They're on the list for that. It's not likely but things happen, sometimes, usually in the middle of a stock market crash, and there's no cost to be on the list.

They make a midnight trip to a furniture store to outfit a bedroom and to a grocery store to buy several hundred things she might like to eat and to a clothing store to buy her outfits and by the time they get home there are four grandparents at the house and time for a quick sweep for things a one-year-old shouldn't put in her mouth and then they have a daughter.

She is brought over by a cheery orange; the kid is wearing a rather institutional black jumpsuit. She blinks at them. Her hair is a lovely azure; if it had been ambiguous at all they would have figured her for purple or green because this just never happens.

"You still don't remember your name, dear?" the orange asks.

"Right," she says.

"Well, then, I'm sure your fathers would love to name you."

"...do you think she'll remember in a couple of days - how do you forget your name -"

"I don't remember anything," she says, "from before I woke up in the basket."

"It's not impossible but you need something to call her in the meantime anyway," says the orange.

"They were calling me Sky," says the little blue. "But not because it is my name. It is not."

They look at each other anxiously. "Can you think of something you would like?"

"We did have a list for a girl - Alatana or Notelle -"

She wrinkles her nose. "I don't know what things people are named but I don't like those."

- giggle. "Do you know sounds you like? Names are made from the same sounds as words -"

He looks up blue baby names on a pocket everything! "Lintalai. Savasa. Sintha. Kalea. Makal -"

"Not that one, it's nearly my brother's name."

"Sintha and Lintalai are okay."

"I like Lintalai."

"I do too."

"Okay. Is that my name now?"

"If you like it."

"Lin-ta-lai. Yeah."

Parents beam at her.

She shuffles awkwardly.

The orange has an information packet - since Lintalai didn't require emergency medical care when found they're responsible for getting that all set up, in the unlikely event it turns out she was kidnapped or something they are obliged to go through an arbitration process, here's a writeup of the circumstances under which she was found, they checked for hair dye but cannot guarantee admixture or that the color won't change, etc.

All of that is fine!

They take their daughter inside. It's a big house - not a big footprint, but four stories and high ceilings - and there is a room set up for her.

She looks rather solemnly at everything.

Dining room! Playroom! Big open room with a bar! Guest bedroom! Her parents' bedroom! Office! Secondary dining room! Third dining room!

"Do you ever need all of the dining rooms at the same time?"

"No, but it's nice to hold events in a dining room that's the right size for the number of people invited."

"What would happen if there was too much room?"

"People might wonder if more people were expected to attend, and why they didn't."

"You could tell them."

"If we had a house with only one room for entertaining then we would have to tell them."

She accepts this explanation and investigates the contents of her room.

Her room has a bed and a bookshelf with age-appropriate books on the reachable shelves and books for older children on the taller shelves. There are bins full of puzzles and games and blocks and toys. One wall has a miniature apartment building with apartments with dolls of all hair colors. Next to her bed are stuffed animals and soft blankets. There's a closet full of clothes.

She decides via some inscrutable process that this is acceptable probably.

"How come you decided to adopt me?" she asks. "I asked the people if I could just go somewhere myself and they said no, I had to be adopted."

"If you went somewhere by yourself you would have a hard time earning money and finding food and a place to stay. People who would like to have a baby but cannot have one themselves go on a list to get a baby if there is a baby in need of parents."

"I can talk. They decided I am one, not a baby, because I can talk."

"You talk very well. But there is no list for adopting one-year-olds because it almost never happens."

"Oh." Pause. "I didn't know what parents were when I woke up in the basket, they had to tell me."

"That must have been confusing."

"Yes. I don't know what other things I don't know that everyone knows."

"One-year-olds are not expected to know everything. You can ask us lots of questions and we'll try to explain things to you."

"Okay. What are your names?"

"I am Kan Neli and he's Aitim Neli. Neli is a job name; it is the job name for people who want to hold national office."

"Wanting to do that is a job?"

"There are lots of jobs which are jobs for people who want to learn the skills they will need to do that eventually, and the job name goes with those."

"Oh."

"You will probably pick a job name when you are four or five."

"Okay. How do people decide?"

"People will come to your school to talk about what they do and what you have to be good at to do it, and you might do short practice jobs do see which ones you like, and you can read books where people talk about their jobs and what they did, and then you can decide. Some people change many times, some people do one thing their whole lives."

Nod.

"Do you know if you know how to read?"

"I can read."

"Then I bet your books will be helpful for learning things you don't know."

Nod, nod. What books has she got?

She has Letters of the Alphabet and Animals You Can See At The Zoo and Animals You Can't See At The Zoo and Countries and Jobs (and the people who do them)! and The Rabbit War and Songs for Everyone and Baby Princess! and What Does A Blue Do? and What Does A Green Do? and What Does A Yellow Do? and What Does A Grey Do? and What Does An Orange Do? and What Does A Purple Do? and Trains and How To Build Very Tall and Baby's First Tax Policy Guide and Pretty Things For You To See and The Good Night Book.

"They said I am going to be blue because of my hair."

"That is not how it usually works but when we don't have any other information we use hair. I think you'll be a great blue."

"Why do you think so?"

"You ask thoughtful questions, you are good at asserting what you want, and you are very smart, because you can read already even though you are very small."

Lintalai smiles.

"Are you tired?"

"No."

"Would you like to read some of your stories?"

She pulls out The Rabbit War. "I didn't think rabbits had wars."

"That is a book about a war that Baravi fought with rabbits. Baravi lost."

She opens the book.

There is a map of the world. There is a large island, separated from the main continent by a narrow channel, circled. 

This is Baravi. Baravi is a big, nice country with lots of grazing animals.

A long time ago, Baravi did not have any rabbits.

North of Baravi is Litholee. They did have rabbits. Actually, almost the whole world had rabbits - but not Baravi.

Because they were an island, no rabbits had gotten there.

Until one day, someone brought rabbits to Baravi.

We do not know who it was. It might have been a visitor who had a pet. It might have been a careless cargo ship with some rabbit stowaways. It might have been someone who wanted Baravi to have rabbits.

Whoever it was, they made a very bad mistake!

Rabbits had lots of baby rabbits. The baby rabbits grew up and had baby rabbits. And soon Baravi was overrun with rabbits!

In most places that have rabbits, there are also foxes and hawks, which eat rabbits. That means that there are never too many.

But in Baravi there were too many. There were rabbits everywhere. There were rabbits eating all the crops. There were rabbits destroying all the grazing land. There were too many rabbits.

Baravi decided to send their army. They taught them how to kill rabbits and they sent them out to kill as many as they could. 

They did this for years!

There were still rabbits! 

They sent more people with better weapons!

There were still rabbits!

Baravi did not know what to do.

What would you do?

 

 

Baravi asked their greens!

The greens said that the rabbits were probably here to stay. But there would not be as many rabbits if there were rabbit predators.

Baravi did not want to add more animals! That sounded very bad. 

Some greens had a clever idea. They came up with a rabbit flu! They said it could kill all the rabbits.

Other greens were worried. They thought the rabbit flu might get people sick. They had to test it carefully.

After lots of testing, they were sure they had a rabbit flu that would not hurt any people.

Helicopters dropped it on fields.

Most of the rabbits went away.

But not all of them! Some rabbits did not get the flu. And their babies did not get the flu either.

Baravi greens tried again. They made three rabbit flus! No rabbit would be immune to three rabbit flus!

This time it worked.

Doing all of this cost Baravi lots of money - it was as expensive as a normal war.

And lots of Baravi farmers suffered while there were rabbits eating their crops.

Everyone learned that the best way to win a war with rabbits is to catch it before it starts.

Island countries have strict rules when people come to visit - to make sure that they don't have a rabbit in their bag!

This book is very absorbing.

Her parents sit on her bed and snuggle each other and watch her read.

She tries What Greens Do next to corroborate the claim that they do rabbit flus.

Do you have a favorite song? A green did that! Do you have a beautiful painting on your wall? A green did that! Do you take the train to go to the park or to school? A green did that!

Greens are inventors and artists. They come up with ideas for how to make the world better. Greens study how everything works, and then they test new things that might work even better. Greens study history, so that we don't make the same mistakes over and over. Greens study old books, so we know how people used to think and whether they had good ideas we have forgotten.

Greens also study how the country works, so they can make it work better. They research what happens when we change a law, so we know whether the change was a good idea. They look at lots and lots of numbers and do math to help us make better decisions. Running a country is hard. It is easier with greens to study things carefully so we know what to do!

Greens also make beautiful things for people to appreciate. They write stories and plays and movies and television shows. They act in those plays and movies and television shows! They play musical instruments. They design public art installations like this one. 

What do all of these things have in common? They are all smart, creative work. To make great art, you have to know a lot - about paints and brushes and things that other artists have done - and you also have to have a creative spark to think of things that no one has done before.

To do a careful study, you have to know a lot of math and study design and research skills - and you also have to have a creative spark to know what to study and to think of things that might go wrong and to design a great way of using the data you have.

To invent a faster train, you have to know lots of things about how trains go and what we use to build them - and you also have to have a creative spark to think of something even better. 

What do greens do? Greens learn so many things! They understand the thing they do very deeply, better than anyone. And then they use their creative spark to make it even better, and share it with everyone!

She checks her walls for beautiful paintings.

Her walls do not yet have beautiful paintings! There are stars on her ceiling.

Huh. Stars.

"What are movies and television shows?"

"They are like books but have moving pictures instead of words."

She inspects her shelves to see if she has any that move.

He pulls up a video for one-year-olds on his pocket everything. "Like this."

Oh. She watches for a minute. It's pretty boring. She picks up Animals You Can't See At The Zoo.

You cannot see all these miscellaneous animals at the zoo, mostly because they are extinct but sometimes because they are too expensive to keep (they need lots of space) or because this one zoo in Cene has all the living ones and won't share or because they are still in the rainforest and not charismatic enough to be worth having in a zoo as well.

After three books she is a little tired.

"Did you eat dinner before you came over?"

"No."

"Let's get you something to eat. Do you want to walk downstairs or do you want me to carry you?"

"You can carry me."

Downstairs they go with snuggly tiny one-year-old and pick things out of the fridge for her to try. Raspberries! Cheese! Cereal! Walnuts! Bacon strips! Apples! 

She looks extremely skeptical when they offer her cheese and bewildered when they try bacon. She will taste raspberries and cereal and walnuts and apples, with tiny dainty bites.

They will probably have to check in with a doctor to make sure she is not malnourished and that's why she's so tiny. But if those are the things she would like to eat then she can have those.

She doesn't eat much of anything, even the things she says are yummy (mostly fruit).

They will make a doctor's appointment once she goes to bed. "Is that all you want?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Okay. Let's brush your teeth and get ready for bed."

She is also unfamiliar with toothbrushes but tolerates the introduction with only mild annoyance.

"Keeping your teeth healthy is important because you'll have them for a very long time."

"Why does doing that keep them healthy?"

He looks it up. "Brushing gets rid of icky things which might stick to your teeth from eating, and it keeps your gums healthy."

"So if I didn't eat I wouldn't have to?"

"If you didn't eat you wouldn't grow, and you would get very sick and tired, and your brain wouldn't grow and let you learn new things."

"What about on days I don't eat though?"

"Growing people need to eat every day."

That does not sound quite right to Lintalai but she lets it drop.

"Let's read some bedtime stories."

"Okay." She grabs Baby Princess!

Baby Princess wakes up. She looks through her window at all of the people. Some are working. Some are playing. Some are walking. Some are kissing! 

"Baby Princess," says her nanny, "it is time to go to school."

"I don't think so," says the Princess. "There is so much else to do!"

"Baby Princess," says her nanny, "we can do those things after school. If you don't learn math and politics, you won't know the things you need to rule."

Baby Princess goes downstairs. She eats a snack. She hugs her cat. "I don't want to learn those things," she says. "I will hire clever people and they'll tell me what to do."

"Baby Princess," says her nanny, "I see a problem with that plan. Do you ever really listen to all of us who work for you?"

Baby Princess takes her sleepclothes off and puts on her favorite dress. "Sometimes I listen to you," she says, "If I like the thing you said."

"So whatever will you do when your advisors come to you? One says 'I know', one says 'that's wrong', how will you decide who you can trust?"

"Maybe," says the Princess, "I could let them both try things. And then I can just listen to the one whose ideas win!"

"What a good idea," says nanny. "But what if there are ten? And what if some have bad ideas that should not happen anywhere?"

"This is a lot of work," she says, "and I am only two. Maybe today I'll sit and play and learn things when I'm big."

"All right," says her nanny, and the Princess is surprised.

"I thought that you would tell me that I had to go to school."

"I did! And you asked questions, and you listened to the answers. And you came up with ideas and you thought how they might fail. You see, when you're a princess, the whole world is a school. And if you want to learn right here, we'll bring the school to you."

And the Princess was quite happy, and when her tutors came, she asked them lots of questions and she taught them to play games. And when the day was done she said "I tried that, and it worked! I learned a lot of things and I had a lot of fun. I know I have a lot to learn, but learning will be great. Learning is just poking things until they all make sense, and learning how to argue is a kind of learning too. Nanny, I don't think that I should ever go to school."

"Well," said nanny, "you're the princess, and the thing you tried did work. As long as you learn everything, I think that this might work. But now? Guess what? It's time for bed."

...said the princess, "No."

"I suspected that might happen," said her nanny. "Ugh. Please?"

"No."

"If you do not go to bed you will be sleepy the next day."

"But right now I am not sleepy and I want to stay and play."

"Your tutors need not stay all night; they go home to their beds. If you want to learn things you can't play the night away, and then be sleepy and a grouchy princess all througout the day."

"They could stay all night as well," she said, "and sleep when I am tired."

"That is quite an imposition," said the nanny, "they might leave. Then you'd learn things from worse tutors and that wouldn't do at all."

"I could say they cannot leave!" said the princess, quite upset.

"Then all will fear to work for you, and hide away instead!"

"But," she said, "I'm not tired, and this really isn't fair."

"Well, lie down," said her nanny, "and we'll talk it through some more."

"Maybe they could put their lectures on a pocket everything, and then if they were sleeping I could watch it when I pleased."

"But you ask so many questions," said the nanny, "that really will not do. A video won't know the things you'll want explained to you."

"I could have lots of tutors," said the princess in her bed. "And one would always be awake if the others were in bed."

"How would they know what you'd already discussed? You'd waste a lot of time explaining things someone else had said."

"We could invent a special thing so no one needs to sleep?"

"Is that the most important thing for our researchers to do?"

"Yes," said the princess, "sleep is boring and I have so much to do."

"Is it sleeping that is boring or the lying very still?"

"Both of those are boring," says the princess, very still. 

"When I am very tired," says her nanny, "sleep is nice. I lie so quietly, like you, and I imagine jumping mice.

"That's stupid," says the princess, frowning at the wall. 

"I usually can't get to ten, but I bet that you could count them all."

"One, two, three," says the princess, "four five six. How many mice are there?"

"I don't know, I've never reached the end."

"Seven eight nine, ten eleven twelve. You said you only got to ten, but no one counts like me. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen."

And she dropped off to sleep.

And one very tired nanny smiled and hurried off to bed.

"Two is older than me and I'm not a baby," Lintalai objects.

"I think it's a series, there are some where she is a smaller princess."

"Oh. Didn't anyone ever name her?"

"Some stories for children don't name the characters so you can imagine they are you! I don't know if this series does that, I haven't read this book before."

"Am I a princess?"

"You are not. Princesses are in monarchies and Anitam is not a monarchy."

"What is it?"

"We are a democracy. In a monarchy, there is a King or a Queen and one of their children or grandchildren or greatgrandchildren becomes the new King or Queen when the old one dies. In a democracy, people who want to run the country explain why on television and then other people select the best ones."

"Why," yawn, "on television?"

"So lots of people can see it and learn who their choices are."

Yawn.

"We will be in the room right across the hall if you wake up and want to find us. Okay?"

"Okay."

Parents snuggle each other and watch their not-quite-baby.

She falls asleep.

Awwwwwww. They go to bed and coo delightedly and quietly over baaaaby.

She wakes up at about sunrise and does not find herself particularly urgent about finding her dads and goes and reads about what blues do instead.

One of our citizens is in another country when they accidentally get into trouble! A blue will talk with that country's government to figure out what happened and help our citizen get home. A business wants to make cheaper pocket everythings, but they are going to pollute our air. A blue will figure out where we want to allow the factory and how much they should pay for cleanup. Someone steals bikes because they do not want to work hard at a real job! A blue will learn about what happened and decide what they should do to set it right. A city is being planned! Blues will make sure it has good transit and a good mix of buildings for different things.

Blue jobs are jobs that require judgment and foresight. It is very important that blues know how to make a good decision in a hard situation, think about the long-term effects of things, and make decisions in a principled and fair way so that everybody understands them. 

A judge is a blue job. Judges look at court cases. If Tan says that Alike cheated on a deal they had, they will go to a court and a judge will look at the case and decide the truth. 

A ambassador is a blue job. Ambassadors go to other countries and make sure that those countries and Anitam stay friends, by solving problems and sharing information.

A landlord is a blue job. Blues who own land have to hire a very good staff to make sure that the land is managed responsibly. They are involved in city development planning to make sure that we plan cities in a way that keeps them safe, rich, clean, and nice. 

A mayor is a blue job. A mayor plans a city, comes up with city laws, solves problems for the residents, and makes sure that national planners know what their city needs.

A legislator is a blue job. Legislators decide what laws we should have and think how to write the laws so they are clear, helpful, and easy to enforce.

The council is blue. The council makes decisions for all of Anitam, big important decisions like whether we should go to war and how we will allocate credits and how we will spend our money.

There are lots of other blue jobs! Can you think of jobs that require judgment and foresight?

Well, she supposes that will be fine then.

She goes down the stairs and attempts to leave the house.

There is a grey-haired person at the door. "Hello, Lintalai!"

"Hello! I am going outside."

"You should get one of your fathers to go with you!"

"Why?"

"...you're one."

"Yes, I know. I have been outside before."

"Well, in the city you should go outside with one of your fathers."

"Why?"

"Because you might get lost and people who see you will worry about you and your parents will be scared that you're gone."

"I do not want to go very far."

"One of your fathers will be really happy to go with you."

"If they wanted to be outside, they could have gone anyway."

"I expect they want to be with you."

"How about you go get one, and I will go outside."

"I will message them, and you will wait here until they wake up." He pokes a pocket everything.

She tries the doorknob.

The doorknob works fine but the door won't open because he's leaning against it. 

She looks for alternate routes around this annoying obstruction.

There is a little interior courtyard behind the nearest dining room.

That will do.

Little interior courtyard has climbing flower plants on the walls and a shady bench and a little art feature which ripples in the wind.

Oooh. She watches the art feature a bit and then attempts to drag the bench into the sun.

She is too small to drag it; it is stone.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"I am trying to move this bench. It's too heavy."

"It's not really meant to move. Why do you want to move it?"

"I want it to be in the sunshine."

"We can get a lawn chair out of storage." He types something on his pocket everything. "Niam said that you wanted to go out into the city."

"I don't care about being in the city. I want to be outside."

"You can come out here whenever you'd like but if you want to go out front I would like it if you told Aitim or me."

"Okay. Here is fine."

Niam brings a lawn chair, sets it up for her in the sun. 

"Have you gotten breakfast?" Kan asks her.

"No," she says, climbing up.

"We should get breakfast."

"Why?"

"It's important to eat breakfast every day so you can grow."

"I'm not hungry today."

"Maybe we can try some more foods and you'll find one that you like. Do you want to try apples with honey, or a milkshake?"

"What is a milkshake?"

"It has milk and ice cream and cocoa. It's a great thing to have for breakfast."

"I need to look at those things to see if they are food."

He gets her apples and honey and a milkshake.

"That isn't food," she says of the milkshake, but she will eat apples and honey.

He drinks the milkshake. "I think it's very tasty food!"

"Oooh, did you make one for me?"

"I didn't! I just made one for Lintalai but she was in more of a mood for apples and honey."

"I suppose I will have to make myself one. How are you doing, Lintalai?"

"I'm okay. The person at the door would not let me go out it."

"Yes. It is not a good idea to wander around alone until you are bigger. You should come find us so that we can go with you."

"I was not going wandering."

"Once you went outside you might have decided to go wandering after all."

"No."

"That is a very common thing for one-year-olds to do."

"I am only one person."

"Do you not like going outside if people go with you?"

"I didn't want to wait to be outside and you were not already there."

"Well, we will hire somebody to be here and go outside with you if we are not around, does that work?"

"The small outside is outside enough."

"Okay. Would you like to bring your toys out here and play?"

"Okay."

They get her toys which can tolerate being outside. This includes dolls and blocks and some of the books.

She reads another book.

These adorable animals are all in the zoo!

Awwww.

She builds a block city.

Her parents watch happily. After a while they declare it is lunchtime. Will she try yogurt, crackers, snap peas, oatmeal, bread and butter, cauliflower soup, chicken wings, caviar?

She is not impressed with them insisting she eat food again and is having absolutely none of the yogurt, butter, chicken, or caviar, but she will have a cracker and a pea and a spoon of oatmeal and a spoon of soup. Okay, two spoons of soup, it's good soup.

"Tomorrow we are going to go to the doctor and talk with them about whether you are healthy. It might be that you are not eating enough to grow up healthy. The doctor will be able to help us figure that out."

"I'm not hungry."

"Usually people only need to eat when they are hungry, but sometimes something goes wrong with being hungry and it's not a good way to tell how much you should eat."

Frown.

"It is important to us that you get your body enough food."

"How does the doctor tell?"

"I don't know. They might check your blood to see if it is carrying enough fuel for you."

"What is blood?"

"Blood is inside you and carries oxygen and nutrients to the rest of your body."

Skeptical Lintalai.

"We can look for a book about it for you."

"Okay. I like books."

"Oh good! Which one is your favorite?"

"I don't know, I haven't read them all yet."

"There are quite a lot of them!"

"Yes."

"Do you want to go out and see the city?"

"Okay."

Aitim and Kan and Lintalai live on a quiet street with shady trees that meet overhead. The houses have pretty gardens and hedges; at the end of the street there is a moving staircase descending underground. 

She remembers that from taking the train to get here. "I did not know what a train was before I came on this one to go to your house," she mentions.

"Did you like the train?"

"No."

"Oh? What didn't you like about it?" They keep walking past the train station. 

"It was crowded and the lights were weird colors."

The next neighborhood over doesn't have gardens. The streets are still lined with trees and behind the trees are pretty, plant-draped stone walk-ups. "Everything must have been very confusing."

"Yes."

"Is it less confusing now?"

"A bit."

They pass another train station. The buildings get taller.

Lintalai picks a flower off a tree they pass and eats one of its petals.

" - sweetheart, that isn't edible."

"...you tried to feed me bacon. This is fine."

" - bacon does not make people sick, and eating flowers might make people sick."

"Bacon is not food." But she relinquishes the flower.

"What do you mean 'bacon is not food'?"

"...there are things I could eat, and bacon is not one of them."

"Why do you think that?"

"I looked at it."

"People can't tell whether something is healthy for them by looking at it."

...Lintalai looks like she is trying to think of a nice way to tell him that he is really dumb.

"No people have ever been able to do that."

"Well, if you want to eat bacon, you can do that."

"I think we should head back before you get tired."

"Okay."

Back they go!

She trips on the way.

She is very small and probably new at walking.

Yes. She could be carried! She will allow it.

Yay!

"I already had a flower so I don't need to eat more today," she announces.

"No, you need to eat dinner when we get home. Flowers do not contain enough calories or nutrients."

Siiiiiiiigh. "Okay. But I will only eat food."

"Okay."

She will eat a peach slice and a lettuce leaf. She will take a bite of pasta in olive oil and herbs and spit it out. She will eat an almond. She will have two bites of strawberry jam on rice cake. She will reject tuna and egg and cake and pork and custard.

Her parents will glance at each other worriedly and be patient with this. 

"Do you want to play some games?"

"Okay. What games?"

They have games for one-year-olds! You roll dice and move, or flip cards and move, or spin a wheel and move, and try to make it to the end first.

These are not terribly interesting but she will play to the end of each one once.

It is an important developmental milestone to argue endlessly over rules of the game so that you always win!

Okay that part is fun.

It's the best part!

Lintalai wins this one because she did not roll the dice correctly that time. Or that time. One went under the chair. That doesn't count.

"The dice are both threes, that's a double, that means I get to roll again."

"You can roll my turn for me but it's my roll."

"Awwww. Okay." 

He rolls her twos. "That doesn't count because you rolled it." She rolls again and accepts her seven and four.

One and three. "That adds up to four which is a perfect square so I can replace it with another perfect square. I pick nine."

"What is a perfect square?"

Tokens. "If you can put this many tokens into a square then the number is a square." Four tokens are a two by two square, like so. Nine tokens are a three by three square, like so.

"I don't think you get to pick your own square. I pick one."

"Awwww." He moves one.

Lintalai cackles.

Her parents beam at her. Aitim rolls an eleven. "That's good as it is."

Lintalai attempts to make an eleven square. She cannot even make a rectangle. "I think something is wrong with eleven."

"Eleven is not a square. The next square after nine is sixteen, which is higher than dice go."

"It's just a line."

"Eleven is prime, that's the word for numbers that won't rectangle."

"Oh." She is distracted from the game seeking rectangles of other numbers.

They have such a smart baby. They watch her adoringly.

One is a small square. Or a small line? Two is a line. Three is a line. Four is a square. Five is a line. "Gosh there are a lot of numbers that won't rectangle." Six rectangles.

"Most big numbers rectangle. Lots of small numbers are prime."

"Ohhh." Seven is a line. Eight is a rectangle. Nine is a square. Ten is a rectangle.

Such a clever baby! Their clever baby!

She runs out of tokens when she discovers that twenty is a rectangle.

"If you would like we can order some more online so you can check bigger numbers."

"What is online?"

"We use our pocket everythings to send instructions to the token store and then they send us tokens."

"I could just use blocks, I have lots of those."

"You could!"

She goes out to the courtyard and sacrifices her block city to prime numbers until she is bored with them and then reads How To Build Very Tall for block city tips.

A long time ago, everybody built single houses. They looked like this.

But lots of people wanted to live in the same place. How do they do that? Well, you can make the houses closer together, like this.

And you can put stairs in the house, and have a second floor and a basement, like this.

But even more people than that wanted to live in one space. What to do? 

Well, you can just put more houses on top of the houses, right? It turns out this is hard. When you build taller, buildings are heavy. This means they press down on the levels below them. If they are not carefully built, they might tilt, like this:

Or even worse, they might crumble, like this!

To learn how to build very tall, we had to learn how to build a base that could take lots and lots of weight.

Here is how buildings are built today. First big trucks dig a foundation. Look at how big and deep the foundation must be.

In some places they can dig all the way down to the solid bedrock under the ground, and attach the supports for the building to that. But in some places, there is no bedrock to be found! Then they pour concrete. It takes lots and lots of concrete to create enough support for a tall building. Concrete is a liquid, but it will turn solid once it is poured. It will turn into rock, and then we have the bedrock for our skyscraper.

Next, we need strong metal supports to be the spine of our skyscraper. Researchers worked for a long time to figure out what was the best way to do supports. Here are some different building spines. Which one do you like?

In some places, there are extra challenges! For example, in a city that has earthquakes, we need to build our spine so that it can shake with a quake. That way, even if a quake happens right under it, people will be safe. Here is an earthquake-proof building spine. 

Tall buildings will also have lots of wind blowing at them. They need to be able to sway in the wind without breaking or getting overbalanced. This is called 'sway'. Some sway is good - it means your building will not take all the force of the wind. But if you have very much sway, people in the building will notice, and they hate that! Engineers work very carefully to make sure that their buildings can sway a little - but not too much.

Now you have a very tall building - good job! But you have another hard problem - how do you get people to live in it. When we had small buildings, they had stairs. But no one can climb a hundred flights of stairs for work every day! 

So we invented the elevator. Early elevators were a box on a pulley, like this: 

They had a shaft in the building and carried people up and down, so they did not have to walk.

But as buildings got taller, there was a problem.You can only have one elevator in an elevator shaft - if you had two, they would collide! What if a hundred people wanted to go to work at the same time? Then we'd need lots of elevator shafts to hold them, right? Imagine if we tried to make enough elevators to move everyone quickly. We'd get a building like this - half of the floor space is elevators! What a waste!

So our engineers got to work again. They invented elevators that work like this. They go up one shaft, and down the other, in a big circle, and you can have a hundred of them at a time. When people need to get off the elevator, they get off the conveyor to let them out, so they don't slow down the people behind them. 

Now how much of our building has to be elevators?

That's right, not much!

But we still can't build as tall as we might like. Why not? Well, rock can only hold on to so much weight. If we built too heavy, even rock might not do! Also, it takes a long time for an elevator to reach the top of a hundred-story building. A two-hundred story building is pretty inconvenient! Building gets more expensive as buildings get taller, so we don't build as tall as we can everywhere. As we learn more things, maybe buildings will get even taller!

This isn't applicable to building with blocks at all.

"Yes, I know she's settling in, I'm not going to interfere with settling in, get out of my way -"

 - Aitim worriedly hurries towards the front door.

"I want to see my grandbaby - Aitim!"

"Don't bully my staff. That said, she's settling in all right and you can meet her if you'd like and if you're going to set a good example -"

"Grandbaby!" says Afen, ducking past the security guard.

Lintalai has How To Build Very Tall propped open to the part about bedrock and is smushing blocks into the courtyard dirt.

"Lintalai, this is your grandpa. He was supposed to come and see you tomorrow but I guess he was in a very big hurry."

"They said they couldn't place her accent."

- sigh.

"Hello," she says. "Why were you in a hurry?"

"I want to try to place your accent. I like languages. And probably know more of them than whoever they had trying."

"Oh. Do I need to say more words?"

"It would help, yes. Do you know if you know any languages aside from Anitami?"

"No. What should I say?"

"You could tell me about the house?"

"It has three dining rooms. That seems like a lot. I am allowed to go in this little bit of outside without having to go get somebody first. A book asked if I had paintings on my walls but I don't."

Afen is frowning. "Do you mind if I run through some languages and you can let me know if any of them sound familiar?"

"I don't mind."

"Does this sound familiar?" he asks in Tapap and Cenemi and Arvaran and Voan and Oahkar and Celen and Yanitaz and Pena and Eliep.

She recognizes Tapap and says "This one I understand," in Tapap.

"- huh. Your accent isn't Tapai, though - want to do more of them -"

"Okay."

But she doesn't understand any of the others and her accent in Tapap is just as strange.

"Do you know -"

"No. Not a language that's been documented, I don't think, though I'll look through obscure ones when I get home."

" - but -"

"I can probably derive some linguistic features from her accent but I'm not placing it at all."

"Linguistic features?" Lintalai says.

"When people have an accent, usually that takes the form of not distinguishing sounds that aren't distinguished in their native language, sometimes distinguishing sounds that are distinguished in their native language but not in this one, and not pronouncing sounds their native language doesn't have. So by noticing when you do that, I can guess what sounds are in your native language."

"I don't remember what it would be."

"I know. But we might be able to come up with some guesses."

"Okay. I don't know what else to say."

"Trains were new. Flowers were not new - right?"

"Flowers were not new. Online is new. I didn't know what blood was. I didn't know people ate things that are not food. I didn't know that I would get parents. I knew what clothes were, and what my basket was. Sunshine is not new."

"Houses? Glass? Porcelain? Machines? Radio? Computers? Rain? Snow?"

"Radio is new."

"Lightbulbs? Embroidery? Kings and Queens? Taxes?"

"Those are not new."

"Democracy was new."

" - huh. Compasses? Navigation? Spaceflight?"

"Not new, not new, new."

"Population controls."

"...ish."

" - child permissions? Child credits?"

"Nnnnndunno."

"What did you mean by 'I didn't know people ate things that weren't food.'?"

"They keep trying to get me to eat things that are not food. They eat them, so I guess they think they are food, but they aren't."

"She will not eat milkshakes, cheese, chicken, bacon, caviar, tuna, egg, cake, custard... she will eat rice cakes, crackers, fruits, vegetables, honey..."

"So no animal products."

"She did not ask if they were animal products. Didn't taste them, either."

"I saw them."

"- you think you can determine whether a food contains animal products by looking at it?"

"...I can tell if it's food. I don't know if animal products is the same thing. They didn't want me to eat a flower."

" - okay, so if, like, we baked two batches of cookies, one with butter and one with margarine, and they looked identical, and we mixed them all up, you think you could separate out the butter ones and the margarine ones?"

"If one of those things is food and one isn't then they won't look identical."

" - Aitim -"

" - sure, you can try it."

"I don't know how to cook."

"I will ask the cook to try it." He goes off.

"Commercials? Castes? Magic? Aliens?"

"New not not ish."

"Hmmm. Computers are not new, but trains are new."

Nod.

Aitim comes back with butter and margarine, shows them to Lintalai.

"That one could go in food but I think it's like the pasta I spat out," she says of margarine.

"But you can tell them apart?"

"Yeah the other one is not food."

He takes them back inside.

"The word 'food' is used by all other speakers of Anitami to mean 'the things that our species can eat'. If you use it to mean 'the things that look foodlike to Lintalai' then no one will know what you mean. It's usually a good idea to use words the way other people use them instead of saying things that make no sense to them because they do not realize you are using your own secret definition."

"I can't eat those not food things."

"I understand. But if someone has, say, an allergy to peanuts, they would say 'I have an allergy to peanuts', not 'that isn't food' at a peanut-butter sandwich. And that way people can understand them."

"Hrm."

Aitim comes back again.

"Watches. Time zones. Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Laws."

"Not new."

"Cancer. Capital punishment."

"She's one!"

"...ish, not new..."

"Solar eclipses. Guns. Permaspringing."

"Not new, new, new."

He is taking notes. "Cars. Genetic engineering. Gamete donation."

"New new ish."

"Marriage? Triangle marriage, V marriage?"

"Ish."

"Are you having fun with this, Lintalai?"

"It's getting kinda boring."

Afen makes a face.

"Maybe you can have three for her every time you come over."

"Ten."

"Three. The cookies will be ready soon."

"The cook should mix them up on a tray, write down which ones are there, and not tell us so the test isn't unblinded by our knowing. Also first he should take a picture and send it so we can tell whether she can tell it from pictures."

Sigh. "Of course."

"Pictures won't work."

"Why is that?"

"'Cause I have to see it not just a picture."