Fortunately Nereus dresses pretty sensibly! Well, price-wise. He apparently loves bright colors, especially oranges.

He can have oranges! Derek is not capable of producing many clothing opinions but he will definitely pay for things.

And then they can go home. Is Nereus fine spending the next few days kind of just wasting time until they can get him a Yeerk?

He'll probably want to spend it getting caught up on world differences, but, yeah, seems reasonable. (And his thing doesn't work over the internet so maybe he can make real friends and have people to talk to, even if it's never enough - )

So the days pass. Derek spends his days at the local high school, where he works.

Derek's wife keeps him company. She tells Nereus when she meets him that she was fired from a three-letter government agency for getting too close to the Yeerks, partially as an attempt to explain the bulletin board papered with photographs, documents, and other assorted data points.

They have dinner together, which mostly consists of Derek gazing adoringly at Braeden while she eats.

Scott visits on the second day. Derek leaves him in the living room, where he waits for Nereus.

He's there.

"How are you settling in? Is Derek treating you alright?"

"I'm doing good, and he's been great."

"That's good to hear. Have you been catching up on what our dimension is like?"

"Yeah. Even understand some of the pop culture stuff."

"Yeah? Have you been watching anything good? I know Derek doesn't own a TV because he's still living in the last century, but I know Braeden has a laptop somewhere..."

"Apparently the Star Wars prequels also got made here! People joke about the prequels in both worlds we know about being terrible, but I like them - here had some really different elements though."

"I actually haven't seen Star Wars. Do the, um, first ones seem the same?"

"They're the same in Aleph and Bet? I didn't check them here - they're from before capes appeared, so I wouldn't have thought they'd have diverged."

"It's weird that there are this many Earths. Do they have the same people on them? You have all the same movies and celebrities and presidents, up until a certain point, right?"

"Yeah. Everyone born before Scion showing up is the same, at least with the super obvious public figures I checked here."

“Since you found us first, do you get to name this one? What are Alef and Bet? That sounds sort of like the Greek letters.”

"Yeah, they're I think the Greek version of A and B? I don't know what the third Greek letter is, though, but I figure people would want to keep the naming scheme... And I don't know who decides the names."

"I don't think anyone here could agree on a name. Maybe it was some scientist who did it. Scientists are terrible at naming things, and they wouldn't talk to all the world leaders first. Anyway, the reason I came here was to ask more about your powers. Some of the others are going to want to know more so they can plan with that in mind."

"Sure. Uh, do you have specific questions?"

"I guess we're mainly curious, uh, how many people can you influence at once, will they notice a change in how they're thinking even if they can't resist it, and if you've ever tested it on other species."

"I haven't tested my upper limit but it's at least ten. Most people notice? Especially if I'm going quickly. I think that varies, though, and - you can get used to Master effects, so the times I've grabbed someone who was being controlled by someone else they didn't notice. And it's not - action control? Someone can decide it's a horrible tragedy that they have to kill or stop me, their best friend, for the greater good." Although he can fuck with that given time and motivation. "I've tested it on modified humans but not other sapients, and I don't think it works on non-sapient animals."

"Do you think it would work if you were in morph?"