"Oh, uh, the thing where when you die you get dunked in liquid nitrogen - it's more complicated than that - and stashed in a basement in case in a hundred years they know how to fix you. From whatever killed you and also being in liquid nitrogen, which is also not good for you but at least keeps you basically the same for as long as somebody's topping off the tank."

Leareth is pretty hard to distract when he's programming, but Idrial picked a moment when he wasn't especially in flow - he's just emailed another question to Shory - and their world has WHAT NOW???? 

:That's.... Wow. Just. WOW. I - who even thought of that idea? I would never have thought of that idea! I guess I wouldn't expect it to necessarily work in Velgarth because what if their soul got reincarnated in the meantime -:

Joining a conversation in another room that he was sort of eavesdropping on one side of is, apparently, SCARY, but Leareth is going to mindread the retired pharmacist instead. 

The retired pharmacist is signed up because his wife insisted as a condition of marrying him! He doesn't really think it will work but it's a nice idea, and less ridiculous than buying a lottery ticket. His son toured the facility once, but said it was very boring to look at, mostly just opaque vats.

This is fascinating and incredible and - and it says something about this world and its people, right, that someone thought that was a gamble worth making, that someone built that facility at what, even for a world of such vast wealth, must still have been a significant expense. 

Leareth desperately wants to know more, wants to know everything about the history here, but for one the visiting pharmacist may well not know - he's not an expert himself, he only signed up because a loved one asked - and also interacting with him is just. definitely. not going to happen. Apparently it's easier to set aside his code and start painstakingly entering in search queries, guessing wildly at how you spell 'cryonics' in Kayshu. 

:Anyway. I'm pretty impressed that your world has that, even if it might not work! It's just - what a thing to try. ...Anyway. Where were we? You'd asked about animals in Velgarth and - something else, but I forgot it: 

"Education! I bounced off the first five things I tried for getting professionally useful amounts of education and it's an interest of mine."

:Hmm. I would have said that our education is sort of all right, definitely not amazing, but I've also never heard of that happening! I guess a lot of our education system is aimed at people with particular Gifts, and if you were chosen by a Companion, or if you have the Healing or Bardic Gift, you can't exactly choose to stop! Also it's expensive to send children to school, and costly on top of that for families to give up their children to school once they're old enough to work, so parents aren't likely to send their children at all unless they're likely to succeed. Most children from rural areas and villages just go to lessons at the nearest temple until age twelve or so, learn how to read and write and do basic figuring but not a lot more, and the really clever ones can get scholarships to study at the new merit-based Collegium in Haven, and learn to be artificers or architects or other skilled occupations. Though twenty years ago, much fewer of them had that, our current King -:

- and her mindvoice catches because Randi is almost certainly dead and it doesn't matter what their recent personal disagreements were, he was a good man and a good King and it shouldn't have happened, and Melody is too tired to be angry so the sense of wrongness, of a universe pushed suddenly out of balance, has nowhere to go. 

:...Er, anyway. I think the children of nobles are maybe more likely to fail out of the Collegium, maybe because their parents send them regardless of whether they want to go? But still not very likely, it's notable when it happens. I know most of the teachers and they're decent. The training for Gifts is - mostly better on average than neighboring kingdoms, except for mage-gift specifically where I think Rethwellan has an advantage due to sheer number of mages and different competing schools. And of course that's for common Gifts. Training for Mindhealing doesn't really exist. I was trying to fix that, but I got pulled away by other circumstances: 

"- you can't choose to stop attending school if you have one of those situations? Why are the temples the ones doing education if they can't get most people past reading and writing and arithmetic by the time they're twelve?"

:- You can technically drop out of the Bardic or Healers' Collegium but then it's much harder to make a living with your Gift, people...rely on the Collegia a lot for trust, they're also the bodies that enforce the laws around ethical Gift-use. And I - don't think we have the temples providing schooling because they're amazing at it, they were just the closest thing to existing infrastructure that King Randale could build on. I expect Valdemar to be much better at this in a few decades, once the teachers get more teaching experience - and once the generation that learned to read and write themselves starts having children, because they'll know the value of it. I think it's hard sometimes for illiterate parents to see why it should matter: 

"...that's so hard to imagine."

:For me too! But I had a privileged childhood in a lot of ways: If not all ways. :I...am getting the sense that hereabouts, most people generally keep going to school after they're twelve? - I guess you'd have to, it seems like literally everything here involves needing to read and write and use a computer: 

"I mean, people can do that when they're twelve! Even if they don't attend school at all! Maybe there's just a lot of malnourishment where you're from?"

:Wait, do most children just have computers when they're small? I...suspect actually a lot of the problem in Valdemar is that most families don't have books at home. And the temples in smaller towns will have some, but not necessarily the sorts of books that will be incredibly exciting to six-year-olds: 

"...yes, most people have computers when they're small. Sometimes ones that don't work very well, handmedowns from adults in their lives who upgraded, but computers. There's some poorer areas? But I've never been to one and I'd be surprised if most people in them couldn't even read."

:I think Valdemar is...poorer. By a lot. And a lot of people - don't have very many options: 

Which is a whole bucket of feelings in itself, because she's spent a lot of the last year helping Leareth slowly unpack and examine all his complicated emotions about gods, and his related ambivalence about returning to Velgarth. The world that once played a role in breaking almost beyond repair, mostly though very little fault of his own, and that he's spent the last two thousand years trying and failing to fix. 

Tantara wasn't poor. She knows, now, why no country since then has ever reached the same heights of prosperity, and - it's not, or not only, because of Ma'ar's war with Urtho. 

Melody really doesn't like gods. 

"Well. Hopefully by the time more comprehensive contact is established we'll be able to send you stuff, probably trading for magic mostly."

:I hope so: 

Leareth is only half listening to this conversation, because he's also trying to look at websites about cryonics, and Melody is directionally shielding her Mindspeech to avoid disturbing him, so he can't even follow what she's saying. 

He can guess, though. He knows Valdemar is far worse off than this world - was still worse off even after the initial contact with Arda, and now it looks like that contact will end up horrifically net-negative for Velgarth.

He can't regret it, exactly, that he accidentally found his way to Arda when he did. It would have gone so much worse for them, otherwise. Vanyel won the war, when he...couldn't, anymore. Just, he didn't win it thoroughly enough, and this feels utterly predictable because nothing ever works and Leareth has mostly tried not to think about this too hard, it won't help, but now he's suddenly crying again and he really hopes Dree doesn't ask him why because he doesn't have the faintest idea what he would say. 

Forgiver is going to hop up with her forepaws on his lap so she can lick his tears off. That will help, right? A less teary Leareth is a less sad Leareth.

Leareth puts down the laptop, he can't read the screen anyway, and leans forward and hugs Forgiver and shivers. He is not really crying any less. Possibly he's crying more. He is trying very hard not to make any noise and interrupt Melody's conversation, but it's hard. 

Idrial is kind of distracted by the crying man being licked by the dog over there, yeah.

:Sorry, I should probably go check what's going on: Melody sighs and hauls herself to her feet so she can cross the room and go sit next to Leareth, though carefully at the opposite end of the couch and nowhere close to touching him. 

:Hey. Should you email Shory to ask for help?: 

:I really doubt that is going to help: