"The other moms live in F block, I can get someone to take you there when we're done talking. Meals are in the dining room, you can go there to get a snack when you're hungry. --You don't have clothes, do you?"

"Just what I'm wearing. These nursing pads have been better. Uh, also the postpartum pad."

"Okay. I'll send you to Rebecca-- she's a pharmacist, she does all our medical stuff-- to get that sorted, and I'll send someone to ask around if there are any clothes in your size. If you need anything, you can write it with your name on the whiteboard outside my office, or use paper if it's private."

"Does Rebecca have a last name? I'm Rebecca Gardner."

"Rebecca Summers. I guess if you're going to stick around one of you will have to pick a nickname."

"Do you have a Laurel? I can be Laurel."

"I don't believe we have a Laurel."

"I can be Laurel, that's my screen name on Tumblr, 'restlesslaurel'."

"...They still have Tumblr in 2040?"

"I don't think it's that old?"

"...I guess they're alternate Earths but it's really weird that your Earth has a Tumblr and my Earth had a Tumblr and apparently they were founded decades apart? Social networking site, blue, extremely poorly maintained, allegedly an image-sharing site but mostly people used it for arguing about really dumb shit?"

"That's the one! It's a Gileadite art site, but I got an account when I couldn't make Testimony work and just do text posts complaining about stuff."

"I don't know what Testimony is or what a Gileadite is, but I did the same thing on my account. Also reblogging fanart and effortposts about math and arguing about politics."

"Gileadites are a big faction of Christianity and they have most of what usedta be the United States. Testimony's a Deseret blog site."

"I'm not exactly an expert on Christians but I don't think we have any Gileadites."

"Huh. Maybe they're less of a thing here. I guess you wouldn't have anybody wanting handmaids without bitoxiphosphene."

"What's a handmaid?"

"They're when Gileadites get some fourteen year old to come live in their house and have the guy's baby because girls're more fertile younger."

"Ew."

"I know, right? Super yuck. - how many people here do the thing where they pilot robots made of feelings?"

"About a dozen, but it varies depending on how many people want to do it and how heavy the death and bliss toll has been."

"Okay, that's good, I'd feel pretty bad about raising my baby to probably pilot a robot she'd die in trying to do - something? What are they trying to do?"

"In the short term, we're trying to clear out the aliens from a larger and larger area. If there aren't any aliens in the area, there aren't any drones. In the long term, we're trying to figure out how to talk to them and figure out what they want and why they invaded and if there's a way we can negotiate, and we're trying to understand the dream world better so we can understand how to do things like wake the sleepers. Both of those require a lot of research in the dream world, which pilots do."

"That's actually real cool but I still don't want Catherine to do it." Pet pet.

"She can decide for herself when she's fifteen! I hope by then we'll understand how to make it safer, or maybe not even need it at all."