Sobon moved stiffly, de­spite the rest and the ar­ti­fi­cial nerves and ac­tu­a­tors he'd graft­ed into the "body" that the Founder had giv­en him. It was... nowhere near a prop­er med­ical fix, but Sobon had en­tered bat­tle with a worse body. Once. That had not end­ed up a suc­cess­ful bat­tle, ex­cept by the clas­sic mil­i­tary stan­dard: any bat­tle you sur­vive is a suc­cess­ful one.

Sobon was un­sure whether this cur­rent mess would count as suc­cess­ful, in the end, even by that low stan­dard. Then again... he'd died sev­er­al times al­ready, and was still here.

The Founder was not in the out­er, Djang-fac­ing part of its spaces, but Sobon did not hes­i­tate to pass into the cor­ri­dor that had un­mis­tak­ably been left open for him. The Founders' 'fa­cil­i­ty' was a hy­per­ge­o­met­ric en­ti­ty in its own right--it ex­tend­ed right out of nor­mal space, not mere­ly ex­ist­ing with­in a pock­et di­men­sion, but ex­tend­ing up into lay­ers of aether space, and Sobon knew that the Founder would not have left the open­ing in a state where he could en­ter if it was not an in­vi­ta­tion. The Founders, af­ter all, could wrap physics and re­al­i­ty around their fin­gers, cre­at­ing and al­ter­ing mat­ter in ways that de­fied any less­er users of aether.

Pass­ing into the an aether di­men­sion for the first time felt to Sobon not un­like the first time he had ever used aether--a pe­cu­liar sen­sa­tion of a loss of con­trol, as though new things were pos­si­ble, and some deep­er part of him had nev­er pre­pared for these pos­si­bil­i­ties, could nev­er have pre­pared for them. And yet... Sobon could also feel a part of his psy­che that was dis­tinct­ly up­set that he could sim­ply walk into... what di­rec­tion was he go­ing any­way?

A syn­thet­ic in­tel­li­gence of some sort re­spond­ed, the data not so much pulsed as wo­ven through the hall­way like a pass­ing rib­bon. Sobon was in­deed sim­ply trav­el­ling through nor­mal, three-di­men­sion­al space, but also, the fa­cil­i­ty's ori­en­ta­tion was tech­ni­cal­ly deep­er into left-right aether spin plane. The fur­ther he trav­elled into this branch of the fa­cil­i­ty, the deep­er he trav­eled into Left-right aether space, though that ab­stract con­cept was de­cep­tive and not use­ful in­for­ma­tion.

Sobon, rather than chal­leng­ing ei­ther that in­for­ma­tion or his own re­ac­tion to it, filed the data away as true in his mind and moved on.

Sev­er­al times, Sobon felt sure that he had come to an in­ter­sec­tion, but every path­way but the in­tend­ed one was sealed. By some trick, every time that hap­pened, Sobon thought he was go­ing straight, though he knew that must not be so. As be­fore, he re­fused to chal­lenge the ap­pear­ance; it was doubt­less a se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure, and Sobon had no in­ter­est in fight­ing the se­cu­ri­ty of a Founder fa­cil­i­ty, au­to­mat­ed or oth­er­wise.

Those in­ter­sec­tions, how­ev­er, only served to high­light the one odd­i­ty of the trip: a sealed side door, with a holo-rib­bon say­ing "No ad­mit­tence." Sobon stud­ied it long enough to be cer­tain it meant what it said, and moved on, feel­ing less and less cer­tain about the fa­cil­i­ty and his place in all of this.

When at last he found the Founder, the crea­ture was stand­ing in what Sobon knew must be some sort of mon­i­tor­ing sta­tion, a holo­graph­ic lift that sur­round­ed them with del­i­cate aether threads, threads that must rep­re­sent both con­trols and in­for­ma­tion. From Sobon's own per­spec­tive, the mass of data around the Founder was un­rec­og­niz­able, but he had no doubt that the Founder was be­ing giv­en every­thing it need­ed to un­der­stand the in­for­ma­tion.

"Sobon of Crest," the Founder said, with­out piv­ot­ing in place or oth­er­wise phys­i­cal­ly ac­knowled­ing him.

"Founder." Sobon paused. "You nev­er did give me your name."

"Nor do I in­tend to. Lin­guis­ti­cal­ly, for our peo­ple, our pro­fes­sion­al iden­ti­ty be­comes our iden­ti­ty, in­so­far as we are noth­ing more than that pro­fes­sion at any giv­en mo­ment. Sim­i­lar­ly, our no­table his­to­ry, in­clud­ing crimes, be­come ad­e­quate sub­sti­tutes for an iden­ti­ty, in­so­far as they are un­am­bigu­ous." Gen­tly, so gen­tly that Sobon might have missed it, the Founder pressed them­selves back with aether force, dis­en­gag­ing from the holo­graph­ic mon­i­tor­ing sta­tion. "In the Founders' lan­guage, ap­pro­pri­ate names for me would in­clude 'In­tern', 'Be­tray­er', 'Mur­der­er', 'Liar', 'Fool', 'Ma­nip­u­la­tor', and oth­er, less of­fi­cial and less po­lite vari­ants. To me, you re­main 'Crestan,' though I un­der­stand that you pre­fer an ex­plic­it iden­ti­ty mark­er."

Sobon found that de­tail of the Founders' cul­ture both ir­ra­tional and ir­ri­tat­ing. "I do," he con­firmed, not both­er­ing to hide the ir­ri­ta­tion in his voice. "Isn't your pro­fes­sion­al iden­ti­ty ul­ti­mate­ly am­bigu­ous in most cir­cum­stances? To a col­league, or oth­er per­son of sim­i­lar stand­ing?"

"You for­get that as a cul­ture, we speak with in­tent, as much as words," the Founder said, sound­ing mild­ly amused. "If we have any need to dis­am­biguate, the in­tent of the word con­veys the specifics. When do­ing so, the word it­self is su­per­flu­ous, but it re­mains... po­lite, to sum­ma­rize the in­tent in a sin­gle word. It is an ex­er­cise in brevi­ty and holis­tic in­tent."

Sobon rubbed his... or rather, he still had Alas­si's head on this pup­pet body, as grotesque as that felt. Was he rub­bing her head? He hat­ed this whole sit­u­a­tion, though he had lit­tle doubts things would re­main screwed up for a long time. "I wish I had more time to rest," Sobon said af­ter a mo­ment, "but I get the im­pres­sion we don't have that time. And pre­sum­ably, that means we don't have the time to waste on idle chat­ter."

"Time flows strange­ly when fate is ma­nip­u­lat­ed," the Founder said, "a fact that you sure­ly know. But you also, to my cha­grin, are not wrong. There have been at­tempts to break into this fa­cil­i­ty from the 'oth­er end', at­tempts that will some­day suc­ceed." The Founder ges­tured, and with a hiss and a qui­et thunk, the door be­hind Sobon closed--and an­oth­er, near­by, opened. "Come, let us dis­cuss more com­fort­ably."

Sobon turned and stud­ied the door be­hind him, but was con­fi­dent when he turned that the noise it had made in clos­ing was en­tire­ly for his ben­e­fit. So he fol­lowed the Founder into some­thing like a con­fer­ence room, if the Founders as a so­ci­ety had any need to ded­i­cate whole rooms to such a ba­sic con­cept.

It was, func­tioan­l­ly, a very ba­sic room in­tend­ed for sev­er­al rest­ing peo­ples, but laid out specif­i­cal­ly for pre­sen­ta­tions, and with some mi­nor tools whose pur­pose beamed them­selves into Sobon's mind with in­tent. In re­al­i­ty, there were only three ba­sic types of tools here--the syn­thet­ic in­tel­li­gence, which could be queried for in­for­ma­tion, a pre­sen­ta­tion ap­pa­ra­tus for for­mat­ting and pro­ject­ing in­for­ma­tion, and the cir­cu­lar glyphs on the floor whose self-iden­ti­ty trans­lat­ed in Sobon's mind to [float-rest].

The Founder took one of these, and im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan re­lax­ing in open air as they had when Sobon had first met them, and so Sobon moved into an­oth­er of the cir­cles, to find that his body was pressed up­wards--from with­in, and even­ly, in ways that might have been com­fort­able to any­one else. Sobon blinked, try­ing to study the sen­sa­tion and the aether flows around him, but his nerves and aether sens­es were still itchy and burn­ing, a re­sult of the pa­thet­ic half-body he still resided in.

The same day he had met this Founder, his body had been ripped mer­ci­less­ly to pieces by a Djang man, some rel­a­tive of the Djang Roy­al Fam­i­ly who was out of pow­er and re­bel­lious. The man's chains had ripped out his bones and even pulled the spine straight out of his brain stem, all the while some­how not do­ing quite enough dam­age to kill him out­right. The bas­tadr had even seemed to be­lieve he would get away with it, but--well. The Founder was pre­tend­ing, quite suc­cess­ful­ly, to be the Di­a­mond Lord, supreme ruler of the world, and had re­quest­ed Sobon's pres­ence. To have done so much to the Di­a­mond Lord's guest was... un­wise.

Sobon didn't know what had hap­pened since, but it didn't take much imag­i­na­tion. Ei­ther the man would sub­mit and be judged for what had hap­pened, or he would fight. De­pend­ing on who else he dragged into the mess, it might al­ready be over, or it might drag into a war. That sound­ed ex­treme--Sobon's own in­stincts were that the man would be swift­ly brought to jus­tice--but Sobon had learned too well that jus­tice didn't work cor­rect­ly in this world. It was en­tire­ly too like­ly that he would show up with some kind of larg­er army, de­clar­ing his own cause just and de­cry­ing Sobon as some kind of mon­ster for dar­ing to de­fend him­self.

It wouldn't be the first time, and Sobon had only just ar­rived on this damned plan­et a few weeks ago.

"I sup­pose these rests aren't as much val­ue to you as I would have liked," Sobon heard the Founder say, and he brought his at­ten­tion back to it, as it float­ed across form him. "It is a gen­uine pity. I've sam­pled the seat­ing of the child races, specif­i­cal­ly those rat­ed most com­fort­able by their re­spec­tive so­ci­eties, and none of them come with­in thir­ty per­cent of a float-rest. Even less­er at­tempts to per­form the same gen­er­al tech­nique, by those of less­er aether, can­not com­pare. I sup­pose it is sim­ply the... en­ti­tle­ment? I sup­pose we are sim­ply too used to com­fort be­ing a solved prob­lem."

"It doesn't do much for me," Sobon agreed, try­ing to keep the frus­tra­tion from his voice. "The sit­u­a­tion?"

With­out ges­tur­ing, the Founder flick­ered im­ages into the space be­tween them, and Sobon found when he looked that the aether pre­sen­ta­tion ap­pa­ra­tus was also avail­able to him, though the con­trols were un­fa­mil­iar. Ei­ther way, the in­for­ma­tion that the Founder pre­sent­ed be­gan to mu­tate in ways Sobon sus­pect­ed were for him alone, as the fa­cil­i­ty or its AI ad­just­ed to what Sobon him­self knew or could un­der­stand, and added and re­moved in­for­ma­tion to not over­whelm or un­der­in­form him.

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"This is us, and this is this world," the Founder said, show­ing the plan­et, its fa­cil­i­ty, and a vague net­work be­yond. "Ac­cord­ing to our data­base, your species un­der­stands this sys­tem as Rex­hai, and thus the plan­et is Rex­hai 2, but there's no rea­son for you to know the name. It is with­in Founder space, and not par­tic­u­lar­ly close to Im­pe­r­i­al con­trolled space."

"Why did it the Ri'lef ressurec­tion pro­to­cols find me, then? As op­posed to any­one else?" The map, once dis­played, made any hint that this was sim­ply co­in­ci­dence be­yond im­prob­a­ble.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly it didn't." The Founder ges­tured, not with their hands, but with a holo­graph­ic pres­ence that merged seam­less­ly into the pre­sen­ta­tion, and the yet-un­la­beled net­work was high­light­ed. "You are... a mo­ment... ap­par­ent­ly the ap­pro­pri­ate term is 'a hack at­tempt'. Founder fate mag­ic chose you as an en­ti­ty like­ly to en­sure that this sit­u­a­tion was re­solv­able." The Founder swiveled to­wards Sobon, some­what, and their pres­ence, some­where above and around them, changed pos­tures, too sub­tly for Sobon to make out any de­tail. "I should clar­i­fy--not my fate mag­ic. It was an in­tru­sive ac­tion tak­en by the net­work, and like­ly not the only one. There have cer­tain­ly been oth­er and var­i­ous in­tru­sion at­tempts since then."

"I hope not more un­for­tu­nates be­ing born into this world," Sobon said, men­tal­ly reach­ing for the pro­jec­tion, and ma­nip­u­lat­ing what he un­der­stood as his own copy of it. But al­though he prod­ded at the mod­els, no new in­for­ma­tion was sur­faced.

"Per­haps some," the Founder ad­mit­ted, and al­though their voice and in­tent gave noth­ing away, Sobon was sure that the state­ment was eva­sive, and pre­sum­ably a non-ad­mis­sion. "But the mat­ter of con­se­quence is this: the fate ma­nip­u­la­tion will con­tin­ue, and es­ca­late, un­til there are re­sults. Giv­en that you seem to gen­uine­ly want to fix this bro­ken world, I can con­tent my­self with let­ting you be the... con­se­quen­tial fac­tor, in me choos­ing to give my­self over to them."

"Be­cause the next at­tempt won't care about the con­se­quences to the plan­et?"

"Or about my life, or yours." The Founder's pre­sent­ed holo­grams flick­ered, and Sobon though they were in­ex­pert­ly con­ceal­ing things. He pressed light­ly at the pre­sen­ta­tion, try­ing to ma­nip­u­late it men­tal­ly, but his aether sens­es were sim­ply not dex­trous or sen­si­tive enough, not any­more, and he pushed it away in frus­tra­tion. The Founder stud­ied him, and then, per­haps out of pity, the pre­sen­ta­tion opened up, re­veal­ing faces, iden­ti­ties.

There were two of them, and while Sobon didn't know them, he could rec­og­nize their ori­gins. One was an in­de­pen­dent sys­tem not too far from Crestan space, while an­oth­er was a known Founder's Child race, one as­so­ci­at­ed with their wargames. Like most Founder's Child races in their wargames, their so­ci­ety had both evolved and de­volved, as they un­der­stood one of theirs would be cho­sen every ten years to par­tic­i­pate in [The Game]. And if a [Play­er] of [The Game] came to their world...

It would not end well, one way or an­oth­er, but be­ing pre­pared was far wis­er than not.

"The peo­ple be­hind these ma­nip­u­la­tions are, broad­ly, per­form­ing sim­i­lar ac­tions to what I thought I would be per­form­ing when I came here, though they are ex­pe­ri­enced and adept, while I was young and naive. I at­tempt­ed to in­ter­fere with the fate ma­nip­u­la­tion in each case, which is... most like­ly why the third can­di­date was even nec­es­sary. I had hopes that there would be a bet­ter res­o­lu­tion, but my re­sis­tance was proof that in­ter­ven­tion was nec­es­sary."

Sobon stud­ied the iden­ti­ties, but the ex­pla­na­tion felt lack­ing. "You said they were still try­ing to break in."

"Yes. Agents of fate car­ry the essence of their ma­nip­u­la­tor with them, and that in­cludes you. The fact that you en­tered this fa­cil­i­ty--with my per­mis­sion--will ac­cel­er­ate their at­tempts to break into the sys­tems and re­gain con­trol. In that way, when you said that we had lit­tle time, you were quite cor­rect." The Founder didn't move, phys­i­cal­ly, but their pro­jec­tion en­tered into the pre­sen­ta­tion again, its fin­gers steepling and eyes nar­row­ing, show­ing a de­vi­ous side that their phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance en­tire­ly masked. "Thus we need to dis­cuss the fu­ture, Sobon of Crest."

"So dis­cuss it," Sobon said, push­ing the ex­ist­ing pre­sen­ta­tion away.

"My in­tent is to give my­self over to them," the Founder said, "and by so do­ing, es­tab­lish that the sit­u­a­tion is con­trolled. How­ev­er, I will be un­able to lie to the Su­per­vi­sor that I will con­tact, as a mat­ter of aether pow­er and sen­si­tiv­i­ty. If the sit­u­a­tion is not un­der con­trol, with­in cer­tain stan­dards, then they will con­tin­ue with more hasty and con­se­quen­tial ac­tions, ac­tions that will taint the on­go­ing plan­e­tary ex­per­i­ment to such a de­gree that the ex­per­i­ment's end is guar­an­teed."

Ex­per­i­ment. Sobon didn't need the pre­sen­ta­tion to trans­late the Founder's in­tent, but it did, spelling it out with di­a­grams and sec­tions of text tai­lored to his own ed­u­ca­tion. The Founders had cre­at­ed this world and ma­nip­u­lat­ed its form, all so that they could watch and see what hap­pened. But if they thought the ex­per­i­ment was over, or would pro­duce an un­de­sir­able re­sult... they had no prob­lem with wip­ing the ex­per­i­ment away and start­ing an­oth­er one.

They would dis­pose of the failed ex­per­i­ment--a very po­lite way of phras­ing geno­cide, Sobon though, sup­press­ing the anger that rose with­in him. And even if that didn't in­clude Sobon, and even if Sobon could ar­gue for the lives of Ki'el, and Lui, and Mian, and oth­ers, that still left... what? Tens, hun­dreds of mil­lions? A bil­lion peo­ple? Sobon didn't query the syn­thet­ic in­tel­li­gence, didn't want to know. Plen­ty of them would de­serve death, but all of them?

What frac­tion of a bil­lion peo­ple had to be worth sav­ing? Sobon re­fused to let it be a mat­ter of num­bers. "It's re­pul­sive," he said out loud. "In­fu­ri­at­ing."

"Yes," the Founder said. "But the sin isn't the killing, Sobon of Crest. The sin is cre­at­ing some­thing in­tel­li­gent only to de­stroy it."

Sobon shook his head--but had to ad­mit, that was pos­si­bly the truth. "We can't get into that kind of talk right now," he said, forc­ing his thoughts back to the mat­ter at hand. "What you want is for me to find a way to sta­bi­lize things so that you can say hon­est­ly that they are sta­ble."

"An ad­e­quate sum­ma­ry," the Founder replied. "The stan­dards that we must meet are that the Fa­cil­i­ty is neu­tral­ized, that no fur­ther con­tact be­tween my­self and the in­hab­i­tants be per­formed, and that the lo­cal po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion can­not pose a risk to the Fa­cil­i­ty or the ex­per­i­ment as a whole." There was a pause. "The last is more com­pli­cat­ed than it ap­pears."

Sobon frowned. Al­though he thought he grasped the sit­u­a­tion pret­ty well, that state­ment didn't give him an im­me­di­ate an­swer. "Why?"

"This in­for­ma­tion is priv­iledged, but I will al­low it, on my per­son­al mer­its," the Founder said, and Sobon thought it was talk­ing to the Fa­cil­i­ty's in­tel­li­gence more than to him. "The fa­cil­i­ty con­trols a num­ber of spe­cif­ic high-or­der aether al­loys, if you will par­don the mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed term. Among the most con­se­quen­tial are [mor­pho­log­i­cal], [con­va­les­cent], [meme­graph­ic], and [meme­clas­tic]. I will give you a few mo­ments to con­sid­er the terms."

Sobon re­viewed the in­tent, us­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion soft­ware as a re­place­ment for his own dam­aged men­tal aug­ments. Mor­pho­log­i­cal aether was a spe­cif­ic fate ma­nip­u­la­tion that pre­pared bod­ies and spir­its to mu­tate--and ide­al­ly, mu­tate suc­cess­ful­ly. Its pres­ence made so­ci­eties more di­verse, and its ab­sence made so­ci­eties self-sim­i­lar, stale. Con­va­les­cent aether was its spin-in­verse--an en­er­gy that brought things, on a large scale, back to where they had been pre­vi­ous­ly. They were com­pli­cat­ed, fate-based aethers, and could co­ex­ist, even side-by-side; how­ev­er, they were also in­cred­i­bly pow­er­ful, and the amount of each, let alone both, would shift the course of so­ci­eties.

Meme­graph­ic and meme­clas­tic were sim­i­lar­ly op­po­sites. Meme­graph­ic aether was a high­er aether as­so­ci­at­ed with prophe­cy, div­ina­tion, and more broad­ly, the gath­er­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing of in­for­ma­tion, and its pres­ence in so­ci­ety would lead to peo­ple jump­ing to the right con­clu­sion es­sen­tial­ly with­out cause. Meme­clas­tic aether, on the oth­er hand, sup­pressed thoughts and in­for­ma­tion, and could force peo­ple into ig­no­rance and fool­ish acts even when the an­swers were ob­vi­ous and read­i­ly avail­able.

Sobon stiff­ened as he stud­ied the four terms. He al­ready knew that the Founders ma­nip­u­lat­ed the course of worlds and cul­tures, and the Ri'lef had said much of this in dif­fer­ent ways, but... hav­ing it laid out in front of him was still vis­cer­al­ly up­set­ting. How much of his his­to­ry, and every oth­er cul­ture that Sobon knew of, had been changed just by the ex­is­tence, or the lack, of cer­tain types of aether? Aethers that fa­cil­i­ties like this ex­ist­ed to ma­nip­u­late?

"We can dis­cuss the of­fen­sive na­ture of these fa­cil­i­ties an­oth­er time," the Founder said, af­ter some mo­ments of Sobon con­tem­plat­ing in si­lence. "What you need to un­der­stand is that these aethers are be­ing pumped into the plan­et from this fa­cil­i­ty through ex­traspa­tial nodes. There are, quite lit­er­al­ly, lo­ca­tions in this world rich­er in mor­pho­log­i­cal en­er­gy than any­where else. Rich­er in meme­graph­ic and con­va­les­cent en­er­gies. Ar­eas where im­pos­si­ble things sim­ply hap­pen, and ar­eas where some tru­ly un­for­tu­nate peo­ple sim­ply can­not un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing around them."

Sobon closed his eyes, think­ing. The top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion was still... yes, why the sit­u­a­tion posed a risk to the Fa­cil­i­ty. "The lo­ca­tions where peo­ple can more eas­i­ly di­vine the truth are also lo­ca­tions di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to this lo­ca­tion."

"Cor­rect." The Founder pro­ject­ed a map of the world, with the fa­cil­i­ty and a dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work high­light­ed. "Sim­i­lar­ly, mor­pho­log­i­cal en­er­gy is re­lat­ed to tran­scen­dent aether and qi abil­i­ties. Peo­ple born in cer­tain places, or which spend long years in cer­tain places, are able to gain abil­i­ties com­pa­ra­ble to the Di­a­mond Lord. What they lack is prop­er ed­u­ca­tion. And in cer­tain places, peo­ple gain in­cred­i­ble in­sight. The two to­geth­er will in­evitably lead to new peo­ple with the strength to break into this fa­cil­i­ty."

"It is rea­sons like this why my peo­ple al­ways raise a few in­di­vid­u­als with suf­fi­cient in­sight to rule the rest of the civilza­tion," the Founder said, their pro­jec­tion shift­ing to be dis­tant and cyn­i­cal--Sobon got the im­pres­sion they didn't agree with the choice at all. "There are var­i­ous hy­pothe­ses about how these en­er­gies should be used, and how the cho­sen lead­ers should be raised; hy­pothe­ses that have lead to var­i­ous ex­per­i­ments. This world is one of a great many with a de­lib­er­ate­ly war­like his­to­ry, where the world is in­tend­ed to see the One Leader as a be­ing meant to be over­come. But... you have al­ready seen, have you not, that they do not see it that way?"

Sobon turned his at­ten­tion back to the Founder, fi­nal­ly be­gin­ning to un­der­stand. "The were told long ago, in a prophe­cy, that space aliens would de­stroy their civ­i­liza­tion."

"A mis­un­der­stood prophe­cy, if that re­flects how it was told to you," the Founder said. "But yes, this world is led to be­lieve that the Di­a­mond Lord shields them from an evil from be­yond. De­pend­ing on if and how we re­veal that the Di­a­mond Lord has been killed, and by a be­ing from be­yond the world..."

Sobon closed his eyes and sighed. "Okay. I get it. We need a plan be­fore we act." He leaned for­ward. "How long do we have, and what oth­er as­sets do we have? What oth­er con­trol over the sit­u­a­tion?"

The Founder's pro­jec­tion of them­selves twitched slight­ly, into what Sobon de­cid­ed was a smile, and they be­gan talk­ing de­tails. It was a dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion... but he couldn't leave it at that. They would fig­ure some­thing out. They had to.

What­ev­er dif­fi­cul­ties this plan­et had, Sobon re­fused to be­lieve geno­cide was an ac­cept­able op­tion.