Cedar nods. “Yes. If they opt out, but are mistaken or circumstances change, and they would want to be alive, then I will eventually rescue them,” she agrees. “Although it may take a while.”

“Do you think that, if you yourself came to join us, and commune with us, the way Affini commune, and come to understand and love the many sophonts that we have helped, and through them come to love the ones we were too late for….”

She reaches a hand across the table, and gently holds one of Miss Daisy’s tendrils, trusting that the human gesture will be taken in the spirit that it is meant. She speaks with quiet conviction.

“Yes, absolutely. Even if we never reach any agreement, my heart is already set on their return. I do not need to swear it now, for I have already sworn it. Since the day I understood what it was, I have been the enemy of death. All my life I have worked against it. And now that I have the power, I will reach to every corner of the multiverse, and become its undoing. This I have sworn, and so it shall be.”

At this, Amethyst’s program interpreting Daisy’s mind reports some new immense shudder of activation within her. It originates from multiple locations, and seems like it would lead to a literal epileptic seizure in the human brains, but some of the stranger parts of her mind step in at the last moment and gradually suppress it. Daisy’s outward appearance does not change, other than her vines stilling for a moment. 

“... there’s a world, in the Triangulum galaxy, and a species that lived there that happened to have a religion that was, as far as we could tell, almost completely correct.” 

“They believed that the Gods were good, and loving, and only wanted what was best for them. That They had the power to give it to them. They believed that evil existed only because the Gods had not yet arrived. They were on a long journey, traveling through the sky since the beginning, and one day They would come, and all suffering would end. What mattered was loving each other and doing as best as they could until the Gods showed up. They also believed that the Gods would take the form of beautiful balls of vines and eyes, and that they would prove they were Gods by controlling the weather, healing the sick, and resurrecting the dead from all the generations that had passed before, giving them bodies that would never fail.”

Daisy adjusts the whiteboard, and it displays <Species 4642615>, a beetle-like organism that reaches their knees. 

“They had one of the most convenient biologies we’ve ever encountered. Their world was very cold, and dry, and so almost all lifeforms were adapted to prolonged stasis, through estivation or vitrification. It was their tradition to, as members of their species aged, place them in natural caves, the bottoms of which were cold enough to preserve them nearly indefinitely. In times of great need, sometimes they would dig some great hero or elder out of the cave, warm them up, and seek their council…”

“In this way, <Species 4642615> had an almost fully functional long-term memory from their earliest days. They were not vulnerable to the sorts of social illnesses you’re familiar with, they had much different ones. Sometimes they found that one of their members was too frail to continue, and when that happened their tradition was to toss them into their Sea…”

“It was miles deep, and below the water there was supercritical CO2, and below that the frozen rocky bottom. The Sea became featured prominently in their religion – they believed in a great Sea in whose smoky depths literally everything that was ever lost would reappear, restored but in stasis, waiting for someone to reach into the depths and bring it back to the surface. They called it the Sea of Lost Things…”

“When we arrived, we were celebrated as their Gods. And we found that we couldn’t deny it. Their prophecies all came true. We drained the tiny Sea of their world, and brought up everyone they had tossed in there over the millenia, and the founder of their religion got to meet their Gods, just as they had always believed they would…”

“It’s not our way to deceive others, and in time our beloved beetles joined us in our quest as caretakers of the universe, and came to learn that not all species were as fortunate as them, that in fact they were almost uniquely special, to have entered into the era of living history before inventing writing, to be able to talk with people from the stone age after inventing computers. And as they came to this understanding, the question naturally arose as to whether we were really their Gods after all, whether their prophecies applied to all lifeforms or just to themselves. They had a whole ecclesiastical debate about it. It was very cute~”

“In the end, the consensus was that their prophecies did apply to all life. In this we were greatly pleased. And they decided that we were also still their Gods, which greatly amused/annoyed us. Their reasoning was, that just as we had to travel a long way and they had to wait a long time for us to arrive, perhaps we would have to travel a long way and wait a long time before we could learn to fulfill the prophecies for everyone else. And after all, information is never truly destroyed. So there’s always hope. That was 200,000 years ago sideral, almost uncountable trillions perceptual.”

“We still have an archive of the original founder of their religion. At some point we should introduce you.”

Cedar wipes her eyes. She’s silent for a moment, digesting the story.

“... we could have vines,” is what she finally says. “If that’s something you would like, I mean. I told you about the ‘Dragon Fairy Elf Witch’ power? I would be fine with telling Amethyst to use it on you, since it only picks up traits that she would want. But it would make her, us, a little bit more like you. And I don’t know if it would give her vines, but … perhaps they were just completely correct.”

“I think they might be. It’s amazing to think about. What treasures exist in this galaxy!”

“But it’s not enough to just remember, to resurrect. It’s just the first step in the journey of growth. We bring these souls from the Sea, dare to pull the lifeline, and drag them onto this shore where we may ruin them.”

“I still think you have a lot to learn about how to actually deal with sophonts. And even with the possibility of resurrecting everyone on the table, we will not simply abandon the people of Canopy. But on the other vine, you will have backups of Canopy, so the situation is not very dire. You’re a young hive mind, and your growth is also important and something to consider. It would be a shame if you tried to grow too fast, to become too like us, and in so doing lost yourself. We have time to grow and come to understanding.

How do you want to proceed?”

She leans back and thinks, staring up at the simulated stars.

“I have an approach, which worked well enough in my origin civilization. I want to give everyone I can the freedom to make their own choices, and, once informed, trust them to make them correctly. I want to build beautiful, pleasant places, so that everyone can pick something that is better than that. I want to give the people of the Terran Accord space, to learn who they are without the pressures that the Accord puts on them. And when they have had that chance, maybe, as you say, there will be people who cannot be helped. But I’m not so sure. Too many things that I previously thought impossible aren’t, to know for certain.”

She looks down at Miss Daisy.

“Practically, I think it would be helpful if we could tell your meatspace counterpart to give Amethyst a list of every dead being you know of. We’ll get to them either way, but I think it will be easier with names. We can also negotiate something better, such as selling you resources or insurance as we build up more infrastructure, but just letting the rest of the Affini know that they can allocate resources away from Canopy is a good first step. Ideally, I would like those resources of yours that we free up not to go to things that we wouldn’t approve of.”

“And, of course, you can remain on the station for as long as you’d like as an observer, and see how people do react. How does that sound? Is there anything else that you’d want to ensure?”

“It sounds like you want to try your hand at building a new sort of lifeform here, in Canopy, one based on the world you came from and yet heavily influenced by your new powers. You are, yourself, a new species by our standards, and it’s important to let new species grow and learn, and you seem like you’ll be able to take care of yourself. If you were a Terran, you certainly wouldn’t qualify for forced Domestication, for example! And I think it would be a good learning experience for you to work directly with these Terrans. Probably not ideal for them compared to what we had planned, but as long as you have proper backups, this system is certainly a much lower priority compared to the rest of the Accord. 

… You’re very young, you know. I admire you trying to take the world on your shoulders despite that. “

She snorts at being called young. She’ll take it, from a being older than her first tool using ancestors, though.

“That sounds like a fair way to put it, given your definition of species,” she agrees.

“I suspect that you may come to find you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, to use the human turn of phrase. And I think that for some humans, they would do far better under our ministrations than with the freedom you intend to give them. And I suspect that aesthetically, you’d probably actually prefer that there be some group of Affini living here with you? How do you feel about hosting a delegation here, as a sort of ‘cultural exchange’?

…And if you find that you get in over your head, know that you can always turn to us for help, whether that’s with yourself or your cuties. We’ve done this a lot, you don’t have to take on the whole system on your own.”

“We’d be delighted to host an Affini delegation,” Cedar agrees. “And, as I think I said before, we definitely welcome suggestions about how to do things better.”

Within Daisy there is the peace of having formulated a plan, and now the only thing to do is see it through. Though she won’t herself live to see it, she long ago stopped caring about such silly concerns. The stone is thrown, the flower grows, the galaxy spins; everything always moves according to the forces that act upon it. 

“Oh, and I think that you should also DFEW the hyperspace corridor lifeform too. It communicates using gravity waves~!” 

Soon, she will understand. 

They will have her in one year.

Cedar mentally reshuffles her thoughts.

“So … let me see. We’re agreed on working to help those who have been lost, but that is more of a long-term goal. And we agreed on passing some information about the residents of Canopy, but that’s very short term. I’m worried about the medium-term,” she begins. It’s important to occasionally remind people that they’ve agreed with you in the past, before you press them for another decision. And maybe that isn’t true with Miss Daisy, but they’ve really been communicating in a very human register, so she’s just going for it.

“Specifically — how you’re going to deal with the rest of the Terrans. Agreeing to let us handle the ones here is a good start, but obviously we’re not just concerned with the people we happened to land near. You were reluctant earlier, when I pressed for you to fully adopt our standards for consent. I still think we can provide enough value to make that worth it for you, but what can I offer you to get you to moderate your approach?”

“Our whole operation with the Terrans, thus far, has been predicated on the idea that we can’t recover the ones that are lost before we can help them. Your powers change that, not only here, but everywhere. We’re now playing a quite different game, and one that works best with your cooperation.”

“The main issue now is no longer the loss of our cuties, but avoiding unnecessary suffering.”

Cedar taps her chin in thought.

“This may not actually be more efficient than your existing nanomachines, but I can produce arbitrary quantities of antimatter. That does mean that it might take a while to finish recovering everyone, though.”

!? This conversation had been going so well but now if feels like she’s been, to use the Accord metaphor,  ‘T-boned’ by Amethyst’s Sudden Unexpected Bloodlust. 

Which, admittedly, isn’t that unexpected – it’s disturbingly common during talks like this for the Other to be entirely reasonable about general improvement, only to bring up how things would be also be generally improved if only the Affini would destroy Those Other Bad Members of their own species. Perhaps it’s something like that, with here already perceiving the rest of the Accord other than Canopy to be her enemy? 

She peers into this creature’s mind, wondering at the meaning of her statement, and then it clicks. She means that the Terrans could simply be obliterated entirely right now, then restored from her apparently supernatural backup process… 

“Ah, I see. I am still not quite accustomed to thinking along those terms. You propose to prune the real in atomic fire, then carefully restore our cuties into a life of joy, with no chance for further death throes from the Accord?” 

Part of her looks at the other parts of her, gathers the previous train of disapproving thought, and disperses it from the memory of the whole. There’s no sense in keeping around false, mistaken conclusions, after they’ve been proven wrong. It’s just good hygiene. 

She nods. “Yes, it seemed like an obvious solution to me,” she agrees. “The downsides are that it will take time, might be hard to explain as a course of action to the version of you that remains outside, and looks hostile to any other aliens who are watching us. The upside is that it means an immediate end to Terran suffering, with the possibility of dedicating as many resources in the future to them as they need.”

And that, implicitly, it will return all the Terrans within Amethyst’s control, where she can give them a choice before handing them over to the Affini. She doesn’t say that part, but Miss Daisy might be able to see the thought occur to her anyway.

Daisy smiles.

“It would be SO convenient to clear up this whole Terran campaign ahead of schedule, and your method also seems to be generalizable for future encounters as well! I know it would have meant a lot to some of us, to be able to skip the depredations of the Accord while we tiptoe around their corporate AIs.” 

“If we could accelerate the propagation of your fixity fields, perhaps by using wormholes or other metric manipulations, might it be easier to simply blanket the Accord’s space in these fields and proceed from there?”

“That’s a reasonable question. The constraint on fixity fields is that it requires a lot of energy to fabricate the crystals, proportional to volume. But the radius of the projected field scales with the volume as well. So depending on exactly what you can do with metric manipulation, it is at least plausible that we could cover all of Terran space very quickly,” she explains.

“Using only our own energy generation, we will have fixity projectors with a radius of several tens of kilometers within a few hours. After that, growth slows down for a while as we transition production methods, and then accelerates again because of exponentiation. With additional energy inputs, we could potentially scale up faster. What kind and number of pinhole wormholes might you be able to produce? Conceivably a single fixity crystal could cover a very large area with enough wormholes.”

“We already have quite a lot of antimatter available to us, produced the ‘old-fashioned’ way. And wormholes are easy to make, though from what I’ve seen you appear don’t seem to have efficient methods currently. That’s why I thought you might like integrating the distinctiveness of the wormhole entity into yourself – it really has quite remarkable abilities at spatial manipulation.” 

“Yes — we have researched some of the basic principles behind spatial manipulation, but aren’t at the point of being able to create wormholes,” Cedar confirms. “At least, not stable ones.”

She really likes the idea of DFEWing something that has native graviception and spatial manipulation.

“How aware is the wormhole entity?” she asks. “Is it a person?”

“We think that this kind of life evolved in the very early universe, when local conditions were vastly different and there was much less spatial inflation. Perhaps such metric-based life was once intelligent – our models indicate it was briefly possible almost everywhere in the universe – but inflation essentially ripped whatever more complex lifeforms they once were apart. The ones in this galaxy are not intelligent. The one in the Triangulum galaxy, naturally, is now a full Affini. Perhaps with your powers we can one day gaze into the past and uncover what they once were.”

Her first instinctive feeling is one of sadness, for the idea of a universe-spanning empire of beings made of space itself now lost, but she pushes the feeling down. The correct response is one of joy — now that she knows to go looking for them, they will be found.

“In that case, I think obtaining some powers from the wormhole entities here would be a wonderful idea,” Cedar agrees. “I would definitely want to include that information in one of our messages out, if we can work it into our terms.”

“If we go with your plan to euthanize and then revive the Accord under controlled conditions, what sort of bottleneck does this present? As I understand it, you need a personal connection with a sophont before you can revive them?”