She nods when the yellow describes her translation.

"She doesn't have an everything or anything maybe it's ear implants."

"Weren't aliens supposed to be listening to the radio?"

"They appeared under the table, they're not TV aliens."

"Everything?"

Luta waves her pocket everything.

"Want understand everything."

"We don't have any spares -"

"I'm going to upgrade mine but the work stuff is sensitive -"

"Understand," she says patiently. She pulls up the illusion of the yellow and the alien again, this time with a pocket everything in the yellow's pictogram slot.

"I wonder how she does that."

"Hologram projector or something."

"Where, up her nose? Anyway, uh, not sure how to give a tutorial on pocket everythings -"

She sighs.

She calls up more illusions.

This is her healing a sick person, this is Illia making a diamond out of ash, this is Atennesi raising the city into the air for the first time, this is a glassworker making molten glass flow through the air...

"You're a movie," says Alaior again.

"Sure is, kid," chuckles a grownup, patting her on the head. "Movie aliens. Sufficiently advanced and all."

"Mother do you have any way to jump the call queue," asks Luta.

"Not from outside the office."

"Call queue?"

"The senator is very busy, so when people call him, they have to wait."

"Call?"

"How does the translation not - I don't know any synonyms for 'call' -"

"Phone?"

"Sure, bust out the period piece vocabulary."

"Phone?"

"I dunno what else to tell you -"

Alaior says, "When the waiting is over Auntie will talk to the senator and he will talk back."

"He--talk? He..." She looks around dramatically, indicating that there aren't any senators around.

"The pocket everything gets his talking from where he is."

When this is translated Illia looks very excited!

Alaior giggles behind her hands.

She gestures to the everything, makes a querying sound, and then holds her hands apart. Lightning jumps between them.

Everybody startles.

"Those are really good pyrotechnic gloves," someone mutters.

"Pocket everythings are electric," Alaior confirms.

She seems very excited when this is translated.

Odette gestures at her sister. "Want understand electric."

"I don't know how electricity works," frowns Alaior.

"Now hang on a second," says one of the adults, "how the heck do sufficiently-advanced aliens not understand electricity -"