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[holmesice]

Make it quick.

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[cahooted]

Yes, I have. And don't treat it like a trifle, it's not.

[Seriously, Mycroft.]

Never pegged you for an evil guy. Heartless, needlessly pragmatic, self-centered and, true, willing to let me freeze to death and stab me [still not over that, never over that] yes, but this seems a bit much.

[holmesice]

[A sigh. Now that he'd recovered somewhat from the false memories--some of them horrendously disturbing--he was feeling a little bad about that. He wasn't sure what had set him off in that fake-time, why he'd been so irritated in the first place.

Then there are conversations like these and it explains so much...]

And your point IS? If I'm "evil", why are you bothering to tell me what I already know?

[cahooted]

Because if nobody speaks up you people will start thinking these are normal or acceptable things to do.

But they're not. It's murder.

[holmesice]

You can't apply standard morality to a place like this. These things are normal and acceptable here.

"The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous."

[Have a Machiavelli quote, Flynn.]

[cahooted]

Oh, but I can and I will. Because they are not normal or acceptable, people just make them out to be. It's not this place that dictates your morality, it's you yourself.

[A quote? Really, Mycroft?

It's on.]

"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." Aristotle.

[holmesice]

What is morality in a place where civiliation is breaking down? What is good or bad other than an advantage developed by a clever pack animal?

[This isn't...good. He's sounding like her.]

Aristotle, really? How pedestrian. "Why then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison." [Hamlet Act 2, scene 2.]

[cahooted]

It's everything. It's what makes us human. Without empathy we're no better than the anomalies, senselessly chasing each other and tearing each other down.

[You shut your mouth about Aristotle! And oh no, you're not dragging his beloved Shakespeare into your argument.]

"Why then, your ambition makes it one. 'Tis too narrow for your mind." [Hamlet Act 2, scene 2 continued.]

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating." [Simone Weil. French philosopher. Less "peasant" for you?]

[holmesice]

Maybe without empathy it could free us into doing what is necessary, what people don't ordinarily have the stomach to do.

Would you be so against my methods if they got you home and saved everyone here you cared about?

"A battle that you win cancels any other bad action of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain." [Machiavelli again.]

[cahooted]

Oh, don't Machiavelli me, I don't believe that. If that's what we're becoming maybe we don't deserve to go back. What good am I for my loved ones back home or here, what good am I for the world if I turn into a callous monster?

[He'd be just like Wilde, throwing all principles over board, endangering everything and everyone around him.]

They depend on me not to. [His expression becomes uncharacteristically stern.] And so do yours.

[holmesice]

Really. You'd stay here because you might have done something morally questionable? Where's your line? [He's incredulous, But also genuinely curious.] What line would you not cross? When would you be too monstrous to be allowed back?

[cahooted]

[That's a loaded question.]

I suppose killing in cold blood would be one. [City-induced alterations and self-defense don't count.] And if I started thinking that it was a normal thing to do. If I... stopped caring about others and my sense of self got so warped that I started doing bad things and became a danger to them.

[It's nothing he can risk, not with all those powerful artifacts at his disposal.]

What if I were to return only to destroy the things I hold dear, the reasons why I'm trying, why I want to go back?

[holmesice]

[That...

...unfortunately hits him harder than he expects it to.

Because that reminds him far too much of his sister and Moriarty, and he has a flash of himself easily becoming like her, even if it was for 'the greater good.'

There's an exceptionally long delay before he replies back.]

I suppose, along with everything else, there is a high potential for that happening to any one of us in this place.

[cahooted]

I know.

[He exhales. Hubris, Will calls it. High horsing. Is it? Maybe. Maybe it's naive or short-sighted or even hindering in getting them out of here but Flynn can't bring himself to believe that.]

Which is why... why I think it's important to fight against it.

[holmesice]

And in the event, we cannot? What if all of this is an experiment in order to turn us all into figurative monsters?

[cahooted]

Then I'll do everything to make it as hard as humanly possible for them.

[Whoever 'they' will ultimately turn out to be.]

[holmesice]

Would there be a point, if we cannot escape it in the end? Especially if it is nothing but an AI or botched program doing this to us?

[Admittedly this has given him food for thought, Mr. Carsen.]

[cahooted]

Of course. There's always another way, there's always another trick. There's always something left to learn.

Giving up is setting the inevitable in stone, it takes away any chance of finding out if it really, truly is inevitable.

[holmesice]

[Giving up is setting the inevitable in stone, it takes away any chance of finding out if it really, truly is inevitable.

Ah. Well.]

Other than a lot of wasted energy. But what else is that energy being put to use for?

[So he's not disagreeing with you on this part, at least.]

[cahooted]

That's really up to us.

Me, I'd like to say for good.

[Look, this is the guy who managed to pull Excalibur out of the stone, it doesn't get more goody-two-shoes than that.]