bus goes to elendil and i could meet you there it's only non-member states where i'm not allowed

yeah okay. kid has a day off school in three

cool

He's there.

So's the mugger with a purple two year old boy in tow.

"Hey! There's a direct to my planet from here, platform 19." Gesture. "How've you been -"

"The money's good," says the mugger, tugging the boy by the hand. "D'you have to get it all changed in Oahk since you can't wade through our pit?"

"There's an online service that's presumably doing that, yeah, I just pay a stupidly expensive fee. I don't know if I'm allowed on Oahk, are they members yet -"

"I don't think so. Closer than we are."

"Then no go. Good thing my buddies and I already did Federation Earth, I guess next time we can do an Arda or something." He leads them platform 19-wards. "Hey kid," he adds as an afterthought. "I'm Dave."

"Hi alien," says the kid. "Dave is a weird name."

"Well, what's yours?"

"Adro."

"See, I think that's weirder. Where I'm from Dave is a very normal name. It's short for David. He's in the Bible. I forget for what, though."

"What's the Bible?"

"It's the book Jesus's apostles wrote. You read it in church and stuff. Not so much anymore, the world's got too much else going on."

"None of that made any sense," says Adro.

"Uh. Some worlds have a all-powerful creator called God who made them and pays special attention to their people. Some of them are really conspicuous and some are subtle and some maybe aren't actually a thing. And in our world, the way it goes is that God made us, and then we were fucking up a lot and so he had a son, whose job was to - forgive us. No matter what. And love us no matter what. And the son grew up and went around teaching, you know, give to the poor and choose God above everything and turn the other cheek and he got a big following and it skeeved the government out so they executed him."

"That's weird," says Adro.

"Aliens all think so, yeah. Anyway David's in there somewhere but I forget where exactly. He kills a dude with a slingshot and he plays harp and he's king unless I'm thinking of someone else."

"That's three different castes," says Adro.

"...well, that's the whole idea, right, he's a shepherd and that's why he made a good King because he got it."

"He's a shepherd? That's four. You can't be most of the castes."

"...why not?"

"It's just stupid."

"I guess the harp might have been more of a hobby." He looks it up on his phone. "He sent his friend off to die in a war so he could have his wife, is that a caste?"