"Total nonstarter until we have planets. Could add a clause that adequate handling of crimes against reds means the punishment for murder of a red must be the same as the punishment for murder of anyone else, and carried out reliably and immediately; might get some places to end their death penalty for manslaughter if they don't want to kill people over anti-red violence."

"...that's good enough, I suppose."

"Disease kills way more people."

"It does, but I don't have a large-scale way of eliminating that; I suppose I could run around the globe and dump a lot of health on everyone but that has the problem that since health is fuel for magic that makes it both more likely that people will develop spontaneous magic gifts and more likely that they'll have big accidents if and when they start learning sorcery."

"Dump a little health on everyone?"

"It's—not exactly visual range, it's detection range, I need to be aware of where my target is with respect to me, so I'd have to literally run around the globe—which I suppose I'm going to do anyway while looking for worlds."

"I can also ship you cancer patients, if that's an option."

"It's definitely an option, yes.—we do need to prioritise, though, I was planning on giving the greens a few more classes while we got the public announcement thing going and after that start looking for worlds."

"Yes, understood. Worlds is by far the best priority, after that I can abolish the death penalty if you really think it's important."

"...I think with sufficient magic you'll be able to severely reduce your false positive rate which removes a part of my objections to it but also you should eventually have enough resources that death penalty won't be necessary anymore and it would be a huge loss if it was kept due to inertia."

"Once we have the resources we'll try for some crime, check what it does to deterrance. Keeping people in prison for decades isn't kind either, though."

"I know, but... keeping someone in prison isn't irreversible. Death—for now—is."

"Once we have the resources we'll look into it."

Nod.

"Anything else to fix about the announcement?"

"I don't think so, it's very good. Should I show up in person in the video, with my face on it? Might attract attention when I'm walking around if so."

"You could wear a different one for the video? Since I take it you can change them more than just the gender switching."

"Yeah, I can," he nods. Then pauses. "...I've been thinking. It doesn't feel very fair that you've been so helpful and it's Governor Avalor who gets all that lifeforce and the greens who get to learn magic and—my point is, do you want some magic?"

"I would be delighted."

Here's lifeforce. So much of it.

"Your father is amongst the greens I'm teaching, he'll have a gift very soon and he can teach you how to meditate for one. But with this much lifeforce in you you might get one just from exerting yourself."

"It will not manifest in some frightening way?"

"Depends on what it is and what you mean by frightening but you'll usually understand it immediately and it's typically helpful."

"I was mostly concerned with startling someone else or exploding things or something."

"Might conceivably be startling, will almost certainly not be explosive, will certainly not be either of those things if it manifests via meditation rather than exertion. Exertion is still faster, though."

"But perhaps I should not do it on the train. Okay. Thank you."