"Usually this isn't a problem, actually, we have ways to figure out if people are lying and we can adjust for it! But now there are too many six foot tall men and that means someone knows how to game the system but I'm not sure how. --Oooh, which one?"

She is happy to discuss the results of her comics exploration. She likes Batman even more now and is sort of going to ignore large swaths of Green Lantern canon. She understands that ignoring large swaths of canon is traditional in this medium.

Lev is pretty convinced that this is because of his wisdom in only giving her comics off the Authors Who Understand Batman shelf. 

Green Lantern canon is ridiculous.

"Yeah! So I pretty much just read all day. I guess I might eventually have to find something else to do while you're at work, but for the next, you know, couple days, the library is probably enough of an attention sink that I can neglect to do this. Oh, and I started making friends with Edith, I think. She's nice."

"That's good! Edith's cool! You should feel free to interrupt me if you want to, I get sort of caught up in things but I'm pretty sure if you got me to stop working Claire would send you a fruit basket."

"I see. I'll consider it. It's good that you like what you do, though."

"It's pretty great! I made Yenta as an intellectual exercise and then Claire was like 'if you make a website I will handle all the boring parts of running the business' so I did and then two years later she was like 'you should drop out of college' and I was like 'why' and she was like 'because your net worth is a hundred million dollars.'"

"Wow. That's - a way to do things, I guess."

"I am insanely lucky."

"I mean it takes luck and skill, to make something like that happen. Definitely luck, but also skill, I'm pretty sure."

"It's not like I worked for it? I'm smart in a way where people give you way too much money for being it, but that's like... genetics, it's nothing I did. And I'd totally have founded Yenta for free. It's not working hard, it's like if people gave me a bunch of money for watching movies or something." He shrugs. "I have done nothing to deserve this but I'm using it to save babies from dying so probably it all works out okay in the end."

"I mean I hear you do a lot of work on the saving babies from dying front, too, so I feel like that counts for something."

"That's also fun! It's not like I'm working fast food. I think people who work fast food should be billionaires and I should be making ten bucks an hour."

"Something something supply and demand. Maybe in the sci-fi future where we all have equal skills on every axis except enduring misery they will be - probably millionaires, I think there are more fast food workers than there are Lev Aaronses in the world, so billionaires might be pushing it."

(None of her jobs actually pay ten bucks an hour. She's been holding out hope for the library branch assistant position someday, though, that one pays $12.52.)

"Too bad, because if there's anything that means you deserve a billion dollars, it's getting screamed at by some lady because you gave her a medium chicken nuggets instead of a large."

"Y'know honestly the overwhelming majority of people are much nicer than that."

- aw wait crap that's gonna make her sound pathetic.

"I know, but it only takes one to ruin your entire night! --Or at least mine."

"Ehhh, you build up mental callouses eventually. Not that I particularly know how much time you've spent working in fast food over the course of your life."

He thinks. "Three years?"

- huh, that doesn't sound like a joke or anything. 

"Much longer than me. I bow to your superior expertise."

"I think you've spent more time having crappy jobs in general than me, though, so really I should bow to your expertise."

"Well the secret, grasshopper, is to get out of fast food and the supermarket and then split your time between libraries and nursing homes, with perhaps the occasional babysitting or cleaning gig. There are more kids who want to work in libraries than there are library jobs, so you do have to stalk the library's help wanted page for a period of several months to a year and apply like a kazillion times. That will get you through normal life situations, up until your niece is diagnosed with some rare only possibly treatable disorder, at which point a woman will fall out of the sky and connect you with a version of Batman who saves people from malaria instead of superpowered villain rampages, and he will pay you to talk about comic books. Results may vary, but in the best case I have to recommend this plan pretty highly."

- that's - that's better, right, than just dancing around it forever? If she's a person who's here for reasons and who has a life that went on before this and not some random person who's probably being payed to play a part?

Lev has no idea how to respond to any of this. 

"Libraries are really good."

Aaaaaah gah that was stupid that is the worst possible way to respond to someone saying their niece might be incurably sick--

"They really are! They're like - I think there are a bunch of problems that libraries aren't really intended to solve, but they're very often the closest thing we have to a solution anyway? They just - they take a lot of pressure off of people who would otherwise have very few options, and they do a lot to lessen the gap between motivated people without resources and people who have entire libraries in their houses. - sorry if all that before was - we were sharing, I guess."

"Sorry I. I'm not really sure what to say. I. I'm way less cool than Batman."