"Right, but you're going to want more than one pair-- you're not going to use your workboots as regular shoes, or wear them to a formal dinner party."

"I've mostly been in environments with uniforms, on Ibyabek, I suppose I don't know how many shoes everyone else has."

"You... wear your uniform shoes all the time? Even when you're going to, I don't know, a theme park?"

"The owl did not teach me 'theme park'."

"It's-- a place where they have rides that spin you around or make you go very fast, and various shows, and sweet food, and sometimes people in costumes?"

"Perhaps if I had been invited to one before I would know what is worn to them."

"...what do you do for fun on Ibyabek?"

"I used to sing. There are movies, and books."

"--I'm guessing it won't make sense to ask about how rich you were because everyone on Ibyabek has the same amount of money."

"That's right."

"...what are the movies like?"

"Do you want - a plot summary of the last one I saw -"

"Sure, I'm just curious. There are-- a lot of things that people wouldn't necessarily think to say, because it's just a background fact about their lives, so you can't really ask about it. You just have to ask them to describe things about their lives in detail and then you'll stumble across it."

"The last one shown on the ship was an action movie about a ship's crew crashed on a planet with hostile wildlife. Another crew from another planet is also crashed there, I forget why there are so many crashes on this planet, and the Ibyabekan ship helps them and brings them back to Ibyabek when they defect from Xeren."

He is quiet for a minute and then says, "we have movies like that in Cascadia too."

"I was mostly watching children's television, for the language."

"Oh?" he says. "What did you think?"

"There were a lot of farm animals."

"Oh, yeah, that's a thing. We all have our own animals here."

"Why is that?"

"The Gileadites nuked us a few decades ago and we have a national trauma about it."

"I'm sorry to hear that - what does that have to do with farm animals -"

"When the nukes hit and the war started, it disrupted the supply lines and a lot of people went hungry. So a lot of people bought animals so that if it happens again they'll be able to rely on their own food. --And then once enough people started doing it it became normal to have your own pig. They are loving and intelligent animals who are also delicious to eat."

"Oh, that makes sense."

"I assume in the future you've figured out vat meat and you think this is all very barbaric."