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Hold on, what's this
Bruce meets Zoombinis
Permalink Mark Unread

This was a lousy idea and Bruce is having a lousy time.

"Come explore the Stata Center with us," they said. "Grad students deserve to have fun too," they said. "It's better than anything else you could be doing at 3 AM," they said. Well now he's gotten separated from the group and ended up in a room with, and he has counted several times, seventeen sides and nineteen corners.

He can't tell which door he came in; worse, they're all locked. There's a window, but it doesn't open, and all he can see out of it is a different exterior wall of this same damned building. 

Bruce looks up at the ceiling, or at least at the point where all the walls converge, and his head swims, and he should have gone to sleep a long time ago, and it feels like he's about to fall off the floor into . . . 

There is a series of sense impressions that fail to resolve into a model of the world, and then Bruce is somewhere else.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's dark, and cold, and damp, and has a cavelike smell.

For the moment, there doesn't seem to be anything much around.

But wait! Is that a very quiet noise, echoing in the distance? Sort of... squeaky?

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He knew MIT had tunnels, but what the unmitigated fuck is this? If he has managed to sleepwalk into the sewer system this is either going to be a hilarious anecdote or a deeply embarrassing obituary. He squints into the darkness and calls out "Hello? Is there anyone else down here?"

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The squeaky noise stops, and there is an amount of very quiet chittering, and then a dim light is visible off to his left. The light grows brighter as a... creature... rounds the corner and rolls into view.

The creature has a round pale blue body, a round bright yellow nose, fluffy dark indigo hair, and its means of locomotion is a pair of thick rugged-looking wheels with heavy treads. There is a small lantern nestled amidst its fluff. It doesn't seem to have any separation between body and head, or limbs other than its wheels, and it is about the size of a basketball.

It pauses, narrows its small dark eyes, and peers into the darkness ahead. When it spots Bruce it hops slightly in place, then leans forward and rolls confidently toward him.

Stopping several feet away on the tunnel floor, it stares up at him and demands, "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

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"I don't know and I'm Bruce Banner. Uh, in the other order. Where am I?" He wants to add "and who are you, are you a space alien" because they sure do look like a space alien or possibly a product of mad science, but apparently they're already ticked at him so better not.

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The creature somehow, without eyebrows or a mouth, still manages to frown.

"You're in a tunnel underneath Zoombini Isle." The creature rolls back and forth slightly, with an attitude of focused contemplation, and then stops and draws themself up into a steady, solid stance.

"Suppose I have three blocks," they say suspiciously. "One is red, one is green, one is blue; one is a circle, one is a triangle, one is a square. The blue block isn't round, the green block isn't square, and neither the circle nor the triangle is red. What colour is each of the shapes?"

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"Well, if the circle and the triangle aren't red then the square must be, and if the blue one isn't round that makes it the triangle, and that means the green one has to be, what was the other one, the circle."

(Bruce is an MIT grad student; this is a pretty normal conversation except for how it doesn't need a whiteboard and there isn't one nearby.)

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The creature relaxes slightly. "Well, you're not a Bloat," they conclude. "I'm Speeba." Another slight back-and-forth roll. "Do you really not have any idea how you got here? If the tunnel is compromised..." They trail off rather than articulate the implications.

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"Yeah, sorry, one minute I was stuck in an evil building and the next I was here. I either fell in a negative space wedgie or did a lot of drugs and walked into a storm drain." He hopes it's the former; he's much more a fan of Star Trek than of Alice in Wonderland. "I don't think anyone knows about you, though. What's a Bloat?"

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"Bloats are a problem," Speeba says cryptically. "And I'd rather not park here chatting about them all day. You can come with us if you're quiet; there should be just about enough room for you on the boat."

They turn around in a smooth practiced maneuver, lean in the direction they came, and call in a carrying undertone, "All clear!"

A parade of round blue creatures emerges from the darkness.

Three more are balancing lanterns on their heads, and all of those are basketball-sized like Speeba; the rest range in size from a little smaller than that all the way down to the tiniest orb, small enough to nestle comfortably in two cupped hands, who has fluffy hair and big sleepy eyes and a red nose and rolls along determinedly on a miniature version of Speeba's wheels. Nose colour, hairstyle, eye shape, and means of locomotion all seem to vary wildly among the population: there are propellers, rollerskates, coiled springs, and bright pink sneakers all visible in the crowd, alongside small eyes like Speeba's, sleepy ones like the littlest creature's, pink sunglasses, red spectacles, and even a few cyclopes.

Permalink Mark Unread

Okay so there's an entire family (?) of cute tiny aliens and some sort of menace and he needs to get in a boat. Boat sounds way better than tunnel in terms of becoming less confused about where he is. He says "Okay, thanks," softly enough not to carry much and follows along.

Permalink Mark Unread

The creatures guide Bruce along the tunnel. Speeba takes the lead, another lantern-bearer follows a few bodylengths behind, then all the little ones in a big group, and lastly the two remaining lantern-bearers bring up the rear. The journey is quiet, with only the occasional squeak of wheels or chitter of tiny voices.

And then they reach their secret dock. It seems to be early morning; the freshly risen sun sheds just enough light to clearly illuminate a Speeba-scaled sailboat tied up at the pier. The four biggest creatures set down their lanterns and line up the little ones in neat rows to be counted; once they've verified that they have all twelve, they start herding them onto the boat one by one. Speeba motions for Bruce to hang back until everyone's settled belowdecks, then scoops up two lanterns - another of the big ones grabs the other two - and beckons him along as they hop into the boat and pull up the ramp behind them.

The four biggest creatures, and a few of the smaller ones, get to work preparing the boat for departure. Speeba invites Bruce to take a seat on a wooden crate near the back end of the ship and then leaves him be. Everyone seems much too busy to answer questions.

 

The teeniest imaginable squeak drifts up from the hatch, and the littlest orb emerges, somehow climbing a rope ladder with their little wheels, and creeps quietly up to Bruce.

"What are you?" they ask, in a small piping voice and a surreptitious undertone.

Permalink Mark Unread

Bruce was holding out hope that they would come out of the tunnel onto the Charles River and he would see the Citgo Sign and know how to get home, but nope, whatever this is he's still doing it. He sits where he's put and hopes he's not so big as to make the boat hard to maneuver.

Oh gosh. Small orb, small voice, small baby alien. He is not sure he has ever seen anything so adorable in his life. "I'm a human," he says softly. "My name's Bruce. What's your name?"

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"Kwispafa!" The creature bounces gently. "I'm a Zoombini! We're escaping from the eeeevil Bloats!"

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He's probably not going to get a nuanced and accurate explanation of whatever unpleasantness is going on between the Zoombinis and the Bloats from this tiny child and isn't going to try. "Pleased to meet you, Kwispafa! I want to learn all about Zoombinis. What sort of things do Zoombinis do?"

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"We make stuff!" says Kwispafa. "We're so good at making stuff! Bloats are bad at making stuff and that's why they're taking our stuff instead." They deliver this assertion with all the authority of a small child who has heard a thoroughly reasonable explanation for the events of their life. "I helped sew the sails on this boat! Look up there," they lift their small red snoot triumphantly to point it at a part of the sail where the stitching is visibly uneven but still pretty impressive for a softball-sized child with no hands, "that's my corner!"

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"Hey, that's awesome! Making stuff is great. I'm a biologist, which means I learn new things about how people and animals work so people can make new things that nobody's made before. Is sewing your favorite kind of making things?"

Kwispafa is extremely good. He? She? Screw it, they, aliens probably don't even have the same set of genders anyhow, is just super cute and friendly and this whole thing is extremely Star Trek. Or possibly a less-screwed-up version of Gulliver's Travels.

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Kwispafa thinks hard about this question for a few seconds, and then says, "My favourite thing to make is cake."

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"Cake is super good."

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"It is!" Kwispafa is so glad Bruce is aware of this important fact about the world.

The boat gets underway. One of the adults(?) comes by and gently shushes Kwispafa, who proceeds to sit very quietly with the attitude of someone doing the Very Important Job of Not Making Any Noise, and for a few minutes all is quiet except for the sounds of cute round aliens stealthily operating a sailing vessel. They emerge from their hidden cove and sail away from what looks like a moderately large island.

Once the island has faded into the distance, everyone breathes a sigh of relief and Speeba comes over to park by Bruce and Kwispafa. "Whew. So far so good. Hey, stranger, I don't suppose you know anything about the fabled lands of logic?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not by that name, anyway. I think I'm farther from home than I thought it was possible to get. Have you heard of Earth or the United States?"

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Speeba sighs. "Didn't think so, but it was worth a try. And no, I've never heard of those."

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"Mind telling me where we're going and what you're planning to do when we get there? I'm happy to help if I can; you've been very hospitable." They have, too. He hopes he would have been this friendly if a giant alien had dropped on him while he was in the middle of going someplace.

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"We're going to the fabled lands of logic, of course. Bloats are hopeless at logic puzzles, they'll never be able to follow us - if, that is, the fables are true, and if we can navigate the puzzles well enough to reach a good place to settle."

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"Well, I'm pretty good at puzzles, though I'm not sure what a land of them would look like. I don't know much about living off the land or finding good places to settle but I can learn." He hopes this boat journey will be short enough that he doesn't have to start eating their provisions, which were presumably planned to be enough for the group minus him. For that matter, he hopes he can eat the food on this planet at all. "Made first contact with aliens, starved to death because their amino acids go the other way" is a cooler story than he thought his life would have, but also a shorter and more depressing one.

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"We're all going to be learning things; I know plenty about living off the land on Zoombini Isle, much less in strange faraway places. But it'll be useful to have someone so big along, if you want to join the expedition."

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"I'd be happy to!" It's not as though he has any other commitments he could actually get to from here, and the Zoombinis seem awesome company. Especially if he can actually help out and not just hang around awkwardly.

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"That'll make carrying our supplies much easier!" says Speeba with an expression that manages to approximate a relieved smile despite their lack of any discernible mouth.

Kwispafa interjects, "And I bet you'd make such big cakes!"

...Speeba digests this comment with a thoughtful air. "Eat bigger ones, too, probably," they say thoughtfully. "We should have enough to make it to the point where we're self-sustaining on the other side... we definitely have enough to make it to the shore, at least, when we loaded the boat we prepared for a very long journey."

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"Yeah, I was thinking about that too. Also I'm not sure whether I can eat your food, though the fact that you have something you call cake is . . . wait a second, how do we even speak the same language? Is this English we're speaking?"

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"English? Never heard of it. This is Islish," says Speeba. "Spoken all across the Archipelago."

It sure sounds like English, and feels like English when Bruce speaks it, and in all other ways is not perceptually distinguishable from English.

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"That is. Not the weirdest thing that's happened today but it would definitely have won if it had happened last week. And I have a whole bunch of experiments I want to do now but possibly it should wait until after we figure out the important logistical stuff."

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"Yes, I suppose that is very strange," Speeba agrees. "You're right about the priorities, though. Speaking of which, I'd better get back to running this operation. Kwisp, you can stay up here and chat as long as you're ready to nip back down the hatch as soon as we hit choppy waters."

"Yes, Ammi," Kwispafa says dutifully.

"Good kid. I'll be right there, Caf!" Speeba un-parks and rolls, one might almost say zooms, away.

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"So, do language experiments sound fun to you?"

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"What's a language experiment?"

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"So, as far as I know no human has ever met a Zoombini before, but we can speak the same language, except you call it Islish and I call it English. So I want to find out what else is different and why our languages are so similar when different people came up with them, and the way I want to do that is by doing experiments--trying things where I don't know what's going to happen and learning from what happens."

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Kwispafa bounces a little. "That sounds interesting! What kinds of things do you want to try?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Awwwww the tiny cute alien likes experiments, and bounces, that's too adorable.

"Well, first I'd like to see if you can understand me when I'm speaking a different language. For example, this is a sentence in German; can you understand it?"

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Kwispafa shakes their head. Or, well, rotates in place in a very headshake-reminiscent way. "I can't understand that at all!"

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"Okay, so we are actually speaking the same language and not, I dunno, you're telepaths or something. Second question, that head gesture you just did meant no, and this one" he nods "means yes, right?" He has the sudden impulse to see if they have an equivalent of flipping the bird and immediately stomps on it because this is a 100% G-rated science project.

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"Yes!" Kwispafa nod-bounces. It's surprisingly distinct from a happy-bounce, even though they're doing it pretty excitedly.

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These people have such clear body language that he's better at understanding it than he is at human body language. He hopes they don't find him weirdly uncommunicative in comparison.

"Hmm, what next . . . Dialects! Do you have potatoes here? If you do, if you slice them up into sticks and then cook them with oil until the outsides are crispy, what's that called?"

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Happybounce. "Oh, I like potato fries, they're tasty!"

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"They are!" Zoombinis: apparently not British. And thank goodness this world has something at least potentially similar to potatoes and probably no countries mysteriously called France. What other regional dialect variations are there . . . "Do you have a word for the kind of shoes I'm wearing, or are they weird alien shoes?" (He's wearing sneakers.)

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"They look like shoes to me but they're pretty weird," Kwispafa admits. "Makes sense, I guess, you probably have different feet."

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"Yeah, fair, I was mostly wondering if you say 'tennis shoes' or 'sneakers' but now that I say it out loud it seems pretty unlikely you've invented tennis. You're not missing much. How about plural you? If I offered someone cake I would say, 'Would you like some cake?'; if I was offering a group of people cake what would I say then?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey guys, I made cake!" says Kwispafa, lowering their voice a little so as not to get anyone's hopes up.

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Bruce laughs delightedly. "That's also a valid way to communicate that! What if I had said 'Would y'all like some cake' or for that matter 'Would youse guys like some cake' or 'Would yinz like some cake'? Like, separate from the actual question of the cake, would you think I was using silly made-up words or reasonable ones?" He feels like he is going to owe this kid a cake at the end of this and if he had any hope of finding a kitchen maybe he would be able to follow through on that.

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"Those all sound pretty silly! I guess I'd say 'you' or 'you guys' instead of those? Are those real words where you're from?"

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"They are, yeah, but only people who live in certain places use them. Are there Zoombinis living in lots of different places and speaking different languages?"

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"I think there's just Zoombini Isle and this boat. And lots of people who aren't Zoombinis speak Islish too. Like the Bloats!"

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"What are the Bloats like? I think I got mistaken for one earlier." Oh void and botheration, if this was a YA novel it would turn out that the Bloats were humans who had come here from Earth to be generically oppressive and that's why the mysterious English. He hopes that is not what's going on and not just because it would be deeply clichéd.

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"They're really big like you and have arms like you but none of them wear glasses," says Kwispafa. "And I think their hair is a different colour. It's sort of pinkish red. I haven't seen one up close though."

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"Huh." Well, if he is in a clichéd YA novel he will have time to deal with it later. "I'm curious about the Bloats, but we can talk about something else if you'd rather."

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"It's okay, I'm not scared!" says Kwispafa. "We're gonna go to the fabled lands of logic and do all the puzzles and find somewhere to live and then my ammi will go back home and tell everyone it's okay and they'll all sneak away to come live with us and there'll be nothing left but a big empty island and if the Bloats want to stomp around and be mean they can yell at the trees!"

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"I hope we find somewhere really nice. What are the fabled lands of logic fabled to be like?"

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"They're supposed to be full of logic puzzles that you have to solve if you want to go places. It sounds like fun!"

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"I guess the people who live there must really like logic puzzles, then."

He's vaguely imagining a continent of colorful aliens who put logic puzzles at the entrances to all of their buildings and nerd-snipe you every time you try to buy groceries, as if Mystery Hunt never stopped and just integrated itself into normal life. It sounds like a very inefficient paradise.

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"Maybe! Or maybe they're really tired of them by now! I guess we'll find out!"

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"Do you know how long it will take to get there?"

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"I know we have to sleep on the boat but I forget how many times. Not a lot though. Maybe just once?"

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"That's a good length of time for a boat trip." Whatever the food situation is, it's going to be better on land.  He looks around at the boat and the hatches and tries to ascertain whether he's likely to be sleeping on deck for lack of space below.

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He is likely to be sleeping on deck for lack of ability to fit through the hatch.

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Well, it would be even weirder if they had somehow been expecting him, and given that they weren't that's hardly a surprise. He'll just have to hope for good weather.

He casts around for another conversation topic. "Want to tell me more about what your life is like? Is Speeba one of your parents?" That's potentially an invalid question, since they could have one parent apiece or reproduce by budding or sprout like plants for all he knows, but he doesn't know how to make small talk at the best of times and right now his hypothesis space is enormous and a mess.

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"Yeah! Speeba is my ammi, and that's my yaya Cafly," they point their snoot at the fluffy bespectacled adult who is currently helping Speeba do something or other with the sails, "and my baba Nawu," the sleepy-eyed spring-borne green-snooted adult who's bouncing gently near the front of the boat, "and my uppi Awoowoo is inside with all the big kids."

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Oh gosh new words! "English doesn't have the words ammi and uppi and baba and yaya so I don't know what the differences are, but that's cool that you've got your family with you."

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"You get your feet from your ammi and your eyes from your baba and your hair from your yaya and your snoot from your uppi!" they explain. "Well, not really, you can be a different way if you want. But you're sposed to look like your parents."

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He's learning alien genetics from actual aliens! Or possibly alien body-modding customs which is also mega neat. "Cool! Humans look like their parents too. Do you start out looking like your parents the way you're supposed to, or do you start out looking a different way and change it to match your parents on purpose?"

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"You start out with the same eyes as your baba and the same feet as your ammi - well, if your ammi has legs you have legs and if your ammi doesn't have legs you don't. But I have to dye my snoot to look like my uppi's. My hair goes floof all by itself though!"

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His hair (her hair? fuck it, their hair) does go floof and it's adorable. "It's neat how many ways to get around without legs you have. Nearly all humans have legs and a small number have wheels, but we're too tall to balance on springs and too heavy to use propellers. As a one-person thing, I mean, we have airplanes that use propellers to fly but they're too big to use instead of wheels or feet."

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"Propellers are neat! My friend Impu tried their sib's propeller on once, but they kept crashing into walls and had to give it back. It's hard to use feet that aren't the right ones for you."

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"Does what kind of feet are easiest run in families, or is it just practice?" It's kind of amazing, he thinks, how many layers of model uncertainty he's currently operating on. Uncertainty about how well Zoombini science reflects reality, uncertainty about how much science this kid knows, uncertainty about how well he's understanding Kwispafa's explanations versus projecting unjustified assumptions he doesn't know he's making, and of course the base layer of uncertainty about whether he's currently having a very weird semi-lucid dream on the floor of the Stata Center.

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"I think it runs in families but I guess maybe it could be practice too!"

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"Do you get them as soon as you're born?"

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Kwispafa considers this question for a few seconds, then says, "I'm not sure! I don't remember hatching."

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"Yeah, I guess if you don't have any little sibs you wouldn't know. Hmm, is there anything you'd like to know about Earth? Or I can keep asking you questions."

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"I like your questions, they're interesting!" But they think for a couple more seconds and then add, "What's it like on Earth? Do you have cake there?"

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"We do have cake! Earth is a lot of different ways in different places, but I live in a really good one. It's a city called Cambridge, and I live with a bunch of people who are all learning all the science we can. I'm mostly learning about how human bodies work so I can discover new ways to make humans healthier."

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Happybounce. "That sounds like a good thing to learn! I like learning things."

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"Learning things is great! What have you been learning lately? Do Zoombinis go to school?"

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"Older kids have school sometimes! I was helping make the boat this week so I learned things about that. Sewing is hard!"

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"Sewing gets easier with practice. Not that I know much more than how to put buttons on things. How do you hold the needle, by the way? I use my hands for stuff like that."

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"Oh!" they say, peering curiously at Bruce's hands. "That's not how we hold things!"

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"Would you mind showing me how you hold things? I'm sure it'll be obvious once I've seen it but I'm having trouble imagining it."

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Kwispafa looks around for loose objects and can't immediately find anything; the grownups are keeping the deck pretty tidy.

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Bruce fishes his student ID out of his pocket and holds it out.

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Kwispafa nudges it, then picks it up. They seem to be holding it with the side of their face; it's hard to describe but looks pretty straightforward to accomplish if your face happens to work like that, which human faces definitely don't. Then they flip it neatly up to the top of their head - "see, and this is how we carry things" - and tip it off again and catch it and hold it out to Bruce.

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"Wow, okay! I can't at all do that, that's neat," Bruce says, taking the card back and pocketing it. He makes a frankly bizzare and ridiculous facial expression trying to do that and confirms that he super cannot.

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Kwispafa giggles at him.

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Bruce giggles at himself. "So what sort of things have Zoombinis invented? Humans have invented a lot of stuff and I'm curious if we got the same things in the same order."

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"Boats! Cake! Potato fries! Wheelbarrows!" says Kwispafa.

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"We have all of those! Do you have cars? Hot air balloons? Microwave ovens? The light bulb?" They clearly have something powering their propellers, so it seems like a decent bet that they have electricity.

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"What's a hot air balloon? What's a microwave oven? I know what a car is, it's a part of a train! And lightbulbs are part of lamps!"

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They have trains! Trains are great. "Hot air balloons are balloons--big bags of cloth--with baskets hanging under them, and you light a fire at the bottom of the balloon, and it heats up the air in the balloon which makes it expand, and that makes the balloonful of air weight less than the air around it so it floats up into the sky! Microwaves are boxes that make an invisible kind of light that heats things up, like how sunlight feels warm but moreso, and you can use them to heat up food."

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"Wooow! I don't think we have those things at all!"

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"My world has a lot of cool things! Most of them use electricity; I'm guessing you have that and the propeller folks use it to turn their propellers but I guess you could be using something else we haven't invented."

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"I don't really know how propellers work," Kwispafa admits. "Lightbulbs use electricity though!"

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He is not going to ask to take apart a propeller and see how it works. He is not going to do that. He is going to say, "I guess I'll have to ask an adult with a propeller at some point. Do you know if you've invented the steam engine? In my world we got that before electricity."

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"Yeah! Trains use those."

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"Nice, so did the ones in my world for a while. It's too bad I don't get to see your cities and all the cool things you've built. But maybe I'll get to see you build new ones!"

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Happybounce. "We're gonna build new ones in the lands of logic and it's gonna be great!! I wanna help my parents design our house! It's gonna be taller than you!"

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"Is it going to have multiple floors? Do you use ramps to get from one floor to the next?" Sure, those wheels can apparently climb a rope, and isn't that embarrassing when he cannot climb a rope even a little bit, but stairs still don't sound optimal.

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"Sometimes! Sometimes we use ladders or stairs but ramps are easier."

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"Makes sense. Humans go for stairs more than ramps but lots of places have ramps too." He looks off at the horizon; he's no sailor but the weather over thataway looks kind of shit.

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"Are humans better at using stairs than Zoombinis?"

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"Well, I've never seen a Zoombini use stairs, but I would guess that we are? We have long legs so we can have bigger individual steps, and that might let us build them steeper."

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"Ohhh," says Kwispafa in a tone of dawning realization. "Do you all have legs?"

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"The vast majority of us do, yeah. A few people have legs that don't work very well, so they sit in chairs with wheels and get around with ramps and elevators. Do you have elevators or should I explain them?"

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"We have elevators! Having to put your wheels on a chair sounds hard," says Kwispafa. "But maybe it works better that way because you're so tall. If you tried to use my wheels you'd probably fall over!"

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"Oh, I would definitely fall over. And there's not really a good place to attach wheels to a human who can't use their legs that's easier than putting them on a chair. And if you can use your legs sometimes but not all the time it's convenient to have a chair you can get into and out of whenever."

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"That makes sense. I think," Kwispafa says uncertainly. "Wow, that's so different from how Zoombinis work."

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"Different kinds of people existing and being different is the coolest. Are there people in this, uh, reality, other than you and the Bloats? Back home it's just humans."

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"There's different people on the other Isles but I don't know much about them. I think we used to talk to them before the Bloats came and now we don't. And I guess there's whoever lives in the fabled lands of logic but I don't know anything about them."

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"I guess we'll find out!" More kinds of aliens! This is the best ridiculous ongoing hallucination and he should probably be trying to wake up but he doesn't want to, he wants to keep experiencing this as long as it's available.

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"Yeah!"

That weather Bruce saw earlier is getting closer; another of the adults, the one called Cafly if he's been keeping track, comes by to herd Kwispafa belowdecks.

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Bruce looks around for something to hide from potential rain under. Ideally something near the centerline of the deck; he doesn't know enough about how delicately ships are balanced to be sure he won't make it harder to steer if he hangs out on one edge.

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Amid their other preparations for the approaching storm, Speeba and Cafly throw a tarp over him.

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He has a vague mental image of being on a checklist of equipment somewhere and chuckles, then tucks the tarp over and around himself in such a way as to minimize the odds of sitting in a puddle.

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It's up to him whether he wants to try peeking out the front of his bundle to watch the storm. The adults and a couple of the very biggest kids are darting around the boat making adjustments and tying things to other things in a very practiced-looking way.

Then there is a lot of rain, which makes loud noises on his tarp. Some of the rain is going sideways. He was successful at avoiding sitting in a puddle, though!

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He has seen storms before; he prefers watching them through glass windows in sturdy waterproof buildings. Today he will hunker under his tarp and not try anything that night let the rain in. And also sleep; it was late at night in his former time zone and now that the exciting novelty is on pause and there's a lot of white noise his body is remembering that it's actually quite tired.

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Then he will probably sleep right through the storm, and by the time he wakes up, they'll be in sight of land.

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He unfolds himself from the tarp and stretches. This definitely wasn't the most comfortable place he's slept, in fact it's solidly in the bottom ten, but hey, apparently he's still here and not on the floor of the Stata Center! Also, land! He goes to the railing and takes a look at the unfamiliar continent.

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The shoreline looks pretty normal from here, but then, it's barely more than a smudge on the horizon.

As they approach, it... still looks pretty normal. There's a broad sandy beach between rocky cliffs; the boat lands there. The hatch opens, and all the kids climb out, bouncing eagerly as they wait for Nawu and Cafly to finish deploying the ramp.

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Bruce will help deploy the ramp if it's something he can help with; either way he'll wait until everyone else has used it before putting his own weight on it. Not that he expects any problems; like everything else he's seen of Zoombini manufacture, it looks pretty well-made.

He's getting pretty hungry, but he isn't going to mention food until someone else does or he thinks he's about to fall over. He really hopes Zoombinis don't go a week between meals or something.

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Fortunately for him, the very next thing they do is unpack a lot of food - they solicit his help for this, since he has several times the carrying capacity of an adult Zoombini - and throw a big party on the beach.

Zoombini cuisine is mostly pretty recognizable; even items he can't specifically place still belong to fairly obvious categories, like 'bread'.

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That's bizzare, but he's not going to look a gift weirdness in the mouth. He is however going to put some of it in his mouth. Specifically, the stuff that looks like bread and fruit and vegetables; he has no idea whether Zoombinis do factory farming but even if they don't the idea of eating meat is still weird.

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The bread and fruit and vegetables are all delicious.

"Sorry we didn't feed you earlier," Speeba comments. "That storm had terrible timing. Still, though, things are looking good so far. Want to help scout, or stay behind with the kids?"

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The kids are great but his comparative advantage is probably in scouting and he wants to see more of this planet. "Those both sound fun but I want to help scout."

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"Right, come with me then." They turn to the other adults. "Who's going where?"

"I think you two can handle the scouting," says one of the three; the other two nod. "It'll take all three of us just to keep up with twelve kids," the first one jokes.

"Sure," says Speeba. "Have fun. Bruce, this way." And they roll off up the slope of the beach, getting surprisingly good traction in the sand.

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Bruce follows happily, getting a bit of sand in his sneakers but nothing he can't whack out of them later.

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The beach slopes up and up and up and the sand gives way to grass and then to scrubby underbrush and then they're on a level with the tops of the cliffs they landed at the foot of and there's a broad expanse of sparsely forested ground ahead. Speeba rolls up to the base of a tree and examines it dubiously.

"Not quite the same as at home," they conclude. "I know there's some pine trees where you can eat the bark but I'm not confident this is one of them. We can experiment if it comes to that, though." They back up and roll around the tree to continue moving inland.

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"Huh. If there are kinds of tree bark humans can eat I don't know about them, but I probably wouldn't either way. Want me to try climbing one of these and see what I can see from the top, or just keep going?"

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"—oh, that's a good idea, yes, do that."

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Up the tree he goes! He can't quite get all the way to the top because the top few branches won't support his weight, but the canopy is sparse enough that he can get a decent view from a couple meters down. What is there to see around here?

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Up ahead there seems to be a prominent bridge across a deep ravine. It looks a little sketchy but should definitely support the weight of a Zoombini no problem.

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Bruce disembarks exits the tree and reports this. "I don't know if I can get across, but if we grab some ropes from the ship we should be able to rig something as a backup."

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"Good thinking," says Speeba. "Let's go report back."

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"Sounds good." Hike hike hike. This time he is careful not to get sand in his shoes.

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Back down by the boat, the kids are settled around a small campfire while one adult entertains them with stories and the other two organize heaps of cargo into tidy stacks. Speeba makes their report to one of those two, while the other takes Bruce aside and asks him to heft some things and walk around with them to get a sense of his comfortable carrying capacity.

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By Zoombini standards, he can carry some pretty heavy loads, and if they can rig up some sort of harness or backpack or pullable sledge he can carry even more. He has never been The Strong One in a group before and it is bizzare and kind of nice (much like everything else in the last eighteen hours or so).

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Zoombinis are clever enough inventors that if he describes the concept of a backpack and is willing to put up with being climbed on a bit by industrious little orbs with measuring tapes, he'll have a sturdy pack to carry things in within a couple of hours, and they'll manage to make it comfortable to wear around indefinitely after a couple more, with a longish break for dinner in between. By this point, though, the sun is waning and it is declared to be bedtime for small Zoombinis, with the plan being that tomorrow they'll pack everything up and head up the slope to check out those bridges.

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Collectively reinventing the backpack is so much fun! Hopefully it pays off in time saved later. He eats as little dinner as he thinks he can get by on, since they haven't figured out food yet, and falls asleep excited for the next day.

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The next day dawns bright and cheerful, and the Zoombinis serve a light breakfast and then gather their cargo and roll and skate and trek and flutter their way up the slope with Bruce and Speeba in the lead. The six biggest kids are very excited to harness themselves behind two of the grownups and help pull the supply wagon.

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This is the cutest and most exciting hike he has ever been on. Between his memory and Speeba's, they find the ravine again without much trouble.

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On closer inspection, it seems there are two somewhat rickety rope bridges spanning the gap, beside each of which the cliffs form a big ol' face in a way that looks not quite deliberate enough to be a carving but a little too on point to be mere pareidolia. The Zoombinis should have no trouble crossing, and if they take a minute to reconfigure the cargo into single-orb loads and get Bruce's help hauling some of the bigger pieces across, they should even be able to get all the supplies to the other side. (The bridges are unfortunately narrow enough that they'll definitely have to cross single file.)

Of course, that still requires one brave Zoombini to be the first one to attempt a crossing.

Speeba volunteers immediately, and although a couple of the other adults suggest that the expedition leader shouldn't be the one taking every single risk they come across, neither one succeeds in volunteering hard enough to displace them. Off they roll.

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Speeba makes it across, and the bridge sways a bit but doesn't seem terribly strained by their weight.

But when another Zoombini follows them across, the closer of the stone faces starts to flow like water, contorting into a massive sneeze, and the bridge thrashes like a cracked whip and flings the Zoombini onto the ground on the near side.

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"What the flaming fuck in a bucket!?!?"

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"My thoughts exactly!" calls Speeba across the ravine. "Nawu, are you okay?"

Nawu wiggles a bit and then flips back up onto their spring, bouncing a few times in place to dust themselves off. "Fine!" they call back.

Speeba approaches the cliff edge and peers dubiously down at the face that sneft the sneeze. "Any chance you're going to explain yourself?" they inquire.

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The rock face is completely motionless. Nothing to see here! Just totally normal rocks! (It's not fooling anybody.)

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It really isn't. Speeba sighs.

"Try the other bridge?" they suggest to Nawu.

Nawu boings hesitantly across.

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This goes fine, but as Nawu approaches the bridge they notice some damage to the shared support beam. It might not be able to take too many more shocks like that last one.

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"Yikes," says Speeba, when Nawu conveys this. "All right—Cafly, Awoowoo, you two cross last, that way we've got grownups on both sides if the bridge goes out—Bruce, maybe you'd better cross now before any more nonsense happens, you're by far the heaviest of all of us—do you want to repack your cargo so you don't have to carry it across?"

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"Hmm, yeah. How about I tie a rope around my pack and pull it after me so it's not on the bridge at the same time?"

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"Good plan!"

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He suits action to words and sets off with some trepidation across the bridge that hasn't had anything messed up happen to it (yet).

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This goes fine!

"All right," says Speeba, "who's next—"

"I'll go," says Kwispafa, rolling up to the same bridge their ammi safely crossed.

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Kwispafa meets the same fate as Nawu!

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"Okay," says Speeba, "these are the Lands of Logic, not the Lands of Arbitrary Misfortune, what's the puzzle here—Kwisp, can you try the other bridge—"

Kwispafa wiggles back up onto their wheels and retrieves their tiny share of the party's supplies and rolls determinedly across the north bridge. This time they pass without incident.

"Suggestions, anyone?"

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"Maybe we need to go north and south in a specific pattern? Or there's something about Speeba that means they can take the south bridge and nobody else who's tried can?"

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"Could be age, could be—I was going to suggest it was the wheels but Kwispafa got sneezed so not that—hmm—Raclie, try the north bridge—"

A Zoombini with flat-topped hair and glasses and a red snoot and a propeller proceeds cautiously across the same bridge that Nawu, Bruce, and Kwispafa have all safely crossed. They manage it too.

"Okay," says Speeba, "youngest then oldest then youngest again, keep trying the north bridge until something happens."

The next littlest Zoombini after Kwispafa trundles up to the north bridge on their skates. Their hair is a tiny tuft, their eyes are small like Speeba's, and their snoot, like Speeba's, is yellow.

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This time the north face sneezes, with a great "Ah . . . ah . . . ahCHOO!" that sounds like a gale howling through a cave and throws the next littlest Zoombini to the grass in a heap. The bridge support is looking noticeably the worse for wear.

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"You okay?" says one of the grownups on that side, helping the little orb get back up on their skates.

"I think so!" they say, a little shaken but mostly determined. "Should I try the other bridge?"

The grownups on that side look across the ravine to Speeba for their take. Speeba rolls back and forth, deep in thought.

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"If I think about this like a puzzle someone set up on purpose, rather than a natural phenomenon, maybe you need to sort by appearance or something? Can cliff-heads even tell what people look like?"

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"Zampaimo and I both have small eyes and yellow snoots... Vapa, try the south bridge."

A small-eyed green-snooted Zoombini starts walking across the south bridge.

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Vapa reaches the other side un-sneezed-at.

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"Well. That's fairly straightforward. All right, small eyes to the south, everyone else to the north, let's see if this prediction holds."

It does! The other two adults are the last to cross, but they both make it safely to the far side.

"Right!" says Speeba, with a cheery little bounce. "We made it! Let's keep going and see how far we can get before we have to make camp!"

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The sun climbs toward noon and a light breeze blows through the hills. In time the party comes to a rocky ridge too steep and unstable to climb over, but with a group of four tunnels running through it. Sitting between the tunnels are four boulders with faces even more obvious (but less human) than the cliffs. They stare judgementally at the group. Then one of them opens a mouth-crack and says, "They're blue!"

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"...yes we are," says Speeba, perplexed and a little wary. "Is that a problem?"

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"I must be careful about who I let in. Blue skin is not necessarily unacceptable, merely . . . unconventional."

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Speeba's small round face takes on a mildly disgruntled expression.

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Bruce doesn't think much of these folks either, to be honest. "Do you have an opinion on humans?"

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Much darker looks from all four rocks. 

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Okay, wow, hopefully they just think he's weird and this is not the reputation humans have everywhere on this continent. "Does someone want to try one of the paths."

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Speeba rolls up to the one on the left.

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Once he's on the path leading past her, she says "Sure."

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And when he reaches the top rock, she chuckles happily. Speeba gets into the tunnel without incident.

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Nawu volunteers next, and follows Speeba up the leftmost path.

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Left Rock somehow launches her entire body into the air and lands with a thud that knocks Nawu off the slope. "Uh-uh," she says in a voice so annoying it would be implausible from a human, let alone a rock.

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"...fine," says Nawu. They try the other side.

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Nawu can get to the top right passage, which merges a few meters back with the one Speeba's in.

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"I'll try next!" say Kwispafa, and they head for the same path Speeba took.

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Kwispafa gets past Left Rock but draws the ire of Top Rock, who knocks them off the path and "explains" herself with "We must be selective about our clientele!"

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Well, what if... they take Left Rock's other path...?

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"Enjoy yourself," says Bottom Rock.

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"...thank... you...?" says Kwispafa suspiciously. But they're safely past the hazard, so they'll take it.

"All right, who next?" says Speeba, peering out of the tunnel mouth. The view past Top Rock isn't great. "Is someone keeping track of the puzzle? I can't see everything from here."

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Bruce is tall enough to see into all four tunnels pretty easily. "Maybe Rotheefa should try going the way Speeba did? Since you're mostly similar?" 

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"Sure," says Rotheefa. Up they go.

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They reach the top left tunnel unmolested. Bruce suggests Zampaima and Plora go next, with the same result.

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"Hmm. There's no one characteristic that we all share... Bruce, you've got the best view of all of us, what are you seeing?"

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"Well, the difference between top and bottom is either your eyes or your snoot . . .  Vapa's got Speeba's eyes and Leiwy's got Kwispafa's eyes, so they could try top left and bottom left respectively?"

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The named Zoombinis make their attempts. Vapa succeeds, but Leiwy runs afoul of Bottom Rock and has to start over. "Should I try top left, then...?"

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"Ack, sorry! But yeah, top left, if the one on the left was going to attack you they would have done it already. And if it's not eyes, I think it's that everyone with a red snoot goes to one of the bottom paths."

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"Okay." Up goes Leiwy, and this time they make it safely to the top.

"If that's what it looks like to you, I'm happy to proceed on that assumption," says Speeba. "What about left versus right, can you find any clues about that one?"

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"Nawu's the only one who's gone right so far . . . aaaaand  . . . " Bruce's eyes flick back and forth a bunch of times. "And the only trait they don't share with someone who went left is the spring!" 

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"All right, everybody," says Speeba. "Let's go with that. Red snoots on the bottom, springs on the right."

The Zoombinis line up at the appropriate paths. A couple of them glance up at Bruce as though wondering which line he belongs in. Then they start traipsing and trundling and bouncing and fluttering up their respective paths, one at a time in an orderly fashion.

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Everyone gets where they're going!

Bruce stares at the rocks. The rocks stare back. Bruce attempts to go up the top left path and all four rocks lose their shit, or possibly their marbles, and try to knock him off. He ends up scrambling up the slope and into the bottom left on all fours, at which point all four rocks immediately stop moving and seem to be trying to pretend nothing happened.

Bruce moves to get up, thinks better of it, and brushes himself off while squatting in the low-ceilinged tunnel. "Okay, that was kind of bogus, but I think I got away with it?"

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"Looks good to me," says Awoowoo. "Let's go."

The Zoombinis all head up the tunnels to the point where they merge, and after a quick orbcount, proceed onward to see where it will lead.

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It leads out into rolling grassy hills dotted with clusters of trees.

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Speeba reorganizes the expedition into a suitable formation for long marches and off they go.

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Bruce brushes the dust and gravel off his clothes and backpack and sets off trekking with the rest of the squad.

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As midday turns into afternoon, they come to a pass between a pair of hills, which contains a contraption slightly taller than Bruce with pictures of pizzas on it, and a tree stump with a face. 

"Fleens?" says the tree stump eagerly as he hears them coming, then "You're not fleens!"

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"What's a fleen?" wonders Kwispafa.

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"Wow, a talking tree!" Bruce whispers.

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"Whatever you are--MAKE ME A PIZZA!"

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"O-kaaay. I'm guessing this is a thing that makes pizzas?" Bruce reaches out and pokes the "peppers" button, and when this results in the image at the top changing to a peppered pizza he pokes that too. It's like a touchscreen made of rocks and that's trippy and fantastic.

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The machine whirs and churns and spins its gears and emits a pizza, complete with plate, onto the ground.

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"Well, that's going to be handy for keeping us fed," Speeba remarks.

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"It really is! Anybody want a slice of this one?" He's been trying not to eat like a person ten times the size of everyone else despite in fact being that and could honestly eat the entire thing right now, but there is such a thing as manners. He looked in the machine as it was working and he's pretty sure there's a lot more where this came from.

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"Hey, uh, you," Speeba says to the talking tree, "do you want this pizza or can we have it?" It seems only polite to ask.

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"Bring it over here so I can see it."

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They carry the pizza over to the tree for inspection. (The Lands of Logic are a weird, weird place.)

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"There's something on that I don't like!"

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Is this how tree-people behave when they're being polite, Bruce wonders, or do other tree-people find this one obnoxious too? It's very convenient how the first species he met is one that's easy for humans to get along with.

What he says out loud is "Okay great, ours now."

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"Yep!" says Speeba. "You can have it, I bet you're the hungriest one in the group. Let's try feeding the tree something else. Plain, maybe?"

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"Sounds good." He rolls the pizza up like a degenerate burrito and takes a bite, then generates another one in plain.

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Arno reacts to the plain one with a wail of "Moooore toooppings!"

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Speeba sighs. "Try something different, I guess. I'd do it myself but you've got an undeniable advantage at reaching the controls."

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"Yeah, between the human faces on the cliffs and the UI on this pizza machine, I'm starting to wonder if there are more humans around here somewhere." He orders up a cheese pizza and, yup, that sure does look like cheese materializing out of nothing inside the tower. Vegan cheese pizza alert?! Best bonkers puzzle continent.

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Arno continues to want MOAR TOPPINGS. 

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Bruce continues to manufacture MOAR TOPPINGS. At one point the pizza machine jams up and Bruce has to stick his hand in it to remove a wodge of dough from the dispensing mechanism, but its ability to generate tasty ex nihilo matter still puts it in the 99th percentile of machines Bruce has interacted with.

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Eventually Arno is satisfied by a pizza loaded with Literally Everything Except Peppers. He even manages to thank the delivery Zoombini graciously before eating the entire thing, tray and all, and there are enough uneaten pizzas that everyone can have as much as they want before moving out.

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Speeba leads the expedition onward in a much improved mood. Unlimited pizza will do that.

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Onward they hike through beautiful uninhabited wilderness. The sun sinks towards the horizon and the light turns golden on the trees. Just as it's getting on time to make camp before they lose the light, they reach a clearing shaded by a single enormous rock, with a generous overhang making a pocket sheltered from the weather. 

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Zoombinis park and make camp and eat dinner and settle in for the night.

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Bruce has very vivid dreams about evading rock-monsters who want his pizza and takes a minute, in the morning, to sort out which implausible things probably actually happened and which implausible things definitely didn't. Breakfast is pizza again and he is not going to think about the infernally catchy Weird Al song nope nope the sun is a mass of incandescent gas a gigantic nuclear furnace . . . okay, time to set out. 

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The terrain gets very steep and densely wooded due east of here, but they can angle either north or south around it.

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"What do you think, Kwisp?"

"South!"

"All right, south it is."

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South is a dense forest where most of the sunlight is blocked out by the canopy; what filters through illuminates colorful mushrooms and carpets of moss. Over the next few hours, the route they're on goes from "the direction the undergrowth is most manageable" to a trail to a path to a cart-track with what looks a lot like tire tracks in it.

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"I don't think I've seen a wheel with a tread like that before," Speeba remarks.

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"There's vehicles with tracks like that, back on Earth. Or I suppose it could be another group of people with wheels but they design them differently."

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The tracks stick with the path they're on until they emerge into a clearing featuring a much more inhabited-looking campsite and a set of wooden bleachers on which are sitting . . . some folks. They have conical chartreuse bodies and technicolor hair and a similar collection of eyewear and footwear/foot alternatives as the zoombinis, albeit with a very different aesthetic. When they spot the Zoombinis, they start muttering in something that's about as unlike Islish as Shakespeare is unlike modern English, but in the opposite direction re: what sort of social class it sounds to American ears like it's signaling. Something about making sure everyone is correct in some unspecified manner.

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Bruce's main reaction is "wow, alien Senior House," but nobody will get that reference so he just hangs back and lets the presumably more normal-looking Zoombinis take the lead on saying hello.

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Speeba rolls closer to the bleachers and addresses the ...folks.

"Hello. I hope we're not interrupting. Do you mind if we pass by?"

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One of the green folks at the top of the array, close to where three of them have eschewed the bleachers in favor of a nearby tree branch, pipes up. 

"If going yinz be through Fleen territory, doing yinz must a radical puzzle before! Got yinz-we a bitchin opportunity herenow!"

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"...all right, what's the puzzle?"

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"Matches each of me-us one of yinz straight across! If find yinz the ones of yinz who matches them the ones of us-we who sit us-us on the branch, will get you safe passage and a fun surprise! . . . Matches nobody the tall strange one. Confused they us-us."

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"They're pretty strange," Speeba acknowledges. "All right." They roll back toward their own group.

"So if each one of us, Bruce excepted, matches a single Fleen, what does that say about correspondences?"

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Bruce is very amused about being the tall confusing one and also fascinated by the Fleens' grammar. 

"Presumably it's about your features again, which is why they couldn't come up with one for me. 'Straight across' suggests it's, like, hair for hair and eyes for eyes and so on? So let's figure out how many of each hairstyle we've got . . . four four three three two, and it looks like they've got the same distribution." Being tall enough to see the whole group at once is very handy.

"Maybe the best way to do this is for everyone to check how many people here with each of their features and memorize the resulting string of four numbers, and I'll get strings of four numbers for each Fleen?" 

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"Sounds good, let's make it happen," says Speeba.

With the four adults helping to organize the counts, everyone is soon supplied with a string of numbers. Kwispafa bounces in a steady rhythm while whispering to themself, "Three three four three..."

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"First one is three, two, four, . . . five." (This matches Awoowoo's numbers.)

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Awoowoo comes forward.

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The Fleen thus indicated goes "Yaaaaa!" and leaps down off the tree branch and rolls at Awoowoo on their tank treads, attempting to herd them back around toward the other side of tree. "Now go you onto the tree! Will have you a good view up there!"

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"If you say so," says Awoowoo, somewhat dubiously, and up they flutter to the indicated branch position.

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The other two get matched up similarly.

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As soon as the third Fleen jumps off the tree branch, the branch's bouncing up and down jostles the beehive hanging under it, and bees swarm out. The swarm assembles into the shape of a giant pair of scissors and chases all the Fleens off into the woods, paying no attention whatsoever to the Zoombinis. The Fleens vamoose, cackling gleefully (or perhaps beefully).

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". . . Yay?"

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"Well, we solved it," Speeba says practically. "Come on, let's see what's next."

"Three three four three," Kwispafa is still whispering with fierce concentration, until Awoowoo comes down from the tree and gently bonks against them. "What? Oh, is the numbers game over now? But I didn't even get to use my numbers!"

"That's life, kiddo," says Awoowoo. "Maybe we can think of a different numbers game to play once we make camp for the night."

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"Hmm, how about you tell me what your numbers add up to? And the mean and median, if you know those?" That'll give him time to come up with a better game, at least, and has no moving parts that can interfere with ducking under tree branches.

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"Three three four three adds up toooo... three and three and three is nine, and nine is ten less one so nine-and-four is ten-and-three is thirteen!" the little orb declares triumphantly. "...what's a median?"

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"A median is . . . hmm, three three four three is kind of an inconvenient example. Suppose you have the set of numbers two three nine eight five. The median is the number that's in the middle of you put them in order. So for two three nine seven five, the median is five, because it's bigger than two and three but smaller than seven and nine. Does that make sense so far?"

The underbrush is getting thicker. Bruce moves up to the front and stomps a pathway, feeling amusingly like some kind of giant city-smashing monster.

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"So if you put three three four three in order, that's three three three four," muses Kwispafa. "...that has two middles. Luckily both of them are three!"

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"Exactly! When the two middles are different, the median is halfway between them. So if you have two four six eight the middle numbers are four and six and the median is five!" Stomp stomp crunch stomp yank shoelace out of entangling plant stomp stomp.

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"Oooooh," says Kwispafa. "And three is halfway between three and three!"

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"Gosh, so it is! I hadn't even thought about it like that!"  This kid is too cute, help.

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Kwispafa bounces delightedly at having out-mathed the grownup, however trivially. "Yeah!!"

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Bruce is happy to keep doing intro stats until Kwispafa gets bored or it's time to make camp, though where in this forest they're going to get enough space to build a campfire is not at all clear. Probably tons of Earth forests are like this too, but Bruce hasn't been in any of them.

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Zoombinis contentedly follow their highly convenient trailblazer.

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It gets closer and closer to dusk without a decent place to camp appearing, until they come to a set of five absolutely enormous trees, their trunks so close together a fox could barely slip between them, their branches tangled together like a disorganized yarn drawer. Near the base of each tree is a set of steps leading up to a little balcony in front of a little door. The sound of a saxophone drifts down from above. 

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A . . . person . . . hears their approach and swings down from the upper branches to land in front of them. She (she's clearly a woman, somehow) comes up to Bruce's waist and is wearing a purple dress over a white shirt with a purple hat that's probably pinned to her . . . hair? Fur? Anyway she also has a little broom. 

"Hello hello hello!" She says. "Good to see ya! You folks looking for rooms for the night? We've got plenty of space! Well, except for you, I'm afraid," she says to Bruce, "but I can rig you up a hammock. The rest of you can just sort yourselves correctly into the rooms."

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Speeba regards this entity with deep suspicion.

"Sort ourselves... how," they say warily.

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"Neatly! The rooms will make it obvious. I'll go get that hammock." She leaps eight feet straight up, grabs a branch, and is gone faster than you can say, just to give a random example of a short word, "squirrel".

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...are the rooms in fact making anything obvious? Or are they just sitting there inertly, waiting to reject innocent Zoombinis for unknown but eventually logically derivable crimes?

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Definitely that second thing. They do have oddly Zoombini-sized furniture inside them though.

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Speeba sighs.

"All right, who wants to volunteer to try one first."

After a slight shuffling of nervous orbs, Nawu hops forward and attempts to enter the leftmost door.

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Absolutely nothing happens! It's a cozy little hotel room with a bunch of different kinds of sleeping furniture, a bathroom, and a table by one of the beds with a tray of snacks.

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There's room in there for multiple guests. Cafly tries to follow Nawu in.

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The balcony retracts itself into the tree and drops Cafly on the ground.

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Bruce considers offering to stand next to the rooms and catch people, runs aground on the fact that none of them are wearing any clothes, and stands there like a dumbass trying to revert his brain to a nonexistent backup from five minutes ago.

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Speeba sighs long-sufferingly. "All right, everybody, keep track of your features and let's get to the bottom of this. Cafly, try the next door?"

Cafly tries the next door.

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Yup that's fine.

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Okaaaay... what if Awoowoo tries to get in with Nawu?

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NO. Fuck you.

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Speeba rolls back and forth, deep in thought.

"Who's most like Nawu?" they wonder, looking around. "Leiwy, you have two features in common. Try following them in."

Leiwy attempts to enter Nawu's room.

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Denied!

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"Vapa, you have the same hair, try next. If that doesn't work, Iceso, you have the same feet."

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Vapa can get into Nawu's room!

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"Progress! Okay, who has the same hair as Cafly..." Speeba has the same hair as Cafly but Speeba is out here coordinating. "Kwispafa, try going in the room with your yaya?"

Kwispafa ascends.

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They can be fluffy-haired in the second tree together!

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"All right. We have rooms for fluffy and ponytail hair; we need rooms for the other three hairstyles. Awoowoo, you try the next room. Fluffy-haired Zoombinis, line up with me." They trundle to the ground below Cafly's room. "Ponytails, Nawy's room. Impu, you take the room after Awoowoo if Awoowoo gets in, and Caure, the room after that, and everybody line up accordingly."

Zoombinis hop and bop and roll and flutter into nice orderly lines. Speeba waits to find out if the three new rooms will accept their prospective occupants before they try asking anybody else to enter one.

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This works great and nobody gets dumped on the ground!

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(Bruce has gotten his shit together and hopes nobody noticed his facial expressions or anything. Doesn't look like it. And everything appears to be going fine.)

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Bruce's facial expressions are very high off the ground and not anybody's priority to scrutinize right now, though Speeba does turn back toward him to call out, "Watch the doors and yell if anybody falls, okay? You've got the best vantage."

Then they scoot to the side of their own line and say, "All right, nice and tidy, one at a time, wait for the person in front of you to finish before you start climbing: everybody into your assigned room!"

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"Okay!"

Nobody ends up falling, though, despite the balconies having no railings even when they aren't being adversarial.

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Shortly after everyone is inside, the woman with the fluffy tail swings down to a low branch holding a hammock, fastens one end of it, swings on it Tarzan-style to another branch and fastens the other end.

"Excellent! A place for everyone and everyone in a place! Dream a little dream!" 

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Bruce divvies up everyone's stuff into their rooms after them,

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and then it's his turn to get dumped on the ground due to one of his features (clumsiness). He gets into the hammock on the second attempt though.

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Speeba pokes their snoot out of their room at the noise. "Everything all right?"

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"Everything's fine, I just f--messed up. Goodnight!" 

Time to sleep the sleep of the honorably exhausted. If this keeps up Bruce is going to be in the best shape of his life soon, infinite free pizza machines or no. Zzzzzzzz.

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"Goodnight!"

It's definitely a better night's sleep than any of the Zoombinis expected this forest to provide.

They wake up bright and early in the morning, make breakfast, and prepare to set off in search of adventure probably more puzzles.

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The underbrush starts to chill out a bit; that and strange unearthly birdcalls in the trees overhead are the main source of adventure until after lunch. Then the deer-trail they're following comes to a deep muddy creek flowing out from under a massive grey wall with a grid etched on it. Various boxes of the grid contain one, two, or three dots, with seventeen dots altogether. Straddling the creek is a set of three seesaws with "stand on this end" written on one end of each, and a strange assemblage consisting of a tank of semi-dehydrated river mud, a plinth onto which a spherical glob of the mud has been piped, and a control panel with a lot of buttons.

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...

What.

Speeba squints at the control panel. How impenetrable are the functions of these buttons, on a scale from Pizza Machine to Five Identical Doors?

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The buttons are Square, Triangle, Star, Oval, Rhombus, Orange, Red, Green, Blue, and Magenta. There's also a  row of five nozzles with the appropriate colors and a row of five swinging arm thingies with the appropriate shapes all pointing at the mudball like the crowd of microphones around someone giving a press conference.

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Pray tell, do these shapes or colours appear anywhere on the target grid?

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Nope! There is however a lever on the other side of the console, positioned so someone standing on the "stand on this end" could pull it.

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"I'm very tempted to push the buttons but my intuitions for how dangerous unfamiliar machines are were calibrated somewhere very different." He keeps his hands in his pockets.

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"All right," says Speeba. "Volunteers?"

Raclie flutters up to the machine.

"Try pressing the first shape button and then the first colour button and then pulling the lever," Speeba directs. "I apologize in advance if you end up flung into the woods."

"Gotta solve the puzzle somehow," says Raclie, following instructions.

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The mudball gets stamped with a square, then sprayed with orange dye that diffuses through it impressively quickly. The seesaw end descends gently when stepped on. The lever starts moving when pulled, then gets hung up as though some kind of internal safety is still engaged.

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"Maybe there needs to be people standing on all three things. Also, how weird should I be finding it that the label is in Islish?"

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Speeba calls for two more volunteers, and Impu joins their sibling on the row of platforms, followed by Plora.

"I suppose that's a little odd, but everyone we've met on this venture has spoken Islish too," muses Speeba. "Even you, for some reason."

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"I guess it isn't any additional weirdness on top of someone building this thing and leaving it here."

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"Well, it's the fabled Lands of Logic, what can you expect," Speeba says philosophically. "All right, Raclie, try the lever again."

Raclie tries the lever again.

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The lever works, and the machine fires the mudball at the wall, where it splats in a big orange splat right in the middle of one of the grid boxes: bottom row second column from the left, not one of the rectangles with dots in it. It holds together surprisingly well post-splat; you can still make out the square stamp if you know what you're looking for.

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Speeba squints at it.

"...different set of volunteers, same symbols," they direct. Cafly and Awoowoo and Rotheefa line up.

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While the volunteers swap around the machine makes a glorpsome noise and generates a new mudball from its glass tank of mysteriously processed mud, depleting it slightly. This second mudball, once dyed, stamped, and fired, splats right on top of the previous one. 

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Speeba rolls back and forth, deep in thought, for a few seconds.

Then they say, "All right, same volunteers, same colour, different symbol."

The volunteers attempt this. Orange triangle, anyone?

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The launcher fires at a slightly different angle, and the orange triangle mud lands one box to the left, in the bottom left corner box which happens to have two dots in it.

A mechanism at the top of the wall spits two rocks out of concealed holes, which hit square into the other ends of the seesaws and fling Cafly and Awoowoo into the air to land hard but not injuriously on top of the wall.

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"Right then." They study the wall. "We know what orange does and what square does and what triangle does. Raclie, Impu, please set yourself on the flingers, and let's try..." They scan the orange row and the square and triangle columns, looking for either a row/column with more has-dots than hasn't-dots cells, or the opportunity to land on a three.

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Hrmmmmmmm.

"Try orange star next," they say.

Raclie boops the buttons and pulls the lever.

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It splats in the bottom middle and two more Zoombinis get yote.

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"Red oval," Speeba says next. Two more Zoombinis bounce and flutter their way onto the flingers.

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Fourth column second row, no joy.

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So the whole second/red row is a bust. But now Speeba knows where all the columns are. Triangle, square, star, oval, rhombus. And out of all of those, the column likeliest to get hit by an unknown row is...

"Green rhombus?"

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Right-hand side, middle row! Now there are 5 people up top and 12 still to go.

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So the remaining unknown colours/rows are Blue and Magenta.

"Blue triangle," they suggest. Zoombinis load themselves onto the flinger and make the attempt.

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Blue triangle lands right above orange triangle; no joy.