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By the time two hours are up, Peranza has twenty items, and when she looks back and reviews them all at once she realizes in the back of her mind that she's going to die a heretic's death, if not right now then after following Sevar's next set of orders, but it's too late now and trying to burn the paper just means Security stops her after they see the intention and then things get worse.

Not that Peranza thinks any of that in words either.

She just picks up her completed report and gives it to Security to deliver to Sevar, with horrible nausea running through her that is no doubt the result of having spent so much time thinking about sickening possible heresies.

(The trouble with not thinking in words, the trouble with running entirely off pattern recognition to decide which next step is safe, without being able to calmly reflect on where the whole sequence of steps goes, is that sometimes you end up cornering yourself.

A better course of action given her beliefs would have been to fail at her task, and be tortured however much you get tortured when you tell them that you couldn't find it in yourself to obey orders because they were too heretical and you didn't want to become a heretic yourself, which is no doubt very painful, but not anywhere near as bad as going to Hell.  This, however, would have required deliberate planning.  The mind doesn't learn wordless heuristics that steer you into that much immediate pain and visible failure on your next step.)

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By the time two hours are up, Peranza has twenty items, and when she looks back and reviews them all at once she realizes in the back of her mind that she's going to die a heretic's death, if not right now then after following Sevar's next set of orders, but it's too late now and trying to burn the paper just means Security stops her after they see the intention and then things get worse.

Not that Peranza thinks any of that in words either.

She just picks up her completed report and gives it to Security to deliver to Sevar, with horrible nausea running through her that is no doubt the result of having spent so much time thinking about sickening possible heresies.

(The trouble with not thinking in words, the trouble with running entirely off pattern recognition to decide which next step is safe, without being able to calmly reflect on where the whole sequence of steps goes, is that sometimes you end up cornering yourself.

A better course of action given her beliefs would have been to fail at her task, and be tortured however much you get tortured when you tell them that you couldn't find it in yourself to obey orders because they were too heretical and you didn't want to become a heretic yourself, which is no doubt very painful, but not anywhere near as bad as going to Hell.  This, however, would have required deliberate planning.  The mind-without-words doesn't learn heuristics that steer you into that much immediate pain and visible failure on your next step.)