Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

the shadowy second image Frodo saw a Man who had spent too much of his youth among Elves, who had learned to wear humble and stained clothes amid the gold and jewels, knowing he could not match them wisdom for wisdom, and hoping to outplay them in a fashion they would not emulate...

In the sight of the Ring, which was the sight of the Ring's own Maker, all noble things faded into stratagems and lies, a world of grey and darkness without any light. They had not made their choices knowingly, Gandalf or Elrond or Aragorn; the impulses had come from the dark hidden parts of themselves, the black secret depths which the Ring had rendered plain in Frodo's vision. Would they outthink the Shadow, when they could not comprehend even their own selves, or the forces that moved them?

"Frodo!" came the sharp whisper of Bilbo's voice, and Frodo came to himself, and halted his hand reaching up toward where the Ring lay on his breast, on its chain, dragging like a vast stone around his neck.

Reaching up to grasp the Ring wherein all answers lay.

"How did you bear this thing?" Frodo whispered to Bilbo, as if the two of them were the only souls in the room, though all the Council watched them. "For years? I cannot imagine it."

"I kept it locked in a room to which only Gandalf had the key," said his uncle, "and when I began to imagine ways to open it, I remembered Gollum."

A shudder went through Frodo, remembering the tales. The horror of the Misty Mountains, thinking, always thinking in the dark; ruling the goblins from the shadows and filling the tunnels with traps; but for Bilbo wearing the ring that first time not a single dwarf would have lived. And now, Legolas the Elf had told them, Gollum had given up on sending his agents against the Shire, had at last found the courage to leave his mountains and seek the Ring himself. That was Gollum, the fate which Frodo would share himself, if the Ring were not destroyed.

Only they had no way to destroy the Ring.

The Shadow had foreseen every move they could make. Had almost - Frodo still could not imagine how it had been done, how the Shadow had arranged such a thing - had almost maneuvered the Council into sending the Ring straight into Mordor with only a tiny guard set on it, as they would have done if Frodo and Bilbo had not been there.

And having foregone that swiftest of all possible defeats, the only question remaining was how long it would take to lose. Gandalf had delayed too long, delayed far too long to set this march in motion. It could have been so easy, if only Bilbo had set out eighty years earlier, if only Bilbo had been told what Gandalf had already suspected, if only Gandalf's heart had not silently flinched away from the prospect of being embarrassingly wrong...

Frodo's hand spasmed on his breast; without thought, his fingers began to rise again toward the vast weight of the chain on which the Ring hung.

All he had to do was put on the Ring.

Just that, and all would become clear to him, once more the slowness and mud would leave his thoughts, all possibilities and futures transparent to him, he would see through the Shadow's plans and devise an irresistible counterstroke -

- and he would never be able to take off the Ring, not again, not by any will that would be left to him. All Frodo had of those moments were fading memories, but he knew that it had felt like dying, to let all his towers of thought collapse and become only Frodo once more. It had felt like dying, he remembered that much of Weathertop even if he remembered little else. And if he did wear the Ring again, it would be better to die with it on his finger, to end his life while he was still himself; for Frodo knew that he could not withstand the effects of wearing the Ring a second time, not afterward when the limitless clarity was lost to him...

Frodo looked around the Council, at the poor lost leaderless Wise, and he knew they could not defeat the Shadow by their own strength.

"I will wear it one last time," Frodo said, his voice broken and failing, as he had known from the beginning that he would say in the end, "one last time to find the answer for this Council, and then there will be other hobbits."

"No!" screamed the voice of Sam, as the other hobbit began to rush forward from where he had hidden; even as Frodo, with movement as swift and precise as a Nazgul, took out the Ring from beneath his shirt; and somehow Bilbo was already standing there and had already thrust his finger through.

It all happened before even Gandalf's staff could point, before Aragorn could level the hilt-shard of his sword; the Dwarves shouted in shock, and the Elves were dismayed.

"Of course," said Bilbo's voice, as Frodo began to weep, "I see it now, I understand everything at last. Listen, listen and swiftly, here is what you must do -"

THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE

With a critical eye, Peter looked over the encamped Centaurs with their bows, Beavers with their long daggers, and talking Bears with their chain-mail draped over them. He was in charge, because he was one of the mythical Sons of Adam and had declared himself High King of Narnia; but the truth was he didn't really know much about encampments, weapons, and guard patrols. In the end all he could see was that they all looked proud and confident, and Peter had to hope they were right about that; because if you couldn't believe in your own people, you couldn't believe in anyone.

"They'd scare me, if I had to fight 'em," Peter said finally, "but I don't know if it's enough to beat... her."

"You don't suppose this mysterious lion will actually show up and help us, d'you?" said Lucy. Her voice was very quiet, so that none of the creatures around them would hear. "Only it'd be nice to really have him, don't you think, instead of just letting people think that he put us in charge?"

Susan shook her head, shaking the magical arrows in the quiver on her back. "If there was really someone like that," Susan said, "he wouldn't have let the White Witch cover the land in winter for a hundred years, would he?"

"I had the strangest dream," Lucy said, her voice even quieter, "where we didn't have to organize any creatures or convince them to fight, we just walked into this place and the lion was already here, with all the armies already mustered, and he went and rescued Edmund, and then we rode alongside him into this tremendous battle where he killed the White Witch..."

"Did the dream have a moral?" said Peter.

"I don't know," said Lucy, blinking and looking a little puzzled. "In the dream it all seemed pointless somehow."