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[Hope's voice is clear and clipped.]

If you would like to leave a message, you may do so here. I can't promise to respond. I have many demands on my time, and this sort of thing is far down the list. Still, if you would like to, you may.

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I will do that.

Though while I do understand people want more assurances about being sent home, I believe announcing that would bring demands of a timeline, or a request that I do so immediately. I think it would cause more strife than good.

Oh, I was not suggesting that you make announcements about sending us home. My suggestion was to resssure people that you will have no need to do anything dramatic to influence our emotions anymore, because you will have a steady supply from willing participants.

[And this is where she's going to try to spell things out a bit more from Hope, because she gets the impression that the gods don't completely understand the amount of enmity some of their actions inspire.]

With the competition, we influenced each other's emotions, but not to the point that anyone struggled to control themselves or lost control of themselves. No one likes not being in control of their own feelings and actions.

Unfortunately, I cannot make that promise. I have no control over what my fellow gods do, and if I said we would do nothing more to influence emotions in that way, I would be the one blamed when one of them decided to.

[He gets annoyed over it, too. People are always dying, then he has to bring them back.]

We have no leader. I can ask them to do things, but they don't have to listen - and often, they do not.

Then I suggest you bring that suggestion to them and ask them to commit to it. People do not mind the individual deals between us and your kind because they are a mutually agreed upon arrangement, and those who have no desire to participate can avoid them.

[She's going to be somewhat firm about this being an important point. The gods seem to not understand the damage manipulating people's emotions does in the long term, perhaps because they don't experience it, and their previous hosts didn't, either. So she's going to push it as an issue of free will, in the hopes that perhaps that will get through.]

Out of curiousity...do you think there is some possibility that one of your fellow gods could be leaking information to the Null?

[She can't see why they'd do something so suicidal, but it might explain a few things.]

I can tell you already that they will not agree to it. Some of them might - Tranquility, Delight, perhaps even Love. Some of the others have no interest in what you might want. There will be no consensus on this.

And of course none of us would do something like that. Our lives are the ones on the line - we will all die if the Null find us.

[She's not entirely convinced, but there are some things Hope's flexible on and others he's fairly adamant about, so she won't push that point too forcefully. Instead, she takes a different approach.]

I saw Tranquility mention a plan to try talking to the Null that got voted against. What were some of the other options proposed?

Our options are the same as they have ever been. Continue running, turn and fight, look for another solution, or let them kill us. Tranquility's suggestion was not one that we could take.

Did whoever suggested looking for another solution happen to suggest other possibilities?

[There's a possibility that one of the gods is overestimating their own capabilities for dealing with the Null and enacting their own plan without the knowledge and consent of the others. It's an idea she wants to build up to slowly, by asking the right questions and getting Hope to think about the situation.]

That wasn't a suggestion, exactly. Those are all options that we have all known of for a long time. It seems that you think we recently got together, had a discussion, and came up with plans - that isn't what happened. We discussed the investigation, and during that Tranquility brought up speaking to the Null again. Our other options were not discussed. We have gone over them many times.

There is a more indirect way of combating them, although it would take some information gathering and you would likely need to involve at least a small elite team of your current hosts to do it.

[She's fine with offering Hope logical suggestions. She's the one with the combat experience, and it never hurts to be on pleasant terms with the god who resurrects everyone. Hope is actually fairly pleasant once one gets to know him a little. He just needs to work on his public relations skills a LOT. So do most of the gods, really.]

In order to produce more of their kind, they must have factories to build more. Find out where those factories are, and destroy them. If possible, capture one Null and determine exactly how it communicates with the others. Then spread misinformation to all of them. If you are fortunate, you could feed them false information about your whereabouts, lure a large number of them to an uninhabited place, and then destroy that.

I believe there are flaws with those plans - mainly, it requires putting ourselves in danger. We've already done that with Rage and Delight, we'll need to process the information from them before we send anyone else out.

I am not saying they are bad plans, simply that they are not something we could currently take action on. Not in the situation we are in. I will mention them to Sorrow, as thoughts for the future.

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