"All four of me have wound up with the syllable 'bel' in our names. I'm Sylvibel. I have no idea how that happened because we were all named by creche workers, but it is still a thing that happened every time. We look a little alike, I think - not overwhelmingly, you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for it, the second time around I was a boy, but still. Other than that I'm not sure."

"Okay. A 'bel from the world with no parents."

"Yep."

"...Do you want to know anything about my world? I've been asking all the questions."

"I already know that you have animal-type reproduction and people with weird powers," Sylvi points out. "But yeah, tell me about it."

"Um, okay, it's the year 2030, as counted from the birth of a religious figure no one in my family cares about. We have mutants, who are the people with weird powers. We sometimes get nifty cosmetic extras, like my hair." Her hair is lavender. "No one knows for sure how long we've been around but we really emerged into the public eye almost seventy years ago. My grandparents--Mama's parents--were involved with that. They're pretty famous. Then a while back Mama and her sister my aunt Emily went on a multi-universal jaunt and came back with a bunch of other people like Kodiak and Dr. Aspen and also some nifty technology."

"Oh, I figured your hair was dyed that way. Did they jaunt through here? That sounds dangerous if you can't know when you'll get doors."

"No, this is my natural hair color. Some of the jaunting was through here. A lot of it was trying to get back home after aunt Emily's normally reliable Milliways-door-getting quality temporarily abandoned her."

"That sounds like a nasty surprise."

"They rescued a lot of people they otherwise wouldn't have, though. No one will tell me what was wrong with Kodiak's world but it's universally agreed to have been really awful."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't know."

"But yeah, I am really extremely not allowed to go home with anyone I meet in Milliways."

"Wasn't going to suggest it."

"I didn't think you were."

"How old are you, anyway?"

"Seven."

"And if you're not in a creche or an apprenticeship, what do you do?"

"I go to school."

"What do you learn?"

"Math. Science. Languages. History. Current events. Basic principles of art and music and stuff."

"Sounds like the sorts of things they cover for kids who stay in creche."

"Did you just stop learning everything that wasn't useful for the one job when you were seven?"

"I read, and we study a few other things formally too between servantmaking lessons. Not everyone needs to know how to do everything. I knew what I wanted to do when I was seven. Actually, all four of me wanted to be servantmakers."

"Okay. Some people just know. Mama knew she was going to be a teacher for as long as she can remember."

"See, there you go. Although people who want to be teachers tend to stay in creche, because that's people who are already teachers are to learn from."