She doesn't spend literally all her time answering summons here and there, but probably most of it. Not right now, though, right now she's taking a break, a nice bath, some cocoa, a good book...
Okay, break over, she gets out of the bath, puts some clothes on, and takes the first summons she feels.
Kid maybe seven years old with denim-blue hair drawing on a paper on the floor. She yelps.
...these languages are absolutely nothing like any other languages she speaks.
"Um," she says eloquently. "Greetings, summoner?"
"What? What are you? Aaah!"
"I'm a—" no word for it "—changer. I'm not gonna hurt you." Even though she could, with the complete lack of bindings.
"A what?"
"You don't have a word for it, I can change stuff?" She demonstrates by changing the color of her wings from white to grey to black to the same blue as the girl's hair and back to white. "Not just color. You... don't know?"
"No!!! You just appeared!"
"...what country is this? And, er, year?"
"...Voa, 3422?"
"...okay either I'm in the far future and humanity's forgotten all about summoning or this is another planet."
"Are you a time traveler?"
"I wasn't until just now! Where I'm from people can summon one of three types of supernatural beings by drawing certain specific circles on the floor and this has been common knowledge for a while."
"That's not real," asserts the child.
"And yet here I am."
"Maybe I am having a dream."
"Try to read something? It's usually impossible to read in dreams."
"Maybe it isn't."
"Pretty sure it is."
"But you are a dream."
"I don't think I am! How can I prove to you I'm not?"
"I dunno."
"Maybe we can sit here until you're convinced no dream would last that long and be this realistic."
"You're not realistic."
"So there's no magic around here? Yeah, magic is incredibly unlikely, I doubted my senses when I first found out about it, too."
"...magic isn't real."
"Mmhm," she says agreeably. "What's your name?"
"Zazi."
"I'm Kaede. It's nice to meet you, Zazi. Is there anything you'd like me to change for you?"
"...I don't think so?"
"Perhaps a toy you'd like prettier, or maybe you want to change your hair, or you want your bed to be comfier..."
"I like my hair!"
"It's pretty," she agrees. "...supposing this weren't a dream, what do you think you should do?"
"Probably tell my uncles."
"And do you think you shouldn't do that, if this is in fact a dream?"
"I dunno."
"It's probably a good idea to tell your uncles anyway, then."
"I guess. Can you teach me to fly?"
"I could theoretically give you wings but they're not part of your body plan and wouldn't grow with you, I'd need to replace them every now and then with bigger ones."
"Oh. That's dumb."
"Yeah. Sorry. When you're an adult, though, you can totally have permanent ones."
"That won't be for like three years."
"...three? How old are you?"
"Almost two."
Sloooow blink. "Other planet, then. Probably. Or—other—species? Maybe? Er. How long's a day and how many days are a year?"
"A day's twenty-four hours and a year is one thousand four hundred seventy-five days."
"...it's bizarre that your days are the same length but your years aren't. Er. My planet's years are three hundred sixty-five, sometimes sixty-six."
"Sixty-six would be a very short year."
"Sometimes three hundred sixty-six, I mean," she amends. "But yeah a quarter of yours—wow. I—think I'd like to speak with your uncles."
"Uncle Savo's not here only Uncle Ror."
"Then I'd speak with him, if possible."
"UNCLE ROOOOOOOR."
"Little one don't call across the house, come here."
"NO YOU HAVE TO COME HEEEEEERE."
"Little one -"
"COME ON UNCLE ROOOOOR SHE WANTS TO TALK TO YOUUUUU."
"Who does? Are you on the phone with someone?"
"NO IT'S THE ALIEN."
"Little one if you want to play a game come here and don't call across the house."
"I CAN'T SHE'S HERE NOT THERE."
"I'm in the middle of fixing dinner, little one, I have to do that since the cook quit, remember -"
"UNCLE ROOOOOOR!"
"Coming, coming -"
She considers calling out that she can help with dinner but decides that might terrify him so she doesn't and just waits.
A large man with phthalo-blue hair arrives and sticks his head in. "...little one who's this?"
"The dream alien."
"My name's Kaede, I'm probably from another planet altogether, she accidentally summoned me. I can do magic."
Uncle Ror picks up his niece and sets her on her feet behind him. She peeks around him.
"I won't hurt you or her." She sits cross-legged on the floor, making sure to not make any threatening movements. "Where I'm from, it's common knowledge that there are three kinds of magical beings—your languages don't have names for them or anything similar—and these three kinds share some fundamental characteristics but each has a specific extra power. I'm a changer—I change things. I can turn something into air, change the colour of something, can make it bigger or smaller, change materials, anything like that. The other two kinds can move things and make things. You with me?"
"I'm very confused."
"...okay, I can back up. Magic is real, in the form of three types of beings which I'm gonna call movers, changers, and makers."
"You're saying you violate the laws of physics?"
"Yeah."
"Why are you in our house?"
"It is possible to summon beings like me by drawing certain types of circle on the floor. Your niece accidentally wrote a valid one."
"From another planet."
"More like another—world? Realm? Universe?"
"Why are you still here -?"
"I can't voluntarily leave, Zazi would have to dismiss me, but the most important reason is that magic is incredibly useful and amongst its successes in the planet I come from is 'ending material scarcity,' and if you still have that I'd love to end it here, too."
"...I meant more in the house, but if you need her to... dismiss you... I guess that answers that."
"Oh, I arrived five minutes ago and was talking to her and getting to understand the fact that I am apparently not on Earth and when that became clear enough I asked her to get you because that seemed prudent."
"I've never heard of Earth."
"Yeah, and your years are four times longer but your days are the same length, and now I'm beginning to guess the hair colour's natural, and more importantly that you do still have material scarcity, so... I can leave the house if you'd prefer me to, but I'd be very thankful if you'd point me somewhere with someone who will be interested in this."
"...yes, the hair color's natural... how do you speak Voan if you're an alien?"
"Is your hair natural?" asks Zazi. "People don't have black hair."
"Mine is, yes, my species gets black and brown and a rusty sort of red perhaps dark orange and golden and grey. As to the language, one of the niftier parts of being summoned is that I get all the languages my summoner speaks automatically."
"We have orange and golden and grey," volunteers Zazi. "But not black and brown. You're an alien. Are you better at Tapap than me? I'm not very good at it."
"I'm as good in all languages you speak as you are, but that's sort of qualitative, I don't necessarily have your exact vocabulary in any of them."
"I'm - sure there would be some greens interested in - this," says Ror, "but we're a bit remote right now."
"We're hiding," says Zazi, "sort of."
"...hiding? From what?"
"People are mad at Uncle Savo," she says.
"This is just our vacation house," says Ror, "it's a bit more out of the way, we're not in hiding."
"...people?"
"Everybody," says Zazi, "he did a bad thing."
"He was trying to do a good thing, little one -"
"It was bad."
"I know you don't like it."
"What was it?"
"He made all the food dirty," says Zazi.
Ror sighs.
Blink.
"I'm not sure how to explain to an alien," says Ror. "It's complicated."
"Could, er, he explain it?"
"Savo? Not better than me, I think, and he isn't here."
She rubs the back of her head. "Well, could you try it anyway?"
"How about not in Zazi's room."
"Uncle Ro-or -"
"I don't want the alien to think badly of your uncle Savo, little one, and she doesn't know him -"
Zazi grumps but gets out of the way for him to motion Kaede out of the room.
She follows.
It's a nice house. There are flowered mountain slopes out the window. A servant with purple hair is dusting in one of the rooms they pass. "Lord Ror - who -?"
"Never mind, Vira."
"- yes Lord Ror -"
He leads Kaede to an office, finds her a box to sit on in lieu of a backless chair, sits down. "I'm not sure where to start."
"Well—what did she mean by 'dirty'?"
"Does your kind of alien have castes?"
"...some cultures kinda did for a long time and a very small number of them still do but it's very rare."
"Well. Everyone here has them. There's a caste considered fundamentally unclean, the - for simplicity "reds", all the castes have a few different names but they've also all got a most common hair color. Ancestral pollution from generations of handling waste and corpses."
"Uh."
"I have no idea what that sounds like to an alien, I'm not sure where to expand on it for you."
"...I'm wary of applying human biology concepts here but 'fundamentally unclean' is not a thing that would happen to people just because their ancestry handled waste and corpses. Are you—particularly sensitive to the environment, on a genetic level?"
"...you won't get very far looking for an explanation you could see through a microscope."
"—is it detectable at all?"
"No. I mean, except insofar as you can do detective work and see where a thing's been or who a person's parents are."
"...okay so why do people think it's dirty?"
"I'm really not equipped to explain this to an alien. Can you take that part for granted?"
"I... suppose I can take it that people believe that for granted, yes..."
"So people believe that, so the reds aren't allowed to touch anything or anybody except the stuff they need to do their jobs, which no one else touches, and each other, and their houses and such."
"And... Savo let them touch the food?"
"Savo coordinated a - fantastically complicated and difficult secret project to arrange that virtually all the food in Voa was, or was not provably not, touched at some remove by at least one red. It's not dangerous. In itself; people can have - dangerous psychological reactions. Or starve themselves. ...And we're an exporter and our neighbor started a war."
"...I appreciate the sentiment behind this but that was such a bad idea. They started a war?"
"To claim some farmland. So they can have independent food security without having to import." He rubs his hand over his face. "Savo was - trying very hard to make it work. He got a red to hand him something to eat on live television, then ate it. People weren't ready."
She rubs her temples. "And so you went into hiding. Okay. I'm... actually not sure if fixing your material scarcity problems the straightforward way would actually even be a good idea, now."
"The straightforward way?"
"Teaching people how to summon makers and changers and movers in safe ways so they can get anything they want. This... might have very, very bad side effects for the red population."
"...probably. They riot if anyone suggests advancing robotics."
"Robotics?"
"To replace their jobs."
"...because then people won't need them anymore and do... what?—is the answer kill them all. Say the answer isn't kill them all."
"The reds certainly think so."
"Are they wrong?"
"Nobody's gotten that far. Probably not."
Sigh. "Savo works for the government, then?"
"Most blues do one way or another."
"Directly enough that he could actually enact such a plan."
"The job title is Allocator. He's still in the capitol, he just sent us here."
She nods. "...you know, it just occurred to me that I can change things."
"...you were advertising that as your magical power a moment ago."
"Yes, I was. And it means that of course I could change contaminated food into non-contaminated food."
"Were you paying attention when I explained it wasn't a physical property."
"Sure. But I'm magical, aren't I? Who's to say I can't change a metaphysical property?"
"...I really don't think it will help."
"Maybe not," she agrees, "but—if we could convince people that worked and figure out a way to get more changers here and have them nod at food—we'd need to vet for trustworthy ones but—"
"This is the kind of thinking that led to Savo's idea."
"Yeah," she sighs. "But it looks like the main reason Savo's idea failed was that—people didn't believe him, right?"
"Yyyyes. I'm not sure you understand how little people believe in magic."
"Right, but that part I can literally demonstrate." She changes her hair colour to blue. "The summoning part, too—or, well, I can't summon, but you can and I can show you how."
"You can't demonstrate it to billions of people."
"No, not me, personally.—should I perhaps get out of your hair and instead go bother your—husband? I'm sure you didn't wake up thinking 'boy what a good day to be alien translator and things-explainer.'"
"...he didn't either. And he's not nearby."
"Yeah but I'm expecting he can point me at someone who can use me better. And I can go wherever he is."
"By - what, flying through the air? I mentioned we're at war -"
"I presume you got here somehow other than walking? Do you have—cars, that's a word that exists, and trains, you probably have some form of transportation. If you're worried about conspicuousness I can turn my wings into air."
"...of course you can. We got here by a helicopter shuttle from the train station, had to change trains twice."
"If I fly most of the way to the train station will I be in much danger of being spotted?"
"Yes, some people live around here, just not many."
"Hmm, what if I fly very high?"
"Birdwatchers." Sigh.
She rubs her chin. "What's the way here to the station like?"
"You can hike it, if you like hiking, but it'd take all day."
"Oh, all day hiking's fine."
...he gets her a map.
She accepts it. "I'm indestructible," she explains. "Even if you shot me that'd at most hurt a little and annoy me, maybe ruin my clothes and I can mend that. I don't get significantly impaired by hunger or thirst or sleep deprivation, either. It'll be boring but that's all it will be."
"If Zazi needed to dismiss you how would she do that."
"Concentrate on wanting me gone for a minute, but if you'd like to do that... I'd like to at least leave you a circle that summons me, specifically, if you ever change your mind. And one with bindings, the one she used had none and bindings are pretty important, most angels are perfectly nice but a not-nice one could cause a lot of harm."
"What will the circle do?"
"If it's wide enough for me to stand on and on a flat, horizontal surface and I'm in my world it will feel like something to me, and I will have the option to take it and then appear standing in it. The binding will prevent me from leaving the circle unless you and I agree on a deal, and then it will still prevent me from doing some other things like turning anyone into furniture even after we agree on a deal. Deals can be pretty much anything I do for you in exchange for something from you, even a token thing like a paperclip."
"Furniture?"
"Yeah, there was this one angel once, it was horrible."
"Maybe you should just go home now -"
She nods. "I won't do that, and I really think I should give you the circle with the bindings because magical people have pretty much ended most problems on the planet I'm used to, but I understand if you feel unsafe by having me walking around unbound. The bindings are all readable, too, you can write them in any language."
"...I sort of have to take your word for everything," he points out.
"Yeah, I know. I don't know how to improve on that, though. If you ask your niece to concentrate on wanting me gone for a minute I will in fact disappear and that will prove at least some of what I said is true? We could try to summon someone else with a binding without my knowing whom in advance and then you'll see the bindings work, since they'll be bound without having communicated with me."
"I realize you don't have a way to improve on that, I'm just. Making it common knowledge."
She nods. "Yeah. The binding test could I suppose still tell you stuff? Either that bindings are real or that I have a very good way of communicating with my world without appearing to."
"I - don't think getting into that would be productive."
She nods.
"In what format would you - leave a circle -"
"If you give me a piece of paper I can draw you one and then you can copy that on the floor."
"How important is it to be exact?"
"The wording should be exact, and the thing should be a circle, but it doesn't need to be a perfectly scaled up model of the drawing."
"...okay."
"Like I said, the bindings can be in any language so you should be careful with them. The planet I'm used to has university courses on them and you need a licence to summon because messing up a binding can be extremely bad."
"For... furniture reasons."
"Amongst other things, yes."
"What exactly are you planning on doing -"
"Your husband seems like someone whose head is screwed on straight about this whole caste business, so I'm planning on asking him to point me in the general direction of someone else whose head is also screwed on straight about this whole caste business and who can help me best deploy magic to solve this problem. If there is no one like that I will at least want to learn more about your history and culture and biology and so on before trying to come up with a plan myself."
"...I love my husband very dearly but he started a war and that's an odd criterion for having one's head on straight."
"He did not have his head on straight about what to do about the fact that this business is insane, which is why I want him to point me at someone rather than being the one to consult himself."
"I'm not aware of him having any similarly minded friends, he acted alone."
"Then maybe I'll have to do it the long way. I don't want to rush this, I want to do this right, I have only one shot at it."
Ror sighs.
"So, should I write down a safe circle and you can have your niece dismiss me so you'll summon me back?"
"I can't believe this is happening. Yes, all right."
After he fetches the paper she makes a couple of circles. "This one has no bindings but is specifically for me. This one is also specifically for me but has a few standard bindings—" which she lists. "I could give you circles for random people but those should probably have tighter bindings—" Pause. "...it's rather odd that no one's ever been summoned here."
"Is it?"
"Yeah, I mean, I expect drawing on the floor is not a super uncommon activity? Er. I'll give you a random circle, can you complete it so we can see whether summoning normally actually works here?"
"...er..."
"I can't summon anyone, only—well, I'd say only humans can but your species demonstrably can, too—so if I change a bit of floor to have a circle on it that won't work but if it's almost a circle and you just complete it then it will, or should."
"I'm just a little wary of the - shifting project requirements -"
"...yeah I understand how that would be worrying." She rubs the back of her head. "I can't prove to you that dismissing works as I say it does unless I'm dismissed, but if whatever random fluke got me doesn't work twice then if I'm dismissed that's it—could be just an angel circle, two rogue angels are not twice as bad as one?"
"You keep offering all these ways to limit the supposed risk and I have absolutely nothing but what you tell me to go on."
"I could explain everything in detail so you can draw your own conclusions about the risks given the premises? I've been trying to not overwhelm you with too much stuff while still making the risks clear but I wasn't expecting to be summoned by aliens so there keep being things that didn't occur to me because they'd be—background knowledge or just wouldn't apply, normally."
"I'd still be going off what you told me."
"If summoning someone else works then that's some independent verification but ultimately yes."
"Please don't do anything stupid."
"I'll try not to do anything at all until I'm much more confident in my understanding of this world than I am at the moment."
"That's - not going to - Savo's a native and still -"
"That's not going to be sufficient, you're right, it's just the minimum bar. I promise I'll do my very best to not do anything stupid."
Ror sighs.
"I'm sorry."
"You haven't started any wars. So far."
"Yeah. So... what do you prefer to do now?"
"I don't know. I'm not - qualified for - I have the circles, you have the map."
"So would you rather I just go?"
"I'm wary of - taking specified actions for you - why exactly did you want me to -?"
"—which part? I want you to summon another person to make sure it still works here because it's incredibly strange that no one in my world has heard of this one, I want you to resummon me for your peace of mind, I won't actually do anything terrible."
"And you care which order these things are done in because if the first thing doesn't work the second won't either?"
"Yeah."
...he sighs. "I'll get some of Zazi's big drawing paper."
He does.
She changes a bit of paper into ink in the shape of a circle for a bound random angel, missing a bit near Ror.
"And I just draw in that part -"
"Yeah, if I do it nothing happens."
.......he draws it.
A girl with pitch-black skin, golden irises, long rust-red hair, and silver wings appears. "Greetings, summoner, and cool hair."
(Kaede breathes a sigh of relief.)
Ror makes a subtle face. "- thank you - ah -" He starts trying to dismiss her.
"What can I do for ya? And ooh cool language what's that—"
"He's practising summoning and dismissing, and those are a bunch of conlangs—some people get real involved in them," Kaede says.
"Huh, yeah, I'll bet and—wait, I don't even get anything for my time?" she pouts.
"...it's only a minute," says Ror.
"Well yeah but a girl's minutes are precious, don't you know?"
"I'm sorry - I didn't plan this very well."
"Nah, it's fine. I'll grab the next one."
And when the minute is up she disappears.
Ror looks at the circle on the floor. He picks it up.
"That one's used up, you'll need to draw a new one to summon someone. Those are the standard bindings, but they get looser when the changer's been given a task for them to accomplish it, so if you summon another changer you should be very careful not to say anything shaped like an agreement until you're sure of the deal you want to make."
"...okay."
"Do you want to have Zazi dismiss me and resummon me under bindings?"
"...sure."
"Okay. Just ask her to do the same thing you just did and I should disappear, too."
"You might as well make your own circle."
She does.
He goes and finds Zazi.
Kaede is dismissed.
And she waits for the specific summons.
...takes a while.
...she sure hopes he didn't change his mind because the sheer number of lives lost if he did...
It's an hour and a half later and then she is back in his office.
She had pretty much given up by then so she looks extremely surprised and relieved when she appears in the circle. "Thank you."
Sigh. "You're welcome."
"What—took you?"
"I wanted to call Savo first."
"Oh. Did he believe you?"
"It took some time. Fortunately I'm not given to juvenile pranks."
"And is he expecting me?"
"Yes."
She nods. "...the binding means I can't leave this circle until you and I agree on a task and payment. It can be symbolic, like, you could give me the task of clearing this circle in exchange for being told your last name."
"My what?"
"—you don't have that here? Back in my world many cultures have the concept of a name other than the given one to further identify someone."
"You want my parentonymics?"
"—sure, or something equally innocuous."
"All right. Will you please clear this circle and I will tell you my matronymic."
"I accept this deal." The circle is cleared.
"It's be-Mavka."
"Thank you. Can I do anything else for you?"
"I can't really think what."
"Okay. I'll show myself out, then."
"I'd recommend going with a normal hair color. If you can do that."
Sky blue. "Does this work?"
"...it'll be more conspicuous that no one knows you."
Grass green?
"Yes, that's fine. If you know what you'll say if someone asks what you do."
"—are people likely to stop me on my way there to ask something like that?"
"Someone might try to make small talk on the train."
"Okay, what are green-haired people likely to be doing and can I be particularly shy?"
"Green is intellectuals and artists, there's no reason one couldn't be shy."
"I could be a university student, or maybe a writer?"
"Sure."
"That works, then. I'll get a course on local society when I get there."
Nod. "Good luck, I suppose."
"Thank you."
And now's a day hiking towards the train station.
It's a pretty area. There are houses, mostly nice vacation houses, a few little cabiny things.
Her wings are gone and her shirt mended long before she's around any people but she doesn't want to mess with her height so she's still rather taller than average here.
Nobody bothers her.
She collected some supplies back in Heaven after it became clear Ror was taking a while—water and some rations—so she doesn't have to actively do magic when she feels thirsty or peckish.
On she goes.
After a lot of hike: town with train station.
Ooh! Okay she will watch a couple of transactions to see what money looks like then counterfeit a small bit of it to purchase a ticket.
...no hard currency.
...seriously? None at all? No one?
If she watches long enough someone gets the convenience store to accept some bills.
Oh good okay she can counterfeit that then. To an outside observer it looks like she took the bills from a wallet in her pocket.
The train can't accept them.
Why not?
You have to have a train card or app.
How do you get a train card?
They sell them at the convenience store, which has been observed to take cash.
Okay she can purchase one then!
People titter at her a little - maybe it's hideously marked up from this seller? - but now she has a train card!
Yeah sure she feels a bit less bad about counterfeiting money now but still not good about it, she will want to ask Savo how to best navigate that.
Train!
If she stares at the map long enough she can figure out which train to get on going which way from this town, which seems to consider itself a small town even though it is about half the population of Pittsburgh.
...huh. Maybe their planet is bigger and/or they have more people.
She takes the train.
The train is crowded, with narrow seats and double-decker cars. It goes real fast.
Good thing she doesn't have her wings, then. She has a small-ish backpack she keeps between her legs and a book to pass the time.
...but she'll take a nap, first, because she's just spent a long time walking.
It's not a loud train qua train but people do talk on it. Nobody talks to her.
Good then she doesn't have to lie. She doesn't really like it.
She has to change trains! Does she wake up in time?
Yeah, she had coffee, it was only a short nap.
Now she is on a new train. An old yellow lady sits next to her. "Hello there."
"Hello."
"What's your name? I'm Torga."
...she should've thought of a name. Well, her name was unusual when she was human... "I'm Kaede. It's nice to meet you."
"That's a funny name, what language is it from?"
"No idea, I don't even know if it's from a language, mom might've just been eccentric and I never got the opportunity to ask."
"Huh. What do you do, Kaede?"
"Nothing, at the moment—or, I write, but I haven't really got anything yet—" Shrug. "How about you?"
Wow she's bad at this whole "pretending to be shy" thing huh.
"I'm the hiring manager for the provincial museum service!"
"Oh, that's cool! I don't think I've ever visited, what's it like?"
"What, none of them? You at least have to see the museum of Voan history and the museum of ancient art."
"I may have gone to a couple when I was little but I don't remember. Those sound cool, though, especially ancient art."
"Your school must have been seriously negligent, we get troops of little greens coming through all the time, where did you go -"
"I'm not actually Voan, I'm from a smallish town in Tapa." Her face goes a bit darker when mentioning that. "I don't like thinking about that much, though—my, um, father wasn't the best at being a father."
"Goodness. It's so hard to find swaps. I guess it may be easier for greens."
"I think it might be, a little bit, but my mother took care of it before I was old enough to really care."
"What did she do?"
"She painted."
"And you haven't been to any of the province's museums?" says her neighbor plaintively. "We have a painting gallery - what's your mother's name -"
"I really don't want to talk about this anymore, I'm sorry."
"What? Why not?"
"She's—dead—I really don't like talking about my family."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, what happened to her?"
She closes her eyes. "Let's change the subject, please?"
Huff. "Well, what do you want to talk about then?"
"—I think I'd prefer not to talk right now, if that's alright with you."
"Nobody talks on trains any more. I remember when everyone was friendlier and happy to meet new people, any season of the year."
"I'm happy to meet new people, just—got reminded of—I'd rather not."
"Leave the girl alone," says a purple guy on his cellphoney thing.
"We were having a perfectly pleasant conversation, mind your own business," says yellow lady.
"Just let her be."
"Young people are so impudent these days. When I was young I would never have behaved like that to a stranger."
She doesn't respond.
Purple guy and yellow lady argue a bit more until yellow lady's stop arrives.
Oh good, she offers yellow lady a small smile and then looks out the window.
Scenery goes by, much of it cityscape or farm. Tunnels go by.
Here's the capital of Voa!
Oh finally! She has her map—
She wants to switch to a more local train line and get off over there and it'll be right in front of her, big blue and white building.
And the building presumably has a reception?
It does, yellow fellow at the front desk. "Can I help you?"
"Hi! I'm Kaede, and I believe Allocator Savo might be expecting me?"
He makes a face. "What regarding?"
"—I'm not sure I'm allowed to say, you can ask him?"
"Name?"
"Kaede," she repeats.
"Do you know where his office is?"
"I'm afraid I don't."
"Then you can wait for him to send down his secretary to escort you. If he still has one." Sniff.
She nods and—is there a chair?
The entry hall has a few benches by the windows.
She can sit on one, then.
They all have people on them but there is space between these blue children and that purple lady!
"Hi," says a blue child.
"Hello."
"Are you a artist or a nerd green."
She giggles. "Artist, probably."
"Do you not know yet."
"Oh I kinda like both but I think I may be best at art."
"What kind of art?"
"Books!"
"The covers or the insides?"
"The insides, I like writing."
"What do you write?"
"I haven't published anything yet but mostly soft science fiction with a dash of magic."
"What kind of magic?"
"Well I have this story about these people you can summon who can get you things if you give them things in exchange. There are three kinds: one moves things with their mind, the other changes things, and the third makes things from thin air."
"Whoa."
"I still need to think of a few details but I like the premise."
"What happens in it?"
"Well I think at first is a secret but the hero wants to reveal it because if everyone could summon then everyone could be happier, but it's very hard and there's a conspiracy, and not all the people he summons are nice people..."
"What's a conspiracy?"
"A secret society that wants something to stay secret."
"Why's there a that?"
"Because some people make a lot of money by summoning these beings and getting stuff for very cheap."
"Oh."
"But like I said, I'm still working out some details."
Nod nod.
A blue lady comes out of the elevator and looks around. "Kaede?"
"That would be me," she says, standing up. She looks at the kid and says, "Nice meeting you!" before walking to the blue lady.
"Hey, Savo doesn't like to go out when it's crowded, sent me to get you." Into the elevator. Up up.
"Yeah, I understand, it's alright."
"He's in that office." Point.
"Thank you very much."
Knock knock.
"Come in."
She does. "Allocator Savo?"
"Yes. Hello."
"I believe your husband has told you everything?"
"More or less... I'm not sure why you wanted to talk to me."
"Because I don't have many options and I have to start somewhere."
"What did you want to talk about?"
"I... want to understand this world better, but I don't have real money or a pocket everything or anything like that and I don't know anyone..."
"I'm not much of a useful connection right now. I suppose I could give you the money for a pocket everything."
"That... would help. At least with internet access I could read some. But I was hoping I could undo at least some of the... damage... due to the food thing."
"How?"
"Magic." Hair-change-demonstration. "I can change anything, so it stands to reason I could change unclean food into clean food, right?"
"...not really. It's not a very scientific belief."
"Magic is not a very scientific belief either."
"You can - show it off. The uncleanliness is unverifiable except by looking at the history of an object, and it'd still be a fact about the history of the object."
She sighs. "But then isn't literally everything infected at some remove? And don't reds, like, walk around places to do their jobs?"
"They wear shoe covers or have separate paths. It's understood that uncleanliness isn't airborne, waterborne, or persistent after a complete decay process, so not everything is polluted."
"They presumably touch the covers, though, and those covers touch the ground...?"
"They step into the covers, they don't have to touch them with their bare hands, it's enough layers."
She sighs again. "Okay, so much for that, then."
Shrug.
"And you don't know anyone I could talk to about how to best deploy magic abilities here?"
"We don't really have an office for that."
"Wouldn't expect so, but..."
"I mean. I can refer you up. But there's not going to be a form to fill out so that you can go do whatever you want to do in a really organized fashion."
"I wasn't thinking anything official, just, if you know someone who knows someone—"
"...I'm a blue, all the someones I know who know someones are official."
"I mean it doesn't need to be an official channel, it would be presumably more helpful for me to interact with an official someone."
"I'm not sure what distinction you're drawing."
"The distinction between filling a form and talking to someone extra-officially."
"I mean. I can tell you where to find Governor Avalor. She's at least not as incompetent as I am."
"That would probably be useful, if the word 'governor' means what it looks like it means."
"...what?"
"I learned your language magically, but I don't know how your government works."
"There are a few governors and she's the senior one."
"Then if you think she'd be of help I'd love to be introduced."
"I'm not sure an introduction from me will help any."
"Is there an alternative? I don't expect one can just walk up to her and say 'hi.'"
"I suppose not." Sigh.
"Sorry."
"Ror said you reminded him of me before I started a war."
She purses her lips and rubs them a bit with a hand. "Why'd you do it?"
"...I didn't think it would start a war, obviously."
"I mean, why'd you do the food thing at all, not why you started a war."
"The food is safe. It doesn't even taste weird if you aren't psyched up about it. I thought if it was - sufficiently difficult to avoid, people would get over it."
"But I mean—presumably other people also know there's nothing scientific about it and they didn't do it."
"Maybe they knew it'd start a war, I don't know."
"My impression was that they wouldn't care though."
"...about starting wars?"
"About reds."
"No, they really don't."
"Why do you?"
"I... don't know?"
Blink.
"I just do."
"...well. Good on you. Someone should."
"Thanks."
"So... what should I do to talk to the Governor?"
"You could drop by her office, see if she's busy. Or wow her secretary, make an appointment."
"Won't I be promptly kicked out?"
"I can bring you if you want me to, it's only I don't make a very good recommendation. She's taken to calling me Allocator Idiot."
"Okay, so I guess I could try the other thing first, then."
Nod. "She's on the top floor, room 3044."
"Thank you."
Can she take an elevator up there?
She can if Savo pushes the buttons for her, which he does.
Huh. Cool. Up she goes.
Top of government building! More widely spaced doors.
And room 3044: knock knock.
A yellow leans out the door. "Governor Avalor is away at a meeting. You're not expected; what's your business?"
"Somewhat extremely important but also somewhat extremely implausible. How much evidence of the existence of magic would I need to provide you for you to agree?" She changes her hair shade between various greens to demonstrate it.
"...is that a wig?"
"It isn't. Colour is also not the only thing I can do but it's the easiest to demonstrate. I could also turn something small like, I don't know, a pencil, into air?"
"Disappearing things is simple prestidigitation."
"Your things, in your office, without touching them?"
"I like the things in my office and don't want them - pickpocketed or whatever you're -"
"I can just change their colour and back, or change their shape, or modify the materials, or refill an empty pen—I can pretty arbitrarily transmute things into other things, you name what evidence will convince you."
"I don't have any way to verify things what are you even doing here -"
"I would like to schedule a meeting with Governor Avalor because I expect she might be able to verify things and then help me help you."
"...help you help me?"
"Plural you, your species."
"...our species?"
"Yeah, I'm not Amentan."
"Ah - what, uh - are you?"
"What I currently am is a magical species for which I don't have a name better than 'changer' yet."
"How did you get past the ground floor?"
"Someone helped me."
"Who?"
"—I'm not sure I should say, wouldn't want them to get in trouble."
"I'm calling security -"
She sighs. "It was Allocator Savo."
"...he really can't stop being stupid for a minute at a stretch, can he. I'm going to escort you out and that can be that."
"Do you think, if it turned out to be true that I can literally transmute any materials into any other materials, that Governor Avalor would be extremely happy about this decision?" And just for demonstration she starts growing wings again.
"I do not have to entertain every crackpot who thinks they can turn moons into honey rain." She marches toward the elevator and clearly expects Kaede to follow.
She turns all of the secretary's clothes a bright lime green.
She's not looking at her clothes and does not notice.
She turns the elevator gold, then.
(Not, like, the actual meat of it, just the surface parts, nothing that will change the weight much.)
The secretary startles.
"I'm not a crackpot, I can literally turn anything into anything else, if you'd given me as much time as you've already wasted here to prove it I could have." Her wings are almost fully grown now.
...She notices her clothes and shrieks.
She turns them back to their regular colour. "I'm not a crackpot," she repeats.
"Please fix the elevator."
(Someone peeps out of a different office.)
She fixes it.
(Peeper out of a different office asks yellow lady what's going on, does she need security. Yellow lady looks nervously at Kaede, which is taken as an answer.)
She sighs again. "Do you still not believe me?"
"It's clear something is going on," says yellow lady. Peeker retreats into his office.
"Yes, and the something is 'I have previously unheard of magic and would like to use it for the good of your country and don't have a good means of contacting someone who can help me achieve this goal'."
The elevator doors open and some security guards come out.
"What's the problem?" the ask the yellow.
"I'm - I'm not sure -"
"I have accidentally startled her and her colleague saw that and inferred he should call you."
"Are you authorized to be on this floor?" a security guard asks.
"As far as I know, yes."
"Who authorized you?"
"Allocator Savo."
"Is he even still -"
"We didn't change the codes, he still works in the building -"
"They should fucking shoot the -"
"Not our job. Ma'am we're going to have to ask you to leave you're upsetting the secretaries."
She purses her lips but nods. "Alright, then."
They surround her and usher her elevatorwards.
Yes sure she can be ushered.
And she is escorted all the way out of the building.
And when she's sufficiently far out of sight she does herself some magical plastic surgery and returns.
Is there anywhere she can wait, nearby? A park or something?
There are parks! Some purples are having a cookout in one.
She can sit on a bench, then, and think. She's—barreling at stuff, and that's not working, and it's not gonna work, and she needs an actual plan.
Does she want an extra spicy chop?
—sure, why not.
The purples give her one on a paper plate.
She thanks them and eats it.
"So what do you do," says one of the purples over his own spicy chop.
"I paint! Not, I'm afraid, anything you can see yet. How about you?"
"Pet store."
"Oh, that's nice! I never had pets, for some reason animals seem to just dislike me."
"You probably handle 'em wrong. You could get fish, they don't care."
"Yeah, maybe I'll try that," she says, smiling.
"You waiting for somebody?"
"No, I'm just appreciating the park and thinking."
"We'll be out of your way in a few hours."
"Oh you're not in my way, don't worry about it, enjoy yourselves!"
They have their party!
Hmm. She looks around: does this place have public phones?
No.
Drat.
What's the movement like around and in the building? How often to people come in and out, do the blues ever leave...
Not that often. Sometimes.
...does Savo? She expects not, but...
Nope.
Hmm... she doesn't actually know what Governor Avalor looks like—is there a newsstand somewhere perhaps with a coincidental picture?
...a newsstand? There are not those.
Argh! Anywhere she could find that woman's face? Maybe even a library?
Libraries they have. She can find a biography of Governor Avalor.
Oh okay and a picture—
Yup. This one is from a while ago, she'd be older now.
She just wants to recognise her when she leaves. ...but since she's at it does the biography mention anything of her personality?
Governor Avalor as the last remaining heir to the ruling oligarchy of Voa united all the remaining Voan blues once the occupying Oahk Empire collapsed, declined the opportunity to be Queen or even to have a unique title in favor of a more stable democratic multigovernor system, is responsible for Voa's unusual child allocation system and many other things about the place being as they historically were, and has refused to retire despite advanced age.
...yep, that's a personality alright. She can work with this. She'll skim that for any more interesting trivia but then return to the park.
Party is gone now.
Then she'll wait there in silence.
Eventually people start leaving the building. Not Savo, but there's the woman he sent to let Kaede up.
Yeah she won't bother her. Might've gotten in enough trouble already.
And there is Governor Avalor.
Does she have an escort, bodyguards, anything like that?
If she has security they're discreet.
Well she's not going to be all creepy and try to not be noticed following her, she'll walk briskly towards her and when she's close enough call, "Governor Avalor?"
Governor Avalor glances at her. "Make an appointment."
"Thirty seconds for me to prove that's impossible?"
...Avalor pauses, checks the time on her pocket everything, and looks unimpressedly at Kaede.
She starts undoing the plastic surgery and returning to her normal face. "I'm an alien with magic, I can transmute any materials into any other materials plus change pretty much any of their properties. I got accidentally summoned to this world and have no money or family or contacts or anything like that. I have very little idea how this world works and don't know anything about your society." Then she starts turning some air into cloudfluff. "I don't exist in your records and if I tell anyone I want to talk to you about aliens or magic I will be rightly turned away and perhaps checked in at a mental hospital. I can produce any evidence you care to name of at least my alleged magic powers." She has a handful of cloudfluff now, so she can use that to produce some bills and prove her counterfeiting abilities.
And her thirty seconds are up.
"Walk with me," says Avalor, and she resumes course.
She does, disappearing her money.
"How did you get to this planet?"
"I'm one of three kinds of magical species and we can be summoned by any mortals—although I'd previously not heard of your species."
"...what mortals normally summon you?"
"Different species that looks a lot like Amentans but taller and less variety in hair color."
"Where are they?"
"Different planet, I couldn't begin to tell you where this one is with respect to theirs."
"What are the prospects for communication with these four new species?"
"The three magical ones can be summoned, I can show you how, and the nonmagical one—we can only contact them when we're summoned but one of the magical species can conjure arbitrary things made of matter, including, say, 'letter to Governor Avalor from John Doe.'"
"John Doe?"
"Just some random name."
"What does the third magical species do?"
"Generalized telekinesis. It has a range but not a meaningful mass or speed limit."
"Faster than light?"
"Maybe I could say they don't have an acceleration limit, they're still bound by relativity."
"Ah. How did you get here in particular?"
"The way to summon us is drawing certain specific kinds of circles on the floor and someone drew a valid circle accidentally. I'm actually more surprised that no one'd ever done that before than that it worked at all here."
"They're easily made?"
"Fairly easily, yeah. Or, at least, circles for random people with no bindings are, they can get pretty involved."
"Bindings?"
"A changer could turn someone into living furniture, a maker could make a black hole, a mover could demolish a city—bindings prevent certain actions from being taken to avoid stuff like that."
"I see. Are there many destructive elements in these species?"
"No, not really, but it only takes one, and—we're very, very immortal. If you shot me I'd at most get lightly bruised, if you dropped a nuclear bomb on me my clothes would be disintegrated and I'd be kinda singed—and some magical people—I'm gonna borrow a word from another language—some daeva aren't used to dealing with fragile people so even if they're not violent they could be accidentally careless."
"I see. Do any of these species have the means to settle other planets?"
"In conjunction they could do it fairly easily—movers to take people there, changers and makers to terraform."
"Are you here to convey any specific messages or make any specific offers?"
"Kinda. I want to roll out summoning to your entire species and end material scarcity and all that—but I'd like that to not be too disruptive."
"...these motives are in tension but no less admirable for that."
"Thank you—and, ah, your species has some quirks that make this tension a bit stronger than it was for mine."
"Oh?"
"I'm thinking mostly of the, ah, caste system, here."
"Never having examined a society that lacked one I am not sure how its absence would make things less tense."
"...I'm less than hopeful about what will happen to your reds if everyone else gets access to scarcity-ending magic is what I'm getting at here."
"Why, does it make people immortal?"
"We-ell. In a way."
"...in a way that does or does not eliminate the relevant red jobs?"
"The magic itself eliminates the relevant red jobs, since a mover can very easily, say, move a dead body without touching it, and a changer could completely clean anything with a thought. The immortality is—more like an afterlife."
"Is it going to be remotely cost-effective to hire magic people for all wastewater, garbage, and corpse handling?"
"You could probably manage to hire daeva long-term, although perhaps not for the same amount as you currently pay reds if it's not very much. And people from my planet are ahead of you, technologically, which is itself a problem when you could get a maker to get you stuff if you tell them the title of five Amentan books—I heard automation is a sore subject."
"Quite. If they could do faster-than-light we could just give the reds a planet once there were more than we knew what to do with; if they can't..."
"If FTL is at all possible we have not discovered it yet."
"Sublight I suppose if material scarcity is not a concern we could put them in a very large ship and they could rely on magical beings for their needs."
"You'd need constant acceleration in order to get summoning circles to work, but yes, that's a possibility, I suppose."
"Well, once they got far enough away I assume they could find a planet no one else was likely to want."
"While that sounds like an improvement I'm not sure how to get from here to there without—trouble."
"It would be delicate."
"What are your thoughts on this, Governor?"
"How difficult would it be to figure out how to summon magical beings without being tutored?"
"Sans safe bindings, not very. With them, might take a while, my planet has licenses for people to be allowed to summon."
"...how difficult would it be to figure out how to summon magical beings without being tutored or exposed directly to the magical beings?"
"...difficult, I think. They only became public knowledge in my world because one person organized a rollout all over the world, before that it was secret and very few people figured it out over thousands of years."
"How customizably may magical beings be bound?"
"Extremely—it's very common for makers to not be allowed to speak or communicate anything other than 'yes, summoner,' because people think makers can talk them out of their souls."
"Their souls?"
"One of the most common names for them in many languages is also the name of a mythological being that in certain stories can do that, and it—stuck. And since people don't allow them to talk and don't trust them to tell the truth, and some makers get a kick out of pretending they can do that, well."
"So this is not actually a hazard."
"Oh no not at all, and you'll probably get much more helpful makers if you let them talk."
"- do makers also obey lightspeed?"
"No, they can conjure whatever from whatever distance."
"So they allow correspondence and even in a sense the transmission of physical goods? Can they copy people?"
"They can make people but they come out—braindead. Anything smarter than a goldfish doesn't come out right, and it's probably part of the magic, because the conjured brains and all that are indistinguishable from the originals."
"That presents something of a limitation for colonization if there's to be conventional farming. What is the population of magical beings?"
"A few billion, but I'm not entirely sure how many. Makers can in fact conjure entire meals, factory farming—no longer exists on my planet because conjured and artificially grown meat are so easy to come by."
"I'm just concerned we will eventually run out of them. Not soon, but an unrestrained population will grow exponentially."
"...right, so about the afterlife..."
"Mm?"
"...I used to be human. Then I died. And I woke up in the changer world."
"Is that common?"
"Not very. Most humans who die go to a fifth world, and they're as indestructible as daeva are but don't have any magic other than that, and they also bring something with them. Most daeva just appear fully formed as adults with no memories and no language."
"Do you have any reason to believe the quantity of daeva will usefully scale with our population?"
"I... have a hypothesis, about what causes a human to become a daeva, and it might count for you, too. I have the vague suspicion that ex-summoners become daeva when they die."
"Is there a way to test this?"
"Yeah—you could summon a maker and do some investigative conjuring."
"But you have not been able to arrange this in the past?"
"Daeva cannot summon, only mortals can, and my world has enough of a prejudice against makers that people wouldn't accept my suggestion to summon one and let them talk."
"It will matter substantially to how central magical beings can be in the process of space colonization."
"It wasn't that critical back on Earth—how many people are there on this planet?"
"Thirteen billion, but that's with strict population controls since before I was born, when it was nine."
"—wow. Do you, uh, just have lots of children or..."
"A majority of people can cope with two without adverse affects, which is why Voa's policy is two per, extras awarded occasionally for merit. The average people want if they imagine being free of population controls is five. It would be higher if the question also imagined freedom from material scarcity such that they didn't have to worry about providing for them."
Slow blink. "What happens to people who have more when they're not allowed?"
"In Voa, the children are taken and put up for adoption and the offender is sterilized. Both birth control and abortions are available for free."
"...I suppose that works. But, um. Wow. You really need space exploration, huh."
"Yes."
"I could make you a circle for a maker so you can summon one and we can do some investigative conjuration.—oh, I forgot to mention, when you summon a daeva you can agree to a deal with them and then their bindings get loose enough to allow them to fulfil their end of the deal."
"But remain otherwise intact?"
"Yes. And you can only dismiss a daeva before making a deal with them or after you've paid, if you make a deal and then don't pay them the bindings start coming off by themselves one by one."
"What sorts of deals are customary?"
"Move my piano over there and I'll bake you muffins, or restore me the lost writings of this very specific ancient philosopher and I'll tell you about ten books you've never read—makers are hard to pay, they can make whatever, so information about things they can make or things they can't actually conjure like watching a specific musical or sex are sometimes used as payment. ...there's a selection effect going on in that since most people gag their makers the makers who take summons are mostly the ones who don't mind being gagged."
"Why don't they object?"
"...the makers? I expect if you don't gag them they do but most people are too terrified of them to even summon them let alone hear their complaints. And the worlds are not physically connected so there isn't, like, a coherent internet."
"You said the ones who take summons are the ones who don't mind. Why do they not mind," clarifies Avalor.
"Oh, either because they're very altruistic or very bored or because they want to get the things summoning gives them—so it's disproportionately people who want to extract almost-always nonconsensual sex, or who get a kick out of pretending to take a terrified person's soul."
"Do you anticipate it will be difficult to locate makers who will be interested in politer arrangements?"
"I think it might take a few tries to find one but then we can ask them about friends and others who they know of and we can start building lists of friendly makers to be summoned specifically."
"Is there any disadvantage associated with it being known to makers that this planet exists?"
"They can only come here if summoned, and even if the information gets to Earth there's nothing to do about it, we're probably far enough away it won't change anything, so I don't think so."
"Then your proposed first step sounds sensible."
She nods. "—and, ah, I don't actually have a place to stay for the night or anything. It might perhaps be best to give you an individual circle for me so you can summon me and get myself dismissed."
"If you prefer that to spending the night in a hotel, or believe you cannot pass for Amentan in a hotel, that is agreeable."
"I maybe could but I'd need money and being at my own place is less of a hassle for everyone. Also this is mostly for your sake, if I have enough coffee I don't actually need to sleep."
"I was offering to arrange the hotel for you."
"Right, I know, and I'm saying you don't need to spend any money if you'd prefer not to since we have an inexpensive alternative, but it's up to you."
"I believe I would have very much failed my country if I were to lose track of you."
She smiles. "Yes, I agree.—my current summoner is Allocator Savo's husband, he can dismiss me whenever he likes by wanting me gone for a minute, you could ask him to and then summon me yourself?"
"...Allocator Savo's husband? Very well." She pulls out her everything.
"Should I draw you my circle?"
"Yes, please. Is it possible to guarantee that it is correct?"
"Yeah, the bindings and my name will be written in Voan so you can read them over yourself."
Nod. She's apparently texting Savo's husband.
And she can produce a circle.
"Thank you."
And Kaede is dismissed, then resummoned in a nice room in a nice house.
"Hello. I'm bound to this circle, we'll need to agree on a deal for me to leave and be able to affect anything outside it."
"What would you like?"
She shrugs. "A token something, Savo's husband told me his parentonymic in exchange of my making this circle disappear."
"I think I would prefer to retain a copy. I will tell you my eldest child's name for your indefinite consulting services."
"—can we go for 'consulting services for as long as we both believe this is the ideal arrangement'?"
"'Ideal' seems too high a bar."
"Acceptable?"
"Very well."
"Then for your eldest child's name I'll give you my consulting services for as long as we both believe this is an acceptable arrangement."
"Her name is Ninda."
And she steps out of the circle.
"Welcome. I've given the indoor staff vacations, so you will not be noticed if you do magic within the house."
She nods. "I can be reasonably discreet but that might be best, yes."
"If you prefer to stay here than a hotel I do have spare rooms, although none of them are currently prepared."
"I don't mind either way, up to you."
"I will be happy to get you a hotel room." She does that on her pocket everything.
Can she be pointed the way?
Yep. This train so many stops it'll look like this.
Alright. ...she'll need to use the train card she doesn't have a pocket everything.
"I can give you enough physical currency to purchase an everything."
"Are there any places that sell those open at this time?"
"There will be round-the-clock stores in the downtown near the hotel. You are unlikely to need to walk more than a block."
"Okay, that works, thank you very much!"
"You're welcome." Avalor gives her money.
And she goes where directed.
It's a hotel.
She looks around for a round-the-clock store.
There are such things to be had. They sell pocket everythings in all colors and models.
Ooh. She'll get something pretty in black that can be purchased with the money Avalor gave her then go to the hotel.
She has a wide variety of model options and the place will set her up with electronic money if she gives them her change to deposit for her. The hotel is very nice and exquisitely clean, staffed by classy purples and a couple desk yellows.
She believes Governor Avalor got her a room?
The clerk taps a thingy to her pocket everything and now she has a hotel widget that will unlock her room!
Oooh hotel widget! She goes to the appropriate room.
And her everything opens it!
In she goes, what's the room like?
Clean and cozy and with an ensuite bathroom!
Good!
...hmm do they have room service, can she get coffee, she thinks she's gonna spend a few hours browsing the internet rather than sleeping.
They have room service! She can get coffee! They have internet! She can browse it!
Oh good. She'll start with... do they have a Google and a Wikipedia equivalents? If so she wants to find stuff on castes: what are they, do they change country to country, are they biological, stuff like that.
They have search engines and something called Summary Bank. Castes are blue, green, yellow, grey, orange, purple, and red, for the common hair colors of each, but also have other names referring to stereotypes or the functional similarities or metonyms. Some careers are different country to country - firefighters may be grey or purple, sex work may be grey or orange, medicine may be green or orange, places vary in the blue/yellow balance of government offices. Some places are patrilineal, the largest example being Anitam, but most places matrilineal. The castes are biological in the manner of inherited talents and aptitudes but all of them are the same species.
For how long have castes been a thing? Also can she get a world map with countries and such? How big is the planet, where is Voa with respect to other counties...?
Castes have been a thing for centuries. The Summary Bank doesn't have a lot of detail; there was a culture that did castes in this way and outperformed its neighbors and spread throughout the world back during this planet's Bronze Age. The planet is about Earth sized with one very large northern hemisphere continent a bit larger than Eurasia, a smaller northern hemisphere continent, three yet smaller southern hemisphere continents, and polar landmasses. The equator, undesirable, also convenient has little landmass. Voa is one of the two largest countries, and is on the largest continent, bordering the other largest country, Tapa.
...why is the equator undesirable exactly?
It doesn't have seasons. Same problem with the poles and spending too much time underground or on the moon. Some people don't mind it all that much but most people object to "reseasoning" even between hemispheres, and a place without seasons at all is like all the worst parts of spring, apparently.
...uh... she's missing some context, what's reseasoning and why do people object to it and a lack of seasons?
Reseasoning is a physical adaptation to the seasons! People are only fertile in the spring and it is when they most want sex and children, and there are other, less significant differences in psychology between the other seasons. Inconveniently, different durations of artificial light do not successfully control this cycle.
—oh wow. That... must be really weird. Especially given seasons here last as long as a whole year back on Earth. Do people know of any other method of affecting seasoning than seasons themselves, since light cycles don't work?
Nope. People are working on it, since it would make it very profitable to settle the poles and equator and moons.
That's bizarre. Are there places that make people season more or less? They presumably tried temperature and humidity and different types of radiation than just visible light...? Makers could so help with extremely complex arcologies.
They think it has to do with angle of the sun.
Ah huh. She files this away for later.
...does Summary Bank have a page on reds?
Reds are an inherently and hereditarily unclean caste - one parent being red suffices, if people break laws enough for that to happen - who traditionally do unclean work (there's a list) and live separately.
Anything that specifies how and why they're inherently unclean?
Their ancestors have been doing unclean work for long enough that it stuck and they've been more or less bred for it and now they're just like that.
...what stuck? She'd been holding out hope that Ror was just uninformed and there might've been something, like, detectable about it...
Nope!
Ugh.
Ror mentioned riots; anything about them here?
Reds riot and will kill roboticists and do property damage, injury, or occasionally murder to politicians who support their work.
...and robotics is the only thing that causes this?
Occasionally other stuff will provoke it, but mostly stuff that has to do with reds more directly.
Whyyyy are people here so teeeerribleeeeeeee it's all imaginary that's not how matter works—
—wait, is it, does this place have the same physics?
Yes.
Yeah okay these people are crazy. Ugh.
She'll read and drink coffee until Avalor needs her.
Avalor does not have the address of any accounts on her brand new pocket everything but has a message sent to the hotel widget when she wakes up.
Ooh right, she replies with her brand new pocket everything's accounts.
And Avalor calls her.
"Good morning."
"Good morning. How are you today?"
"I'm well. I spent the night reading about your world on the internet. How about you?"
"I am fine. Do you have any agenda in mind?"
"Not a full one, and lots of it might depend on the results of that first investigation on whether I'm right about who becomes daeva. We should probably do that first then make a decision."
"Does the location matter very much?"
"Not particularly."
"Then I suggest you come back to my home."
"Okay. Be there in a bit."
Off she goes.
The trains are so trainy. Very well-run and frequent.
Then she will soon arrive at Governor Avalor's place.
Governor Avalor greets her and has cleared a space on a tile floor for a circle.
She makes an incomplete circle. "If you finish that it will meaningfully count as you having made it and it'll work."
Avalor reads it.
It's a circle for a random demon with a standard binding (demon can't leave circle, can't make things, etc) minus the gag, so they can speak freely.
And she finishes it.
And a shirtless guy with long black hair, deep wine red clawed batlike wings, and albino skin appears. He looks down at his circle and at the old lady with blue hair and blinks. "Well, greetings, summoner. No gag, huh? Must be really desperate."
"Conversational, rather," says Avalor. "I am interested in locating makers of particular skill sets and interests and require maker assistance to do so."
"—wait what language even is this, you don't have words for—makers—?"
"We do not."
"None of these languages do, where are we—uh, it's not important, I guess. ...man, this is way harder when I can't just loom menacingly."
"If this summons does not suit you I can dismiss you."
"No, it's just—usually the summoner just tells me what they want and starts offering stuff and if I'm not feeling bored I'll take their soul or wait until they get tired of offering but sometimes they hit something interesting, so... What do you want?"
"I wish to establish correspondence with makers of particular skillsets, especially terraforming, with a view towards frequent summonings by my people."
"...uh, terraforming? Uh, I don't think I know anyone but there's probably mailing lists..."
"Could you do some investigative conjuring for us instead?"
He blinks and looks at Kaede like he hadn't noticed her there. "If you tell me what to make, probably."
"It is possible you should conduct this exchange outside of the need for the summoner in particular," Avalor tells Kaede.
"You'll still need to be the one to agree," she tells Avalor, then turns to the demon. "Half an hour of investigative conjuring for... is there anything in particular you want?"
"Uh, I don't know, I don't usually..."
"What sort of music do you like?"
"Classic," he says apologetically.
"They might have an equivalent. Do you know any old composers?" she asks Avalor.
"As in from my childhood or from a century ago or...?"
"A century ago is probably closer to the mark."
"Yes, I do, although I can't promise they'll be to any given taste."
"We'll give you the names of five people who composed music a century ago and you've never heard before," she tells the demon.
"—uh. For half an hour conjuring? Yeah okay sure why not."
Avalor lists five composers.
The demon conjures a chip in his hand and... stares at it. "Man, you're legit. Okay, shoot."
She asks for the records of a couple specific summoning license issuers, and checks for summoners who died. Checks for scale models of them after death. All of them are daeva. Asks for valid circles made by daeva versus limboites. ...there are a small few made by limboites, that's surprising—but conjuring for all daeva that answered a limboite's valid circle gets nothing.
The demon, it appears, is much more surprised than she is by these results. He suggests a couple of things, and in the end—" Yeah okay I'm pretty convinced now. Thank you—I never caught your name—"
"Rachnu."
"And I'm Kaede. Thank you, Rachnu."
"Thank you, Rachnu," agrees Avalor.
"As a last note, do you know any makers who might be more interesting in the terraforming project?"
"Uh, maybe Jeska? Here, I'll write it for you—" He gives Kaede a note with the name for the specific summons.
"Thanks, we'll try them next." And Avalor can dismiss the demon.
She can and does.
"So, answer's yes it'll probably scale with your population."
"That is a relief."
"And I'm not actually sure we should be interviewing demons for terraforming now; it might be a better idea to figure out how to roll out summoning to everyone."
"What would the advantage of doing that without a terraforming project underway be?"
"Ending many of the causes of suffering for people currently alive is the main one. Also I'm not sure how long a terraforming project would take and the fact that every country had access to daeva helped a lot with that."
"I am not sure you appreciate the extent to which population control is a source of suffering."
"Perhaps but the coordination part remains a concern."
"What do you mean?"
"How to guarantee someone from, say, Calado gets access to another planet if Voa's the only country with access to demons is an instance of the problem."
"If you had ever been to Calado, you might find the prospect of their having access to demons very concerning."
"—it was an arbitrary example but, uh, why?"
"Calado, most likely because they practice permission-based population control, has something of a culture of - high variance strategy."
"Strategy... for getting permissions?"
"Permissions are awarded in different ways per caste. Among blues it requires agreement from high-ranking other blues who are not related to oneself. So the strategy that sometimes works, as opposed to never working, is to draw attention to oneself in ways that, if successful, would make one look clever and valuable to the right people. This is inimical to caution."
"...yeah I can see how that would interact badly with having daeva available."
"Credit systems work on money, which is at least predictable."
"Anyway, uh, point was that I don't love the idea of giving only one country access to other planets and this is not the kind of secret that's easy to keep for long and I expect international cooperation in general is probably very positive for colonization projects."
"Why do you expect that?"
"Well, for one because then the other countries don't have incentives to try to spy on you or sabotage your efforts."
"I do not intend to keep it a secret forever. I think having a precedent and proof of concept will make it possible to establish a template which will prevent disastrous attempts from less conservative forces."
"And give your country a political advantage."
Avalor raises an eyebrow. "If you would like to choose a different country - not Calado, please - I will happily recommend you a competent blue there and tell them how to summon you and wait."
"The point was giving every country's competent blues someone, but..." She shrugs.
"Perhaps something like that would work if there were more consultants like you to distribute. I do not recommend spreading yourself thin."
"Yeah, I don't either, and I don't... really know other daeva I'd indicate, like that."
"If you would like me to refer you to another country I can do that. You came to me."
"I wanted someone who could—use me properly. Allocator Savo indicated you might be such a person. And under the circumstances, I'm not sure it makes sense to be extremely picky—other than the war thing over his mistake your history seems pretty spotless and your personal history, uh, better than that."
"And my recommendation is to have a planet ready to go, quietly, so that no one is unduly tempted into doing anything foolish when they could simply copy the procedure. If you will cooperate with me on this I am inclined to cede Imde province to Tapa without further contest so that they will not impede me but I would very much regret having done that if you abandoned the project subsequently."
"No, that sounds like a good plan, I can definitely work with that."
"Are you sure? Do you have other reservations I should address before I set that in motion?"
"...well there's also the part where I would very strongly prefer this not cause millions of people to die because their hair color happens to be red..."
"I think most countries would prefer to kill them. I believe Voa may be on a very short list of countries that can credibly promise gradual non-fatal transition to reds living separately, and once ours have established a colony we can carefully make sure that it is easier to add reds to it than to kill them and then there will be a much shorter list of places that simply want them dead badly enough. It will be very hard to sell anyone on teaching them to summon - they might pollute the daeva, who would then I take it mix indiscriminately with the rest of the daeva population, not to mention the general concern about allowing them any kind of power - but the planet can I take it be set up to give them a pleasant transition to living on their own, learning to farm to replace initial supplies, etcetera."
"Probably. And if it's extremely important, I'm pretty sure all three types of daeva can get rid of whatever pollution more thoroughly than your series of soaps and shampoos can."
"It is... unclear to me based on your example that they should be trusted to do so."
"Not at first, but I think the cultural taboo could be instilled, or it could be a part of regular deals when reds are taught this, exchange something for whatever service plus a good decontamination after. But I'm wondering if an angel couldn't just—depollute a red completely."
"What changes do you propose to make to this effect?"
"I'm not entirely sure yet, but there must be something, if a series of soaps and shampoos is enough to decontaminate a clean caste person then maybe enough—magical blood transfusions? Or something like that—would work."
"I can tell you where to submit a proposal should you care to write one. It still seems, even assuming ideal results there, best for reds to have their own planet, as this sounds like a complicated enough process to require training and would therefore take time to put the whole population through, but once they have a planet and have all been cleaned they can trade normally with others without suffering violence from anyone who is residually hateful."
"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Does this solar system have any other rocky planets or moons?"
"Yes and yes. I have one in mind that I would like for the proof of concept planet and a couple of candidates for a red moon depending on how terraforming makers can handle tidal locking."
"No makers have ever really had the opportunity to terraform, due to the taboo, we've only got arcologies, but makers in general have sufficiently varied hobbies I'd be surprised if no one'd thought of the answers to all terraforming-related questions we might have. The dimension demons appear in is an infinite, spatially flat dimension with absolutely nothing in it except things makers make, so they've had time to perform one experiment or two."
"...I see."
"They have a couple of planets there, even."
"What are your sources of information about conditions in the makers' home?"
"I used to be a summoner, when I was human, and I let them talk and asked them about it."
"How long ago was this?"
"I've been dead for about five years now. Er, that would be one local year and one season."
"Mm. Anyway. I am thinking the sixth planet for Voa's colony and a second planet's moon for reds, either the tidally locked one or another, smaller one."
"Should Voa's colony be the test planet?"
"As opposed to?"
Shrug. "The red moon."
"I suppose that depends on how likely the test planet is to be less pleasantly inhabitable than subsequent trials."
"I expect not very, and any problems can be fixed by a combination of the three types of daeva."
"If I present a terraformed moon to the rest of the world and explain that it is for use in housing reds, this will be seen as wasteful and frivolous and I will immediately have a fight for the moon on my hands. If I present a colony planet, with a moon for reds in progress, and everyone else can form a line for their own colony, the existence of a moon via which to be conveniently rid of reds will be a bonus."
"Yeah that makes sense. ...would it be premature to suggest not extending the invitation to countries that decide to go the easy route and kill its reds?"
"This would have to be weighed against the undesirability of interplanetary warfare."
"You think it would come to war?"
"I think you cannot rule it out. You do recall I'm currently planning to turn over a farm province to invaders who are upset that reds touched their food."
"...yeah, right, there's that. I—summoning gives people immortality, it—feels wrong to not give it to everyone—"
"There are more lives to be lost to mishandling than to prejudicial handling."
She sighs but nods.
"I appreciate your pragmatism."
"I gotta shut up and multiply, actually helping as many people as possible is more important than—moral righteousness."
Nod.
They can interview some more demons, then.
There are terraforming hobbyists and their next random doesn't know any or how to get ahold of them but the one after that does and then they have a terraforming hobbyist. She's over the moon, so to speak.
And is she okay with working with angels?
"Like, how with," says the demon.
"Well, I expect terraforming places is probably easier when a changer can, you know, clean stuff up or modify the already existing things?" she says, in Voan for Avalor's benefit. "I wouldn't know, it not being my area of expertise, but it sounds like they'd help."
"If stuff needs disappeared the fluffbrains can come in later and disappear it," snorts the demon. "An empty planet isn't going to have anything much in the way. If it's radioactive or made of poison or something send the fluffbrains in first, there's no with."
She laughs. "That's a very charming phrase, 'fluffbrains'. So you're saying there would be no call at all for simultaneous work?"
"Don't see why. Fluffbrains are slow and pointless. We don't need 'em."
"I'll take that under consideration."
"We can make whole planets! You'd only start with one that was already there for like orbital mechanics reasons and to save a little time. If it's not radioactive or poison skip the fluffbrains unless you need teeny spot edits later 'cause the spec wasn't good."
She nods. "That makes sense."
"I can't wait, this is gonna be great. Planets for people!"
"Yes! They're going be thrilled."
Grinny demon.
And after Avalor dismisses her: "Did I mention that makers and changers are in general extremely prejudiced against each other? Because they are and it's stupid."
"I see."
"It's a whole thing—the four magical worlds every now and then have events called concordances where a certain bit of space exists simultaneously in two worlds, and concordances with the regular afterlife and the movers' world are fun, we trade stuff and send letters and all that, but when it's with the makers' world there's a stupid, pointless mini-war."
"That seems unproductive."
"Extremely so. So I kinda want to see if we can find changers who might have a similar hobby and if they don't have an—alternative opinion on how useful they are to the project."
"I do not object."
And it's probably harder to find terraformer angels but not impossible, right?
Substantially harder, but eventually they find someone who agrees to look stuff up on Heaven's internet and come back in a couple hours to report. There are angels who know how to do atmosphere and landscaping and such, but none of them are really on a full terraforming scale and none have ever started with an uninhabitable planet and wound up with anything more than an arcology.
How do they feel about working with demons, do they think they could contribute?
Most of them would rather not.
And the angels can't think of how they would be useful if they did want to be?
Well, if the demons put bad, demony things on the planets, they could remove them. They'd be useful if there was a methane atmosphere or something, too.
That makes sense. She is so grateful for their help and consultation!
Of course, any time!
"Yeah it actually doesn't look like changers will be super necessary, and to the extent they are I can probably do whatever."
Nod.
"So what do we need to do to get started?"
"How heavily involved do you wish to be?"
"I would like to help however and as much as I can."
"I will keep an eye out for things useful for you to do."
"Thank you. Would it be easier for you if I returned to my world and you summoned me when you needed me?"
"Is it possible for you to obtain and perhaps translate a book on summoning there?"
"Yeah, actually."
"That would be very convenient."
"Yeah, it would. The original revelation happened when one person summoned a bunch of daeva and got them all over the world, different countries and stuff, and just gave out this book for free, to lots of people, so everyone who wanted it would have access to it."
"I'm glad that worked for that planet."
"How do you think that'd fail here?"
"Perhaps you have been here long enough to guess."
"People would try to get to other planets immediately, or perhaps terraform the poles and equatorial regions—people from Calado would screw everything over for everyone—?"
"It would be impossible to verify that reds were contained. The entire world would panic the same way Tapa did over our exports but more."
"—right, that. I'm having some trouble imagining how people would—actually react. It's not like they'd be able to start a war over it."
"I think you underestimate people's ability to start wars."
"Who'd they start a war against?"
"Anyone who they could blame the distribution of the book on. Anyone whose reds seemed inadequately deterred from running rampant."
Sigh.
"I believe I can get reds a moon that will represent a substantial increase in their average quality of life."
Nod. "Thank you."
"Of course."
"So do you need anything else before I'm dismissed?"
"How long will it take you to find a book to translate? While your command of Voan is excellent you might benefit from the ability to look things up in it, which you will not be able to do at home, so I mean to resummon you afterwards."
"I could probably get one in a day. I might even be able to get an electronic version in a day, do you have electronic readers?"
"Yes, but I assume the formats are incompatible."
"Makers can conjure books in a compatible format if I tell them it exists and name it or specify it well enough.—for that matter it might be better to just summon one and get the book from them, rather than me going back for it."
"I was assuming you'd find it easier to make sure that you had chosen the book you preferred if you could find a copy in your home but that is also fine."
"I don't have any copies at home, and we can just ask the demon to conjure an electronic device with all books we care to specify."
"I have no ability to so specify," says Avalor, "but we can arrange that if you will create another circle."
Circle!
Avalor completes it. The demon is happy to produce books for theater recommendations.
They're on another planet that is not Earth theater recommendations are kinda uh hard to give.
Avalor can recommend recorded theater productions, they're just Amentan.
Yeah if the demon is okay with recordings that works.
Of course recordings. He's a demon. Recordings are where it's at.
The transaction is completed and there is a local format copy of the book, although there's no local software with the right alphabet.
...so what's there instead? Gibberish or an approximation or...
Images. She can page through it and can type or speak her translation. Avalor sets her up with the app.
Okay yeah she can do that!
Then she will be left to it. Avalor goes in to the office to do governor things.
Translate translate translate it is not a very long book but it's not a pamphlet either.
Avalor comes home in the evening and orders delivery. "Do you want some food?"
"If it wouldn't be any trouble I'd love to have some."
Avalor orders extra. It takes ten minutes and arrives piping hot via delivery.
Food! Extremely foreign food she's never eaten!
It's tasty!
Good!
Presumably Avalor will sleep after that.
She sits up a bit but yes.
Then Kaede should probably return to her hotel and sleep, herself.
If she doesn't care to power her translation with coffee.
She could probably do that but she thinks she'll take a short nap and then power her translation with coffee—
—pausing after a bit to adjust a thing or two about himself.
In the morning Avalor emails her when she wakes up and asks if she needs anything.
Nope, translation's going good. Also he attaches a picture of himself today so there won't be any misunderstandings when he turns out to be looking like this.
Good to know.
Translate translate translate boy this is boring he wonders if any linguist daeva nerd would mind doing it but eh probably too much work to summon one it's not like he has much more to do.
Avalor emails him again in the evening and asks if he is aware that she has put money on his hotel account so he can order food through them if he wants.
Huh. That's a thing. He says he doesn't really eat often, usually seems more trouble than it's worth, but thanks her all the same.
No trouble. How's he doing, does he need anything?
He's doing alright, thanks. Using this to refresh his summoning knowledge, too, he'll have the book in Voan (and a bunch of other languages, but that part he doesn't mention) soon.
Good.
He'll probably be done with at least one local language by the end of the day and from then he can use this planet's amazing machine translation algorithms to get the others.
They're good, although he'll want to hand-patch them.
Yeah he'll look over them and notice that.
Which means he can't trust any in languages that neither Avalor nor Ror speak.
Those he probably won't do anything with. For now.
...he also probably won't do anything with the ones not in Voan but, well. Good to have in any case.
Avalor continues to ask periodically if he needs anything.
He doesn't.
And then he's done.
She appreciates the translation. Would he like to go home till she needs something?
Actually he might prefer to stay and see how things go.
All right. She can continue to pay for his hotel.
He is very thankful. How are things going her side of things?
She is nearly done with the groundwork for ceding Imde province and has begun to recruit a handful of people for secret projecting.
Secret projecting! He's excited for this.
Would he like to present the book to some secret project greens so they can ask any questions they may have about the translation?
Yeah!
He can come to a place and meet some greens! They are all so excited about this project.
Oh so they have been told what it was after all?
They have been told that it is groundwork for space colonization among other things and involves unprecedented advances which could be summarized as magical! Some of them have more information than that, probably so Kaede doesn't surprise them!
Right-o! It is in fact magical. Here's some magic.
Oh boy!
So magic is done by magic people—daeva—who come in three kinds. Magic is extremely dangerous—black holes and furniture and such. Not that most daeva would do that, of course, they have different personalities just like Amentans, but, you know, it takes one. Are they very very clear on how very very dangerous they can be?
Yes.
Okay so daeva can be summoned, and there are bindings, and you can make a deal with them. You can dismiss them before agreeing on a deal or after you've paid them by concentrating on wanting them gone for a minute or uh dying. Also here's the story of furniture angel. Daeva can be very very very dangerous.
They understand.
Right then. Bindings! This is a book about this. The full course takes a while, it is not immediately straightforward, he is going to teach them how to do it the right way and there are going to be tests.
They can handle it. They were selected by a process that seemed to involve Governor Avalor calling university administrators and going "you know those talented young greens who just can't pick a field but have loads of potential? I found their field."
Ooh it's good to deal with smart people. He teaches them summoning!
They are diligent and excited.
Before they can summon their first daeva Kaede informs them of the risk of becoming one after death.
That sounds... probably cool? Compared to being dead.
Yeah he thinks it's a pretty sweet deal but who knows some people might have objected.
Okay so who wants to summon a fairy?
These greens want to!
So they can summon! Hi fairy these are students they are learning how to summon to get their license.
"What's with the hair?" asks the fairy.
"Everyone at school has green hair," says a green earnestly.
"Huh. Okay."
So: they can make a deal with the fairy, something in exchange for (usually) some service, and then the person who summoned them has to concentrate on wanting them gone for a minute.
They ask the fairy if it's okay to resummon him a few times so they can each have a turn and then the fairy can have a stack of paper books. The fairy accepts. They each have a turn and the last one gives the fairy the books.
The lessons will probably progress quite nicely, then.
Yup. It turns out handpicked greens working on a secret project integral to the future of their entire species learn faster than college kids who are dividing their time between summoning, English Lit, and beer.
Sorta expected, really. He designs a test different than the one he passed because honestly fuck gags.
The book mentions them but the greens don't really see the use unless it's a common problem for daeva to talk at inopportune times in an attempt to mess up their summoners.
It's not; he explains the reason.
Can't people just... not trade their souls?
In theory demons are just that good at convincing others to sell their souls. But also demons can't actually do that.
They will spot each other while summoning demons in case it turns out Kaede is mistaken and conventional wisdom is correct.
That is reasonable! Some demons may in fact offer to get their souls but they're not typically supernaturally persuasive about it.
Why do demons want souls?
Kaede thinks it started as a pretty common prank and then since people would only gag demons the ones who do answer are the ones who don't mind being gagged so there's some selection for being so altruistic you want to help or for being able to get what you want in spite of the gag, which is easy when the thing you want is stereotypical.
Huh.
They could also ask the demons?
They make a note of that.
And eventually they will in fact get to summon demons!
Yes! Terraformer demons!!!
Yep! Not before they actually pass the test but she'll be very surprised if they don't. And they can ask them what's up with the soul thing, too
They seem to be sort of indulging her on the whole test thing but none of them attempt unauthorized demon summoning.
Sure sure as long as they understand that black holes.
They are aware.
Good.
Demons!
Avalor writes her that she can probably scale back to email consulting now.
She probably can, yes.
Here is a lot of money as compensation for her time.
...thanks. She's not really sure what to do with a lot of money, are there charitable orgs around?
Plenty! Voa has a charity certification system to ensure that charities are doing legitimate things within their cause area.
Any about reds?
There are actually a handful of charities that do things with reds. Three. There is Red Aid, which appears to be run by reds and says it will give donations directly to needy reds. There is Red Tour, which has open-top buses that reds can sit in and look at tourist and nature things and occasionally select outdoor concerts and theater, without leaving the bus, since normally they would not get to go places. There is Shadow Scholar, which does a buddy program between reds learning things like medicine and construction so they have someone to ask questions who went to a real medical school or whatever, in case they can't find stuff online.
That first one, that looks good.
They will happily accept her donation and she can decide if she wants any information about who they're funding this month.
She kinda does, yeah.
Then she can get a little e-newsletter with a picture of a red kid holding a teddy bear. This month Red Aid has given money to this list of names, who needed car tuneups, furniture, debt relief, food assistance, medical help, respite childcare, shoes, Shadow Scholar fees, electrical repair, and an internet upgrade to one neighborhood that was on four-year-old tech.
...goodness. She's actually kinda heartened that Red Aid exists at all, though.
There are buttons in the email to allow her to set up a recurring donation, sponsor a neighborhood, donate physical goods, stop receiving these emails, and direct a fraction of online purchases from participating retailers to Red Aid.
Ooh what are the retailers?
Apparently a majority of large online retailers will let you send some of the proceeds of your purchases to a charity of your choice; Red Aid is just one you can pick.
That's... kinda surprising, honestly.
She reads the news and checks her emails frequently.
The news is mostly about Imde Province being ceded and some about a sex scandal with a regional governor (she slept with her husband's girlfriend's husband, which is unremarkable, and had a child therewith, which is remarkable, and is fighting to count the kid under his allocation and not hers (it's her third) so the baby won't be adopted out, which is exciting) and some about tornado warnings and heat waves and the latest in televised entertainment.
...what else is there to do?
There is lots of televised entertainment!
That's boring. Does Avalor seem to need her for anything?
Avalor occasionally asks if she needs anything. But no.
Okay.
...okay. She'll go out, then, with her pocket everything, and oh-so-casually start heading towards the red neighborhood.
The red neighborhood is clearly marked and surrounded mostly by dead ends; at its only entrance is a parking structure. A hearse drives out over a contraption that shrinkwraps its tires, then it accelerates down the road.
Huh. Is there anywhere out-of-sight where she can hide?
...she could go in a bush?
She... kinda wants to do some detail work that she'll need to look at—an alley, maybe? A red one even.
This near the red district instead of trash alleys they seem to have chute-based setups.
Hmm... okay... and reds only come and go in those trucks?
Looks like.
Hmm... how much air surveillance is there?
There are not flying security cameras or anything.
And anywhere in particular she could fly without risking being caught on pocket everythings?
Anybody could be looking out the window. There's lots of windows.
Okay so not that. Any other obvious ways to get inside if you can look like whatever you want and reshape matter at will?
She could tunnel through a building. She could turn her hair red and walk in, in case they ever do that and she just hasn't seen it done.
That last thing is the thing she'd been planning on doing before seeing that apparently pretty much everyone just uses trucks. Tunnelling through is... a possibility... Any convenient buildings that would allow that more-or-less straightforwardly?
There are plenty of buildings that share walls with red buildings, albeit for a value of "sharing walls" that means "there is an extra, third wall between the two walls belonging directly to each building".
Any that share walls with dead ends? She doesn't want to suddenly tunnel to someone's kitchen.
Hard to tell from ground level and outside the red district.
Are all of these dividing walls extremely tall or something?
It's densely built. There are no short buildings.
And none of the very tall buildings on the red side have gaps indicative of dead ends?
Not that she can see from here.
Hmm. She'll go looking for a bar or a restaurant or some place like that that looks like she can slip in to and out of unnoticed.
There is a little dive bar, if she goes a quarter of the way around, that looks like it might serve.
In she goes, out comes a purple with a different face. And this purple will start walking around the red neighborhood, looking for a place that's more obviously a dead end.
The architecture is really uncooperative. Nobody wants to look at the red neighborhood and its buildings are shorter than those in the surroundings.
...how about one of those buildings with the chutes, she'll look for one of those.
They do have chutes. She could climb in a chute if she tried.
And they're not watched?
They're not watched but they are not invisible. Architects just have no respect for her desire to sneak into a red district.
Yeah. But she's okay with not invisible as long as there are times when she could actually slip in unnoticed.
If she can see into windows that are designed for privacy of occupants, she can sure detect such times! If she can't do that then she has no idea.
Ughhhh.
Fine. She'll wait until the evening. Back to the hotel with her.
The hotel is waiting for her! Night arrives on schedule.
How much easier is it for her to sneak?
It is darker. The architecture, not being were-architecture, remains.
But some other things might change because it's night, like the number of people walking around and being in particular parts of the city and their buildings. And given the higher density living thing they have going on here...
There are fewer people out and about, more lights on behind windows.
And do those lights also have shadows that might indicate someone is behind them or looking through them?
Some of them! Very blurry.
And are there any greys that look likely to want to know what she's up to if she loiters?
None patrolling near here right now.
Then she'll walk around a bit, making sure not to stay in any one place too long. Maybe when it gets late enough everyone will be asleep.
It is not a very sleepy city.
Change of plans: find an unobserved place like a laundromat or something she can tunnel through.
(She has read the laws about pollution hysteria, she's not gonna invite that.)
Laundromats seem not to be in vogue.
Is literally every inch of this goshdarned neighborhood watched?!
Nobody's setting out to make it difficult, but it's very densely packed and some people are nocturnal and it's not set up to make sure one can sneak unobserved into the red neighborhood either.
Surely there are buildings whose toilets or other unwatched rooms have walls adjacent to the red district!
With very dedicated hunting she can find a third floor restaurant bathroom that seems to have an adjoining wall!
She is so dedicated.
Okay, she'll first study that wall pretty thoroughly and take pictures on her pocket everything so she can put it back then she starts making a very very careful hole, paying attention particularly to wiring and plumbing—
There is plenty of wiring and plumbing and then a fridge.
Cupboard to one side. Stove to the other.
...uh...
Any space above the stove?
Some. There's a stack of pots on it.
Okay... if she's extremely careful and turns wall into cloudfluff and then turns that into horizontal wall can she... crawl out without knocking anything over?
It's a tight squeeze, but yes, now she's in some strangers' kitchen.
Okay, so she can start reforming the wall—she might need some light but she won't use her pocket everything's actual flashlight, just its screenlight, dimmed—what does the surrounding wall look like—
Brick.
—easy enough. She rebuilds. And on that note, turns her hair red.
Now, what's the place like?
Cramped but not really cluttered. Dark. Quiet breathing from bedrooms.
Okay, she looks around just enough to memorize the place then turns off the light and very quietly heads for a door.
The door creaks.
She freezes.
Somebody wakes up. "Honey? Is it time already?"
Oh she is so not moving.
"It's so dark, I feel like I barely slept - honey?"
Nope, she is not moving or saying anything, you just imagined it, go back to bed.
"- it's barely past midnight what are you doing home what happened -" Bedroom door opens.
Shit shit shit—" You're dreaming," Kaede whispers, changing her hair around and making her skin change a bit to make her look blurrier and more dreamlike. "Go back to bed."
...the red lady blinks at her.
"Good night," she whispers, and turns around to walk towards the door (which now has a cloudfluff interior that she can step through)—
"- I can't read clocks in my dreams," breathes the red lady.
Nope through the cloudfluff (very ethereally and dreamlike) which is back in place and is now a solid part of a door again where can she run—
She is in an apartment hallway, dimly lit by lights in various states of disrepair.
And stairs presumably?
Elevator. Off to the left.
...come on surely there are emergency stairs or some such? She needs to get out of view.
No stairs. Apparently they don't have the same fire codes here.
You have got to be kidding her.
Okay, the floor just under her feet is cloudfluff now and she holds onto the edges of the hole she just made so she can brace herself some—
Ominous creaking.
And the cloudfluff can go back and become floor/ceiling again come on it can't be that hard to just go away.
Now she is on a different floor of the building.
And she has a different face—boy face, even—and she calls the elevator.
It comes. It disgorges a red, who blinks at her. "Who're you?"
"—Naol. Who're you?"
"...I live here. Do you live here?"
"No, I don't," she says, pursing her lips a bit.
"What are you doing here?"
"Visiting."
"Who?"
"I don't know that I should say."
"I never saw you before."
"And vice-versa."
"I live here. Where're you from?"
"Elsewhere. And I'm on my way out, so if you'll excuse me—"
"Are you a burglar?"
She blinks slowly and shows her empty hands. "Nope. Uh, do you want me to show you what I have in my pockets...?"
"Yeah, that'd be good. And then I wanna show you out of the building and see if Daza'll wake up to have a look at you."
Pockets: pocket everything, wallet.
"Who's Daza?"
"...Daza be-Vai em-Adorao."
"Oh. Okay."
He waves her into the elevator.
She goes.
And out and down the narrow little street to a rowhouse. He knocks.
She waits.
Eventually a tired red lady comes to the door. "What is it?"
"Do you know this guy?"
"...no."
"Found him wandering the Abda building."
"Name?"
"Says it's Naol."
"Where's he from?"
"Didn't say."
"Hiya."
"That's not a city. Where are you from, Naol?"
"'Nother planet."
"Very funny. Where are you from? Why are you here?"
"I'm from another planet. I'm here by accident." She changes her face to be feminine again, but not hers.
...Daza is struck somewhat speechless.
"It's nice to meet you. My name isn't really Naol. Who're you?"
"- Daza, uh, ma'am."
"The whole concept of castes and cleanliness is honestly ludicrous, you don't need to do the thing you do to the other castes to make it seem like you're meek and helpless. I'd—rather not give you my real name, because some of the blues I'm working with would be rather upset if they found out I came here, so you can call me Sam. And it's actually better if they don't find out at all because otherwise they'd panic about you having magic."
"- we. Don't have magic."
"But I do. Why'd he think you'd know me, are communities here that tightly knit? I suppose they would be wouldn't they."
"Please don't try to give us magic. They'll kill us all."
"Okay.—uh, the magic I'd give you would actually give you all an afterlife. But I'll listen to you on that, most of the point of coming here was trying to figure out how to do right by you instead of listening to a blue tell me how to do that."
"...so you went into an apartment building in the middle of the night."
"I couldn't very well walk in without absolutely terrifying everyone."
"Well. Everyone who doesn't know you're here will not be terrified."
"Yeah. So I tried to minimize—probability of contact. I was not expecting someone to be using the elevator past midnight."
"A lot of us work nights."
"I suppose that makes sense. Still probably better that one of you sees the alien than that one of them sees someone sneaking in."
"Clean castes come in here sometimes."
"Social workers?" she guesses.
"Deliveries. Cops. Eccentric photographers. Social workers. The problem'd be if you came out without going through the shower."
"Eccentric photographer would work more easily, I think, I'm posing as a green."
"You really shouldn't be here."
She sighs. "So the best way to do right by you is leaving?"
"I - you - you don't belong here, if anyone finds out -"
She touches her hair. "Finds what out, I'm just a red."
Daza looks despairing. "The decontamination exit is that way. White door."
Her hand drops back to her side. "Never mind that, then, no pretending I'm red. But I think it's pretty clear I don't know enough about anything here that my own ideas will be very good. If you tell me that just doing whatever Governor Avalor thinks is best is, in fact, best, then I will, but—if it's not then it'd be a very good idea if I had more of a clue. I have an email address," she adds hopefully.
"We have email addresses too. Email is safer. The white door, over there."
She sighs and gives him her email address.
They stare at her.
"—I'll just go, then, I guess."
She goes.
There are clear printed shower instructions and measured ridiculous dispensations of soap.
And if she recalls correctly it takes a long time, right?
Hours.
Ughhhh.
Fine. She can go through this. Ugh.
There are several separate shower chambers. She is supposed to put her clothes through a separate automated cleaning process. There are many kinds of soap, although they all smell nice. (They do fry her hair, or try.)
They can keep on trying.
And finally the last timer dings and she is allowed to leave the last chamber and collect her clothes.
Finally. This was awful.
Her hair's just fine (and green), though. Out she goes and makes her way back to the hotel.
"Whoa," a purple comments as she emerges, "your hair looks great, how do you do that?"
"It's a wig, I actually just shaved bald to not have to go through the hassle."
"Oh. I bet a wig that comes out nice is stupid expensive, too..."
"Yeah, it kinda was," she sighs. "But I might come back a few more times—art project—so."
"Kinda art project?"
"Well I'm going for a photography thing but—I'm not sure yet, I had an inspiration the other day but it's still got to stick somewhere more specific..."
"Wow." He shakes his head. "Well, if the wig takes dye I know somebody'd want it secondhand."
"I'll keep that in mind!"
"Yeah-huh." And he moves on. No one else interrupts her on her way to the hotel.
Before she gets there her face is her own again.
She checks her inbox.
No reds have emailed her.
Sigh. That did not go very well. She should read up more on this world's history, particularly anything about them.
...she wonders if there's anything that isn't infected by the stupid taboo, there.
Why are reds so gross? Red executed for pollution violation. Reds are so gross. One looked at me (you poor thing) (are you okay?). The reds were very slow to repair the toilet in my grandma's house. Reds should only be allowed one child by default and only the ones who behave themselves should get more.
...what does this latter person have to say about, oh, incentives? Have they heard of Calado?
Calado doesn't do one by default, totally different.
And supposing none of them behave?
Oh, most of them behave, it's just a few bad reds who get all the press.
Is it. And what counts as a "bad red"?
Uppity or lazy ones who don't know their places.
Are there literally no reds on the internet.
Sometimes someone on an online game or a social media site is outed as red. This is not socially good for the red or anyone who was friends with them.
Reds also, if she looks very hard, have their own sites.
She does! She does look very hard. What are they like?
Social media sites, pretty much. Just with reds on them.
Ooh. Okay she'll explore that—can she create an account...?
Most of these sites require an invite to do that, and she can't see much without an account, either, just the occasional public post which may be curated specifically for prying eyes.
What about the sites that don't require an invite?
Innocuous blogging about the weather, food, and similar, distinct mostly in being openly red and painfully bland.
Wow.
Okay.
She supposes she'll spend the next while browsing idly for anything more interesting and hope she gets emailed.
Not soon, anyway.
Not in a couple of days?
Nope.