Move 2.4b Recap

The team discusses how to handle Jedao.

An agenda and Ione's powers

Seyli thanks Sasha for remembering they prefer to avoid alcohol while on duty, then blurts, "I don't like any of this, you all know that. I don't trust him farther than I can throw him. I know I'm not the smartest person on this ship, but I am...was...Kel, and think I've earned my fear of him." Sasha nods at Seyli; Reshad murmurs, "I want to discuss this."

Sasha presents her agenda for the team: "We are going to toast to a successful enterprise, because we have achieved our objective smoothly, and learned even more than we had hoped, due to your coordinated action. Next we are going to discuss the strategic recommendations we will make to Ashari, regarding our guest. In particular, will we tell him about the moths, or will we wait until we can consult with them? Finally, we will address Seyli's specific question, about the security restrictions to place on Jedao, once our strategic plan is clear." She toasts, "So. To a successful enterprise!" knocking the shot of arak back and letting the glass clink on the table. She then asks the team members "who spoke directly to Jedao" about their "assessment" of the conversation.

Ione says that though she "did very little speaking," she was able to sense many of Jedao's emotions: "He wasn't throwing strong, viscerally negative feelings to hurt me or put me off my game. He didn't know what I was sensing, though he may have picked up on something at this point. But, I mean, I can tell when people are faking disruptive emotions in order to put me on the wrong path or get me out of a room and this wasn't that." She expands, "I wasn't probing because I need skin-to-skin contact for that, so what I've got is choppy, but he mentioned being blackmailed, and that person sounds like a much bigger concern than Jedao himself. I mean, verbally we picked up on that but also emotionally, I thought I was going to be sick for a second, without skin contact." She believes Jedao "hopes that we are the answer to an impossible problem, and maybe we are. Which means he'll be much more inclined to work with us than against us, especially if ... I caught almost a fear of something that might happen, not something that had happened. So my educated guess is if we can help him out of a path he might otherwise be stuck taking, he'll help us as well."

Sasha is disconcerted to learn that Ione's empathy does not always require touch. She asks, "Can you give us some background on the emotions you can detect without touching someone? Is there some baseline required intensity? How do you deal with conflicting impulses, or layers? How much contextual information do you need for interpretation?" Ione explains, "Anything I'd notice without touching someone has to be overpowering for that person. Of course my usual comparison is angry telekinetics, which doesn't help here -- if it's bothering me without being deliberately looked for it needs to be pretty much the only thing that person's feeling. Blinding rage, primal fear, that kind of thing? I have very strong shields that even I can't deactivate, so it takes intense and focused emotion to get through them." Sasha curls her fingers, instructing the grid to record the phrase "angry telekinetics" so she can research it later.

Ione adds that she only understood the context of Jedao's reaction because she was listening to the conversation at the same time: "Emotions alone are junk data." Moreover, "But -- if something's got layers to it it probably isn't strong enough. Conflicting impulses just overlay each other so it's not hard to separate them out; a conflicting impulse by itself is a relatively strong feeling? Usually not strong enough though. It's because of the nature of the situation that I think Jedao projected so much. More than I was prepared for or expecting. I'd have worried it was intentionally amplified for me to sway me to his side if I had any reason to believe he knew anything at all about me."

Shuos and Rahal perceptions of Jedao

Sasha sums up, "So Jedao is terrified of this contact whose name he didn't give us. Sulen, Virmad, Gerae--does that match your reading?" Virmad assents, glancing at Sulen and Gerae. "His signifiers indicated some uncertainty about our intentions — understandably, I think — but few about his own: he seems to be earnestly and surprisingly honestly committed to ending the -archate. He was fluctuating between a few signifiers; only the Immolation Fox worries me, but we knew already that he had...unpredictable tendencies." A bit nervous about speculating, Virmad adds that "reading between the lines," and using information about Jedao's signifiers, he believes that "this ‘co-conspirator’ who's blackmailing" Jedao "may be the one responsible" for the events that transpired in the team's timeline at Hellspin Fortress. "Or, rather, that Jedao did what he did on his co-conspirator's orders. Not exactly a strong character recommendation, but if it's true it would alleviate some of our concerns about Jedao's reliability."

Gerae says he wants to know if drugging Jedao "affected his emotional stability": "It was subtle, but he seemed to have a hand tremor that he was trying to disguise." Ione is confused: "Stability? No, just lability, and only during the first hour or so - wait, what? No, if anything it would treat a hand tremor." Sasha asks the grid to play back its footage of Jedao's hands during the interview. As the recording begins, Reshad says, "That's not a tremor. It's Shuos sign language. That was 'heptarch's orders?' If you turn the camera to me, you can spot the other half of the conversation. I thought it would be useful to approach the interrogation on multiple levels."

Sasha instructs the grid to display Reshad's hands during the same time period on another screen, and asks Reshad to summarize her signed conversation with Jedao. She thinks the sign must be what Reshad had wanted to ask earlier, and wonders why Reshad didn't discuss this plan with Sulen. Reshad says the silent conversation "was short, and parallel to the spoken conversation. He asked me if I was there on heptarch's orders, and wanted to know my era of origin. I told him, and mentioned 'hexarchs' just before the Rahal did so. It could barely have gone better." She adds that Jedao "mentioned that his co-conspirator is Nirai," and at the end, "He said, 'my life is in your hands.' I took it as surrender."

Methods of immortality

Sasha wonders whether Jedao meant that his life was in the team's hands, or was specifically speaking to Reshad. She tells her, "Thank you. I believe I mentioned, Jedao has been corresponding with an anonymous Nirai. There is a draft of a message protesting the collateral damage from an experimental weapon design, but he never sent it. We'll want confirmation, but I expect Jedao's correspondent and this co-conspirator are identical." Addressing the whole team, she asks, "Are our adversaries cooperating with each other?" On the one hand, "Jedao's co-conspirator" was "interested in the rifts" and "Jedao believes he is undying." On the other hand, "We know that Quill wanted to eliminate Jedao, or at very least keep him from all knowledge of the rifts. Might these be related? What evidence would we need to confirm or disprove this hypothesis?"

Alaric asks, "Do we know how this co-conspirator is undying? I'm assuming from context it's not just some simple biological trick to prevent senescence. Anagathic drugs or medical micro-machines are a dime a dozen, but methods of stopping violent death - reliably - is a lot harder and usually involves some sort of exotic effect." Sasha says, "Jedao says he killed him, and it didn't stick. Remi thought it was an exotic effect, too. I think he had some ideas about how to get there, from the calendar in his time. Is there information Jedao could give us, or data we could gather about the high calendar, that would help you pinpoint the specific effect?" Reshad muses, "I wonder if there's more than one way to be immortal?" She explains, "Jedao had come back a minimum of three times, in my era. Real details are thin on the deck, but history shows him well past when he could have been kept alive. If he failed in a way that got him immortality..." Sasha says, "It seems simpler to assume that the mechanism is the same, for both the future Jedao and his collaborator, but that the price of the bargain is too high."

Alaric tells Reshad there are "a lot of ways" to be immortal: "People have been trying to live forever since people became people. Good ways, that's the problem. It's like any other sort of exotic effect or even invariant engineering - it's easy to come up with ideas, hard to implement them without a lot of work, and the calendrical math often means that enabling one technique excludes others. Which makes me think that Sasha's right about them sharing a mechanism." He tells Sasha, "It would be useful to know anything else Jedao can tell us. Killed but it didn't stick is a good start, since it rules out things like making yourself physically immutable or, I don't know, a cloud of nanomachines."

Strategies and baby aliens

Sasha sums up, "You recommend, then, that for threat assessment, we engage Jedao in detailed conversation. Is there information that we need to keep from him, or control his access to, while we are doing so?" Alaric says he can't think of anything: "The only secrets we really know are the nature of the moths, which he might already be aware of and any high-ranking Nirai collaborator definitely has, and our information on the rifts. That's the technical part, anyways, there's probably gobs of horrifically dangerous political and historical data just sitting around in our entertainment database, but I leave advice on that to other people." Reshad says, "I suppose it depends on what our strategy is. We've already denied him to the Kel, and learned something about his blackmailer. We're in process of denying his death to Flute. If we mean to seek his collaboration, he needs the same information the rest of us have."

Seyli protests, "How can we trust anything he says? Do we really believe he's a useful tool in our goals?" "Plasticized penthrite is useful, too, but we don't hand it out as modeling clay," Sasha says. Making an effort to convey command presence, she goes on, "There is no way for us to be safe. There cannot be, as long as Quill is coordinating with heptarchate or hexarchate agents. The only question is whether we move first, or react to our opponents. With Jedao, we must--the proverb I learned is, 'spin the web and watch for scissors'. We listen to what he tells us, and what he omits, and check everything we can. The judgment on what to do with him is not ours alone. But we have some time, on the way to Autumn Pyre, and I expect on the journey through the rift, as well. We can watch, and learn." Reshad says, "Exactly so. I do not trust that Jedao has our best interests in mind. I trust that he'll be himself." She tells Seyli, more softly, "You're right to be wary, but if we treat him as an enemy, we are likely to make one where it isn't needed."

Sulen says, "I will certainly be watching him. I believe he meant it when he gave us his word, but I trust we won't be giving him free run of the ship." Sasha answers, "Of course not. We're going to agree on the maximum freedoms that we might permit him, both physically and in the sense of information, in the next few weeks. We'll set a checkpoint for before we enter the rift, and potentially a different one for after. And we'll approach those maximums gradually, and only if he continues to cooperate."

Reshad suggests, "Those limits likely depend on our strategy. We've already denied him to the heptarchs, assuming we aren't being pursued by Kel moths. We're denying his death to Flute. I do believe he wants to see the -archate fall. I hope he decides to help us, but we probably have a hand in that, too." Sasha describes her strategic questions: "We need information. We need to know more about Jedao's mysterious collaborator, and what Quill wants. And we need to know more about the rifts themselves." She worries that the Cantata may end up lost in an unfamiliar future. Sulen points out that Jedao is "lonely" and "desperate": "I do not think getting him to talk more will be difficult."

Alaric says, "I wonder how he feels about small baby animals. Not that I'd normally suggest handing one off to an infamous mass murderer, but a surprising number of those have soft spots for pets. Could be a good ice breaker to get his guard down." Sasha protests, "The hells, Alaric. Do you mean Fluffy's eggs? Pseudo-dragons need socialization with each other and with humans. We're not locking a newborn away from its siblings just to test a hypothesis." She checks how much longer the Cantata will be in range of the station's sensors, hoping to give Jedao more freedom of motion once the threat of Kel pursuit is lessened. Voice bone-dry, Seyli says, "If we're going to give him a pseudo-dragon, why don't we just give him access to the mothlings?" Gerae, worried, looks gratefully at Sasha and Seyli.

Reshad says, "There's a lot of room between the extremes. Why not bring some of the pseudodragons in, supervised? That gives us a chance to work with him, also." Tapping a finger on her glass, she asks, "The mothlings - are they Cantata's?" Angry, Sasha says slowly, "The mothlings are children. We will not use them as counters in any sort of game." Gerae looks loyally at Sasha. Reshad says, "I do not suggest putting any child in Jedao's sole care. Rather if Cantata could be compelled to action, they should only be near people you trust." Sasha wonders whether Reshad's "you" is meant generally, or is daring her to choose whether she trusts Reshad. She says, "I think that is a clear boundary. We keep Jedao from any contact with or knowledge of the mothlings. Also, I would suggest, we keep him away from Mishka." Frustrated, Alaric says, "Of course we keep him away from the mothlings, Mishka, or any other children. I'm not saying to give him a psuedodragon either, just that exposure might be helpful. Or not, I'm not the interrogation expert here, just trying to be helpful. Not that any of us are all that qualified for dragon-raising either, but that's beside the point." Reshad nods. Sasha tells Alaric that she has "a fucking distance-learning certificate in herpetology" in addition to her "qualifications for armed rebellion." She asks, "Would anyone else like to establish a boundary condition?"

Practical limits

Virmad says, "As, more or less, an interrogation expert, I take Alaric's point to be that continuing to think of this as an interrogation isn't likely to get us anywhere. Jedao is dangerous: we all agree on that, I think; it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. But, having already broached the topic of overthrowing the -archate with him, the longer we treat him as our prisoner rather than our ally, the more difficult it will be to earn his trust. He's already offered us a significant token of good faith, in the form of the confirmation that he also wants to overthrow the -archate, and the fact that he’s working for someone already. I think — taking as many precautions as possible — the least we could do, to start with, would be to let him stand up and walk around his room, even if we decide to restrict him just to his room for the time being." He adds that the team "might want to take a lesson from" its "previous guest," Gerae, "and make absolutely sure there's no way out of the room unless we collectively agree to let him out." Reshad nods again, approving.

Sasha says, "At the moment, the only people who have the authority to create a door to his room are Seyli, Sulen, and me. I see no reason to expand that list." Watching Seyli, she continues, "Speaking of grid permissions--shall we allow Jedao any means of interaction? There's no fucking way I'm giving him even a visitor's accesses, but we could allow him to dim the lights in that room verbally, or to play items from a list of approved media." Seyli is tense but silent. Reshad says, "My expertise is in gaining trust, in difficult situations, not interrogation. As Virmad said, treat him as a collaborator and we're more likely to actually get there. I'd like him to have freedom to move in his room, and I'd like to be able to speak with him. Surveill, if you like. We do have to keep our risk low." She tells Sasha, "Your grid access ideas are good ones, also; he'd make a far better ally than he does a prisoner." Sasha observes, with some irony, that surveillance is nearly inevitable, since "the grid responds to gestures." She asks Sulen for their thoughts. They say, "I approve. Could you get me access to his room's security camera?" Sasha tells them, "You have it. Aymad can walk you through the procedures."

Gerae inquires, "Just what media do we want him to have access to? We could possibly find something out about him by tracking his choice of entertainment." Shrugging, Sasha says, "We have all sorts of media from the station we just visited. And I think perhaps we should give him a version of the standard rebellion orientation, edited to remove any reference to his own activities. After that--it's really your call, with the rest of the Rahal, that is, though I would choose to err on the early side." Reshad suggests, "Perhaps a carefully chosen documentary, without reference to him. Let him look at the Hexarchate of my era. And be ready for questions, because I doubt he's seen it all coming." Sasha notes, "The rebellion orientation cuts off around then. I could never get anyone to say whether there was a reason, or someone in Personnel just thought a thousand years was a nice number."

Sulen says, "We should decide how much to tell him about his own actions. We don't want to be inconsistent." In something between a bleak joke and a genuine suggestion, Seyli says, "Why not tell him everything? Rather than having him manage to find out anyway and assume our intentions are other than we've stated." Smiling at Seyli, Reshad says, "Our actions need to leave little room for doubt." Sasha observes, "He is already corresponding about threshold winnowers. And he told us that he had considered a terrible bargain, in exchange for life unending. I think he knows, and knows that we know. But if we are going to talk to him about Hellspin in any detail, I want Ione or the Rahal available, to read how he reacts. And I want to know how he responds to facts, not to hundreds of years' worth of dramatizations." Reshad says she would like to see Jedao's correspondence: "You mentioned this Nirai; if they're immortal now, and offering the same to him, we may be able to trace them through the history books. Do some reconnaissance based on things they haven't done yet. We need to find out when they became immortal. Past or future." She adds that "of course" any discussion with Jedao about his historical actions would need to start with "the truth" or at least proceed "carefully, and with questions": "We need to know how his current plans correspond, not what it looks like when he falls apart."

Sasha promises to make Jedao's correspondence available to everyone, adding, "And I still want to know if Jedao's co-conspirator is cooperating with Quill. That might explain why this mission focused on Jedao, in particular. But to start with, we need to learn as much as we can about what the co-conspirator is doing in this timeline. There's a limit to how much I can pull from the lattice while we're in transit, but I may be able to investigate more thoroughly once we reach Autumn Pyre. Sulen and Reshad, can you coordinate to get me a name and description, before then? The sooner the better--Nirai systems are inconsistent, and I'd like to plan out an attack."

Sulen agrees, "I'll speak to Jedao again soon, after we get him settled in. Anything else you need from him?" Seyli breaks in, "No one should go in alone with him. I don’t believe that's a good idea." Reshad agrees, "That's for the best. Two can defend one another; one is a hostage. I'll go with you, and if we can't get the information immediately, we'll at least lay the groundwork." Sasha says, "We have more of Ione's drug, as well. And the advantage that he won't remember how many seconds it needs, to take effect. Sulen, my next priority for information is confirmation of his link to the current Shuos heptarch. If she is fixed in time, she is less of a concern for us, but she is still an adversary."

Team-building, information-sharing, and ideology

This meeting highlights the effective cooperation among the Rahal, and the increasing confidence with which they coordinate with Reshad. Their interactions with Sasha and Seyli are less smooth. Virmad assumes that Sasha has dismissed his competence due to his flirtatious habits (somewhat ironically, since Sasha's overly intense reactions to people she might find attractive are an ongoing threat to team cohesion). Seyli's fear of Jedao runs deeper than a single meeting could allay.

Ione shares useful information, though the full extent of her abilities discomfits the other team members; Reshad in particular dislikes the idea that her emotions are not private, while Sasha is curious about possible overlaps between Ione's experience and her own inconsistent powers. Alaric's expertise is both unusual and valuable, though in this case his usual cheerful-bordering-on-flippant demeanor is a source of stress for the rest of the team; on the other hand, Sasha's overt protectiveness of the mothlings and potential baby pseudo-dragons aids in winning Gerae's allegiance. In general, the team has, perhaps, placed insufficient emphasis on moral and ideological sources of unity: in particular, both Reshad and Seyli feel slightly isolated in their levels of anger at the hexarchate, despite the fact that the team is ostensibly devoted to engineering its downfall.