Nod nod.

Home they go. 

She reports to Aitim about her test results and says that Kan says she can be a terrifyingly competent blue.

"Yes you can! Is that what you want?"

"I'm not sure I want to scare people."

"I do not think you will have to scare people."

"The thing you do sounds complicated but I don't know what my thing is yet."

"Gosh. One and a half and you don't have your whole life planned out yet."

"Well I want to know what to work on!"

"Reading things carefully and learning what's in them and what the person who wrote them wants you to believe and how hard they're trying to convince you. Saying things in a way that makes people believe you. Treating people in a way that makes them feel like you value them and have high expectations of them. Looking at numbers and noticing something suspicious or strange. I think those are useful skills no matter what you end up doing."

"How do you practice the middle things? And why does it matter how hard people are trying?"

"Well, if someone writes a memo and is trying a little to make it seem like their division is doing valuable work, then that's about what you'd expect. If they're trying ridiculously hard to make it seem like that, that's unusual, and it's probably worth figuring out why it is so important to them."

"Why would it be extra important?"

"Maybe they're worried their department will be shut down, maybe they're covering for something bad that happened or trying to do some good news before some bad news, maybe they think you don't respect them and think that memos will change that, maybe their department needs help."

"That's a lot of different things, if all you know is how much they want to convince you how do you tell?"

"I would look into it further. "They really want to convince me" isn't enough to know anything but it's enough to suspect there is something worth knowing."

"How do you look into it?"

"I might check other reports they've filed recently to see if they're trying to convince other people or just me. I might check if there's been a change in the people in that department recently - lots of people leaving or transferring, or new people hired, or a change in roles. I might drop by there with a minor errand to see how people react."

"Hmmmmmm."

"Doesn't sound fun?"

"It sounds fun, it's just sort of sneaky."

"It is really valuable to have more information than you have reason to have. Once people know you have more information than you have reason to have, they will start being more honest with you, because they won't know if you already know."

"But you have a reason, you noticed the thing about the memo."

"Yes, but people don't know that, and I don't tell them, they just know I know lots of things."

"Sneaky."