Right, yes, sorry. Um. I don't know how much is reasonable and if I asked someone who wasn't you I suspect they'd quote me a figure significantly below reasonable because you're red.

The army paid me partly depending on how much work there was but the base was - She quotes a figure.

Per--week? day? month?

Month.

Illia sends her a sum half again as much as she named.

Ooooh. *cash register noise*

*giggle*

Katin in a new outfit, looking nonplussed on Peka's knee.

Awwwwwwwwww.

Meanwhile, Orvara's test of purple rotation in the one city is going well. They're training more purples for the work and would like to know if the aliens have any use for the other reds when the time comes.

Yes definitely they do. Absolutely.

Great! They removed the one neighborhood very neatly, can they do it like that for all of them?

Yes.

Orvara is so delighted to work with them.

They're worried about running out of satellite internet subscription and need money to re-up.

She sends them the money to re-up.

She gets a nice thank-you note from a polar red.

Aw! That is nice.

So the ones at the pole are keeping the ones still in Orvara from panicking or starting riots but if you think you won't be able to support all the reds in the entire world you should probably say so that they know when to stop going quietly obsolete.

There may be tradeoffs, I should maybe be making them more explicit so you can help weigh them.

Mm?

We can support the entire world's population of reds. Whether we can do it without burning serious bridges elsewhere is another question. For example, it would get a lot easier if we started teaching reds magic.

Yep everyone will panic.

I guess you could support us all and when someone goes "hey uh about planets" you could go "yeah we're kinda swamped with our reds but we were told people would rather not have the reds do their own magic..." but you run a risk of people going "we'll get rid of them for you" instead of "we can compromise on that for planets"?

Anyone who attacks polar reds is going to regret it. One way or another.

Yeah but they have to try it first to know for sure