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the arborist brings Sadness home from Milliways
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There is a bar, behind a door that once led elsewhere.

The bar seems to be empty, aside from a shadowed figure watching the main entrance from a corner of the room.

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The door shrinks and a tiny blue child comes in.

They've apparently remodeled the train station a lot since last week.

Maybe the shadowed figure in the corned knows the way to the train of thought. Sadness approaches him hesitantly.

"Hello?"

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The figure's bends until his head is only a little bit above her level."Hello. Are you lost?"

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"I think so? I'm looking for the train station?"

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"I do not know of any train stations nearby. Would you like help searching?"

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"Yes, please. I'm sure the train station was here last week. What is this place now?"

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"This is a restaurant. The door leads many places, and does not always allow people to return to their place of origin immediately, but I believe it does return them without allowing any time passing, so that they aren't missed."

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"Oh. Might the train station be one of the places the door leads to?"

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"It might be. I do not know. Why are you going to the train station?"

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"Good. I was going to help unload and load the train of thought. How can we make the door leads to the right place?"

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"I have heard that the door is unpredictable, but will always return people to where they came from in time to do what they need to do. What is the train of thought?"

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"Um. The train of thought is- a big machine that moves thoughts and ideas and so on around Riley's mind so she can think about them in different ways? And sometimes we also use it to transport other things?"

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"You help someone control what she is thinking about? That's interesting. What else do you move with it? Does it only work for one person?"

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Sadness is confused.

"I guess so? Um, sometimes people travel on it. What do you mean, does it only work for one person?"

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"Is Riley the only person whose thoughts the train affects? Who else travels on it?"

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"I think the train only effects Riley's thoughts? How would it effect other peoples' thoughts? And I traveled on it once, and I think sometimes mind workers travel on it."

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"What do mind workers do? And what do you do?"

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"Mind workers do lots of different things. I make Riley sad about bad things." (She sounds proud of this) "What do you do?"

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"That sounds very helpful. I save people who are lost or despairing from dying. It's much harder to help people who don't know how to be sad."

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"That sounds really good, it's really sad when people die. And yeah, we used to think we shouldn't let Riley feel sad about anything or let me influence her actions at all, and that ended up being really bad for her. Do you save people inside or outside of Riley?"

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"Yes, it is. I'm glad you came to a better understanding. I can only save people when I see them. I think if I were inside of Riley, I could save people there, but I think that I am not inside of Riley right now, so I could only save people outside of her."

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Sadness looks surprised and concerned by this assertion.

"What? Why do you think you're not inside Riley?"

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"From your description, I believe that inside Riley, everything and everyone is in some way focused specifically on helping Riley think and feel. Where I am from, there is no overall focus to the world and the things and people within it, most of which have unrelated goals. To the best of my knowledge, none of the people I regularly encounter are focused specifically on Riley at all."

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"Oh! Wow. So this is some sort of collective unconscious? I should get the other emotions, they'll want to hear about this."

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"To the best of my knowledge, I am not an aspect of any person's mind, although I suppose I cannot completely discount the possibility. Once a being returns through the door to their place of origin, the door ceases to lead to this restaurant, so that when the door eventually leads to the restaurant again, the people present earlier are likely not to still be there."

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"Oh."

Sadness, having stopped fidgeting, starts again.

"What are people dying from in other worlds? How do you stop it?"

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