"It is!"

"What do you think our priorities should be with respect to space exploration and colonization?" she asks Emily.

"I think I don't currently know enough about the tradeoffs to answer that question."

"Not even a guess?"

"I think if there are any technologies that can be used both to colonize other planets and make the Earth support more people, that's a really good place to start."

"Isn't the Earth supporting people problem fundamentally a distribution problem, at least at present?"

"It is, but it won't necessarily be once de-aging's solved."

"I think I read somewhere that even if we all turned immortal right now it'd still take decades for that to be a problem bigger than distribution, but that memory's vague enough I'm not sure I should trust it."

"This isn't a problem I researched extensively before having this conversation either."

"It's the kind of problem we probably should research on the way to fixing aging, but there are probably several years before we reach that point."

"Maybe we should be encouraging people to go into politics to fix the distribution problems."

"People as in eclipsed?"

"Maybe, but probably not--politics takes a lot of mental energy better spent on magic. Just, you know, trustworthy sensible people who will attempt to fix distribution problems and not take away people's rights."

"Yeah, that's probably reasonable, but I don't actually know many non-eclipsed that are not my family and that I would trust with this."

"Know any who are in your family who you'd trust with this?"

"No, not really."

"Oh well."

"How about you?"

"Our dad's got too much of a temper and our mom's higher-leverage where she is."

"What do they do?"

"Dad's a structural engineer and Mom's a genetics professor."

"Ooh, cool!"

"I know, right?"

"My father's a preacher and my stepmother's a housewife, nothing as exciting."

"Ah. ...Emily and I are Jewish, by the way."