"It's a huge problem with greens. Most of them don't make any money at all. And it's worse because some of them are really rich, so the rich ones can get seven child credits and then five adjuncts or broke artists wind up not having kids. So most greens are poorer and less successful than their parents, and that ends up causing all sorts of stress and neuroticism."

He really really hopes Levva reads about social science. 

"It sounds like it would, yeah. — here most people who make money off art have a different day job waiting tables or being a barista or something, it's still a mess but not nearly as much of one as if artists couldn't also have another job —" 

"It's pretty bad for greys too. The problem is that you need a lot of greys for going to war but the rest of the time there's just not that much for us to do, you just don't need that many arcball players and cops and dancers and park rangers. --It's really bad in Voa because we're two-per-couple, so you can't just reduce grey unemployment by making there be fewer greys."

"Yeah. — I'm sure there are reasons to have castes but I think having people be able to do more than one thing over the course of a lifetime is good for us." 

"You can do eugenics-- in general, yellows have better executive function, greens are smarter, greys are"-- hair-touch-- "more athletic. And people can specialize pretty early on. Greyschool is like half athletics in the early grades because we're all going to have to work physical jobs, blueschool has more politics, greenschool has more art and music and more advanced math and science, orangeschool has a ton of psych classes--" He sounds a little longing about that last one.

"...............................eugenics." 

"That's an oddly skeptical face."

"When someone here decided they were going do eugenics it ended with eleven million people murdered." 

"What? Why?"

"Because he didn't want the Jews in the gene pool. Or the gays, or the disabled, or the Roma." 

"I don't know what two of those are, why would people who spring sideways be on your top four list, and disabled people not being in the gene pool is fair but you could just sterilize us."

"Roma and Jews are ethnic groups, Judaism is also a religion but he meant it the ethnic group way not the religious way. People on earth have a long and horrifying history of hating gay people in lots of different ways. And here if someone suggests sterilizing disabled people they are maybe a quarter of a step away at most from suggesting rounding them up and killing them." 

"What's a religion, were they particularly dysgenic ethnic groups or something, why would you hate people who spring sideways, and why can't your species do population controls without murder."

"It wasn't population control. He didn't give a fuck about population control. He gave a fuck about dirty foreigners invading pure German society and about the nasty money-grubbing Jewish vermin and the licentious degenerates and —" and here his voice breaks and he buries his face in the pillow. 

"Hey," Levva says, and holds him. "Hey, it's okay-- I'm sorry-- I don't actually know what most of those words you said mean-- it's okay--"

"I don't know if I can explain them, sorry," he says, and presses his face into Levva's shoulder. "I just — that's what people think of when you say eugenics here. Is eleven million people rounded up and murdered." 

"I'm sorry. Back home it means-- not doing that. If anything."

Coming up with a response to that sounds like it would involve both feelings and taking his face away from Lev's shoulder and Sasha is not a fan of that idea. 

Levva strokes circles on Sasha's back and holds him and does not comment that he's very pretty even though he is and it's spring.

"I think I'm gonna fall asleep," he says after a few minutes of being held and having his back rubbed by someone who smells just like his boyfriend. 

"That's okay," Levva says, "I think I'm going to try to figure out whether you have an Internet and if so where can I find the videos of babies getting confused about mirrors."

"We have an internet. Try Youtube." 

A robot knocks politely on the door, enters, and presents Levva with one of the primitive everythings. "I believe this will help," Jarvis says, in English and in Voan.

"Thanks."

He curls up and sleeps and — 

— doesn't dream, and if he did dream he wouldn't remember it, and if he did remember it he wouldn't admit it. 

When he wakes up, Levva is very intently watching "Funny Babies Moments - Cute Babies and Daddies Moments Compilation 2013." A baby is biting his dad's nose while the dad giggles.