Malou thinks on this for a moment. They have water, food, shelter, and medicine, and soon also some entertainment. A reasonable plan to move to a long-term home is in the works. That's about all she thinks they need at the moment. She looks to Hildre if he's thought of anything

He nods to her, then looks to Charon. "Do you know whether the doctor who helped us yesterday has decided whether he'd like to work with us long-term, and if so, do you know if he has a time in his schedule for Roland and me to come by and begin his training?"

"I think that he'd be happy to work with you long-term, yes. He presently has time in his schedule for some training later a few hours later today. I think I'll head off and bring you the books and cards, if there's nothing else you need right now."

That will indeed be the last thing the two of them bring up. They'll arrange the time for the next meeting, then head back to the camp.

As always, there is no end to the tasks at hand when taking care of dozens of children, even afflicted ones. Malou is careful to not let her thoughts wander in the children's direct, but is unable to suppress the feeling of hope for their future she feels. The world they've found themselves in seems so different from the one they left, and while the apparent absence of those who share their condition tinges the hope with sadness, the absence of the hatred for them shines brighter.

Instead, she'll spend her time working with Rom and Thea, checking and rechecking the food and water reserves, keeping watch for hikers who might stumble upon the camp while looking for the bathroom, helping repair damaged camouflage or rebuild collapsed tents when Hildre or Roland inform them, and occasionally letting the six eighteen-year-olds practice enduring relatively concentrated attention or emotion.

Time passes, at once slow and fast. Then, it's time for the doctor's training. Hildre and Roland deputize the six eldest teens, and then head off once more to the meeting place.

The doctor is waiting at the edge of the forest, anxiously. He's incredibly curious about what the training to be able to work with the children will be like.

After greeting him once again, Hildre launches into an explanation of the first step of training, "Today, we'll be preparing you for future work, giving you some experience with what I called 'cognitive distortion' yesterday. First, though, we should find a place where you'll be comfortable. If you have a strong preference for speed and find the park acceptable we can begin just by finding a seat, but if you have somewhere that you feel particularly safe and secure, that would be ideal."

"I feel perfectly safe and secure here, really." He looks around, finding a bench, and sits down on it, ready for the training.

With that, they'll get started. Hildre will direct the doctor to begin the meditation that he's familiar with while the two seat themselves nearby and close their eyes, refamiliarizing themselves with the particular character of the doctor's outermost mental emanations.

Once the doctor's achieved a reasonable level of mental stillness, Hildre will continue explaining. "We're going to make contact with your mind, now."

And indeed, in the following moment, the doctor will experience a sudden and palpable feeling of presence, quickly followed by a second, coming from the directions of Hildre and Roland respectively. Their positions and postures haven't changed, their body language is calm, almost sleep-like, but the feeling of their simple existence, or perhaps specifically of their existence within the doctor's awareness and perceptions, is insistent, maybe even overbearing.

He tries his best to remain calm and neutral, but struggles not to respond with confusion and befuddlement. He doesn't make any attempt at stopping whatever they're doing, still.

"We've made contact," Hildre states, his voice steady. "It's reasonable to be confused. I imagine you haven't experienced much like this before. For now, trying to control that feeling isn't the goal. There is no problem."

There's a long pause, the two men simply quiet as their perceived presence continues to weigh on the doctor's mind.

Then, he continues. "We are going to be exerting force, gently, now. We'll begin with the direction of attention."

That feeling of weight then begins to move, the two distinct weights shifting from the locations of the men to a point between them. Nothing in particular is in that direction, it's just a patch of the ground, but nonetheless its contribution to the doctor's perceived world is disproportionate. Maybe a part of him begins to assign it some importance, such as beginning to piece together a pareidolic face. Soon the direction of the weight changes, though, drifting in a lazy circle around the doctor. It lets it leave his field of view, or lets it reenter, he may notice a subtle moment where his brain almost seems to change gears, maybe even a tingling in his ears as he suddenly becomes more aware of the sounds coming from the direction of the weight.

He just... lets it happen. It doesn't feel much like training, but he's happy to do it if it lets him be able to treat and care for the children.

"As I said, this is more so preparation," Hildre states, almost unaware of whether the doctor actually said anything out loud about his feelings. "Like stretching before any exercise. Regardless, you seem to be taking to it well. We will move on to texture modification now."

The weight of feeling, continuing in its circulation, begins to change in a different way. As it re-enters his field of view, the 'gear-shift' from aural to visual doesn't occur, and the weight still feels more as if it's pulling on his hearing than his sight as it drifts across his field of view. He may experience some oddity with the focusing of his eyes as it does so. Then, as it exits his field of view, the gear-shift occurs, but not brings his vision to the fore, even though the direction of the weight isn't somewhere his eyes can see. This prompts a somewhat starker change, as surprisingly vivid visualizations, almost hallucinations, spring unbidden in his mind, portraying the world that perhaps was latent within his internal mental model of the world around him. When the weight moves back within his field of vision, it changes once more, but instead of to a different sense, a more granular transformation occurs. The way he sees changes, not inside his eye, but rather how his mind is processing the visual information he's sensing, altering the process of perception. Colors, light and darkness, shapes and forms, movement, and other aspects of his visual sensorium all shift, not in terms of their values, green remains green, shadows remain obscured, but in terms of their recognizability, their importance, their meaning, their capacity to to connect to concepts, to summon memories, and to provoke thoughts in his mind.

He starts feeling uncomfortable; it feels like he's being taken to an alien dimension, where anything can happen. But he's too curious to not keep going, and keeps sitting down and paying attention to everything that's happening.

"The next step will be a large hurdle. It may interfere with your perception of time, but Roland and I will be keeping close watch of it. We will begin substantial modification now." Hildre's voice remains steady, but there's nonetheless a hint of strain in it.

Indeed, the change that comes is not only strenuous, but distressing, in a way which may itself be quite disempowering. The warping and shifting of the interconnected characteristics and significance of his perceptions seems to deepen, in a way which immediately presents itself as icy cracks spreading through stone, roots burrowing through soil, and other metaphors rapidly diverging in meaning and implication, evoking emotions in a chaotic and muddled deluge, individual feelings rising to almost painfully extreme heights one moment, before crashing back down into the chaos the next, only to be replaced another, unrelated feeling, spiraling out of some other aspect of his environment, or from a memory, or from his own meta-cognitive perception of the ongoing chaos.

This point is also when more physical effects become apparent. Heart rate fluctuations, rolling waves of muscle tension and relaxation through his head, neck, shoulders, arms, and chest, and difficulty maintaining a steady breathing rhythm are all obvious even through the mental maelstrom.

He's in good enough shape that he can handle the physical exertion, and determined enough to keep going and stay calm.

"You've done well," Hildre's voice is significantly more tired than previously, though the context of the words and sounds may be difficult for the doctor to register through the ongoing chaos. There's a short pause, then he adds, "We will progress to the final step, though Roland and I are both fairly taxed, so we won't stay there long. We will begin disjunction now."

The change is difficult to notice at first, given the overwhelmingly distracting nature of the 'substantial modification' he was being subject to. After a moment (maybe, or maybe longer, it remains difficult to tell), it actually seems like the chaos is abating. The spurious connections, explosive emotional spiraling, and never-ending thought-cascades steadily quiet as the underlying network which they are embedded is rendered numb and insensate. Soon, there is nothing.

Muscles relax. A heart beats. Lungs breath steadily. Eyes see and ears hear. Skin feels a gentle breeze as it blows.

Then doctor is back. It is significantly later, close to the end of his scheduled time for training though not too close. Hildre and Roland have both leaned more fully into their seats, though neither looks quite as completely exhausted as they did last night after all of the examinations.

"That will end your training for today," Hildre says breathlessly. "If you'll allow me to assign you some homework, I'd like you to review and contemplate your experience of today's events." He pauses again to catch his breath, as well as to take a swig of water from a bottle that Roland passes him. "The effects of contact, especially during substantial modification and disjunction, have likely interfered with the proper integration of the memories you've formed. Being able to access those memories will be critical to developing the skills you'll need."

"Well, that doesn't make much sense to me, yet. But I think that the review process, and the contemplation, would make everything fall into place. I'm looking forward to joining you, as the doctor for your little, isolated community. How far along am I to being safe around the children, in your opinion?" 

The two men both get a thoughtful look for a long moment. "Much closer than I expected, and about as near as I dared to hope. Assuming nothing goes wrong, I'd be willing to consider unmitigated exposure after three sessions of guided training, and a week of total practice whether with us or on your own," Hildre answers, finally.

"Well, that's quite good, that I'll be able to there for the children relatively soon." Charon arrives in a car, carrying a few folding tables, books for new readers and a few fantasy and sci-fi epics, and several packs of playing cards from different games, covered in plastic sleeving. "Here's the entertainment you were thinking of getting. Do you have ideas for what the kids might find fun, so I'll have a better idea of what to look for?"

Roland quickly looks at his borrowed timepiece, belatedly realizing that yes, this is around when Charon said he'd be bringing the materials that Malou and his teacher had requested earlier. He lets out a weary sigh as he prepares to carry most of these things on the hike back to camp, and drains the rest of the water bottle. They really should've brought Rom and Thea along.

"I know that most of the older boys and some of the girls were fans of a ballgame they'd developed," Hildre answers Charon's question, rolling a hand vaguely. "The children don't often put names to things when they aren't speaking of it to an adult or an unafflicted peer. Other than that...opinions are somewhat difficult to safely extract from afflicted children, even for Roland and me, so I don't think there's more I can say unfortunately."

"Hmm, I'll return with a ball that's good for playing games with. Are there any food allergies or preferences, among the people in your group?"

"I know we have four with a peanut allergy and three with a stonefruit allergy, but none other than that. As for preferences, it's a little easier to tell what foods they like, but not by a whole lot. The most we really know is that they like starches, especially bread, tree nuts, and fresh fish," Hildre replies, beginning to slowly make his way up from his seat.

Roland also stands up, and starts doing some stretches to get ready for the hike.

"Certainly, no peanuts or stonefruit. We'll see if we can get some sushi, kept properly cooled, for the kiddos; it sounds like something they'd truly love. I'll see if I manage to scrounge up some bread, but we don't eat much of it, so it's quite rare. I'll come back with the food at a time fits your schedule. I should probably also bring with me some cargo robots that can follow you on the trails, so you don't have to carry so much with you."

Hildre chuckles at the mention of cargo robots, and Roland looks over with a mixture of appreciation, guilt, and just a little frustration.

Thus, they work out a good time for the doctor to come by for his next session of training (for real this time), and for Rom and Thea to come back and pick up the food (and/or guide the cargo robots back to camp), before loading up with folding tables, books and cards and heading back to camp.

Fortunately, things have going mostly alright. Marit, as the eldest of the teens, reports today's events while Rom and Thea help set up the tables in a place that's well-shielded from the view of the bathrooms. No new injuries or illnesses, and the medicine is helping the little kids with coughs to recover, but a lot of the younger ones are also starting to really process that they're probably never going home, and it's dragging the mood of the whole group down. The news of the cards and books, naturally, is very welcome, and soon Hildre, Roland, and the teens have their hands full organizing some basic turn-taking so that the younger children don't hurt themselves or each other competing for access.

Things settle down pretty quick, falling into what is becoming their new normal, to a degree at least.

Eventually, it's time to meet Charon once again, and it's Rom and Thea's turn to take the hike again.

Charon arrives, together with the doctor, revealing robots that look more like boxes on wheels. They all have metal boxes within them, loaded full of food for the children. Charon explains how the robots work. "The robots are designed to follow after their human leaders, if they're not following pre-planned routes inside of cities. They need charging, but you can charge them inside of the public bathroom, so don't worry too much about them."

Rom is visibly resisting the urge to simultaneously disassemble the robots to find out how they work and also hoarding them like a technological dragon. He is doing admirably but will probably be fascinated with them all along the way back to the camp.

"Thank you both so much for your help," Thea says to both Charon and the doctor. "If it's okay for me to ask, I've been curious...how are you affording helping us like this? Is this," she gestures at the robots, "and everything else just...not difficult to share? If not, is there anything we can do to repay you?"