"Yes, that he knows."

"Not prohibitive?"

" - we don't, personally, get annoyed at the culture we're immersed in, wouldn't be constructive, but notice how thoroughly he's surrounded himself with people who are really upset about it, well past the amount that's strategically useful..."

"Has he? Why?"

"Because his species is in fact kind of frustrating. And it'd be horrible and exhausting, being surrounded by people you're using to do things they don't believe in or agree with."

"Ah."

"So I think the way he feels about other people finding Amenta frustrating is 'no kidding, but give me a couple years'."

"Fair enough."

"It'll be impressive if he pulls it off."

"Yes."

"I'm proud of our country. I think it'll mostly just make things better to have more resources."

"I think so too!"

"And apparently it makes a big difference to plan your trains well. We will have such well-planned trains."

"I like our canals! Can we not scale canals?"

"I haven't found anyone who scaled canals but I haven't asked Bar for books specifically about that, maybe we can scale canals."

"I'll get over it if we can't, they're just so us."

"Well, we hardly have to fill them in with dirt even if we can't make them the backbone of a public transit system."

Giggle.

They work on their infrastructure plans!

In Revelation, they decide to see if daeva have been summoned anywhere else.

They start picking their way through the complete works of Singularity.

Singularity: has Elves and orcs and Dwarves and beautiful art and music and a planet which recently got fed into a black hole.

Meanwhile in Milliways Cam catches up on the news and oh for fuck's sake.

"...what happened-"

"Revelation decided to see if daeva had been anywhere else and now I'm under arrest. They can't get me till I'm dismissed but -"

"But they'll have a nice bout of demon hysteria in the meantime? Can you write them and clarify."