"How would it know that?"

"I mean computers don't know-know things, they're just, like, kind of books, but if you type in the thing you want then the computer can tell you without you having to find the right book yourself. Sometimes."

"Huh. Okay."

So Zana logs into a library computer and searches for rivers. Apparently there is a river called the Los Angeles River that runs through downtown Los Angeles. She is sort of annoyed at herself for not already knowing this.

She also types "is drinking from rivers OK" and gets the CDC website telling her that "While the water flowing in the streams and rivers of the backcountry may look pure, it can still be contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites, and other contaminants."

I think they're lying.

Why would the CDC lie about rivers??

So that no one realizes they can live on their own and be fine.

That doesn't sound like something the CDC would do but I guess I don't technically know that they didn't do it.

Why would all the survival books talk about safe water, though? Like, if they're about how to live on your own without dying.

I don't know. Maybe here the water really isn't safe because someone did something to it. But where I'm from it is safe and everyone can just drink it and you don't need to know things to live on your own and it seems a lot better.

Well I think here you need to know a lot of things, and even if you know them you still can't have things like, I dunno, pencils.

I know how to make ink and which feathers to use to write. 

Pens are less good than pencils, though. And I dunno how to make paper.

I know how to make parchment but I would have to be bigger to do it myself I guess.

Do you really think somebody poisoned all the water?

I really think that the way things normally are, the water is drinkable and plants you can eat grow everywhere and there'd be no way to convince everyone to do work that makes them sad all day. And - we're not evil, but if we were evil that'd be a very clever evil thing to do, wouldn't it?

Yeah, I guess so.

Maybe if somebody poisoned all the water then there's a way to unpoison it all. Like, there has to be, right, if we know how to make it safe again for cities?

Yeah. There has to be. Or at least if they stop poisoning it it wouldn't be poisoned anymore once it had all gotten washed out to the sea. 

Yeah. 'Cause rain isn't poison, so once it rained again and didn't get poisoned then the rivers would all have to stop being poison.

Yeah, like that! So if we make them stop then it'll be easier for people to live on their own if they want to.

Hmm. I don't know how to make them stop if we don't know who's doing it, though.

Probably we will need to figure that out. Carefully, they might be dangerous.

Yeah. 

How do we figure out who's doing it?

Uh, is there an evil angel who rebelled against creation and wants to cause as much suffering as possible?

You mean Satan?

I bet you that's the person poisoning the water.