"As far as we know the increased intimacy is only for biological relatives."

"Lame. But the point is mostly that it'd take a lot more than me becoming a selfish jerk for a few months for most of them to consider not wanting to be friends anymore. Especially if they knew it was because of giant robot mind control. Not that I'm planning on becoming a selfish jerk, just, in the worst case. It's gonna take me a bit to make truly unbreakable friendship bonds with more people here, but I think I have a good starting set, you know?"

"Not that I'm not delighted by your enthusiasm," Chris says, "but many of the people who broke up after becoming pilots thought they had truly unbreakable friendship bonds."

"I did figure that. That's why anima structure is only half of the strategy. The other half of the strategy is how to figure out how to keep your whole life from falling apart as a result of whatever is happening with the anima. But we have some idea how to keep people's lives from falling apart, you know? It's not like the concept of relationships sprung from the ether last year. We'll have to figure out how to deal, but at least this is something where anyone's ever succeeded at dealing. So I figure if you could find a setup that mostly costs you in areas that people as a whole have some idea how to deal with, like stress and your friends not liking you, and not ones that nobody has a very clear idea how to combat, like blissing and getting beat up in the dream world, then that's better than the other way around.

"- also I kinda figure that if you wanna last a really long time and be really good at things, then you have to have a setup and a strategy that you're really confident in, and then keep doing as much as you possibly can to minimize the safety risks anyway. Right?"

"Lev wrote a book about how to be an anchor, you might be interested in it."

"Ooooh, yes please."

He pulls a copy off a shelf. 

"There's paper in the back for taking notes, don't mark up the pages. I can get you paper if you want some."

"Paper's good. I don't need a lot, I can write really small."

"There's a long and noble tradition of wasteful military spending which you are welcome to participate in."

"I mean you can give me lots if you want. I'll still write small. I'll just also have extra paper whenever anyone I like needs it."

"We'll save it for when you're a pilot."

"All right. Fair."

And now she will read this book. What the hell does this book say.

t's printed out on paper, like old books from before the Bliss, not handwritten.

The first chapter is about how the dream world works. The next few chapters are about the mechanics of anchoring: how the headset works, what the different indicators mean, what sort of things the anchor should point out to their pilot and what things they should leave alone.

The rest of the book is about relationships. There's advice about self-care techniques that work for different anchors. There are exercises to help you develop a sense of fondness and admiration for your pilot: write down a characteristic that makes you proud of your pilot; think of things you and your pilot have in common; describe beliefs and values you and your pilot share. There's advice about how to avoid escalating fights: admit fault; use I-statements; bring up concerns as soon as they occur to you instead of letting them fester; say things like "you're hurting my feelings" and "let's start this over again" and "let's find our common ground" and "we can agree to disagree." There are several chapters about figuring out when you should break up.