"I mean, you could just assume that within the next fifty or sixty years there will be some kind of exogenous hormone solution for your insatiable craving for peanut brittle, but yeah, maybe don't gamble on it."

"There might be! The scientists will probably be less motivated now that we're under less pressure but there are still infertile people, people who really shouldn't be parents... I expect there'll be something for it eventually."

"The desire for marshmallow peeps does not come with a corresponding impulse to be especially kind to them, or it does but in a population this size it's inconsistent?"

"We have significantly lower rates of child abuse than human populations. Partially the higher desire for kids, partially the fact we pretty much don't have unplanned or unwanted kids, partially the fact you get sterilized for everything that could conceivably affect your parenting and then some. But it's not zero, no."

Nod.

"And some of those factors are going to be much less in force."

"I hope you have evolved as much as you needed to."

"Everyone else seems to get by without any eugenics."

"Eugenics is sort of a bad word on Revelation. Less than it used to be, but around when I was alive there was a lot of backlash against some rather evil attempts at it."

"Everyone else seems to get by without selectively breeding their population for diligence and law-abidingness?"

"Yes. For assorted values of 'get by' but honestly your value of it has historically been pretty assorted too."

"Just a bit. I think Anitam will grow up into a nice modern state, it'll just take some doing to get there."

"Here's hoping."

"There are going to be parties full of alts of me someday and I don't want to be the one with no country to show off. Even if the rest of them got easier problems."

"You live in a democracy."

"That's one of the things that makes it a harder problem."

"It doesn't even have a single head of state."

"Plan was to get people I could work with elected."

"I suppose that's how you corner an oligarchy."

"I really prefer it to having a president, it means that your mandate has to be stronger to do anything really disruptive and - most things our government would've thought of doing wouldn't be wise - I'm surprised Earth didn't have a problem with people electing bad presidents -"

"The judicial branch and legislative branch were separate, although a bad president could still do lots of damage. Term limits help."

"Legally speaking we can't give the courts orders, just in practice. - demon forensics are doing wonders for the corruption problem, actually -"

"And you don't have to be nearly so careful about relying on us if Amentans born in Revelation can be daeva one day."

"Yep!!! I'm so pleased that works! We can have children at a rate that astonishes and appalls everyone else and it can be a wholly good thing!"

Snort.