"That must help a lot."

"I imagine so, yes."

"How hard is - de-aging -"

"I've done it and I'm only three-quarters of the way through my biology degree?"

"I'm a botanist, is that applicable?"

"To some extent? We can do it if you can't."

"That doesn't scale, you doing everything."

"I know but we don't want de-aging to scale until there are planets so I'm not worrying about scaling it until closer to then."

She nods.

"Anyway, if that's something you're interested in we can make sure you learn it."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"What do I need to do?"

"I'm waiting until I've done enough interviews to know whether it's worth it to set up a class or just do individual tutoring."

"When will that be?"

"A little less than a month from now."

"All right."

They go through a few more interviews of various country and caste; an orange from Anitam and a purple from Tapa. A purple from Rivik and a grey from Evalee are rejected.

The next interviewee is a green from Voa. They're meeting at her dorm room; she's a university student, apparently.

Illia gets some gawkers on the way through the dorm but nobody bothers her.

The university student opens the door and--stares.

"...When they said the aliens looked like us that wasn't what I thought they meant."

...The looks were weird enough, but she sounds like Odette too.

"You bear a striking resemblance to my twin sister."

"That's funny, you bear a striking resemblance to mine. You even sound like her, modulo language and accent and so on."

"Same. And you said on your application you expected to have a strong Sympathy resistance--Odette has a phenomenal Sympathy resistance--"

"This is bizarre. Are you fucking with me."

"I'd ask you the same thing except that you have no way of finding out relevant things about us and mimicking them, whereas we are magic aliens who could plausibly do that. Uh. Regardless I promise I am not fucking with you?"

"...I'm not completely sure I believe you. It's a simpler explanation."