A dragon explores space, finds Amenta.
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Putting them on the Draak planet would be a bigger disaster-waiting-to-happen. Could they not just be other castes? They'd be clean. Though if push comes to shove, she knows Bloom is disconcerted about reds and also getting rich.

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There are a lot of jobs now, so maybe they'd be capable of some lower-skill purple work...

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It's not like there's a terrible hurry. Maybe Doet can try it, the Seeker said they like experiments and dragons don't really get it in a lot of ways? She will also be consulting with Bloom to look into mass-despringing, which should be possible.

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Doet will put together a cohort of experimental reds to reembody and try them out on purple work.

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The tool for this is a titanic emerald with flickers of internal light, several feet across. She tries to explain the whole process to the reds and says it is almost entirely certain to work and she's sorry if there was a better way and they didn't find it and asks the reds if they want to be re-bodied.

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They want to know if it will work on their kids, and if it will work for pregnant ones later on, and if it will hurt, and how long it will take, and whether they'll be allowed to visit their families who aren't in the experiment, and if it will change their hair color, and if it will make them mesosensitive.

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It will work on kids and pregnant people. It will feel strange at first but shouldn't hurt. The transfer takes mere seconds but they will be tired and off balance for an hour or so afterwards. She has another dragon bother the blues about their families; Surely if they decontaminate each time that will be fine? It won't affect pollution sensitivity but can change hair color if desired.

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Many of them would like their hair color changed, is there a form they should fill out?

They will be allowed to visit red districts; they're going to be housed in social service buildings to start out with, the kind where you can't buy a credit till you pay off your stay, till they've made decent money at purple jobs, by way of incentivizing compliance with the experiment.

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They should ... Have a paper or a card that is the same color as their desired hair color. Her assistant tells the reds what they've been told about the housing and visitation arrangements (He doesn't really know himself whether this is good enough or not).

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They will get some paper cards and their experimenters will procure a selection of purple hair dyes to dip the cards in.

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Once everyone is satisfied with the arrangements she'll have the first red stand in a designated spot, and the giant emerald glows brighter for a moment and everything falls away, and then they're staring at the ceiling from a curtained-off and cordoned away cot, feeling like they've been jerked out of a deep sleep and completely naked. There's hospital gowns right nearby and if they put them on and walk out all the waiting reds will see them through a glass divider.

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The waiting reds want to interview the first one in pretty thorough depth first. The experimenter greens apologize to Guardian for the delay.

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She's not in a hurry.

The red will feel very tired and as if they had a strange dream they can't remember. They don't seem otherwise different. Their hair is the specified color.

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Once the reds are satisfied and willing to proceed cooperatively with the rest of the reembodiments the experimenters get to interviewing the purpled red themselves.

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They are so so so scared. But you can't force people to accept things, and this is a deep trauma.

...She hopes this turns out well. It takes about ten seconds each once things are going smoothly.

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They spend slightly less time interviewing each purpled red as they get used to the process. At ten seconds per she can get through the experimental group of a hundred and fifty in less than an hour even with all the double-checking.

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She can go do the same thing for Baravi's spring-normalizing program while everyone sees if something goes wrong with the new purples. They don't even need to vanish and reappear, she just needs a reference person who's been de-springed standing around. She'll charge money for that one, with a royalty to Bloom. Money seems useful to have. (Bloom is extremely deferential and respectful to the Guardian. Hero-worshippy, even.)

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The town where Bloom is set up is growing noticeably in response to the tourism boom from people coming through to get de-sprung.

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The place seems weirdly verdant after a while. All the plants are growing better including weeds and everything and everyone seem healthier including pests. How's the red experiment going?

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The reds seem able to do the purple work that was carved out as probably doable by reds - janitorial stuff, some manufacturing, driving trucks. Some of them have saved enough money from these jobs to plan to move out of the social service housing, which is good because Doet doesn't have enough for the entire red population to live there all at the same time.

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...People learn to do new things sometimes? Why isn't that happening. She will use some of the money to let them learn to do new things. One of the other dragons who can interact with Amentans better is recruited to help navigate this.

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So the three problems with purpled reds doing arbitrary purple work are educational (fixable with money), innate aptitude (probably variable but not fixable, this generation), and people not wanting purpled reds to touch them out of an abundance of non-theologically-validated-but-still-compelling caution, whereas they can tolerate a purpled red sewing a garment that then gets washed before being sold.

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There isn't much she can do about the third thing. The heart wants what the heart wants, and is disgusted by what it's disgusted by. Her strategy of trying to send the reds inspiring dreams doesn't appear to have actually resulted in any dreams, either. Maybe they can migrate. What do other countries think of all this? Does it make "not having reds, and also not exterminating them" seem possible?

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Apparently purple voting blocs hate it but it seems likely to go through anyway.

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...Is that because they're only letting reds be purple. Well, she's obviously not an Amentan politician or anything, but she's one of the four effective heads of state of the Draak and is very politely confused at people about this. What about the reds, do they like the idea?

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