In which Inkirani Yo explains her intentions.

Oh, nope, it’s not just a casual upsetting aside; we’re going to be hearing about it in detail.

Inkirani Yo is pretty much treating Tocohl the way she herself was treated by the Institute to ensure her compliance. Probably the gentle expressions of concern were part of the process as she experienced it too, which makes it that much harder to tell how much she actually means any of them.

It’s possible that she does mean it when she promises that, though Tocohl will be enslaved, she will never feel as if she is enslaved. She might even mean it as a kindness, knowing for herself how unpleasant that feeling is. But what she would have to do to Tocohl to keep that promise is another level of terribleness to the whole thing.

The fact that Tocohl is a machine intelligence and Inkirani Yo is able to plug into her thoughts adds another unpleasant wrinkle to the whole experience, because it means Tocohl can’t just pretend compliance in the hope of biding her time and waiting for an opportunity. (Or is it a new wrinkle? Part of me is now considering, in horrified fascination, the possibility that the Institute might have found a way to do the same thing with its “students”.)

Another line of horribly fascinating speculation springs from the question of what it might be possible to do for Tocohl, afterwards, if Inkirani Yo does succeed in what she’s attempting to do. If it happened to a meat-person, sorting it out would be a job for a Healer, but can a Healer work with a mind like Tocohl’s? (Probably the current official answer is something like, “I have no idea, nobody’s ever had occasion to try.”)