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mohd dandelion in Amenta
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She opens the web browsing app and starts investigating the general shape of their web.

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Well, none of it's in any languages she actually knows, but it's sure an internet, lots of variety of stuff; the browser assumes the default thing she wants is this social media site.

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She will stick with the parts she can make McElroy translate. What's this social media site? 

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It's called Everybody and it invites her to import her contacts so it can try to find her friends and make her an account, or log in!!

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She is sort of vaguely curious how far she can get in the making-an-account process with no actual legal identity or anything. 

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Everybody does not require a legal identity. Now she has an account!

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Okay neat. She can use this to try and get the lay of the land, so to speak. 

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Everybody is not very useful without any friends.

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...Joy, okay. She supposes she'll get started on that language-learning app, then. 

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It's starting her on things like hello and thank you, though she's also introduced to the name of a local fruit as an example of a thing to be thanked for, and a couple names (a recurring purple cartoon character is called Ahmi and her yellow friend is Erak).

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She dutifully does her best to memorize those things and tries to see if this app displays any differing background assumptions from what she's used to, culturally. 

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In lesson three Erak lets Ahmi hold his baby and she says 'thank you'!

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Well, that makes sense given the thing where apparently they want way too many kids. She's going to have to do something about that at some point but she doubts it's going to be in the top ten on her priority lists. 

When she can't focus on the language lessons anymore she goes back to the web browser to see what else she can learn about this planet. At least they have a reasonably recognizable search engine or this would be much harder; she decides she might as well start from the baby thing. What does she get if she searches, oh, "permissions," "reproductive control," and, on a whim, "babies?" 

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Permissions are a form of population control used mostly in the Oahksphere where individuals or families are awarded permission to have a baby according to various criteria. "Reproductive control" gets her birth control results; they have it just about perfect and reversible for both sexes. Babies gets her BABY PICTURES and BABY MERCHANDISE and A CREEPY SERVICE THAT WILL EMAIL YOU RECORDINGS OF BABIES MAKING BABY NOISES.

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Yeeaaaaah that's pretty creepy. She admires the cuteness of a couple of baby pictures then tries "population control" since that phrase came up when she tried permissions. 

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(Meanwhile Kamuor has found and awakened her cook, who is hastily assembling some sandwiches.)

Population control search results tell her that some places instead auction credits for money and some places do two-per. Everybody has to have population control.

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She is not thrilled by population control but she understands the concept of tradeoffs. Two-per seems obviously best but she's not going to say that out loud where her host is likely to hear and be offended. 

...How are population controls enforced, she remembers that in China during the one-child policy era you had to pay fines if you had a second kid...

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Most places will take your unauthorized baby and adopt it out and sterilize you. Tapa, a large country north of where she's at, will sterilize you but doesn't adopt the baby out - instead they actually murder the baby. There are many forum arguments and blog posts about this.

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What the fuck, Tapa. 

She's not happy about taking the baby but she knows people used to abandon girl babies so they could have a son in China so...maybe it's only comparable levels of bad? But. What the fuck, Tapa

She makes an actual noise of combined disgust and horror out loud. 

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"- hm?" sais Kamuor, who's been fussing with her own pocket everything.

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"Tapa," she says, her lip curling. "I was looking up population control policy and I found out about Tapa." 

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"- oh. Yes, it's despicable. They're enormous, though, nobody's going to fight them over it, over forty or fifty kids a year..."

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Nod. "That makes sense; I might be able to do something about it but not soon and however viscerally upsetting it is I doubt it's the most pressing problem." 

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"The thing everyone hopes aliens will be able to do is show us how to get to more planets."

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"...Well, my species hadn't gotten past our moon, yet, but I can create pocket dimensions." 

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