"Well, I couldn't be a therapist anyway, same reason I can't be a teacher. I do statistical analysis of arcball, mostly."

"You couldn't be a therapist," he tries out loud, carefully. "You can't be a teacher. Reason you can't be a therapist, teacher?"

"I'm grey." She touches her hair. "My mom is orange, but this is a patrilineal country so I'm grey like my dad."

...you have the wrong hair to be a therapist or a teacher?

"If I'd been born with orange hair I'd still be grey and I'd have to - well, not strictly have to, just it'd avoid misunderstandings - dye it."

- I still don't see what that has to do with being a therapist or a teacher.

"Our castes are hair color coded. What caste we are determines what jobs we're allowed to have."

That sounds stupid.

"Yes. I know."

What happens if you just go do whatever you want anyway.

"You aren't allowed to make more than one sixth of your total income from things that aren't for your caste."

Do you think your government will stop that if I tell them it is stupid.

"...uh, you could probably get them to liberalize it some, but it would be really hard to suddenly stop altogether and they'll probably not want to."

Why not?

"A lot of people like it. It works unusually badly for me. And a lot of stuff is built on top of it. There's one casteless country in the world but they're very weird and started from scratch a few years ago."

It still sounds stupid. Would they not let everyone learn magic?

"I don't know how they'd caste magic. Probably depends what it's being used to do."

"What does - grey - do?"

"Cops and soldiers and athletes and dancers. I categorize my thing as 'bookie', we have that one too."

"What is - cops and soldiers? And bookie."

"Cops enforce laws, soldiers fight wars. Bookies do betting."

"We no have those ones."

"...that's interesting. Not even cops?"

"Not even cops."

"Huh."