Rootkit 16

Rootkit 16 states that 'If we get the chance to make war on the hanyos, we should take it.' It is FALSE. It is the sixteenth and final statement of the Rootkit Test.

Explanation of answer to Rootkit 16

Quoted from Puzzle One.

When I was young, every time I saw something hanyolike, I thought to myself ‘This is what I was born to fight!’ I was wrong, of course. It was only after I figured out where I should be that that sentence changed to ‘This is what I was born to escape.’ I realised that if I risked my own welfare and my chance of escape to do anything else (and at that point I could only save myself, no one else), it was because I was putting ‘hurting the hanyos’ ahead of ‘building my world’ in my list of things I needed to do. That meant I stood a good chance of never getting out of hanyo town. I saw that the biggest damage I could do to the hanyo world was to leave it behind. That was an automatic ‘win’ because then they could get nothing from me. And if I left it successfully, I could help others to leave too. 

This is why the rootkittens still live among you. They are brave souls, tertons seeking treasure, and they’re there because we want as many victims as possible to escape before hanyo town collapses, as it will, very soon. When each rootkitten decides she can’t do any more to help this happen, she too will leave if she can, as you must. Rootkittens don’t stay on because they want to hurt the hanyos. They don’t care about the hanyos: none of us do. Rootkittens care about you. So never ask a rootkitten to help you make war on the hanyos: they will immediately vanish. 

War is a hanyo idea. All of our defense systems and protective measures are just means to keep the hanyos out. If the hanyos never mess with us, then our defences will never be used. But we keep them in good repair, because if the hanyos decide we’re a big enough threat and they’ve run out of other hanyos to fight, the ones who are left will send an army after us. When they do that, we’ll be ready. We will fight by being impossible to find and inaccessible to pain. Rather than bring the fight to the hanyos, we will simply not be there. We have better things to do than help them destroy the world. While they’re wandering around figuring out how to blow us up, we shall go on tending the babies and puppies, growing the plants and animals, pulling karma, teaching each other useful things and holding parties in the baths. All we want is for you to join us, and then our happiness will be complete.