Company wasn't expecting them either and shrieks about it!

There’s a flurry of conversation in Devin.

("The wards - "

"Dareni!"

"She wasn’t under an illusion - I think she teleported - she still isn’t - "

"Shouldn’t be able to cast in here now.")

All eyes are on the stranger now.

She is going to stammer apologetically in a foreign language and hold very still except for drawing her arms in closer to herself.

Dareni hasn’t heard that language before - none of them have - but she doesn’t need to have. There’s a trick to hearing the meaning and she knows it. But even if she didn’t, it’s not that hard to get the important thing with or without magic; rather than translate she lets the others know she can’t place the language.

The older man tries speaking Hari. It’s still not an Amentan language but he’s aiming for somewhere in the vicinity of reassuring and that might come across.

It doesn't really work! She is still super freaked out and apologizing; it's getting pretty repetitive.

More Devin. Its phonology isn't much like Tapap; it contrasts multiple liquids and has a voicing distinction.

Eventually Dareni grabs the youngest local's plate of as-yet-untouched meat and leaves and takes a couple steps toward the alien and holds it out.

Aaaa what why is this happening.

She shrugs and puts the plate back and says something.

She goes to the front door and opens it. There are quadrupeds outside.

Confusing but not additionally alarming all on its own?

But it doesn’t cause her to leave. It’s fine, she’s interesting and not causing problems, but it’s kind of notable that she isn’t leaving. Dareni could handle communicating with her if she’d just talk... assuming she can; she isn’t a mage. Dareni tries pointing at things and naming them in Hari in case that helps.

One of the quadrupeds outside sets up a bowl and starts playing a stringed instrument.

Absolutely bewildering but if anything a little reassuring. She will try repeating the Hari nouns tentatively.

For some reason this is a disappointing response to everyone except the youngest person present, who's enjoying the entertainment. Most of the people present go ahead and start eating.

Dareni just keeps conspicuously watching the stranger and says something vaguely annoyed in Devin.

Will cringing and going "sorry sorry sorry!" help with the annoyedness.

Not really.

"...Sorry sorry sorry?" Dareni echoes.

Oh right, no one can understand her. She will cringe slightly harder to make up for it.

Dareni tries gesturing to herself and talking ("this is some random Hari nonsense to serve as an example of talking") and then shuts up and gestures to the stranger.

"Ma'am I'm sorry I can't understand you."

Excited gesturing!

"Ma'am I don't know what you want me to do, I don't even know where I am or how I got here!"

"Ma'am where I am Eliti Devori Hari."

Shiver. "Uh. I'm Peka Atan ma'am?"

"I'm Dareni ma'am. I know."

"Are you trying to... learn Tapap...?"

Not exactly but close enough. "Trying to learn Tapap."

"Oh. Uh. ... I don't know how to teach somebody Tapap."

Dareni considers this for a while and then says, very carefully, "I know how to teach somebody Hari."

"I was trying to do that but you looked annoyed ma'am?"

"I know. I'm know? I'm sorry I can understand you ma'am?"

"I'm not a ma'am I'm Peka Atan."

That doesn’t make sense! It’s probably a word that Peka Atan is using nonliterally.

"I'm a ma'am? I'm Dareni Know."

"...okay, Know."

The younger of the two men present interrupts with a question and when Dareni answers it he walks out the door and away, dropping a coin into the busker's bowl on the way.

Dareni thinks about what to say, sighs, turns to the older man and says something in Devin. And now Dareni is surrounded by floating green stars that fade in and out of visibility.

"Whoa what the fuck."

A description would totally have been too much to ask for, huh.

"I don't whoa what the fuck. ...I don't whoa what the fuck. I know." She gestures at one of the floating stars. "Ēá."

"Ey-ah."

"I don't whoa what the fuck ēá. I whoa what the fuck you where I am."

"Are you - saying you - brought me here??"

Aaaaargh. Frustrating though that is, it does give her the last word she needs to at least try to explain the situation to Peka.

"Uh. Gēr brought you here. I can’t understand gēr brought you here. Uh, hm. Peka Atan, Dareni Know," she says, gesturing at the people in question, "Hanu Ēá," the man, "Thira Híerān," the woman, "Eyik Gēr," who looks maybe as old as four Amentan years old. Eyik waves. "Eyik Gēr can't brought you here. I saying - Gēr brought you here, I can't understand, I whoa what the fuck. I - " Dareni makes a frustrated noise and a gesture like she's brushing all that aside. "I don't know Tapap. I can't understand Tapap. I can understand you. I want you to do saying?"

"I... don't know what to say, ma'am... uh..." She will start tentatively singing in case that's an acceptable way to do saying?

That’s very acceptable indeed!

What is she singing about?

The first thing that popped into her head was the national anthem, actually, but it's not very long and she will then switch to random top-forty type songs about clubbing, holding babies for the first time, gathering all your friends in the park for a party, being a secret shapeshifter alien, a cute little bakery staffed by charming friendly purples, the Emperor of Oahk time-traveling to ancient Sheern and getting put in his place there, breaking up with a girl you loved in spring because she sucks in summer, and waiting until next year to get pregnant and being very maudlin about that.

Dareni eventually informs Peka that Peka is an alien.

"Oh. You know, that makes sense now that you mention it considering it's so weird here."

"I'm fascinated by this world you come from," says Dareni. "I never knew how life could be before I met you."

Which is about when the person who left returns, now carrying a small box.

"Oh, uh, I'm from Amenta. It's a... planet... I don't know where this one is so I don't know if it's anywhere nearby..."

"It is not anywhere nearby. - We wanna give you this, we hope it helps you understand what we're trying to say," she says as the other person offers Peka the box.

"You want me to.... take the box? Like with my hands."

There's some quick, baffled Devin discussion. (They conclude that she's afraid it's cursed and doesn't understand that they don't need to touch her to do magic to her.)

"Do you feel like you've gotta show the whole world first?"

"I don't know what that means. Uh. At home people mostly. Don't want me to touch their things."

"It’s your thing now. We want it to be your thing."

"...okay." She will take the thing.

It’s a closed box that is perfectly silent even when its contents shift. If she opens it she’ll discover a device inside playing a movie.

Ooh, what's the movie about.

A... cat alien? or something? is in a forest, pointing out objects with their tail and naming them. There are also sentences about location and motion (the leaf is falling from the tree to the ground, the rock is not moving...). The language is tonal and entirely lacks dental stops and the way the alien pronounces it the distinction between the unvoiced fricatives may actually be impossible for Peka's mouth.

"I don't know if I can pronounce all this? And I don't learn as fast as you... how do you pause this..."

"You can’t pause it." Dareni sighs and mimes closing the box. "I pronounce it differently - I say 'Hárī àr Sárág Màrsáehū'."

She closes the box. "Why can't you pause it? - Hati ah Satak Masaehu -?"

That seems worse than the physical shape of her mouth requires but it’s not like dental stops mean something else in Hari.

"It doesn’t - it’s - I want to tell you something so hard to say." Frustrated sigh.

"Should I... sing more?"

"Yeah. I learn the words you sing."

"Yeah, it's really cool. Is there a kind of thing that a song about it might help you with the thing you wanna talk about?"

"Yeah. Words and - people? Aliens? And... what are all... shapeshifter and understanding Tapap and ēá - what is - maybe the thing Atan is not? I don’t know."

"I'm not sure what all of that is getting at but I can sing, uh, the alphabet..." She sings the Tapap alphabet, and then a kids' TV song that Shahn likes about parts of speech, and then an old poem set to music about a wizard who could turn into various animals having adventures, and... what is eyah supposed to mean, the color green? stars? magic? holograms? She can come up with at least partial songs about all of those things.

Dareni tentatively suggests that it probably means holograms once she has the word. "That doesn't help me say why you can't pause this thing or how to pronounce Hari, but I can say aliens are wizards. Hologram wizards, knowing wizards, different wizards - no shapeshifting wizards."

"How many kinds of wizards are there - uh, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve -" she'll go on like that until stopped or when she gets to forty.

She lets Peka go all the way to forty, because maybe she'll need those numbers later, but then says "Twelve here. I don't know how many on Amenta."

"Oh, Amenta doesn't have wizards!"

"You have songs about them. And... things. You have good things."

"Maybe you don't mean wizards, you mean something else? Uh, scientists or something? The songs come from, like, composers, you don't need magic."

"I mean... I can see you aren’t a wizard. You can't make - " this plate of food is a convenient prop " - a lot of food. You can't make it better when people are bad. You can make... a good thing? You can't make lots of good things."

"Uh, I don't know what you mean, but I'm pretty sure Amenta doesn't have any wizards... it has doctors? And... farmers?"

"Say more?"

"Doctors have, like, medicine, and they can do surgery, and they can like... do tests to find out what's wrong with people? Farmers plant seeds in the ground and they grow into food plants like, uh, wheat, or apple trees, or whatever, or they raise animals like cows or chickens..."

"Say more about seeds and tests?"

"Seeds are the little bits of plants that new ones of those kinds of plants grow from. Like the pits in peaches. Tests are like... I don't know much about this but like they can sometimes put some of somebody's blood in a machine to find out if they're, I don't know, low on a mineral or, um, infected with something?"

"Seeds grow kinds of plants. Anyone can put a seed in the dirt if they have one. And you can’t make a machine to find out if they’re low on a mineral, or make seeds better, because you were born wrong. Do I understand?"

"Yeah."

"And 'wizards' isn’t the word that means everyone that isn’t like you?"

"Oh - no, that's castes. We have castes."

"...Say more about castes?"

"Uh, there's blues, they're in charge, and greens, they invent stuff and write music and books and things, and oranges are doctors and teachers and nurses, and yellows do computer stuff and office work, and greys are cops and soldiers, and purples do most everything else like farming or building houses or whatever. And I'm red."

"Say more about computer stuff? I think we might not have computer stuff."

"Oh, uh." She has her pocket everything and can pull that out. "Like this is a little computer, it can play movies - that you can pause - except I don't have signal here so it'd just be ones I have downloaded - same with music - and it can like do math and stuff - I guess maybe you don't have a way to charge it unless you have electricity wizards."

"Maybe we can. I can’t but maybe another kind. ...It’s not magic at all. Like your hair."

"Why would my hair be magic??"

"You look like a - my kind of person? Sometimes we have pink hair because it’s beautiful but it can’t grow that way."

"...well, I'm glad you like it but it's natural. Amentans don't have black hair like you."

"I'm fascinated by Amenta and I want to know more. I can keep talking to you. I can tell you the rules here. I can give you my food - I don't know if it's your food, I don't really understand your..." Dareni puts a hand to her own stomach. "I can see it but it's really complicated. I can help you sleep in a good place. But, uh - do you want that? I give you those things and you tell me about Amenta?"

"Uh, that... sounds good, if that's what you wanna do... um...

...hey, I need the bathroom."

"Oh. You can use ours. Uh, you didn’t want to touch our things, right? I can’t make you walk on air, I'm a different kind of wizard..."

"At home usually people don't want me to touch their things. But if it's okay with you I can use yours."

"...Why?"

"'Cause I'm red."

"I don’t think I... I understand your words but I think I don’t understand? I guess - not being a wizard could make me feel like you’re saying you make people feel? I think? But if they’re not wizards either then why do they feel like that? I think maybe I need more than one word."

"Reds're, uh, untouchable."

"That is the only part I understand. Why?"

"'cause we do gross jobs."

Dareni contemplates this for a while and then says, "Oh, there are no wizards on Amenta. Wizards just kill the gross here - it's very, very, very small animals. Maybe we can't even - uh - have anything bad happen because of Amentan gross things? We can't even all have the same bad things as each other. And, um - because we can't have all the same bad things - something that isn't bad for Amentans might be worse for us than anything that is bad for Amentans. And anyway the gross small animals also go in the air."

"Oh, we know it's very small creatures - they're not animals, or, uh, most of them aren't, they're a different kind of thing, but we know about those. But yeah it seems like possibly you can't catch our diseases or that you can and they're awful. I'm not sick but if you wanna quarantine me that'd be reasonable."

"If I get sick I'll hire a wizard doctor. If you get sick and you're being entertaining maybe I'll hire a wizard doctor but the doctors here don't understand aliens."

"And their... magic, doesn't do their detail work?"

"They have to know what details to work."

"Okay. I hope I don't get sick then."

"So. Bathroom." It’s over this way and Dareni is going to explain the soap, because it kind of sounds like Amenta doesn’t have soap and Dareni would like her alien guest to be clean. And also everything else, because who knows how they do things on Amenta.

"We have soap," she clarifies, but she attends to the full explanation.

She repeats the word "soap" a couple of times like she’s trying to memorize it and then chirps "in the bathroom no one can hear you scream!" on the way out.

"what???"

"The magic here means I can’t watch you or listen to you from outside."

"Oh! Okay."

When Peka's done Dareni will be out here explaining everything to the others.

Peka can't understand her but can emerge so as to be no longer hypothetically maybe screaming.

Dareni waves. The younger person waves even more enthusiastically and says something that prompts Dareni to say, "Eyik wants an alien friend and I bet she'd teach you Devin."

"Tefin is a language but not the movie language?"

"Yeah. The movie language is Hari. Almost every person on this planet speaks Hari a little and some people only speak Hari. You can go anywhere if you speak Hari. The words I've taught you are Hari. But right here in Elit City we speak Devin first. It's better for our mouths. Maybe it's also better for your mouth but probably not because you're saying the name wrong."

"Some languages on Amenta have those sounds. I can sort of do it if I pay more attention. De-vin."

"Yeah! I'm glad your mouth and ears are a lot like ours."

"This would be a lot harder if you were weird crystal aliens or something yeah."

"You would have died if you appeared where the - where the ocean people live. Because it's in the ocean. And even if they were a wizard of knowing, a - person that only talks by changing color - wouldn't be able to pronounce Tapap. It's really good for you that you appeared here, you could have been either of those places if you appeared less than a mile away."

"...yeah, I hadn't even thought about landing in the ocean, that would have been bad, I can't swim."

"I bet Eyik would teach you."

"Sounds fun!"

Dareni translates this, which prompts Eyik to say something to the older man, which prompts Dareni to say, "...Okay, before you think about going anywhere, you should know what the government wants, and you should know that if you don't have magic of hiding then your clothes don't hide you, and you should know that people mostly don't know how to understand Tapap - and even people who know how to understand can't look back at the things you said inside this house, same reason I can't watch you in the bathroom."

"...people can see through my clothes? Kinky. Uh, yeah, does the government want something with me, my government would sure want an alien that showed up."

"Maybe they will want to talk to you when they know - " brief Devin aside and response from the guy who brought the movie " - and they don't know yet. They want everyone to, uh... there's a list. They want everyone to give them money when they say to. They don't want everyone to - do anything to other people, like touch them or do magic on them - to them? - or take their things or - stuff you can't do and I don't know how to say in Tapap - or go to someone's house if they don't want you to, or trap someone away from the outside, or say someone did those things if they didn't."

"So they - collect taxes and you can't steal stuff or break into people's houses or kidnap them or accuse them of crimes they didn't do or... touch them?"

"Yeah. Only if they don't like that - like, you came here by accident, but also we're going to tell the government it's okay that you're here."

"Well, I guess it'll probably be pretty easy to remember not to touch people."

"It's not like Amenta. It’s because... the world is big and full of strangers. You can do whatever you want with your friends. I'd touch you if you wanted."

"Amenta's big and full of strangers, it has thirteen billion people! The clean ones touch each other!"

"When?"

"Like, families hug each other and people pat little kids on the head and strangers who don't know each other's names tap each other on the shoulder to get their attention about stuff and people get very crowded on the train or the elevator..."

"Families hug each other. Lots of people don’t have shoulders or don’t have hands or - you can kill some people if you hug them, they’re delicate. And we don't have crowded trains. We fly instead. If there's an emergency and a lot of people have to move very fast through a small space the government will probably not be angry. The government will definitely not be angry if you touch your own children."

"Well, I don't see how I'd have any children here."

"A wizard could help you make a child but I think the child might have to be just like you because there aren't any other aliens and no one here knows how to change alien babies yet. Or you could buy one but then they won't be as much like you."

"How would buying one work, even with a credit there isn't anyone who could get me pregnant."

"It depends on... I don't think Tapap even has the words I want... it depends on what kind. If you want a baby that's like an Amentan but with black hair, then it'd be from a mother who died or was sold. Those aren't very common. If you want a snake, those are very common, because they don't really care. If you want a furry one that eats fruit, the mothers care some but not a lot, sometimes they'll sell. It's almost impossible to buy a baby that talks with colors or a baby that's furry and eats meat or a baby that's like an Amentan with pointy ears, they really don't want to sell them. If you want to get pregnant, you will have to hire a wizard to use magic."

"There are people who sell their babies?????? Like they have a baby, and then they're like, instead of this baby that I have, I would rather have money, and give someone else my baby?????"

"Snake people have a lot of babies and don’t care about them at all. Other people usually only sell babies if something happened to make their old plans not work anymore. Like if the father was going to help and died or something. Or if the baby is a wizard of space or sick. Or if they didn't want the baby in the first place and getting pregnant was a surprise, sometimes, if they're a kind of person that has an easy time - my kind of person would usually not finish the whole pregnancy just to sell the baby but furry fruit-eating people do sometimes. Is it different on Amenta?"

"Yeah, it's different on Amenta!"

"I think you like how it is on Amenta better, huh?"

"I mean, this might be fine for me, I guess, but the poor babies!!"

"Does every person on Amenta feel that way?"

"Wanting... babies? Yes!"

"I mean thinking 'poor babies' instead of 'so the things I want are cheap'."

"I mean, maybe I'll buy babies, but like, mostly to save them from anybody else who buys babies, and because I can't have my own, I'd really rather my own."

"Wizards can get my kind of people pregnant. I think they can learn to get your kind of person pregnant... maybe."

"But only with clones, and that's like, weird."

"If they don't know - uh, there's a - thing, in you. It says that you have pink hair and two eyes. Can you tell me some Tapap words about that?"

"DNA? I don't know a ton about it but we know it's a thing."

"DNA! There are wizards of DNA. If a wizard of DNA gets you pregnant, they can use your DNA and not any other Amentan's DNA. They can also change it so the baby isn't a clone, but - if they change things they don't understand, the baby could be sick. So if you know anything about what parts of your DNA say what things, then maybe you can have a baby that is your baby and isn't a clone and isn't sick."

(Eyik sighs impatiently and leaves the table.)

"Well, that'd be really great if I knew things about DNA but I don't."

"Hmmmmm." Dareni checks if Amentans seem to have bird-style WZ chromosomal sex determination because that'd be nice and convenient.

They do not.

"Well, I guess the best you can probably do is to hire someone to look at places where your DNA disagrees with your other DNA and try to guess if any of them are safe to make agree with each other. It probably won't work and will probably be a long, expensive project. I can look but I don't know about DNA either, the best I can do is compare it to mine and see if we're similar enough for knowing about local people's DNA to help much..."

"I don't see how that would even help - I guess it might make me less likely to get cancer?"

"It'd be a way to use your DNA to get different DNA."

"I think I have or at least am supposed to have the same DNA all over."

"My kind of people have two sets, one from each parent, and we can also sometimes have - a few small pieces that came from a sibling if our mother was pregnant with us both at the same... time..." Dareni checks whether Peka is diploid and whether she has any cells that seem like they could plausibly be the same species but genetically different. "...Uh. You would definitely know if you were pregnant right now, right?"

"Oh. Fuck."

"Not better than a clone, huh?"

"I'm sure the baby'll be lovely."

"We're gonna set up a ward on the house so no one else can just show up like that. So even if he follows you he won't follow you here. - Do I understand?"

"Yeah. I don't think he would. Even if he could. Which he can't. Probably."

"If you want a hug, you can have a hug."

"I'd take a hug." She holds out her arms.

Hugs seem to be about the same on this planet.

That's nice. It'd be so sad to be on a planet where they hadn't invented hugs.

"So. I guess this is a fine time to ask you what you need."

"Well, we should probably figure out if your food is going to poison me, I guess."

"Yes! What kind of things are your food on Amenta?"

"Uh, meat and grains and milk and eggs and fruits and vegetables?"

"You're so similar to us, it's really weird! We drink milk as babies too. And we can eat some meat and some grains and maybe all eggs and some fruits and some vegetables. And some other things that are like grains and - anyway, you can eat things and find out if they're good for you. That's grains." She gestures at the remaining oatmeal.

"Grownup Amentans can drink milk." She will, presuming it is obvious how, serve herself a taste of oatmeal.

"Huh! Why?"

"...well, why not? - we drink milk from farm animals mostly, not, like, people milk anymore after we're about a year old."

"I thought you meant each other and that would be less food than the food you'd need to eat to make the milk."

"Yeah, it'd be a bit weird. Cows mostly, bred to produce lots."

"...Huh. I guess you could do that without magic."

"You have magic cows?"

"We use DNA magic for things we farm. But you could breed them to do the same thing. I think it would take longer."

"Yeah, it takes longer. They can do genetic engineering now I think but I don't know how they do it."

"Purples do it?"

"I think it's some purple some green?"

"Are the other castes not allowed or not able?"

"Oh, not even that, they can do it if they know how, they just can't get paid for it. For all I know there's retired oranges and yellow interns in all those labs."

"Hmmmm. What do you know how to do that isn't - the thing 'Atan' is about?"

"Well, not a ton. I can drive. I don't know if you have trucks. I did the intro courses in plumbing, in school. I know not zero things about Amentan anatomy because I was for a while going to be working with my mom and she does autopsies but I stopped going to work with her, uh, just the other day."

"You don’t have to be a wizard to do plumbing here."

"That's good because I'm not a wizard! Maybe I can be a plumber."

"Yeah. Your job can be entertaining me with stories about Amenta for a while but you've got at least that other option. Or learn to weave, cloth's really expensive and magic doesn't help very much."

"I know how to quilt a little bit but I haven't tried weaving."

"You don't have to be a wizard to make quilts, either."

"Are there sewing machines?"

"No! Do you know how to make them?"

"No but I do know the basic insight that makes them work!"

"I want to know about that! If I can make and sell sewing machines from your description I can give you one in twelve of the, uh, money circles that I get when I don't count the money I pay to make and sell them."

"...coins?" she suggests. "Uh, I have... no idea if that's fair."

"Coins! Yes. Our coins are circles. I have no idea if it's fair either because I don't know how much of it is the basic insight and how much of it is other things."

"I think you can probably get a really basic sewing machine with just that and some way to make a wheel turn? And like, being able to put together machines with moving parts, at all. Fancy sewing machines have more features but those I can't help with besides knowing that they are nice to have."

"That sounds like the insight is probably worth more like half. But I maybe don't want to hear it yet, now I want to try to think of it."

"But then I bet you won't pay me at all!"

"I could pay you to not tell me but I think I won't."

"Well, probably you won't think of it but maybe next time I think of a thing I could maybe help invent here I won't tell you about it at all, so there."

"...I will pay you forty eight circle coins to tell me if I have the same insight that makes it work or a different insight that makes it work."

"I don't have any idea how much one circle coin is worth, at least a fraction I can guess!"

"For that many circle coins, I could probably hire a wizard of carrying to make a machine go in circles forever, if I had a machine."

"- wow, then you'll probably have a huge head start on industrializing once you learn how. If you guess I'll tell you if it's what I'm thinking of, sure."

"So if you can do it with a wheel, the real problem with just having both pieces of cloth flat in a thing that holds them together and the needle spinning around to make the - thing that sewing is, the line that holds the cloth together - is that something has to hold the needle. I can... uh..." Dareni gestures horizontally with her left hand and then mimes holding a needle with her right hand. "I can hold this part," above the fabric, "and then this part," below the fabric, "but a wheel can't. You could have the hole in the needle be near the end and make it go like - " Dareni gestures. It's in fact the thing the needle on a sewing machine does. " - if something could catch the thread. Tiny bits of iron in the thread and a magnet bar and not an iron needle. Then just turn it and drop a second needle down through."

"- parts of that are close."

And here is a coin. "This is forty eight but if you want forty eight small ones I can give you those instead."

"I might later but this is convenient for now." It goes in her pocket.

"How do you make a sewing machine?"

"You were right about having the eye of the needle on the pointy end! And then you have a second thread, beneath, and you use that to catch the loop while the needle's down." She gestures vaguely.

"Hmmm. I don't know if I'm going to sell sewing machines but maybe I will." Shrug.

"It'd be a whole project to like, actually make them."

"Yeah."

"I think that's kinda true of all the - tech things, that I know about."

Shrug. "Something might still be worth it."

"Yeah. I dunno which ones because you're doing a bunch of stuff with magic and I don't know what magic can do."

"Magic... makes food plants grow more, makes things not change, makes things hot or cold, carries people and things between cities, lets us see and hear about things far away, makes buildings not burn, makes things clean, hides things, makes things not break, makes babies healthier, makes people not break laws..."

"Makes people not break laws?"

"It can make you not do things. We do it to people who kill people or steal things. Or people who can't learn not to do that yet, like babies."

"Oh. When do you take it off the babies?"

"When they can definitely follow all the laws. There's different ages because there's different kinds of people."

"I guess that makes sense."

"I can't see Amenta so I can't see when you were born. So I don't know how old you are in local years."

"Well, I'm five in Amentan years."

"I'm twenty in local years. I don't know if that makes me older than you. It probably does because my kind of people grow very slowly and because it would be weirder for a planet with people that can live on this planet to have longer years than shorter years. But if they're a lot longer or shorter you can go outside and tell me if the sun looks different and I can maybe guess."

"Looking at the sun too much will hurt my eyes."

"You don't have to."

"I'll get a sense of how long days here are and then do some math."

"Makes sense. ...Anyway, you don't seem to be running off, so now's as good a time as any to show you the rest of the amenities, huh?"

"Sure, thank you!"

Dareni points things out. Over along that wall are cabinets with packages of food in them (apples, oats, trail mix, already-washed fresh greens, seared steaks, perfectly unmoving live bivalves in perfectly unmoving seawater, carrot-apple-lemon juice, individual servings of honey, a very stiff fish, seaweed resting against the top of its box instead of the bottom, a container of salt, and one egg) and of course there's the table with cushions all around it and an open space for coworking or whatever and Peka can pick between these two bedrooms (small loft bed that looks like tree branches coming out of the walls and a blanket that looks like stitched-together autumn leaves, no windows, touch-activated light right above the bed that changes color as you slide a little switch; or absolutely photorealistic movies of the ocean on all the walls and the floor and the ceiling, soft curves instead of sharp corners, and a soft patch of floor that still looks like it has fish swimming beneath it for a bed).

She wants the treehouse attic, she thinks the ocean would make it hard to sleep, but they're both so cool.

"I used to have the ocean room but I always liked a guest bedroom better so I moved to it."

"What's yours look like?"

"Mine is southern-style! Kind of a meadow but not really because it's kind of abstract. Maybe I'll clean it up and show you later."

"It's amazing that magic is so cheap that you get it done for this kind of thing."

"...Does it seem less weird to you to imagine magic existing but being very expensive?"

"- well, can you have one person magic a thing and then make a thousand copies of it without them having to do more work about it?"

"Sort of. Not exactly? You can set things up to do things a bunch at a time if it's... it depends on the thing. You have to really know what you mean. But some things work sort of like that."

"Oh, then maybe it isn't weird. I just think that things where you have to pay a person to come to your house and do a thing to it are usually kind of expensive."

Shrug. "Maybe we should have this conversation with numbers instead of just saying 'expensive'."

"Okay. The currency at home is called tap. A week's worth of groceries for one person in my neighborhood would be like, thirty tap."

"A week's worth of groceries is very different for different people. But I think I need more numbers than you've already said - maybe I could eat for twelve thirties of circle coins? - and I could buy the magic of hiding for one room for forty eight circle coins or less if I wanted a simple kind. The ocean movie was more than that but not as much as eating for a week. If I wanted magic for one room and I lived far away from everyone, maybe I would have to pay more."

"Well it's not like there's any magic at home to compare! And I wasn't allowed to shop at normal stores!"

"Maybe you'll like the market here."

"It'll be really novel at least, and I can see what looks tasty, I'm not picky but this not at all what I'm used to."

"I wonder if I could eat your food."

"No idea but I guess probably if I can eat yours?"

"Maybe. I can eat furry people’s and they can’t eat most of mine."

"Can I come grocery shopping next time you go?"

"That sounds fun. I usually go on the way back from work but I don’t have to do it that way."

"What's your job?"

"I help the government find out if people break laws."

"I should know what those are probably."

"Yeah. I was having a hard time reading them to you earlier, can you say more about laws before I try again?"

"Uh, people who break the law go to jail, or get fined, or they're executed, if the judge they interview with thinks they're guilty. They could like lose their medical license if they had one and they did a medical related crime. Probably other licenses are like that too. Reds sometimes go to jail but don't get to interview with judges, the greys handle it themselves even the execution part on the spot... people who didn't do any crimes are innocent... judges are blue, but I guess here they wouldn't be..."

"People who break the law get fined or they're executed or... a wizard does magic to them and then the government sells them... I don't interview people, I look at what happened in the past."

"That sounds like, uh, convict slave labor?"

"Yes, there's convict slave labor here."

"Oh. That seems bad."

"Hm?"

"Amenta doesn't have slavery at all any more. Since it was bad."

"Bad how, for who?"

"For the slaves in... basically every way, they couldn't do what they wanted at all."

"...Yes? Yes, it is bad for the slaves in basically every way. - The laws are simple and you will be fined the first time and you can die instead, you're probably not going to be convict slave labor."

"I guess being able to die instead is better than the alternative!"

"The laws are really simple. The big government has this much," gesture, "if you write a letter this big," gesture, "and the smaller governments here have this much," gesture, "and they don't have convict slave labor."

"Yeah but you're the only person who can speak Tapap and I don't know what words you're going to need."

"...You have no reason to trust me enough to believe this would solve your problem so it won't happen but it would solve your problem if I made you my slave now."

"How the fuck would that solve my problem."

"If my slave steals something, that's my crime."

"I don't want you to get in trouble either - is this like, term-limited, a month or something at a time -"

"It can be."

"Oh, that's way better than if it was forever."

"But also I think you can learn all the convict slave labor laws today."

"Okay, I hope so. Is there anything I need to give you more words about?"

"Hmm. I'm going to try to read them and see where I have trouble. They say...

"The... everyone working together thing... of Har says some laws to all people who live in Har and... do things like going shopping or saying things to people... It's really hard to do this quickly. Um. It says it wants you to...

"Pay taxes. The taxes are in a list but I can help you with the list.

"Other people who aren’t slaves have bodies. If those people don’t want you to touch their bodies, or change their bodies, or do magic to their bodies, then don’t.

"Don’t kill anyone who doesn’t want to die.

"People have things. Don't take their things if they don't want you to. Don't change their things or do magic to their things if they don't want you to.

"If you have a slave, and if a... smart person? If a kind of smart person would think it was really obvious that your slave can't follow the laws, don't make them stop being a slave.

"If you... I need more words about promises and selling with promises."

"...guarantee? Uh, warranty? ...fraud? ....people having things includes slaves doesn't it. Is there a rule about what counts as knowing somebody wants you to touch them? - maybe you meant expert or psychologist or something about thinking it's obvious someone can't follow the laws."

"I think I need more words about fraud. I don’t mean an expert, I just also don’t mean a baby or someone who doesn’t know anything. People having things does include slaves."

"I don't know all that many words about fraud! Like... if I bought something that looked like a TV or that somebody said was a TV and it was a box with rocks in it, that would be fraud, because it's not a TV. I don't think that's very helpful as an example but I'm blanking."

"The law says not to do that. But the law only says anything if - uh. If you promise to give someone a TV because they're saying 'give me a TV or I will kill you', then the law isn't about that. It's about if you promise to give someone a TV and that person isn't saying they'll kill you or steal from you or break your things."

"Okay, so if you're being threatened you can lie to them to get away."

"If the threat is to break the law."

"Oh. So - yes if they're saying 'give me that or I will poke you in the arm' but no if they're saying, uh, 'give me that or I will kill my slave in front of you'."

"Yes. You understand."

"I guess!!"

"You really don’t like it when slaves are hurt. I kind of understand, it makes me sad sometimes."

"It's not like it's better than hurting anybody else somehow??"

"...They get about as sad, sometimes sadder. But hurting other people can... break society?"

"You can have a society without any slavery."

"Amentans, who have babies who can’t do magic, can have a society without any slavery, but sure?"

"What do babies with magic have to do with it?"

"You can just kill all your criminals but you can't just kill all your babies."

"- I didn't say anything about killing babies! What!"

"I think on Amenta maybe they don't need to be slaves or dead."

"How does having them be slaves or dead help anything!"

"It helps with doing magic so that they don't kill people."

"Even if you need to so some kinda safety magic on a baby so it doesn't accidentally magic people to death doesn't mean it needs to be a slave."

"Hm?"

"You could just like. Have the baby. And also safety magic, on the baby, who could be a baby who is not a slave. Amentan babies you can like - swaddle them if they're clawing you with their fingernails or something, like, they can't kill people but still - but that doesn't mean you can sell them or hurt them or anything!"

"Who complains to the government if you hurt them?"

"Their other parent or the neighbors or their grandparents or your siblings or their older siblings or their teachers or their doctor or your neighbors!"

"Hmmm. But - so - my parents and neighbors and other people could tell the government if you hurt me. But then the government would find out if I wanted to be hurt, if they could find out. They would try to only do something like convict slave labor if they thought I didn't want it. But we don't want to not change or touch or do magic to babies just because they don't want us to do it to them."

"Yeah, you have to take care of babies even when they're really mad about getting their vaccines or whatever, but you don't... have to solve that with slavery... just with like, custody rights, and an age of majority..."

"Say more?"

"Like at home - uh, if I managed to scrape together credit money, anyway, which is what I first thought you meant when you talked about buying babies - then the baby would be mine, even though I probably wouldn't move out of my parents' house right away, with my sister and brother. They could help me but it'd be my baby to like, bring to the doctor and make sure they were babysat while I was at work or whatever. They could like, try to run away if they got mad that I wouldn't let them... uh, I don't know, watch porn when they're two or something... but whoever they'd run to would like, think literally at all about whether that was a reasonable rule for me to have! They'd be like, sorry, kiddo, your mama is totally right that you are not old enough for a springshow, wait until you're coming up on four and will actually need this information... but if I like, slapped them around, then whoever they talked to would be like, wow, your mama's doing a terrible job, something as precious as a kiddo should not be raised by someone who'd do that, you can stay here with me, or go crash with your friend's family, or move in with great-grandpa, or whatever, and if your mama tries to get you we'll all back you up - this would only be if I was hurting them though, not if I made them eat dinner when they were being a picky eater or whatever."

"Interesting."

"Thanks I guess?? It doesn't seem very interesting to me that we don't treat babies like property or like grownups and instead like a secret third thing which is babies!"

"But it’s so different. Why do you do that?"

"Because owning people is horrible and we don't want anyone being horrible to babies because babies are good and important!"

"Huh. I guess if everyone feels that way."

"Yeah, everyone feels that way - even if, what was it, the snake people, who don't care about their babies, couldn't you just have different snake people baby laws and normal ones for normal people?"

"I don’t understand what problem that would solve."

"The problem where you are enslaving babies that could be just babies instead of slaves."

"Why specifically babies that aren’t snakes?"

"If snakes don't care about baby snakes maybe they need different rules? I don't know, I never met a snake alien."

"But then there would only be rules protecting babies that people probably already want to be nice to."

"You could also make rules about snake babies, I don't know!! How would I know?? I just know slavery is bad."

"It's interesting that you feel this way even though you get to own your baby here and you wouldn't on Amenta."

"I don't want to own my baby, that seems really horrible! And I can't even stop owning them until they're not a baby it sounds like! I want them to like - know I love them and don't want to control them and would never ever hurt them or sell them or - and what happens if I die, at home a relative would get them but they wouldn't own them plus I don't have relatives here -"

"You can tell the government who you want to get your things if you die. I - knew my parents didn't want to hurt me or sell me but maybe I would've known it more if it was against the law. I don't know, I think most kids know that, if it's true."

"I don't want anybody to own my baby."

"I guess we didn't make our laws for Amentans."

"I guess not."

"You can vote later but I know that doesn't make it much better."

"...I mean, it's new and exciting, but there's only one of me."

"Yeah. Two later."

"Yeah." Sigh.

Sigh. "Also, we can make a deal about the baby. We can set something up to make it legally complicated to hurt them even if you wanted to. I'll want to think about it a lot and I'll want you to understand Har better and I'll want to understand you better, but..."

"I'm not really worried I'll hurt my baby," she sighs. "It's just - it's gross that I could and nothing would stop me, that other people might be hurting theirs and nothing stops them."

"Of things that Amentans think are gross for reasons I can't figure out, it's really not my favorite."

"It's weird you can't figure it out."

"I think I understand why you don’t like it at all. I think Amentans are like my kind of person. We feel other people’s feelings sometimes. Gross, I don’t understand. Scary or sad, I understand."

"Do you just never think anything is gross or do you mean you only think, like, physically gross things are gross and don't do... grossness metaphors."

"I think things that happen in the bathroom are gross sometimes. I think wizards of space are maybe gross? There’s food I could eat if I liked it but I don’t like it because I feel like it’s gross. I feel sad about slaves sometimes but I don’t feel like I want to - what's the word for un-eating?"

"Throwing up. ...why are wizards of space gross?"

"...I’m not going to let people hurt you. I really, really want you to stay alive and safe. But it’s because their magic isn’t very good."

"Do... they all have to be slaves about it, or..."

"No."

"So you don't like them but they can just like, live their lives anyway and not care what you think, right?"

"Yes." If they’re allowed to grow up, of course, but maybe they’ve spent enough time talking about that for now.

"That's good then."

"You have a very interesting perspective."

"Thank you."

"So, I was reading the laws. We were halfway done with the laws you can be a slave from breaking."

"Go on?"

"Sometimes people who aren’t slaves have places. Don’t go there if they don’t want you to. Hmmm... and if there’s a place, and the person who owns it does want people to go there, and people want to go there, don’t keep them out. And if they go there and don’t want to leave, and the owner doesn’t want them to leave, don’t take them out of that place.

"If someone who works for the government does want to ask you questions about a crime, don’t lie. It’s okay if you don’t answer but don’t lie.

"Sometimes cops can break some of these. If you have questions there are more things you can read. That’s all the big laws. There are small laws about lying when you sell things and stuff but they aren’t convict slave labor laws."

"It's okay not to answer? Wow, that's kind of neat actually."

"The government pays for questions just like everyone else. Are you sure Amenta doesn’t have slavery?"

"I'm sure! There's just, like, things you don't do to not-slaves that Amentans sometimes do to not-slaves, like with the babies thing. Nobody can sell anyone."

"Is that a language thing - can I not say we invented slavery before we invented money?"

"I don't know which one Amenta invented first, I guess, but like - that's just a really obvious way for somebody to be totally unprotected, not the only way."

"...You don't have anybody who's totally a slave, is that right? And do you have anybody who's totally free?"

"I think slavery is illegal on Amenta everywhere now, what do you mean totally free?"

"I'm free. I can go away and not talk to anyone or visit anyone or buy things or sell things or live in a busy area. If I do that, I don't have to pay taxes. I don't have to be seen. The government won't say anything about me having a baby. I can go away and not do anything. I don't want to, but I could."

"Well, if you go away and don't do anything you'd like, starve, probably. I guess Amenta doesn't have anywhere where anything works like that - like, you could get left almost all the way alone if you owned the land but you'd still have to get a credit to have a baby and if a population control observer wanted to check up on you about that you'd have to let them."

"I might starve if I didn't figure out how to not starve. It's hard for me because I'm not a wizard of carrying or something. But me starving isn't a law."

"Well, if you're starving you also can't have a baby. Or at least we can't."

"Yeah. But it's still not a law and I still might not starve."

"A lot of places you can avoid taxes but not and have a baby. - or, like, maybe you can both not pay taxes and also have a baby, somewhere, but you can't also never have anybody want to make sure you have only the right number of babies."

"So no one is really free or really a slave. They're all a secret third thing which is sometimes babies."

"I guess if the freedom to keep out population inspectors is really important to you and the freedom to touch people is not!"

"You can touch anyone who wants you to. You do understand that this is only illegal if they don't want you to, right?"