"I'm also technically your boss if you're going to do scavenging, although day-to-day you'll be managed by Loki and not me. But if you have complaints you can come talk to me, it's my job to handle things."

He nods again. He's doing a lot of that today. 

"You should also talk to me if you decide you want to be a pilot."

"Pilots... control the robots made out of love that they use to fight the aliens?" He really hopes he remembered that correctly. 

"Yes. Being a pilot has many advantages, such as the fact that you don't have to do any work other than piloting and are more likely to receive things you want from scavenger trips and you are wildly lauded as a hero, and one enormous disadvantage, which is that pilots seem to nigh-inevitably die or bliss or go permanently insane."

That sounds like a terrible tradeoff and he has no idea why anyone thinks he would make it. 

"Thank you for telling me about the option." 

"I will see you later."

He leaves.

He should really take this book and go down to the library and ask the librarian about copying out his margin notes. What he wants to do is curl up on the bed (bed!!!) and process everything that's happened in the last month. 

He takes the book and goes down to the library. 

The librarian gives him some paper and a desk in the corner of the library. 

She seems to be keeping a little bit of an eye on how much he works.

Lev takes the books Sasha brought to his office, discovers Sasha copied poetry into the margins, discovers Sasha has good taste in poetry, and repeats "fuck" for several minutes.

He writes quickly; he's had a lot of practice making his handwriting as small as it needs to be. Every few minutes he pauses to shake out his hand and then gets back to work. 

Eventually the bell will ring for dinner.

He's gotten through a significant portion of book by then; he thanks the librarian and goes. 

Having regular mealtimes is going to be strange. Having three meals a day is going to be even more so. He acquires food and — if he's going to stay here he should try to make friends — god he misses Nova — looks at the space where people are eating. 

He recognizes Loki and Chris and the librarian and the rest of the scavengers and some of the water purification people who were hearing LOTR get read to them.

Yes alright he knows Loki he'll sit near Loki. 

Loki is very polite and welcoming!

Lev comes in and sits three tables away from Sasha but within eyeshot of him. He brings papers and attempts to look busy.

Also sitting near Loki is a boy — maybe seventeen? not older — who smiles broadly at Sasha and introduces himself as Marlo. 

Sure, why not. Sasha smiles back. 

"Marlo's a pilot," Loki says.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

"Cool! I haven't heard a lot about it, what's the alien world like — if that's okay to ask —" 

"Different for everyone! For me there's a statistically bizarre amount of castles or things that are trying to look like castles but there's one guy who gets gorgeous glaciers even in the middle of a suburb and someone where the insides of buildings look like honeycomb." 

That is not a smile Marlo usually makes at cute people. It is a significantly happier smile than he usually makes at cute people.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

"Weird! When you say things that are trying to look like castles —"