Someone else walks in! Someone also seventeen, and someone definitely a girl.

" - well this is neat."

...Yeah, people don't just walk out of buildings without walking into them. Maybe if she's a recording from somewhere else. So now he's pretty sure this is a predatory alternate universe that devours people who are trying to walk out the front door.

"Hi, I'm Valanda, I'll tell you where I'm from if you'll tell me where you're from?"

"Hi! I'm Karen. I'm from Earth. Sunnydale, California, if that helps. Most people from Earth would be freaking out right now, I am weird and just so happen to have seen dimension doors before."

"Oh, so one of us knows what's happening, that's convenient. I came here from Thelm Ret, Ehima, in the Hari Empire, and I haven't seen one of these before. How much do you want for the explanation?"

" - I'm sorry?"

"I'd like to know what a dimension door is and why it's here and what I can expect it to do. It seems like you know the answers to those questions. What's your price?"

" - OK, one, I make no promises as to the accuracy or relevancy of my information, dimensional portals are different from each other and they behave in different ways, I just know that dimensional portals exist and that they take you to different universes than the one you were in, so it's not terribly surprising when it happens at this point. And two, why on Earth would I want you to pay me for the answer to, like, a basic safety question? That's, like, common decency? - I guess it's pretty America-centric or something to assume that my understanding of common decency applies everywhere, though. Uh. On Earth - in America, anyway - we ask questions and sometimes people answer us even if we don't have anything to offer them. - if I ask you questions are you gonna demand my watch or something? - does that count as a question?"

"Well, not if we're trading information for free, I'm not. That's absolutely how it happens at home by default, though. What's common decency?"

" - oh boy. So, there's being a good person - or, well, that's not right, nobody's entirely good - except - no, focusing on this, there are some actions that are good, right? And within that class, there are actions that are, like, really going above and beyond - donating half of your paycheck to take care of orphans, or jumping on a grenade to save other people in the room, that kind of thing. Heroic sorts of goodness. And then there are things that are less difficult, less above and beyond, things that some people will judge you for not doing but which are still definitely on the good side of things. And then there's, like, just not doing blatantly evil stuff, doing the really really basic things that aren't even hard to do, and those things we call common decency, and you get zero good person points for common decency because it's really just not being evil. You know? Like, seeing a puppy and not kicking it, that's common decency."

"We don't have common decency or puppies in the Hari Empire. Or grenades. We do have people who spend a lot of money buying orphans."

"Thaaaat's either a poor magical translation or definitely not what I meant at all and very concerning. - I mean, I've met demons who have totally different systems of morality, so I get it, and some of them are really nice anyway - not to say that you're a demon necessarily - not to say that being a demon is bad, either, if you are - of course most of the things people call demons aren't real demons anyway, which is where the confusion comes from - "

She takes a deep breath.

"You'd think after this long I would be better at not blatantly insulting aliens. My total bad. I was getting dressed to go to Target and then my closet was a dimension door and I guess I just didn't have my work hat on right this second. Which is really no excuse. How about you tell me what it means to be a good person in the Hari Empire, and then we can go from there and I can say fewer stupid things."

"Oh, so this place is translating, I hear you speaking Ilan but that's probably the translation. Okay, so, 'demon' isn't translating, but we have seven - actually eight species and I can describe them all in case you recognize them. I'm... not sure what you're asking... we have laws against murder, theft, trespassing, vandalism, assault, perjury, breach of contract, interfering with someone's use of a public place, or causing someone to be free who can't follow the law. And it's rude to look at people or call someone 'nobody' and it's dangerous to look like you belong to one of the clans if you don't. I'm not sure if that answers your question, though."

"I figured it was translating - I used to not assume, but it turns out that English is sort of an earth-specific language. Latin is not, oddly enough, but that's neither here nor there. We - and I mean America here, my country, I dunno about all of the other countries on Earth - have laws against all of those except for maybe the last two. Second to last seems like something we might have laws against but I don't know the specifics, and I'm not sure what the last thing even really means, so I can't very well say whether we have something analogous. Um, it's not rude to look at people in America but I think that one is actually culture-specific, I am sorry if I am looking at you a weird amount and I promise it's not intentional. But those aren't even really the same thing as what I mean at all, it's like - so it's possible to pass an evil law, right? It's possible to, like - hm. So certain rulers on Earth have in the past, like, tried to wipe out certain races of people they didn't like? And that was definitely evil, even though they controlled the laws? It's really not hard to find examples of evil laws. So goodness and legalism are really different things. - do you mind if I write some of this down, I feel like I should be taking notes, meeting someone from a different dimension and being all first-contact-y."

"Yeah, go ahead, I guess you can't scry the conversation after you leave the universe. I don't know what 'evil' is and it's not translating usefully. The last law I mentioned us having is mainly things like not freeing someone with certain kinds of brain injury or someone under the age of majority for their species, I bet you have something similar."

" - oh you mean abandoning dependents. Yeah, that's - probably a civil courts thing and not a criminal courts thing, but yeah." She pulls out a notebook and starts scribbling. "Um - man, it's so much easier to explain this to vampires, vampires had the concept and have just forgotten how it works. Hm. Goodness is like... the things that you should do, as a person. Fulfilling your duties, and doing things that make other people stronger and that make the world better, and respecting sacred things, making the world more what it's supposed to be. - really you can mostly just round it off to things that make the world better, unless you are doing advanced morality jiu-jitsu. And evil is the opposite, it's hurting people and making the world worse. To a first approximation."

"What makes the world better and worse? And what does 'sacred' mean?"

" - oh man. OK. Forget sacred stuff for a second, I feel like maybe it's important to hold off on the evangelism until everyone in the conversation knows all of each other's important words. So - OK."

She draws a picture in her notebook, of a little house that's totally devoid of anything else on all sides. She gives it a little potato field and a water well and puts a few scraggly bushes out in the wilderness surrounding it.

"Say you live in this house. It's just you. There's nobody around, anywhere, just the house and the field and the water well, and you have to work ten hours a day growing potatoes to live, otherwise you will starve to death. Is it a place you want to live?"

"Me, personally, or people I know, or what?"

"You personally."

"I wouldn't be happy, I like hugs and there's no one else there. If I had someone else that I liked there it would be okay."

"OK! So, say you have the option of living in this house, or living in a different house that's just like it, except - " she draws another house, " - there's another house over here, and it has someone who likes hugs, and who grows strawberries and tomatoes in their garden. Which of those houses do you want to live in?"

"The one with the neighbor, unless the neighbor wants to eat me or enslave me or something. I notice there's still not a government in the picture."

"Yeah, governments have nothing to do with this. Or, like - they are a related concept, governments are supposed to try to make the world better, but if we can borrow D&D concepts without our brains melting, whether you do lawful things or unlawful things is a different question than whether you do good or evil things. Alright, so. Good things are like, if you find a lonely person who needs to be hugged and told that they matter and are valuable, and give them that and maybe also give them strawberries or something, I dunno - that's helping people and making the world a little bit better, it's doing a good thing. And if you go around killing and eating people, that's hurting people and making the world worse, and is evil. You with me so far?"

"Lonely people find it comforting to know how much they'd sell for and don't like being eaten, I'm assuming strawberries are a random example of food and you wouldn't given them to carnivores - do you give the strawberries away for free - do you not have money?"

"'Valuable' in this instance does not mean the literal cost to buy a person. We have money but we don't use it to buy people because that is slavery and is frowned upon. Selling strawberries is totally fine, but giving them away to people who need them is one of those above and beyond things I was talking about earlier.

"But what I mean is like - people are what it's all about, you know? And it would be excessively simplistic to say that goodness is doing whatever makes people happy, because people care about things other than happiness, but - the process of making the world better is taking an empty and broken and heavily flawed world, and fixing it up and filling it with nice things, so that we're always moving away from worlds that are more like the first house and the house with the person-eating neighbor, and towards worlds that are more like the house with the neighbor who hugs you and gives you strawberries. Moving in that direction for every single person, as well as we can, even when there's nothing in it for us apart from the chance to become better people ourselves. And - I guess I think we should do this because I think that people are inherently valuable, on like a whole different level than everything else that exists in the universe, and so the universe should be a place that lets people be the best versions of themselves, all the time. And we won't ever get there, not on our own, because a lot of the time it's easier to be evil, and so not everybody is going to help you with moving in that direction, but it's important to have things you're working towards. - I don't really know if that made any sense at all? I've never really met anyone who had never ever heard of good or evil and who was also interested in stopping and chatting about it."