"You're going to leave this cell," Jarvis says, "and spend time with some other Levvas, and the people that like them."

"Okay."

"They're going to bring you an earpiece that has me in it, so I can speak the translation in your ear while they talk."

"That's fine."

And he gets the earpiece and walks outside.

"Hi!" says the blue glowy alien. "My name is Asher."

"I'm Levva," Levva says. "You're taking me somewhere?"

"Back to my house. I flew here but we can get a car back."

"Okay."

He is perfectly silent the entire car ride over.

Sasha's knee is bouncing repetitively by the time he gets there. 

"Hi," he says, keeps his voice quiet but warm. 

"Hi. Apparently you like a different me. I think I'm probably worse than him in every way so don't get your hopes up."

(English comes out of a little speaker on his shirt; the voice is Jarvis's best imitation of Xenolev.)

"...that seems really unlikely. My name is Sasha, what's yours?" 

"Levva." He touches his hair; it's grey, even though he looks younger than Cascadilev.

"Hi, Levva. — can I hug you?" 

He flinches. 

"I think everyone here is polluted."

"I don't know what that means, I'm sorry." 

"If you touch feces or urine or corpses or garbage or the caste that deals with those things, then you're polluted until you can take a long shower with special soaps."

"We don't have that. We also don't have castes." 

"Oh." He touches his hair again. "I'm grey"-- Jarvis transliterates the caste name instead of translating--"I'm the caste that does the military and police and athletics and sex work."

"I'm so sorry. — are you sure you don't want a hug." 

He's already polluted. It doesn't matter. 

"Sure."

Sasha hugs him. 

He's very familiar with what Lev likes in hugs; hopefully Levva is the same. 

He's polluted he's polluted everything here is polluted Sasha has probably touched garbage and he's just fine with it--

Poor Levva. 

This is fine. He should probably just try to get used to it.

(He wants to tear off his skin.)

This isn't helping. He lets go. 

"Do you want to use our shower, do you want anything to eat, do you want a change of clothes?" 

"All the clothes here are probably polluted because none of you seem to care about pollution."

...this probably won't work but it's worth a shot. 

"It's not that we don't care about pollution, it's that we don't have pollution. For anything here to be polluted it would have to touch those things back in your world." 

That doesn't sound right but Levva is really really dumb. 

"Okay. I guess I can wait on the shower then."