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a straight course to eternal bliss
Cascadia Rebecca in Bliss Stage
Permalink Mark Unread

The baby needs to be walked a lot. If she is not walked she yells. So Rebecca walks and walks and knows the hallway well enough to do it with her eyes closed, so she does it with her eyes closed because she's so tired, so she doesn't see the difference until she hears her footsteps on concrete instead of carpet.

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A noticeably dirty and skinny teenager says to her, "Hello. What crew are you from?"

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"Wha?"

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"What crew are you from?" the teenager repeats herself.

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"I don't know what you're talking about. Where am I?"

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"We're from Eros. You have to have a crew, you have a baby and you're clean."

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"I don't think I've slept in two days so maybe you're actually making complete sense but I dunno what you're talking about."

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"Really?" the teenager says with a horrified expression. "Come with me, we'll get someone to take your baby and you can nap and then we'll find your people."

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"- yeah that sounds great," she yawns, and she follows him.

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Rebecca is brought to a tent. The teenager takes perhaps a slightly unreasonable amount of care in making sure that the tent is completely zipped before she takes the baby away.

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Rebecca takes about two seconds to assess this tent before she flops in it and falls asleep.

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When she wakes up, Catherine is crying and three teenagers are arguing about whether it's more dangerous to feed the baby expired formula, to starve the baby, or to wake Rebecca.

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Rebecca unzips the tent and wobbles over and plants Catherine's face on a boob. That was maybe a whole hour of sleep, hooray.

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"We're sorry," the teenager says, "as soon as she's fed you can go back to sleep."

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"Thanks." Sigh. "She eats a lot."

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"Sorry," the teenager says, "people who are breastfeeding don't scavenge. If you don't know where your crew is, we'll cut this trip short and take you to Eros so you can swap off with the other moms."

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"Is crew a - sailing thing -"

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"Your people," the teenager says. "You know, the ones that help you find food and shelter and defend yourself from drones and forklifts and other people's crews."

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“My foster parents are probably at their apartment? Where I was? Till just now?"

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The teenager has a baffled expression. "You have more than one old?"

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"They're... married?"

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"Excuse me," the teenager says, and leaves.

The conversation outside Rebecca's tent includes the words "dream emanation" a lot.

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How about she and this baby both flop in the tent and she tries for the 400th time to sleep while nursing and see if it works yet the way people keep saying it should.

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As soon as the baby seems to be done nursing, a teenager will come by to collect it.

For the rest of the afternoon, Rebecca will be brought a baby occasionally for nursing and then allowed to sleep undisturbed. When the sun sets, Catherine is placed in her tent. Throughout the night, Rebecca has a sense that if she leaves the tent something horrible will happen. 

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That's concerning! It makes it hard to sleep, actually!

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In the morning, a teenager comes by to collect her baby. 

"Did you sleep okay?" the teenager says with a perhaps unusual level of concern.

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"I think I got a few hours in there but I had this weird anxiety after dark. I'm not like scared of the dark or anything, it was weird."

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"Oh, yeah," the teenager says, "that's the Something. Don't worry about it, it can't get you if you're careful to close the doors and windows, and we're very good about checking the tents."

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"I... think I got enough sleep that things shouldn't still be this confusing?"

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"Okay, so the world became really confusing seven years ago," the teenager says, "and we think you got transported forward in time or spontaneously created with inaccurate memories or something. We're going to take you to Lev and he's going to figure out what's going on and explain everything to you. It's only a day's canoe away, and you can nap in the canoe if you didn't get enough sleep last night. --One of the consequences of the confusing things is that it is really important that everyone get enough sleep."

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"I can sleep in a canoe," says Rebecca agreeably. "If I was spontaneously created with all my memories why do I remember having the same baby I have?"

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"I'm a farmer and a scavenger," the teenager says. "Dealing with dream emanations-- that's the kind of thing you are-- is way above my pay grade."

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"Dream... emanations?"

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"Weird things," the teenager says, opening the tent flaps. "Dealing with weird things is way above my pay grade."

Now that Rebecca is less sleep-deprived, she may notice that the street has mostly disappeared under a carpet of grass, all the buildings are crumbling and covered with vines and moss, three or four people appear to be napping on the sidewalk, and a waffle bar is walking merrily along the street. 

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She points at the waffle bar and goes, "Bwuh?"

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"The world," the teenager says, "is very very weird."

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"Okay but that's a buffet table and it's walking."

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"Yes. It's very convenient." As they talk, the waffle bar appears to observe them and sit down. A dozen people ranging in age from barely pubescent to midtwenties form an orderly line and take plates. "I recommend filling up, it's the only sugar you're going to get for a while."

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"It's safe to eat - walking waffles?"

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"Yep! They're really tasty too." 

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"If you say so."

She loads up her waffle with chocolate and strawberries and whipped cream.

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It is, in fact, the most delicious waffle she has ever had.

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Wow, can she have another? Breastfeeding, constantly walking a baby around with very few snack breaks, and catching up on sleep are all hungry work.

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The waffle bar is infinitely replenishing!

Some of these fruits don't look like any fruits she has ever seen before. 

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"What's up with this?" she asks, holding up a green fruit.

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"The waffle bar gives you fruits that don't otherwise exist," the explanatory teenager says. "That one's safe, but you shouldn't eat one without asking someone, some of them turn you blue or make you sneeze constantly or cause you to float six inches off the ground."

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She tastes the safe green fruit. "Do you ever stop? Floating or sneezing or being blue?"

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"Oh, yeah," the teenager says, "they wear off in a couple hours."

The safe green fruit tastes delicious! Unfortunately, the delicious taste in question is umami. 

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Weird. She will go with blueberries and maple syrup and lots of butter this time.

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The waffles continue to be perfect!

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...everything here is super weird and apparently this is not a routine opportunity and the other food available is not up to waffle standards so she has another half waffle with lemon and powdered sugar and then she's too stuffed for more.

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Fortunately, everyone is very happy to watch Catherine while she naps in the canoe. 

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That's very nice of them!

She sleeps in the canoe and wakes up before they arrive.

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"You missed lunch," the teenager says, handing her some jerky. "We're almost there."

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Chew chew. "And some person there is gonna explain stuff?"

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"Yeah, Lev can explain everything. He's really smart."

And they pull up to a building that is, recognizably, a prison. There's LAKE ERIE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY in front of it and everything.

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"That's... a jail."

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"It used to be a prison," the explanatory teenager says. "Now it's Eros."

A lot of people are milling around, doing various sorts of agriculture. No one seems to be older than their midtwenties. 

The explanatory teenager yells. "SOMEBODY GO GET LEV, WE'RE BACK EARLY AND WE HAVE A WEIRD DREAM THING."

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"I'm not a dream thing," she mutters. "My name's Rebecca."

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"THE DREAM THING'S NAME IS REBECCA."

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Sigh.

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After some amount of canoeing and busyness on the part of the people on land, Rebecca can disembark and be greeted by a short, unnervingly skinny man with dark curly hair and an aura of extreme stress. He is probably older than eighteen but not by much.

"Hi, I'm Lev, I run Eros. I hear you're Rebecca?"

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"Yes, hello, nice to meet you."

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"We should probably go up to my office."

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"Okay - should I bring Catherine in case she gets hungry -?"

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"Yes!" He makes a face at her. "She's so cute."

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"Thanks!"

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"Can I hold her while we walk to my office?"

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"Sure!" Have a baby.

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On the way to the office Lev will amuse himself by counting her one-two-three-four-FIVE six-seven-eight-nine-TEN toes.

 

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Awwww!

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Lev's office is weirdly free of paper and computers, but there are a lot of books on shelves: science fiction, economics, survivalist books, resources about the kinds of plants. 

"So, all I've heard is that you're a 'dream thing.'"

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"I don't think I'm a dream thing. I don't know how I got here or where here is or why it's so postapocalyptic though. I'm from Deseret? I was at home walking the baby down the hall and then I wasn't."

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"Can you tell me what Deseret is like? --Sorry, I bet you're confused, I just want to know how far back I need to start the explanation."

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"Uh, Deseret's an LDS-majority country that broke off from the United States when it collapsed and is all of what used to be Utah and some extra stuff next to that too?"

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"...What year are you from?"

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"2040."

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"...It's 2025 here. And I'm guessing you didn't have the Bliss."

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"Nnnnno? What is that?"

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"So, seven years ago, in 2018, everyone aged 18 or older suddenly felt this overwhelming overpowering desire to take a nap. And if they did, they went to sleep and they didn't wake up. They don't need food or water, animals don't attack them, they stay alive remarkably well, they just... never wake up. We call this event the Bliss, because it seems like they're having happy dreams, and we call the unconscious people the sleepers."

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"Oh - wow - that sucks a whole lot."

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"It turns out that the Bliss was an invasion attempt on the part of an alien race. We don't know who they are or what they want or what they're capable of. One year after the Bliss they sent out drones to try to kill as many kids as they could find."

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"The aliens touching our world-- changed it. In bad ways, and good ones. You've probably experienced the Something."

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"The creepy thing at night? Yeah."

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"At least it helpfully told us it existed! But yeah if you leave a door or a window open at night everyone in your house will get eaten by the Something. --We quadruple-check every night."

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"...okay. Also there was a waffle buffet."

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"Yeah! There are buffets that wander around the world. Usually waffles, but not always. Lots of kids would have starved if not for those."

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"That's so random."

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"The aliens are really confusing. --The other bad thing is that stores that are large enough to have forklifts are now defended by attack forklifts."

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"Oh... yeah, somebody said something about forklifts."

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"They're pretty scary but you don't have to worry about them unless you're a scavenger."

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"Welp somebody told me that breastfeeding moms aren't scavengers."

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"Of course not." He sounds mildly offended.

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"So I guess I won't worry about forklifts."

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"You wouldn't have to do it unless you wanted to, anyway. Scavengers usually volunteer for it, they get more time off the rest of the month."

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"Oh."

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"But we can figure out what your skills are once you're up to date on what the world is like."

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"I'm not good at much. Like, I'm still in high school. I'm good at music but you can't like, eat that, and I bet you don't have a piano..."

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"You're still in-- oh, right, no Bliss. Here we only do school until eleven."

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"That sounds kinda nice."

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"There's a lot of disagreement among the people old enough to remember school!"

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"I mean I like being in the school choir, but I could do without math class."

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"I actually think math is really fun."

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"Well, it would be a very dull world if we were all alike."

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"Anyway. Do you have any more questions?"

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"Why do you all think I'm a dream thing and not - that a dream thing took me here, or something?"

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"I think they were using 'dream thing' to mean both of those. I certainly don't know whether you were created or transported, and I don't know how we'd figure it out."

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"I don't know how I'd prove it. I didn't like, bring anything with me besides I guess my phone."

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"Can I see?"

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"Okay." She hands it over. It's at seventy percent.

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He looks through the apps.

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Various music apps - tuner, metronome, keyboard, her actual music player. Games, some simple puzzles and some music themed and one task management themed around nursing. Phone, texting, three different chat apps. Bank, doctor appointment app, grocery coupon app, grocery list app. Maps, reminders, calendar, camera full of pictures of Catherine and (longer ago) various other people, some Rebecca's age and some older. A school app, a web browser, an app for a pizza place.

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He turns it off.

"We should probably wait to use this until we figure out if we have any compatible chargers."

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"I have the cord in my pocket but not the part that converts it from Zapline to wall plug."

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"I don't know what a Zapline is, so that's not promising."

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"It's the kind of charger all the little electronics use nowa- uh, in 2040." Catherine nuzzles her. Rebecca sticks her on a boob.

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"Would you rather I take it to the electronics people so they can study it when they have time, or leave it with you and you don't turn it on?"

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"I'd probably turn it on by accident, like, to check the time, even though I haven't reset the time."

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"Okay, we'll take it. --If we had money, I'd pay you for it, but unfortunately I haven't gotten that up and running yet."

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"You don't have money? What, are you communists or something?"

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"Or something. The economy is run by me deciding who gets things."

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"That... sounds hard?"

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"I'm trying to get everyone onto a different system. But I think I do an okay job."

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"Okay. Uh, I don't want people reading my private notes or anything. Like maybe just stay out of the prayer app completely."

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"Of course. --What religion did you say you are?"

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"LDS! - Latter Day Saints. Mormon. Do you have those here?"

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"Not in Canada. Eros is about half Catholic and half atheists and members of other religions. I'm Jewish."

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"Oh. Is there a way to go to Deseret from here? Or, uh, Utah?"

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"We could give you a compass and copy out a map onto paper for you? But I don't think your survival skills are going to be very good."

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"Can't put bicycle handlebars on a waffle buffet?"

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"Waffle buffets often have predictable routes but I don't think there are any of them that go from here to Utah, and even if you did you'd have to provide your own medical care and keep yourself safe from the Something and have a way to escape the drones."

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"Yeah." Sigh.

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"Do you want other Mormons for services or some other reason? We have Mass every day."

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"I guess Mass is better than nothing? I just really wanna get married in kind of a hurry to have a daddy for Catherine and it seems like it might be hard if my husband wasn't a Mormon."

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"There are lots of single Catholics here. And members of other religions. Although I don't know if Mormons are supposed to marry other Mormons the way Catholics are supposed to marry other Catholics."

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"I dunno how it works for Catholics, I can't read Spanish, but like, usually you wanna do it that way because it makes lots of stuff easier. I guess if there's not a temple we couldn't do a temple wedding anyway."

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"What do Catholics have to do with Spanish?"

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"Mexico is Catholic? I mean there's Mexicans who speak English I guess, but I never paid a lot of attention."

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"...I guess we probably have a weirdly high number of Catholics because of the whole Pope situation."

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"Pope situation?"

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"We have the pope. He's sixteen. A bishop realized the Bliss was happening, called the Vatican, somehow was put through to the Pope, and received permission to ordain a nine-year-old a bishop immediately before the Pope blissed. The Catholics generally consider this to be a bona fide miracle, so there have been a lot of converts."

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"Wow. I mean, it could be a miracle, I'm not clear on exactly how Heavenly Father feels about all the other kinds of Christianity but maybe He likes them, and we can't check if there's a sixteen year old President in Utah."

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"Sadly, Heavenly Father seems less interested in the miracle of the Large Number Of Jewish Girls Who Are Mysteriously Into Me."

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"Why do you need lots of them? Are Jews into polygamy?"

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"I don't think it's against the rules, but I think it was kind of frowned on? I don't know, I didn't pay that much attention in Hebrew school. I just mean that one Jewish guy and ten Jewish women gets you more Jewish babies than the other way around, and if children have a non-Jewish father and a Jewish mother they're still considered Jewish, but not the other way around."

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"Oh. Does that matter?"

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"It matters to me."

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"Don't do too much polygamy, okay? It doesn't work super well when people try to do it too much."

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"The non-Catholics do some amount of polygamy but girls get to date more than one person too. It seems to be working out okay."

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"I'm pretty sure girls aren't supposed to do that."

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"None of us are Mormon."

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"Yeah." Sigh.

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"Girls here do everything guys do, except that there are more men doing jobs you have to be strong for, and they can't do anything dangerous if they have a baby, and if they're having sex that might lead to a baby they can't do anything dangerous except piloting."

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"Piloting?"

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"So you know how I told you the aliens are fighting a war with us?"

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"You mentioned they came in and killed people and wrecked stuff, I don't think you said war."

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"Well, we don't know what they think they're trying to do, but 'war' is good enough, given the number of people they've killed. --Anyway, pilots are how we fight back."

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"How do you have, like, planes?"

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"The aliens aren't from our world. They're from a parallel world we call the dream world because it's-- dream-logic-y, the same way the forklifts and the waffle bars and the Something are. Using a special machine called the anima, we can transport ourselves from our world to theirs and travel through it safely."

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"How do you... build special machines, though?"

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A brief flash across his face--

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"Asher, the former leader of Eros, reverse engineered the anima from drones we captured."

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"Wow."

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"The dream world is weird. Places in the dream world correspond to places in our world but they're-- different. Space is warped. Sometimes you ride ten floors in an elevator and end up at the place you started. Sometimes things are, for no readily apparent reason, castles or theme park rides or pizza restaurants. There are people but they're all like NPCs in a video game-- they have three or four or five lines, but they don't respond to new situations. It's also shaped by the people who are in it. Some people get stunningly beautiful landscapes with mountains and glaciers, even in the middle of Cleveland. Some people get weirdly still and eerie dreamscapes. Some people get mazes that they can't escape from. One person got into theirs, screamed, and then refused to ever get in an anima again."

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"Did... they say what they saw?"

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"Nothing except that it was horrible."

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"Well... the glaciers one sounds nice!"

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"Yep! The aliens themselves are awful though. They look like people you knew from the past-- your elementary school math teacher, your parents, your old crew leader. But when you look at them you know it's not them. And they have this-- aura of unthinkable horror. They're just-- wrong. And when you're around one it feels like you're moving through water, all your movements are slow, no matter how panicked you are and how much you want to speed it up."

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"Yeah, that's a dream thing."

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"The pilot goes into the dream world. To protect themselves, they form a giant robot we also call an anima. The anima is formed out of your relationships with people you love. The chassis of the robot comes from a person we call the anchor, who also acts as mission control. But you can turn other relationships into-- guns, or sensors, or fists, or whatever you like." 

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"That doesn't make any sense," she points out.

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"Dream logic?"

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"But a relationship isn't stuff, you can't make it into a robot!"

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"It's more-- your feelings that you're making into a robot. And it's the dream world, lots of things are physical there that aren't physical here."

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"I guess," she says grudgingly. Catherine switches boobs.

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"Since the robot is made out of your feelings for people, when a part of the robot is destroyed, it damages your relationship with them. People get-- insecure, or angry, or easily irritated. They start thinking about all the other person's faults, or their bad memories, and don't think about their virtues or the good parts of the relationship. If you get injured in the dream world, it turns into emotional problems in our world-- depression, or hearing voices, or anger issues, or anxiety."

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"And let me guess, if you die you die in real life?"

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"Yep! And pilots bliss a lot."

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"That's the falling asleep forever thing? That still happens?"

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"Yeah. If you're not a pilot it happens sort of randomly, but it's more likely to happen if you sleep too much or too little. We think that if you're generally happy and not too stressed it's less likely to happen. But pilots bliss a lot. Pilots with more powerful animas tend to bliss more, and so do pilots who have had bad breakups. Anyone who tries to pilot over the age of 18 blisses."

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"Child soldiers. Great."

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"Of course not, we don't send in anyone younger than fifteen."

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"I guess that's not that much younger than Deseret's age of majority."

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"There are some people between the age of eleven and fifteen who train to defend Eros if it becomes necessary, but we don't think it will, and of course some of them are scavengers, which is very dangerous."

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"Cause of the forklifts. Right." She looks down at Catherine. "Poor baby. Is there a way you could all just - come to my planet?"

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"Not just the forklifts, there are lots of crews that will kill for food or because you trespassed on their territory, and there are cannibal crews."

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"...yikes."

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"If I could take my people to your planet I would."

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"Will it help if I like... dream about it... or anything? Not that I know how but like I probably will since I lived there."

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"Can't hurt."

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"Guess I'll try to do that then."

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"What else-- oh, if fish swim through the air near the lake that's normal and it doesn't mean you're seeing things. If you're ever trapped somewhere and need to escape, you'll always be able to find a way out, even if you've been there before and you know there's no way to escape. And strange cats are often powerful and will try to protect you from harm."

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"How... will I know there's no way to escape... if there's always a way to escape?"

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"I mean, if you've been in this room before and you know there's just a wall, and someone is threatening you and you need to get out, the wall will suddenly have a door in it."

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"Oh, okay. Cool."

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"It comes in handy."

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"Yeah, it sounds useful." Sigh. "So like - you don't have money but do people have to work, here -"

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"Yes, everyone has to work. Fifty hours a week is pretty normal. Of course, you'll have less, because you're a mother."

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"Well, that's good. I assume I can't just... teach piano."

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"We don't have a piano, and even if we did teaching it is not really very important for the survival of Eros. If you can sing or play an instrument we have or can get, you can play at night or while people work."

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"I sing too, yeah. Piano's the only instrument I've picked up but I could learn something else!"

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"That sounds good. You can garden also, or make something. We have enough three- to five-year-olds now that we've been thinking of splitting them off into their own classroom, if you think you'd do better as a teacher."

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"Gardening's okay but I'm not great at it. My only teaching experience is piano but I like that pretty well and I don't know that much stuff but I probably know enough for kindergarteners. - if all this happened seven years ago how come you have so many kids?"

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"Our list of contraceptive methods is the pullout method, the rhythm method, homosexuality, not having penis-in-vagina sex, poisoning yourself in the hopes the fetus dies before you do, and natural family planning which no one can do because it requires so much paper to chart. All of these are unlikely to work for many people."

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".........bi...toxi...phosphene?"

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"What's that?"

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"A chemical that makes women infertile? We have a lot of it and it's everywhere and most people can't have kids, or can't have kids who're born alive anyway, especially not past their teens."

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"Not a thing in our world. --If you can't have babies you're going to be very popular among a certain subset of the good Catholic boys of Eros."

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"I mean, I had this one and she's healthy. I might be good for another five or I might never have another one or they might all come out with half a head."

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"Even so, some guys will like their chances better with that than with the ten babies they'll have with a girl born in this universe."

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"Lucky me then."

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"It's unfortunate if you want kids, though."

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"I've got this one, that's more than some people get."

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"And you can adopt, it's not like we have any shortage of parentless children."

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"...yeah I guess if their parents are dead I can do that. I have like, weird feelings about adopting kids if their parents are not dead."

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"I don't know why we'd let you do that, there aren't enough parents to begin with."

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"That's really weird," she says. "Like, coming from a place where there's bitoxiphosphene. I haven't put Catherine down since she was born except when people here borrowed her so I could sleep, 'cause people kept telling me it would be better to give her up for adoption so she could have two parents, and stuff."

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"But she's your baby!"

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"That's what I said!"

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"I promise you, no one here is going to take your baby."

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"Good!" She snuggles Catherine, who has fallen asleep. "Also everyone here seems super invested in me getting enough sleep."

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"People who don't get enough sleep tend to bliss. Eros takes sleep very seriously. You can talk to the other moms about cycling baby care so you get eight uninterrupted hours every night."

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"Awesome."

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"Do you have any more questions?"

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"Um, where do we stay and how do I get stuff we need and who do I talk to if I think of something I need to know?"

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"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?"

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

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"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"...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?"

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"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."

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"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."

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

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

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

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"What's a handmaid?"

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"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."

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"Ew."

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

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"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."

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"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?"

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"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."

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

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"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."

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"Yeah. So do I like - try the different job ideas and see what works?"

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"It's your first week, so why don't you try helping out with Ada-- she's the teacher-- for a few days and see if you think you could handle the threes-fours-fives classroom, and do some singing at night to see if people will ask that that be one of your jobs, and if both of those don't work out you can garden?"

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"Okay. Do you ever have electricity? There are some pretty light keyboards you could maybe find somewhere if you were looking and I really don't want to forget how to play..."

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"Yes, but it's pretty severely rationed. We need it for heating and running the animas and things like that."

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"Even if it wasn't turned on I could like, keep the muscle memory till there was a special occasion maybe."

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Lev writes it down in a notebook. "I'll do my best."

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"Thanks."

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"Anything else or should I send you on your way?"

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"You said meals in the dining room but I don't know where that is."

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He sticks his head out and says, "Can someone get one of the moms? Probably Alyssa?"

Alyssa, when she appears, is in her midteens and has a child old enough to walk. "Hi!"

"Alyssa can show you around," Lev says.

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"Hi! I'm Rebecca but if that's confusing with the other Rebecca you can call me Laurel. This is Catherine."

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"Hi!" Alyssa says. "I'm going to call you Laurel because the other obvious way to nickname one of you is to call the other Rebecca Old Rebecca and she haaaaates that. She's like 'I'm only 45'! This is my son Shadow."

Shadow clings to his mom's leg.

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"Hi there Shadow!" says Rebecca.

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Shadow buries his face in his mom's leg.

"He's scared of new people," Alyssa says. "We don't get them much here and, well."

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"I'm a new person, I admit it."

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Alyssa takes Laurel to her room!

Laurel's room has a bed and a desk and a closet and a window. A handful of items-- soap, a toothbrush (but no toothpaste), nursing pads-- have been placed on the desk. 

"We'll see about getting you some clothes," Alyssa says, "the other moms are doing a collection."

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"Thanks! - I also gave birth like three days ago and I'm still kinda bleeding."

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"That's what this is for," Alyssa says, pointing to a strip of cloth with velcro on it. "It's pretty self-explanatory, I think."

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"...okay."

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"Sorry, we were out of disposable pads by year two."

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"I guess that makes sense. How do you do laundry?"

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"You take your clothes to the laundry people and then they clean them," Alyssa says. "I'm not sure how, I'm not on laundry personally."

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"Okay, cool. There's running water?"

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"No, they use lake water, I think."

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"Guess that makes sense. I just keep Catherine in the same bed with me?"

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"It's usually easier to get enough sleep that way, although if you want a crib you can ask for one."

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"I can make it work. And I can like - hand her off to get a little extra when she wakes me up a lot?"

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"Yeah! Everyone on this hallway is a mom, if they have a sock on their door it means that you can stop in and hand off the baby so you can sleep. We also don't have to work as much because we have babies."

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"Cool. How long's that last?"

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"Until they're sleep-trained, basically, it's on the honor system. Although if your kid is three and you're still on mom hours Lev is probably going to talk to you."

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"Guess that makes sense. Maybe I'll be married and have another by then though."

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"Are you Catholic?"

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"Mormon."

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"We don't have any Mormons," Alyssa says. "But Pope Peter usually approves interfaith marriages. Although I guess that doesn't help if you're not allowed to marry people outside of your religion."

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"We are. It seems like it might be awkward but I don't wanna just never get married and Catholic's not one of the worse other religions there are."

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"You can try to meet people," Alyssa says. "I know a really cute guy who wants to be a priest."

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"Aren't Catholic priests not allowed to get married? My foster dad complains about it all the time, he thinks it makes them out of touch."

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"Oh, the pope can change the rule," Alyssa says. "He's trying to make as many people priests as possible so that if somebody dies the Catholic Church can continue. But they have to get married before they become priests, so lots of guys are trying to get married."

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"Huh! Okay. I could marry a wannabe priest."