Well, nobody's done much of anything yet. I think she should have a human name, though. Since it's so important that she's human.

Hug.

Hug.

M'sorry for being depressing and stuff.

Karen.

Sor - Oh.

Yeah. OK. Thanks for being here to listen to all the depressing stuff.

Always.

Hug hug hug.

So for a boy I figure you have options. He's not gonna have to put it on job applications so it doesn't need to sound, like, respectable, you can pick whoever you want. I thought about Goku, because he kills gods sometimes, except I think I sort of disapprove of Goku as a person, so not him. And I like Beowulf, and it's a cool name, but he doesn't kill any gods, just a monster and the monster's mother and a dragon. And I thought about Aximili, because - I mean I guess there are sort of parallels between the orcs and the yeerks, even though Ax doesn't do anything really even vaguely like killing gods - so far, anyway, who knows what'll happen when more books come out - frick, not me, I am never gonna read another Animorphs book in my life, that's vaguely depressing - but anyway there's this scene in one of the books where he finally succeeds at calling the other Andalites on their homeworld or on some ship or wherever, I forget, and - Ax is a kid, he's maybe my age, and he likes to pretend he's military but actually he's just this alien kid with a little cadet training who's really desperately faking being a soldier because he landed in the middle of a war and he's stranded and he needs to keep it together, and - anyway, he calls the actual military people and they tell him that someone might possibly come to save earth, I guess, if they get around to it ever, because they have a bunch of other battles to fight on a bunch of other planets, and so there will probably be no one coming to save him actually. And then he tells the military about how his brother gave humans the ability to fight back by morphing into animals, which is like super illegal, and his brother's this big war hero - was, before he died - and they don't want to tarnish his memory because when you're at war people need heroes and images of goodness to cling to, or something, so they pressure Ax to lie and say that actually he was the one who broke the law, and it's so sad, these experienced military people needing this kid to take the fall for them so they can be OK, but Ax does it because that's the sort of person Ax is.

But then I thought about it more and decided that's not really a good fit for the baby and is actually just really pointlessly depressing.

So I think maybe you want to go for, like, Ender Wiggin and James T. Kirk, if you're gonna be the sort of nerd who names your god-slayer baby after science fiction protagonists and not after something respectable like, I dunno, St. Michael commander of the armies of heaven, or whatever. Ender because Ender is someone who defends humanity from the invaders who would wipe them out, and because he's a kid who was created to do this from the start, created to go through this process that would let him defeat these aliens and that would also destroy him in the process - and also because, well, Ender, one who brings things to an end. And Kirk because Kirk yells at gods a lot and because one time he reprogrammed an unwinnable training simulation to be winnable, because he doesn't believe in no-win scenarios, and also because he time travels a lot, and also because Kirk's from, like, this future imagined version of humanity where we're really striving to do all the good we can and really trying to be better, this - idea that things can be better than they are now, that maybe the world can't be totally fixed but maybe it can be less broken.

This is probably all very stupid.

I don't think so.

OK. - thanks.

Science fiction is sadly lacking obviously suitable female protagonists, so I guess I gotta keep thinking.

I had actually forgotten that humans can't pick. 

Oh, do Quendi pick?

Yeah. Can't - by accident - you have to both want to, and you have to be deliberately making it work out, and as part of that the father can choose whether it's a boy or a girl. - the entire royal family is all men with occasionally a token daughter after three sons, because men inherit, it's honestly very stupid.

Oh. Huh.

That's - cool, though, the getting to - decide stuff.

Honestly it's the most awful thing for humans, I can't imagine why - I can't imagine a good reason why - you were made like that. It's much better when every baby is - two people choosing right then.

Catholics aren't supposed to mess with it. I dunno why it is the way it is, though.

He seems to contemplate saying something and then decide to build houses instead.

Building houses is good. 

She will... just kind of keep building houses for a few more days unless anyone else decides to contact her about anything.

Eventually Ryan leaves a note under her door that says I think I have an answer to your question from earlier, if you still want to discuss it. But honestly I'll be very glad if you don't, so don't feel pressured.

Nope, nobody in this situation is getting out of anything that easily. She knocks on Ryan's door.

He opens it. "Hey."

"Hi. You thought about stuff?"

"Yeah. Uh, come in."

She does that.

"Karen, how old are you -"

"Sixteen. Seventeen in four months."