"Well, random people off the street are likely to be helpful; that's the point.  - That was very flippant; I'll think of someone."

"Thank you."

"It's quite literally my job, which I vied heavily to get, to help you.  But you're welcome."

"How does the vying even work, when you can all copy whatever the skills you need for the job are -"

"I already had expertise in most of the relevant subjects, which isn't everything but is maybe more important than you might think, especially insofar as it's indicative of disposition.  I said before that I wasn't a historian, and that's mostly because I don't particularly care about history for its own sake?  So I'd be much worse at whatever the history-based version of this is, since I wouldn't be so terribly invested in it.  And obviously I could copy caring about history, but I wouldn't care about caring about history, which will do in a pinch but if you have somebody on hand who's already enthused you should probably pick them.  And things can get lost when copying something as broad and scattered as true expertise, mostly doesn't come up under ordinary circumstances but might make a difference in something as important as this."

"Huh. So at some point the - supporting traits get too diffuse to copy straightforwardly?"

"Yes!  That's a lot of the narrowness and broadness I mentioned before; it also applies to skills and mental traits.  And to be clear, I could also copy things that would make me care about caring about history, but at that point you're probably flirting with something ego-dystonic if you weren't already."

"Are most people not already quite a bit earlier than that? I guess it could be cultural."

"I personally already care about history precisely the amount that I prefer to, which is why I, as you can tell, only care about history as much as I do, even though this is very important and it may have been helpful.  - I might, hmm, I could see myself deciding I wanted to care about it for a short time in order to accomplish something specific.  Or making it shiny and interesting for a while without particularly tying it into my identity or finding it intrinsically important the way the forward march of progress is."

"Is that sort of thing temporary?"

"It depends who you copied it from whether it would wear off on its own, generally.  But if I'd made history shiny to fill a weekend or something and it kept being attention-grabbing enough to get in the way after that, I could just copy from one of the many people who do not find history shiny."

"Makes sense."

"People do have different standards about it, though, some of which is definitely cultural.  I think we're probably somewhere in the middle, globally, although I couldn't pinpoint quite where without knowing more about how ordinary people from other places view it."

"Maybe there's a travelogue or something we could read once we can read."

"That sounds reasonable.  - Would you like some children's books; I have a few here for you."

"Sure, thank you."

She hands him a short stack from a drawer in her desk.  From the outside they mostly look like regular books.

Kyeo takes one to flip through.

The text inside is fairly large and there are occasional printed illustrations with full color and thick lineart, mostly depicting children doing various activities.  Recognizable characters only show up for a few pictures in a row in a way that suggests either people change up their appearances very frequently or it's a collection of unrelated short stories.

He puts it back in the stack. "It would be convenient if at some point we were taught the basics so we could go on from there."

"Certainly.  I had a friend who moved here when the two of us were young who I helped learn Cretari, so I probably have a better idea than most people of how to go about that, although not necessarily a good one yet."

"At what age can kids usually start copying things?"

"Usually somewhere in the ten - or, hm.  Around four or five Earth standard, it would be.  It's usually shortly after they start counting as people who can be copied from, although sometimes it can take a bit longer, and sometimes even once they have it at all it can still be limited in ways similar to what I mentioned we occasionally do on purpose for development."

"Are there late bloomers? Precocious kids?"

"Yes, definitely.  Most babies become people around that age but there are plenty of outliers on both sides."