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[holmesice]

Make it quick.

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[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.]