"We'll head out." This leaves everyone five days of planning before contact. 

About half a day later he visits 97816's room and stands outside the room shouting '97816?'

Well that's terrifying.

It takes her like four seconds to get from the bathroom to the door. She hasn't been crying recently - she has, in fact, been meditating, because that's what she's supposed to do when she's under too much pressure and she can't possibly stand up under it indefinitely. She doesn't think she's been successful in absolute terms, but she feels marginally less awful and has been able to squash most of the remaining awful back inside herself for the time being.

"Did something happen?"

"Hmm? No, no, everything's fine, everything's fine, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Usually if you're at someone's door you ping them over osanwë and without that I have no idea how you're supposed to know whether or not you can open the door. You didn't latch it but you seem like the kind of person who might not. What've the servants been doing?"

" - oh. You, uh, you tap the door." She demonstrates knocking on the door. "Everyone's sort of just been coming in so I've just been - assuming people will just come into my room whenever. Mostly."

"Well, you can latch it." He demonstrates. "Then they can't, see. Also I can tell them not to be rude and teach them the tapping trick and that'll probably work but I still feel like it's important on principle that you know you can just latch it."

"...thank you," she says, copying the latching and unlatching motion. "Our doors mostly don't do that. And I don't think anyone's been rude, really. But thanks."

"I think they were doing their best." He looks vaguely disapproving. "Anyway, how're you -"

"Fine! Better. I was - stressed but I'm back to mostly sort of arguably OK."

"That's good. They're off to get your ship. They're not planning to let anyone kill themselves right away, is that going to be okay?"

"Yeah. They, uh - I don't think the Alteri will try killing themselves in that situation, really, I just know it's a thing that - the Carthons have taken planets before, and the Alteri do their best to make sure they're totally devoid of any life or useable resources by the time they make it down. But I don't think they'll kill themselves right away if they're kidnapped."

"And if they do and they're stopped until they can confirm they know what's going on, that won't be horribly awful for them or anything?"

"...well I think most people don't like being kidnapped? I do not expect them to be having fun. But I think the mass suicides are mostly for strategic reasons."

"Then we shouldn't worry that we'd be wronging them by preventing them. That's good."

She nods. "I mean - I mean I think there are some who'd rather die than live under alien rule. To be fair to them. But I think that's - there are things that go into that besides suffering, there's pride and honor and - stuff. But you can only kill yourself once, so - I think a lot of the ones I knew on Yahi would mostly rather be prevented for a few weeks and then left to make their decisions, on the whole. Otherwise they might feel obligated."

"- huh. I could see myself being like that but you've got to attach it to something that isn't horrible."

"I'm sure they have things worth defending," she says quietly. "Liars don't commit suicide very often, but I think that's at least partly because the ones who're still alive have been selected for not doing that."

"That shouldn't affect new ones, though."

"No, it - I mean, uh, not a geneticist, at all, but I'm pretty sure babies are like their parents in some ways. So if you note down all of the people who committed suicide and don't make their kids have kids, then fewer people will want to commit suicide a couple generations down the line, even if the conditions you keep them in are really bad."

" - huh. And they do that deliberately?"

She nods. "It's - kind of confusing to think about? Because there are other people who could've existed the way I exist and they would've found it horrifying and killed themselves, and I exist partly because I'm the sort of person who won't want to kill myself no matter how bad things get, and - I still don't want to die, at all, but it's kind of not great to think about people taking advantage of that, I guess. Um, they breed us for lots of other stuff, depending on specialization, but limiting disabilities and stuff like suicidality is pretty standard practice for everyone."

"How strange and awful. I'm sorry."

"...thank you." People will probably continue to get points with her for declaring things to be awful for a while. "Uh, I'm not very optimized for anything because I'm not really a spacer, my owners just ran out of money for spacers and decided they'd do OK training domestic servants to fix spaceships." She bites her lip, remembering something. " - oh. Most real spacers won't be able to stand up under the gravity here, not safely over long periods of time. I forgot about that. You'll want to give them crutches or braces or wheelchairs or something if you bring them here. Probably crutches, I bet they'd be annoyed by chairs. That's not a genetics thing, that's just that if you grow up in space without much gravity then standing up on planets is hard."

" - oh, we can just put them someplace without much gravity and long-term the Valar should be able to fix that for them."

"Oh! OK. That works."