Then, she will not notice at all, when a portalsnake appears in her room and decides to eat her?

Not per se, but she definitely notices the whole being-uncotted part afterwards!  Sleep and accidental blanket self-bondage and blindfolding don't make for the least disorienting of combinations but she has other senses - where is she, what sort of place?  Is anyone around?

She is in what appears to be a brightly lit torture chamber!* There is a blue-clad torturer** who is leaning over his victim*** with sinister instruments!

*dentist's office
**dentist
***victim

What the fuck!  She yeets her sleep mask at the floor, detangles the blanket from her legs, kips up, and - runs out of the room??  If the door's locked she'll check for windows to jump out of.

The door's locked. The dentist palms open a compartment in his torture instrument caddy thing and produces a device and shoots her with it and she falls unconscious.

Then she wakes up.

What.  What.

Well where is she this time.

She is in a similar torture chamber. She looks alone. She isn't alone.

Actually, come to think of it, the dentist also wasn't alone! And there were several extra dudes in the torture instrument caddy!

But, most relevantly: she has company.

<Hiya, I'm Ispalt!>

On the one hand it does not do her credit that her immediate instinct in the previous situation was to run the fuck away, but also she could hardly have rescued anyone if she was about to get tortured herself, and she's still totally going to do the exact -

She's still going -

She's -

<Yeah, no, that's not going to work while I'm driving, hon. Work with me and we can avoid the vivisection scenario thing though!>

The what.

<See, that thing you do where you can copy stuff from other people? Isn't a thing here. Ain't nobody can do that. And if you go tell everybody as soon as I let go of you for one teensy tiny second, this is bad for me, because then I never get you back and you're very cozy, and it is bad for you, because they take you apart trying to figure it out. Capisce?>

She definitely doesn't want to get taken apart; it would probably be fine in the long-term but what if something got her throat wrong and she couldn't heal it without taking someone else's voice and then her voice would be lost forever and it's such a good voice.

Nonetheless - she can see the person in her head (ew) but can she take anything from them?  Such as ideally (this is so surreal) control of her own body??

<Nopily-dopily! If you could do that I would've yelled for the folks next door and then stunned us again so you could be taken off my metaphorical hands. I'm driving.>

Colley wishes whatever this is had happened to her her girlfriend instead.  That's not an awful thing to think because she's pretty sure her girlfriend would have preferred it too.

How does she - is it just directing thoughts at her new pal (derogatory) - <I can't copy context from you, can you please fill me in on the basics.>

<Yeah-huh,> says Ispalt, getting up off the torment chair and shaking out their hair. <I dunno where the ass you're from but this is planet Earth, where there are humans who don't do that, and I am from the Yeerk homeworld - well, I was born in space, but ancestrally speaking - where people also don't do that, and us Yeerks are here on Earth collecting hosts so we can survive having a war with the folks from the Andalite homeworld, where they sort of do that but it's dramatically more complicated and also mostly involves turning into animals wholesale and yeah it's not actually the same. I can cozy up in your brain for a few days and then I need to go for a swim. During which time standard operating procedure is that you are thoroughly locked up, of course, but usually they don't gag you, so you could still spill the beans. I'd rather you did not. You'd rather you did not. Win-win if you shut your face about having weird powers.>

. . . <Sure.>  Tentatively.

<I reckon I have a few days to win you over to the cause of Not Getting Vivisected. I mean, for one thing, you wouldn't hafta be conscious while they looked for weird glands or whatever, so no need to get the idea that you could fight them off with the strength of Whoever and the speed of Whoever Else. Now I'm gonna go lie your ass off to the boss and we will figure out what is next for me 'n you, mkay?>

She pushes open the door and leans into the next room, where a little grey-green slug is being administered to the patient* in the dental chair. She yoinks the language from the dentist, since Colley does not in point of fact have it. "Yeah, boss, she doesn't know how she got here either, I'm pretty sure she was high. Fancy outfit for a homeless vagrant, right? She can't even remember where she swiped it. I think she'll detox okay though. Can I crash in your guy's spare room till -"

"No, no way, he has neighbors, they'll talk," says the dentist, as the slug slithers into the patient's* ear. "Get cash out of the ATM and get a hotel for now. Report to the pool to get reassigned."

"You betcha, boss!"

And she lets them out of the dentist's office.

*victim

Colley si - she does not sigh, not even once they're outside and out of earshot.  Ugh.

It occurs to her that Ispalt might be able to make her into whatever kind of person they want, if they're the one controlling the copying power, which is the WORST POSSIBLE thing to have realized and she's going to concentrate very hard on composing more of her opera now.  It's annoying that she can't hum or play along or write anything down but that doesn't actually impair her in keeping track of six lines of harmony.

<I don't need to, hon, not unless you turn out to be the kind of person who is super planning to sprout knives out your arms and scream to everyone that you have exciting powers the second I go on vaycay. Though separately there isn't a rule that you've gotta be such a sweetie, if you're sick of it.>

<No thanks.>  She's gone traveling before and while it wasn't really legal to change herself in certain ways it also wouldn't have been enforced as long as she put things back before she came home.  But what's possible, that seems important to know - <You can try and make me think your body is less gross.>  It doesn't really rate next to everything else but she can see it and it's in her head and this probably only isn't nauseating because she clearly isn't responsible for her own nausea right now.

<Harsh. Unfortunately I don't super care for it either, I'd rather have yours.> Elevator.

Colley skips over forming an opinion on whether or not that was a socially appropriate opinion to have and/or express.  <What's this,> she wonders of the elevator, and to a lesser degree of everything around her that's at a higher tech level than she's used to.

<Elevator. It's going to be very annoying hiding how wacky you are while also not myself having seen most things in the world. Fortunately you have useful powers.> She grabs context from the building doorman and from three random passersby till she knows how to find an ATM and book a hotel room.

<Why haven't you?>

<You're my first host! I've like, heard stuff. But we don't super have eyes.>

<Do small people usually stick with the same one?>  (She's a little surprised, in the background, that anything that small could be a person, or at least that they could and also not be able to copy anything.)  <How many of you are there compared to humans?>  For that matter, how many of the people she sees walking around have additional people in their heads?

<Usually! Unless the host is special and someone with particular clearance or skills is going to need their face. But nobody's gonna know you're special. Right? You don't want five hundred thousand Yeerks sliding in one ear and out the other in succession to learn umpteen languages they made you copy, or whatever, followed by vivisection.>

Most of the people walking around do not have company. That one over there has one but he and Ispalt do not acknowledge each other.

<Chill.  No, I don't.>  She muses a moment.  <I'll refrain from pulling anything on purpose but we're going to need to pick up a little on how to seem locally unspecial.>

<So glad you're with the program. Fortunately at a hotel nobody'll know who we are and there'll be lots of folks coming and going.> There's an ATM. She goes and punches some numbers into it and it spits out numerous twenties.

<I wasn't done looking at that,> Colley says of the ATM's screen.  (There's a hint of sincere curiosity but she's mostly checking Ispalt's response to this type of request.)

<If you want to look at common Earth objects we will do this in our hotel room, on the internet, where no one can see us acting like a dork.> Time to go buy a laptop.

<It's not my fault if you can't act well enough to pull off another glance.>

<Oh, it is. I get practically all my skills from you.> Best Buy will sell a laptop and a case to carry it around in and then they can hop on the store's internet connection and find a hotel they can walk to, though it'll be a time-consuming walk.

Colley is substantially more resentful about this than previously!

<We can take more risks when we're more oriented.>

For just a flash she considers coming up with a polite response containing an implied threat about the chance of a discreet escape opportunity, or if it looks like Ispalt was wrong or lying about anything, or - but of course that would be dumb on so many levels, not least that she's being mindread and has no plausible deniability available even if she delivered it perfectly - and now she's composing, composing, composing.  It's worse at masking anxiety than the fuming was.

<Fortunately for my life expectancy I am not lying at all! You'll get a look at the situation when we go to the pool.>

<I'm sure.>  (She's not.  But hopefully it's close enough for them to both pretend.)

Hotel. Room paid in cash. Laptop slapped down on the desk, opened, plugged in like sooooo. Configuring of the laptop tap tap tap.

It's just like in a sci-fi play, only with so many intricate and pedestrian details that it's actually a usable object.

How do requests for ways to use her own senses go over now?

Ispalt will sometimes glance at something Colley wants to glance at. Colley's hearing, proprioception, smell, touch, and taste are completely unobstructed, but she doesn't get to shift position or time her breaths to take better advantage. Ispalt does look up ATM machines and obligingly look at the result image for a few seconds, though.

<Could you let me do things while you're still in here?  Like, can you.>

<Yeah, I can. What do you wanna do, breathe?>

<I want a block of time every day unless something comes up and we both agree it's too risky then.>

<You know what, fine, as long as you don't do anything stupid and they keep me on a schedule with enough downtime to afford it. Which I guess they will since they don't know you don't need to sleep. What are you gonna want to do?>

<Mostly music.>

<That works for me. Though you'll have to keep it down, since mostly people sleep.>

<Even if I have to be completely silent some days being able to take it down will help a lot.>

<Do you have other demands?> Ispalt inquires, setting up a Sharemail account for... google google context grab... "Colleen Farrell".

A swirl of thoughts - <So far I don't think either of us has ruled out a 'we're both in this together' attitude.  If things get more antagonistic then I'll want to lay out some rules but I'd rather start as allies.>

<Oh good, glad to hear it. I see no reason we shouldn't get along fine.>

<Excellent.  Give me control for a minute, please.>

And what is she going to do with it?

Maybe look around the hotel room or something; probably hum a bit, quietly.  Mostly she just wants a concrete sign of good faith from Ispalt.

<All yours.> She lets go.

Colley looks around the hotel room and hums a bit!  Quietly!  Fixes a stray hair in the bathroom mirror, takes care not to look at the traits and location of Ispalt since there's a higher chance of that successfully nauseating her now.  Stretches.

Ispalt waits quite quiescently while this is going on. Nothing she needs to do right this minute.

<Do you like music?>

<I do now! It does seem like the sort of thing that is easier to enjoy if you're good at it.>

<I wonder if we can play things more complicated than either of us could alone, if we each take one hand, or something - can you do that or is it all or nothing - >

<Ooh, I could give you one hand no problem.>

<I probably don't know any of the instruments here but hopefully they aren't so different that none of what I know carries over.  Or maybe experts will be easy to find.>

<Find, yes, get in copying distance of, harder. We can get concert tickets.>

<Oh good.  Do you have any idea what day-to-day life is going to look like for us?>

<Not till I get a job. Unhosted Yeerks can't do very much - some knowledge work but we're a lot slower that way. So I don't have a previous career to expect something based on. If they don't have a strong opinion I might try to tell them that we should just be a musician, it's believable enough on top of the high homeless vagrant thing, the story'll be that I'm keeping you off whatever your drugs of choice were.>

Colley really really hopes she can still be a musician.  <Will we need to change my hair, do you think.>  It's currently a soft red at the roots and blonde at the tips with a short gradient between them.  <Or is there a way for the humans here to get the same effect?>

<Gooood question. Google 'hair color' or something.>

She does that.  She has to hunt and peck for the letters but she got the language too and was paying attention to Ispalt's computer use.

<Yeah, I guess we can say we dyed it and just have to let it grow out from here and redye it at realistic intervals.>

<Okay.>  Some of the hair pictures have hands in them.  < - Woah, what's up with these nails?  Is there nail dye here?  I want to dye my nails.>  She starts the process of typing 'nail color' into the search bar.  <Also we should probably learn some local songs if we're going to show off for job-assigning people, or at least write lyrics in this language for one I already know.>

<Good thinking! We can probably get nail dye, whatever that is.>

The results inform them it's actually nail polish, and it comes in So Many Colors.

She googles 'songs' next.

This provides children's songs and also a random Beatles MP3 in the first few results.

Children's song!  - Oh, dreadful.

<You don't happen to know more about this part than me, do you?>

<No, but I don't like it either. There's a few billions of these guys, probably they have something good.> She grabs the arm to poke the Beatles result and gets Eleanor Rigby.

- Colley considers requesting that Ispalt ask permission or at least warn her before doing that but decides against it.  <I'd appreciate it for the whole body, though, unless it's terribly time-sensitive.>  Music music.  Colley's attention shifts between the layers of sound, often accompanied by a proprioceptive sense of how she would play a snippet of tune on the closest equivalent citreliac instrument, lagging half a beat behind as she processes what she's hearing and converts it to imagined motion.  The words are too poetic (probably that's what it is) to make much sense to her yet; she doesn't bother trying to hard to figure them out.

Ooh there's a version of this by a string quartet!

Ooh!  On the second listen she's focusing more on the instruments themselves; it seems like they should be pretty much the same as the string instruments she's familiar with save for the tuning - if she could see the people playing she could figure those out and practice fingerings without needing an instrument of her own - as it stands she listens really hard for notes played open.  It's not a skill she's previously developed or acquired; she doesn't get very far with it.

<Are you getting all your tastes from me or do we have different opinions on what stuff is good?> she wonders.

<I think I have a differently tuned sense of novelty but otherwise I'm getting a lot of it off you.>

<Hm!  We should get some food - there are so many food places here - and see how much we match on opinions there.  And copy wakefulness from somebody so we don't crash all of a sudden in like an hour.>  This all has been exciting enough that she's not really tired but it doesn't feel like her nap lasted very long; her composing fugue is going to catch up with her soon.

<Yeah, good plan. We should go someplace that's open round the clock so we can get a night-shifter who just woke up.> There is a 24-hour McDonald's not far from the hotel.

<'Happy Meal' is a cute name and I don't have any better ideas about what to pick.>

<Suits me fine! I wanna drive in case someone I know spots us though, awkward to have a visible body language transition there.>

<Alrighty.  Thanks for the warning.>

Ispalt takes over and heads out to the McDonald's and gets a Happy Meal, which comes with a small plastic dolphin for some reason, and sits down to eat it, scanning the people around for the most recently slept one to copy off them. Fortunately how awake someone is is distinct from how stoned they are.

Huzzah.  <I don't really know how local drugs work, let alone when you can't just copy someone sober when you're done.  We should look into that before you have to go to your thing.>

<I was planning to lean a lot on you having blacked out when you took whatever drugs you supposedly took but I guess it would be good to have more of an idea what the details were.>

<Yeah.  How are you liking the food?>

<It is everything I didn't have the neural architecture to dream it would be!>

<Aww!>  Colley is checking out the people around them for anything else it might be useful to copy.  And generally observing body language, fashion, anything she can use to blend in, to the extent that she can while not in control of her eyes.

<You can look around but I will stop you if you stare or something.> Ispalt lets her eyes go. Their fashion is very standout, though there's enough variance at the extreme ends of local fashion choices that they might be passing as some irregular subculture, though probably not the ones who wear all black over there or the ones with the motorcycles. <Clothes shopping probably has to wait till morning.>

<Poor everyone else here, having to sleep all the time.  - Do you, normally?>

<Not exactly. We rest, but in our natural environment we're never totally unconscious.>

<It's refreshing sometimes.>  Ooh, that lady over there knows how to play a handful of songs on something called a piano; Colley wants that.

Ispalt yoinks it so seamlessly it almost feels like she was letting Colley do it.

What a good Ispalt.  Colley spends the rest of their meal trying to integrate that with her general instrumental knowledge so that hopefully she'll be able to play substantially more songs than the copiee could.

And when they have finished their Happy Meal and trashed the packaging they can go for a bit of a stroll, it's not yet quite late enough that anyone will raise an eyebrow about their sleep habits. See what's around, grab more context and local skills. Ooh, now they know how to drive! ...ooh, now they know how to drive not like a total asshole!

<Incredible.  I'm used to everyone just running around.>

<There is probably like one guy somewhere who does that, and nobody in the whole world can duplicate his trick. So sad. It's a good thing you already had all the cool perks.>

<Ugh, we're going to have to keep in shape ourselves if we want me to stay that way, though.>

<Oh, that's annoying, yeah. Maybe we should take up watching sports in person? I dunno how hard that is to do.>

<Do you have any idea how they'd compare?  I mean, it's probably better than nothing.  . . . Well, it's maybe better than nothing.>

Colley remembers Zarian going on a ramble about the beauty of the fittest person in every generation having their skills spread across the population, not even for the benefit to those people but because everyone's kids would start from that baseline and have the chance to improve even more - Dira'd interrupted by throwing a choreography notebook at her, to get her to focus on the dance number the two of them were supposed to be working on - Colley misses them.

<Yeah, I don't know. I guess we could also like, take up running with headphones on?> Like that person over there, see. <Combine taking in the local music scene with not atrophying.>

<That doesn't sound so bad.>  Colley is indescribably excited about headphones.  Conveniently, communication with Ispalt requires no description.  <As long as I'm not already fast enough to be suspicious.>

<We'll run at night. Cooler then anyhow.>

<Like now?>  Her shoes are suitable and her hair is mostly loose but braided at the top to stay out of her face.  <You know, I bet if we don't copy unexertion from anyone while we do whatever, it'll be way less attention-y and probably better exercise.>

<Don't have headphones yet. If we spot a place still open that has them. And something to play the music on.>

<It's faster, though.>

<Hmm, all right.> She breaks into a jog, dodging the occasional pedestrian while looking for a late-night store that will sell an iPod or something. No such luck.

It still feels nice to be taking steps to preserve something that she previously didn't consider that valuable and now definitely does.

Jog jog jog. There's a Walmart, over there, still open. They might have phones. Worth a look, anyway. Jog jog.

There are so many THINGS in this SHOP.

Sure are! They can walk around looking at all of them - a brisk walk, but local context suggests it is odd to jog in a store.

This is also true on Citrelia though admittedly the stores there are much smaller and narrower and less well-lit.

<Oh, should we pick up some clothes?>

<Bet your butt we should!> Ispalt grabs a cart and goes through the clothes marked WOMEN. She does not have her own taste in clothes and will get whatever Colley wants.

<But I don't want to bet you for control of my butt.>  (She's joking.  Though it would be hard to tell from her tone of mental voice alone.)

She likes colors on the bright side of pastel, and athleisure, and sparkle.  She wants the two of them to touch all the fabric and inspect the seam quality before deciding on and particular items to buy; the existence of serging surprises and impresses her.  They haven't picked up the local sizing system but for the most part she can tell what'll fit her just by looking.

Buttclench buttclench.

There's a fitting room to double-check things!

Ha.

<You should pick something out!  Like I want veto power if it's hideous but if it's your first time you should get something.>  Now she's imagining glittery little tailored slug clothes.

<Alrighty...> She grabs a stripey sundress, pink and white.

And they can try everything on!  Colley has a good eye; everything fits, but it's still fun to have a little fashion show.

Posing! What a concept!

Once they've had their fun: <Headphones?>

<Headphones!> Some nice hifi ones and some earbuds for running. And an iPod. And some iTunes giftcards because she has cash but not a way to pay online for stuff very easily at the moment. And an electric keyboard. And a backpack to carry these items back to the hotel in, except for the electric keyboard which they will have to hold in their arms.

eeeeeeeeee keyboard.  Now she'll be able to do music in the middle of the night without bothering anyone at all.  Amazing what these people have accomplished while having to get good at everything all by themselves.

And out they can go with all their purchases. The iPod does not come charged, so they can't listen to music on the way back to the hotel, more's the pity, and the piano would be too awkward for a local to run with so they will have to walk.

That takes so long but yes it's worth it to be careful here.  And then they can set it up and plug in the iPod hopefully???? <Do you want to take the right hand on 'The Red Blossoms of My Affection' and we'll just jam and see how complicated we can work up to - >

<Fuck yeah!>

They can get so complicated!!  Colley takes a bit more of the lead, since Ispalt can read her mind and the reverse isn't true, but she knows how to give and take and leave room for Ispalt to sparkle.

Ispalt can pick up everything Colley's putting down!!

Colley's willing to go literally until the break of dawn if Ispalt's down!

Ispalt is SO DOWN. Though in the morning they will have to step out to collect their complimentary continental breakfast and the wakefulness of the morning people who are up this early.

Can they get breakfast and wakefulness in headphones?

Yes they can! They can download a bunch of stuff onto their iPod and do a little dance while they are in the elevator and going through the buffet for, wow, this all looks amazing, maybe because they have been continuously doing music and stuff for the last many hours without having eaten anything since the Happy Meal. They are going to get one of each kind of pastry and try the scrambled eggs and copy that old man who is toasting and buttering an English muffin and ooh bacon smells fantastic and gosh there are so many things they can put in their oatmeal and also there is OJ and - their tray is full! They will make another trip if they are still hungry.

Ispalt is extremely cute and also there's so much food here and they have PORTABLE CONCERTS.  (She wishes her people were here; they would love this - except that it would probably be a little awkward and difficult to explai -  ooh, wow yeah bacon, meat is at all a thing on Citrelia but it's even rarer as food goes, and more expensive, and this just came with their room and there doesn't even seem to be a limit on how much they can take - )

<Well, probably if we just walk off with all the bacon in the hot plate they will be like "uh what are you doing" but if we at least make a credible attempt at eating it yeah!> Omnomonom. Ispalt loves orange juice and is not wowed by oatmeal (probably she put in too much cinnamon) and is big into the scrambled eggs.

That's too obviously antisocial for Colley to have considered as a course of action!  (And also she near-exclusively goes to discrete food places to eat food and then eats all the food there; she's not into cooking and neither are any of her close friends.  But that part's less obvious to her.)  <This isn't terrible or anything but I wish you could taste citreliac food - would it help if I concentrated really hard on some of my taste memories  - >

<I don't think concentrating actually helps, but I can remember 'em.>

<I bet all-of-Earth-food is better than all-of-Citrelia-food though.  Just because there's so much more of it; it doesn't have to be as much of a special treat.>

<Yeah, probably. At least on the high end. There is probably also much worse food here than anyone on Citrelia would bother with making.>

<. . . I hope no one's stuck eating food that tastes worse than not eating anything just because they have to eat all the time; that would be sad.  Probably not, if this> (came priced in with the room, the staff isn't tracking how much they sit here and eat, buffet style probably means there's going to be a fair bit left over) <is as good as it is.>

<I think some of them probably are but in poorer places, not right around here. We picked a richer place to land, more industrial base.>

<Huh.>  That's slightly confusing but not enough to warrant actual curiosity, especially up against this PORTABLE CONCERT.  What even are these instruments; she has no idea what could produce anything like that kind of sound.

Good question and there is no obvious way to find out solely by listening but they can find a list of all the instruments that exist on Wikipedia on their laptop!

Also Ispalt is going to send her commander an email proposing they meet to talk about her host's applicable skills.

Oh synthesizers??  They should maybe read the instruction manual for their keyboard later; it seems like probably there's stuff about it that didn't get picked up with what they got on acoustic pianos from that one lady.

Skills: she has so many of them!!  What's Ispalt saying about her?

My host was blacked out at the time she stumbled into the dentist's office, so I'm unsure how she got there or what she'd taken, but with me keeping her sober I think she has what it takes to pull off a serious musical career. Obviously money per se is not at issue but a celebrity could present opportunities for access, public opinion effect, etc. which might have me more valuable in that capacity than as a more conventional plant or operator. Happy to demo next time I need the pool.

What a good Ispalt.  No notes!

Well, some notes, presumably. Musical notes! The keyboard can sound like different stuff, turns out!

YESSS.  Let her at it let her at it -

All hers!

Aaaaaa there are so many sounds just in this one thing!!  Some of them have cool delay-y effects and she can make tunes that harmonize with themselves even when she only plays one note at a time!!  - There are string instruments on here??  Copies of other instruments instead of just completely new ones she's never heard of???  They don't sound perfectly right but it's still extremely impressive.

Awww. Ispalt has always been able to hear so it's not quite as exciting as being able to see but it's certainly a rich and interesting medium.

< - We probably shouldn't get swept into this for another ten hours; what would you like to do today?>

<Have to be ready for maybe being called in for a meeting to discuss my career. We could try writing English lyrics, have something to show off.>

<Ooh, okay - maybe we should just start by making a list of rhymes, first; that's what I did for this - well, you already know, don't you.>  This one competition where everyone got access to a brand-new conlang and then had four hours to write a song in it.  She didn't place but she rewrote the lyrics in Cretari with help from a few friends and that version's a few people's favorite song, or at least was a decade ago.

<Sure, though there might already be something like that since English isn't a conlang.> She googles "list of rhymes".

rhymezone.com: further proof that local humans are pretty amazing!

<What should it be about?>

<I'm imagining that we may wind up as the public face of our community organization thing The Sharing. They do stuff like pick up litter and supervise kids and have cookouts and stuff. So something in that general vein would be most on the nose.>

<Aww!>  - Actually she knows like a dozen songs about Creta that are kinda the vibe which they could probably plagiarize / translate / draw inspiration from.

<Ooh, yeah, that one.>

Colley types up a rough translation and then starts looking for words to replace with rhymes.  Scansion can come later unless anything good strikes either of them - oh, if she flips the structure around here that lends itself to a really nice parallel that wasn't there before; possibly she should tweak the original to match, not that anyone's going to - nope!  No worrying about that right now, she's busy.

And after a few hours of such busyness they have a basically workable song.

In the meantime an email has arrived telling Ispalt to get a cab to such and such a location for a meeting.

Ispalt is nervous about this and tries turning over the autonomics to Colley about it.

It helps; Colley's not very nervous about the meeting.  She's a little worried about Ispalt now though!  <What's the matter?>

<It'll probably be fine but my boss is kind of a hardass! So I'm scared he'll be like 'no do something that sucks instead' and then you'll be sad and bored all the time.>

<Aw, well if it's too bad there's always Plan B: vivisection, right?>

- What a stupid joke to have made on so many levels.  She'd been so successfully not thinking about that, and not thinking about thinking about that, and ( - can she keep just running the 'concerned friend' version of herself or is it time to go off the deep end of obvious implications - no, she's a friend and she's concerned; that's her) that was probably an insensitive joke to make because - because nothing, it just probably was.

<For you. I doubt I'd be extended the privilege.> Cab.

Okay yes because that.

<Are we really allies or just friends,> is the first thing she asks, the first thing she wonders.

<Man, I don't know, it kind of depends? My boss is one thing but my boss's boss is fucking terrifying.>

< - Is there a way to not go straight to this meeting without raising suspicion?>  There are the obvious implications but she knows very few actual details.

<Ways and ways but none of them are literally zero risk. I'm not, like, important. Yeerks are cheap. Hundreds to a litter. Grow up in a few months. Hosts can be hot-swapped. It's not a big deal if they execute somebody for transposing a couple digits in the address they gave the cabbie.>

<. . . How old are you?>

<Four.>

Nooooo babyyy - there's no time for that.  Also the years are longer here but fuck, most humans still aren't even people at that age - there's still no time for that.

She stops bothering to direct anything at Ispalt in favor of flicking through ideas as fast as she can - what if they just dont go back there at all; she can change her face; they havent even heard her singing voice so no worries there, right - what was that thing Ispalt said before about needing to do something every three days?

<I have to go in a pool which is getting a specific kind of radiation. On our planet the sun does it. This sun doesn't so we have artificial mini ones and that means the Empire's controlling all of them individually. Else I starve.>

Oh, fabulous - Colley doesn't have to eat they're just doing that for fun, surely Ispalt also - can she get it off Colley or does it have to be other Yeerks -

<I don't actually have that power. I'm just using yours and then knowing what you know that way out of your brain Yeerk-style. I can feed you that way, but not me.>

Well, fuck.  <. . . Maybe we can play along for a while and look for opportunities to copy how to make you a sun.>

<Yeah, somebody has to know, though I don't actually know who.>

<I can put up with doing some sucky job for a while.>  If it means buying time to figure out how to stop these people from KILLING their BABIES.  <We can do music and stuff at night.>

<Sorry about all the suckage.>

<Yeah.>  If she were in control and it weren't obviously dumb she'd hug (herself? themself?) - she would pilot the body to hug itself right about now.  <If there's a way to fix it we'll do that.>

They arrive at their meeting. The boss keeps them waiting for nearly twenty minutes, then waves them in.

"So you think your host is, when not strung out on every substance known to man, a good enough musician that I should have you on that instead of doing ops?" he asks, folding his hands. (He's a Yeerk, of course, so there is another dude there who technically owns the hands, but the Yeerk is driving.)

"Yeah-huh, you wanna hear?"

Shrug. "Sure. Keep it down, this is a rented office."

Ispalt sings.

It's a good voice.  Even though many things about this situation suck, singing (or being along for the ride while Ispalt does) is always nice.  Some tweaks for their song occur to her during the performance.

"All right, she's got pipes," he acknowledges, when they're done. "But that isn't all it takes to succeed in an industry. We don't already have a producer or agent onside and it's not a strategic priority. I'm assigning you to the Sharing ops arm, and you can organize a little talent show and try to get gigs and be reassigned if it pans out, but if you don't have a foot in the door you don't have a career, just an instrument."

Colley's not directing anything at Ispalt because she doesn't know how easy it is for Ispalt to multitask talking to her and this seems pretty high stakes, but she's definitely wondering how much this job is probably going to suck.

"Who should I report to, sir?"

"Raftess 552, occupying a Carol Marks, I'll email you the details."

"Yes sir."

What are the numbers.  It can't be like what Creta does with giving everyone an ID number, if it's only three digits and yeerks are """cheap""".  Maybe it's more like a last name or something.

<Yeah, more like a last name. Means there are at least 552 Yeerks named Raftess, or at least were when she was born.>

That's a lot of Raftesses and it's kind of weird to think of a government being able to keep track of all of its new citizens everywhere in that kind of detail, but not actually all that surprising; she's seen computers.

<I'm a 90451. Ispalt's a popular name.>

<. . . Wow.
So how much is this job going to suck?>

<It might not be that bad but I don't know Raftess like at all so possibly working for her will be the pits. They try to keep the Sharing nice for the humans who aren't hosts yet though, so most of the time we'll probably be in, like, a chill friendly environment?>

She's glad.  <Are we gonna have to do any horrible things to people ourselves do you think.>

<Well, get Yeerks into 'em.>

<How are most Yeerks, on a scale of you to your murdery grandboss or whatever?>  Also if there's a chance to copy not finding Yeerk bodies nauseatingly gross from someone, Ispalt is even more welcome to do that at any time.

<We're just folks, I think? I don't think I'm that special. But we want to win the war, y'know.>

<What's all that about anyways?>

<There's these blue furry aliens with hooves and knifey tails and four eyes that hate our guts.>

<Like for being slug people who need to use other people's bodies or because your bosses are super evil even to you guys?>  (Does Ispalt have guts??  - She does not actually want the answer to that.)

<I'm kind of not clear on that! Like, they knew we were slug people who needed hosts back when they landed on us in the first place, we hadn't even invented electricity, so you'd think they could have just not given us any technology. That's their policy now, word is they will no way no how give any humans a tech advantage even if we start moving openly.>

<Huh.  . . . I'm gonna need a crash course in like all of this as soon as we're somewhere convenient.>

<You betcha.>

There's already an awful lot to think about.  Talent shows sound like something people here might not have come up with but Colley's glad they did.  She wonders whether she could get a music career with only the skills that she already has.  She misses her twin, and her girlfriend; she's probably going to miss her girlfriend increasingly much in the coming days - ISPALT IS FOUR.  Obviously she's in some sense an adult but also she's like a twelfth of Colley's age and that's fucked up.

Thinking about the time conversion segues nicely back into missing things from home, which is sad but at least not very fraught, unlike just about everything else she could be thinking about which is all extremely so.

<Yeerks don't actually do sex as a thing at all, we just sorta glom together a few in a bunch and then split apart into hundreds of babies, killing the parents, so don't worry about me not being sexually mature, there isn't really a thing that means.>

That's . . . . differently concerning.  Wow that just wasn't something she expected at all even knowing that hundreds of baby Yeerks happened at one time.

Also completely nonsexually it's still fucked up that Ispalt is a twelfth of Colley's age!  She's trying to keep the condescension to a minimum but four is way way way way way too young to have to worry about your boss killing you over a slip-up.  Or like obviously that's fucked up at any age but seriously.

<If you were a regular person I'd be like 'well at least I won't die of being old' but you also won't do that I guess.>

<I also will not do that.>  This is good news for the future when they know how to make suns and have totally gotten everyone to defect to their side by virtue of not murdering babies, and convinced the blue guys to just let everyone chill and invented a portal back home where probably lots of people will volunteer to be hosts and then Zarian will invent a way for Yeerks to get the copying power and everyone can have their own bodies be however they want and then they can all live happily ever after for literally ever.

<I dunno if a lot of Yeerks would want to just copy bodies with eyes and hands instead of doing the hosting thing? Seems lonesome.>

<If we're already daydreaming that they could copy, then they could just make themselves not mind!  And then anyone who would mind not minding can stay as they are and pair up with someone who doesn't.>

<Yeah, I guess that'd work out fine.>

And then Zar will probably have so much alien sex and they won't be girlfriends anymore - they probably aren't girlfriends right now??  They were going to call it off and renegotiate if aliens ever came to Citrelia but this sort of scenario isn't really something they planned for.  Probably everyone is just going to think she ran away for some reason to go live as like a normal unfamous person or something, ugh.

<I can ask to be trained in z-space navigation but it's not like we know where Citrelia... is... even if that would let us figure out how to get there, and also finding it might get it caught up in the war.>

<What's z-space exactly?>

<It's like a parallel dimension where distances are different so if you pilot a ship through it you can find shortcuts for long distances.>

<Huh.  Well, we could copy the training from someone and see if that gets us anywhere, and then decide whether to ask.>

<Yeah, there'll probably be somebody at the Pool. Unless they all go to the one in space.>

<What's space like?  You were born there?>

Their taxi arrives. <On a Pool ship. I couldn't have been born in the space part of space, there's nothing there, no air or water or anything. But we've got a great big ship with a great big pool in it and I was born in that.>

Colley tries to think of a tactful phrasing to ask what Ispalt's relationship with her siblings is.

<Basically don't have one. They like, exist, but we don't have anything much in common I don't have with unrelated folks.>

<What are your friends like?  Will I meet any of them?>

<Might do, my friend Asjana works in the Sharing, host's name is Pauline. I haven't seen much of her lately since Pauline has like a family and human cover stuff to do and stuff.>

<Do you think I'll like her?  What was your life like, like before this?>

<In the Pool all the time. We talk to each other with little electrical pulses, about the same as we send and receive information from host brains, and we can read books from computer terminals that do the same thing, though there's always more Yeerks than terminals so there's kind of a wait for anyone who isn't building up their skill capital to be of use to the Empire. Me and Asjana used to hang around eavesdropping on the same books, stuff about Earth and humans.>

Colley has a small and very brief metaphorical internal scream around the relative numbers of Yeerks and terminals because it reminds her of the 'Yeerks are cheap' thing.  <We should read some - actually we should watch something on TV!  Since that's new to both of us.>

<The computers are not actually that expensive but you want them to be mostly situated on land with just part of them stuck in the pool, and not an end where folks are going in and out of hosts either and there might be splashes, since a lot of their parts would be damaged by the moisture, which limits how many you can have to a pool.> They emerge from the taxi. <Hell yes to TV.>

Oh, relieving.  <What was your favorite book?>

<I don't know that I'd say any of them were my favorite book. I wanted the information but they weren't, like, engagingly written.> What's on TV. Various streaming, apparently, and she can charge it to the room, so whatever they want.

MUSICALS.  Also maybe they should try like five minutes of a bunch of different things to see what looks good?  - Oh or previews!!  Previews are an amazing concept she loves them immediately.

They can flip through a bunch of trailers for musicals till something catches Colley's ear.

But all of them are catching Colley's ear!!  Especially Newsies and Little Women and Spongebob and The Phantom of the Opera and Cats and The Sound of Music and Peter Pan and possibly that's too many to reasonably count as 'especially'.

Ispalt makes the executive decision that The Sound Of Music mostly for title reasons.

Colley wants control of the body, which she uses to position it in a maximally-cozy way, drawing all her limbs up during the opening credits.  It's the closest she's likely to get to giving Ispalt a hug.

WOW those are sure some pretty mountains and cool architecture, from perspectives she's never seen before.  And it's really cool how the singer still sounds so clear and close even as she and the camera move around a ton relative to each other.  It would be really nice if recording people were copiable-from; Colley wants to know everything about how all of this works.

<Awww,> of the "hug"; <Yeah, it's a pity> about the uncopiability of Julie Andrews.

Seven children sure is kind of a lot to have that close in age to each other, or would be for citrelians.  Most of the plot is mostly comprehensible but pretty abruptly she wishes she could copy the actors not just for their knowledge of filmmaking but for like, any cultural context.

<Humans can have a lot of kids if they aren't on birth control. There's billions of 'em on this planet and they do have birth control.>

<Yeah.  And ugh, they're all like growing old and dying, so of course you'd have to have them all at once if you wanted that many - I wasn't even planning on any for a few decades and I think I'm about as old as this guy - >

<Also I'm not sure they did have birth control back then when this is set. Maybe they did, we could look it up.>

<Afterwards.>

Aww, the little scale song is very cute.  Colley knows several citreliac equivalents - she was desperate for them before she was a person - but most of those were scaled to various divisions of absolute pitch instead of a solfège equivalent.  Also it's good to know that not all songs performed by this planet's children are terrible.

<There's an accidental in this song! I think I object.>

(Ispalt is having independent opinions about music!!  Yay!)

<But it's easier for littles to keep the same overall pattern of intervals, and if you're going to be using them in the rest of your music anyways there's not much reason to leave them out.  But maybe the ideal version of this song would have had twelve bits of wordplay instead of seven.>  She's already half-composing it in the back of her mind without particularly having intended to start.

<No, I mean the song is about the scale! It should be in the scale entirely.>

<If you say so!>

<I do. I do say so. It's bad pedagogy. Imagine impressionable children with perfect pitch.>

<I was one such child and it went fine!  I still like the songs, too.>

<I like the title song best.>