"Well, if the others don't like them and the planet is crowded, maybe some of your kind of person could move somewhere else."

"It's nice to think about at least."

"What exactly is the problem with you touching things?"

"The kinda person that I am is polluted."

"Polluted how? Does it damage objects or just leave a residue? It doesn't look like it's damaging your clothes but maybe they're a special material - is it okay that you walked across the hub? Do you want me to make you your own notebook and pen so you can draw without touching mine?"

"Wow you're taking that really well. It doesn't actually leave stuff? Like I'm just inherently polluted even if I'm fresh out of the shower. If I walked across a clean people place on Amenta I'd spray where I stepped with chalk, or I'd be wearing shoe covers, but technically the shoe covers are redundant, it's just the kind of thing they want lots of redundancy on."

"Okay, that's good. I don't really know how you're used to people taking it but it's starting to sound like maybe they're assholes about it. What exactly happens to things you touch - can you borrow things if someone scrubs them really well afterward? I have never known anyone who had this happen to them before and it's really concerning but I'm also wondering if it's the kind of thing that can be treated - I guess your planet wouldn't have the magic that we use to deal with medical problems and hazmat emergencies, and this sounds like a medical problem or a hazmat emergency or both, so maybe we can just solve the entire problem."

"It does work to just clean things we've had, it's just - not as redundant as cleans like, I guess. I don't think I have a medical problem and I don't really know what a hazmat emergency is?"

"Some chemicals really dangerous, like chlorine, and it can cause problems if they're around people, so you want to do something about that immediately. That’s what I mean by hazmat emergency."

"Oh. It's not like that either."

"What is it, then?"

"They just wanna make - really really really really sure that they're not touching us, or things we've touched, and that if there's any way they might've gotten too close to doing that, they wanna spend five hours in the shower after. It's not the same thing as being poisonous or having the flu, it just makes them - feel that way."

"Is this... in some way related to a physical feature of your body."

"- well the caste that has this problem is called reds and we have red hair but only usually. All the castes have a most common hair color but it's not a hundred percent."

"Hair color can be changed but it sounds like the problem is that - this doesn't see like it can be right but all I can think of is that they just - randomly decided you're gross for no reason?"

"It's not random, it's because for generations we've been doing all the gross jobs."

"Generations. That's... a concept. I don't think we're missing out on anything by not having babies."

"Well you've never seen one. And you don't have parents! Or siblings! That's bad too."

"I guess. I'm not as concerned about helping the other people from your planet now because they seem like maybe they're assholes for no particular reason."

"D'you mean just the cleans? Because there's millions of reds."

"I guess I mostly mean the cleans but I don’t know if there are ways you suck yet. I haven’t noticed any but that doesn’t prove they don’t exist. And, like, I’m still thinking about putting together a place for reds to go. If there are millions then frankly that’s a lot and I don’t want to make space for more than that anyway. Maybe we can just arrange for all the reds to disappear with no explanation and everyone will be better off."

"...well, no, I think the cleans will have a bad time, but they do mostly suck. There's billions of cleans."

"Because they don’t have the ability to deal with waste without you?"

"Right. They want to invent robots so they can kill us all but they don't have them yet because when they try we fuck them up about it."

"I want the reds to have somewhere else to go. And I don’t care if the others have problems. They got themselves into this situation and they can get themselves out of it on their own."