.”

With the software available to her, Daisy has almost as intimate a connection to Cedar as she would have with one of her florets, but read-only. Still, it’s enough to ensure she won’t be misunderstood. Though she communicates only with words (anything more ~convincing~ would be prevented by the environment), they are words that adapt to ensure that Cedar’s network comes to accurate internal representations. After some time, Cedar comes to understand: 

- The Affini are from the Triangulum galaxy. Their surroundings are a depiction of one Triangulum system that has been under Affini influence for over 1e6 years. 

- They’ve completely taken over the triangulum galaxy as the ultimate dominant force, having subsumed the other 4.8e6 sentient species present there. 

- Recently they’ve caused the lifeform that grows shortcuts between the stars (the so-called “hyperspace lines”) to reconnect with its siblings in the milky way, the culmination of a project that was started at almost the founding of the Affini compact. 

- They generally employ a strategy of watching carefully to see the overall tech capabilities of a new sophont species, and then deciding on a plan of action. 

- Humans are the first species they’ve encountered but they are currently domesticating around 30 additional species now in parallel.

- The strategy they are employing to help the Terrans is to arrive in force, rapidly disable the corporate AIs, replace them with floret-ified versions of themselves, and then shut off all other hyperspace connections into the system temporarily. 

- Then they eat everything with nanotech, carefully cataloging all details. All matter is converted into simulation cores not unlike the one they are currently in, as well as heavy industry to produce wormholes and grow more phytomatons / ships. 

- Then they revive each sophont in separate simulation “shards”, and begin rehab on the sophonts, giving each the personal attention they deserve~ 

- The closed hyperspace connections are strengthened and reconfigured to disassemble incoming arrivals and send them into cyberspace instead, and send people from digital space to realspace the other way. 

- They can’t go even faster because the stock corporate AIs will interpret it as union organizing and kill huge swaths of people, in addition to disabling the hyperspace connections. They have to be absolutely undetectable to the Terran Accord for this plan to work. 

- But if they can take over the AIs remotely using Amethyst’s power, then that simplifies things. 

- They are currently 2 days out from Canopy with the rescue fleet. 

- They have already been helping Terrans for thousands of their subjective years. She is, herself, now made of some of her favorite human florets (thus why she was selected for this mission).

- As far as they know they completely understand physics. But she’s doing things right now that sure would be easier if they were missing something.

- Their remediation strategies vary according to the needs of the sophonts they’re helping. For the Terran Accord it’s important to work quickly and stealthily to avoid disaster.

And Cedar responds with her own story, about a girl and a notebook and a powerful eldritch being from beyond space and time that wanted her to be beautiful and special in a feminine way.

She is, despite the ridiculousness of her statement, apparently telling the complete and sincere truth.

“... and so when we were figuring out what equipment she should bring, I volunteered to send a copy of my mind-state, in case she ever needed a non-upgraded fork of herself, on the condition that I would eventually be able to join up if she ever did need to instantiate me,” she finishes. “And it’s a good thing we thought of it, apparently, because it’s come in handy.”

“I don’t really know why the Spirit chose me, but a good guess might be because of some technology I had invented a few years previously — when I was younger, I noticed that there was this field that …”

And she goes on to explain the principle of operation of a fixity field projector (in rough terms), together with a brief description of how she leveraged it to remake her world.

“... and so Amethyst is pretty sure that what happened when we arrived was a form of stable vacuum decay, with the fixity field only being stable on the inside of the bubble. But the energetic favorability must be pretty high, because we think the field is propagating at near the speed of light — if you look, there’s a small but measurable amount of neutrino deflection because of the boundary effects, so you can compare the angle of change of neutrino emissions from background stars to approximate the size of the bubble at any given time.”

She takes a sip of water.

“Which means that we’re probably going to roll over this galaxy more slowly than you will, but because of the leverage principle that I was telling you about, I’m pretty sure that we’ll be able to maintain control of the area, and I don’t think you have the industrial capacity to move most of the stars out of the way before we get there.”

Cedar ticks off her mental checklist of topics.

“Okay. I’m pretty sure that’s everything about our capabilities. Now the question is how do we leverage these things to make stuff better? I think we both agree that the Terran Accord as it exists is suboptimal, but I suspect collaborating on making it better is going to require some compromise. Do you want to talk about what we would each prefer the end result look like, or start by finding some simple starting things we can both agree on?”

“Indeed~. I wonder if we can figure out a way to get the vacuum decay to propagate across wormholes. It seems like fixity fields would be an invaluable tool to help additional sophonts. But more to the point:

We both agree that the Accord needs help and that it isn’t going to help themselves, and that the current situation is untenable. 

By default, it will take us another half a year to assimilate Terran space, and there will likely be stragglers on the order of 1e5 sophonts for the next 10 years in expectation, diminishing to < 100 unhelped terrans in unusual situations such as time dilation over the next 100 years thereafter.

We have the experience treating many civilization-scale problems such as the terran accord faces, so it’s best to leave the details up to us. But if you could suborn the AIs throughout terran space all at once, prevent them from closing off their systems, we could then sweep through much more quickly, and complete assimilation of the Accord in only 1 month. You would only have to deal with about 30 AIs – they’re all connected by primitive wormholes for communication.

“I’m pretty sure the main problem with accelerating the vacuum decay across a wormhole boundary is with the interference between the boundary of the wormhole and the boundary of the decay. I think with enough power, it’s theoretically possible to stabilize, but I haven’t taken as many measurements as I would like, and you can probably calculate what would be required better than I can, with your physics knowledge. But I agree! I would love to be able to solve all your energy-generation and information-storage problems for you,” Cedar comments, before setting aside the physics discussion to focus on strategy.

Cedar flips through the notes that Amethyst left her on the Terran Accord’s size, including a PACNA-provided map of known systems.

“If we were working alone, trying to bring the Terran Accord up to Fixipelago living standards in-place, it would probably take at least a year — but that’s partly because I have high standards. If we just mass-produce FTL shuttles and try to evacuate the entire population of the Accord to the Canopy system, I think it would take 3-6 months, depending on details of how FTL engines can be optimized, and some unknowns around how the Terrans would react,” she says after a bit of thought.

“So I agree — your help would be really valuable in resolving this situation faster, with less risk, and more humane interventions. But I’m not sure that I actually think all the citizens of the Terran Accord becoming your florets is better, if you continue to use coercion. Would you, meaning all the Affini and your associated parts and organizations, be able to promise not to modify anyone without consent that meets my standards for informed consent, in exchange for my help?”

“We could make such a promise – it would have to be reviewed by the Whole, but it’s not impossible. Especially if it includes magical help from yourself for other species going forward! But it really depends on what you mean by “informed consent”. In our experience helping many species, it’s normally an incoherent concept that simply enriches the existing power structures at the expense of the powerless. What do you really mean, by your ‘standards of informed consent’?”

… wow. That is such an alien perspective. Cedar thinks about how to explain for a moment.

“Informed consent is, from my point of view, the minimum thing needed to avoid a situation where the most powerful agent ends up modifying everyone else to want what they value. Imagine for a moment that instead of getting me, you got someone who had been visited by the Spirit who didn’t value mental sanctity as much as I do. There are powers that the Spirit offered Amethyst that could fundamentally change who you are — and people with those powers are out there.”

“If you could make a timeless trade with them, what would you want them to commit to changing or not changing about your values? There are many coherent answers, but I think ‘not changing anything that I don’t, with enough understanding of the situation, want them to change’ is a particularly obvious answer that is both simple enough to be robust and computable, and simultaneously an obvious Schelling point for many kinds of vaguely-human-like agent,” Cedar explains.

“But what would you trade? Well, since this is a timeless trade, you don’t know whether you are the person who can manipulate others’ minds, or the person who might have their mind altered. So it’s simple — you can refrain from modifying people’s minds, in exchange for the expectation that this hypothetical person refrains from modifying your mind. And you’re in pretty much the same position as the hypothetical other Spirit-blessed person is with respect to the Terrans, so the deal should apply, and you should avoid making changes to them that they do not, with a full understanding of the situation, endorse.”

“And obviously there are messy details around this, because many people haven’t gone through this logic explicitly, people will defect from the bargain, etc., etc.” Cedar twists her fingers together, nervously trying to see whether her message is hitting. “But if you’re partly human, you should have access to human moral intuitions — which there’s no reason to expect are atypical of evolved species in general, although you would have more data there — and you can see that you are far less likely to be altered or enslaved if you hold yourself to that standard of behavior, even if the people in question have not thought through the logic explicitly, since the intuition I’m describing is a stable point in the evolutionary landscape.”