"Sure! Have you thought of any questions? A bunch of people here are really excited to answer them." Back out to the common area where everybody's hanging out.

"Hmmm... Oh! There weren't a lot of kids in between ages at the park - ones my age and ones a couple of seasons younger and ones the same amount older, and that was kind of weird? Why's there age clusters?"

"Babies are only born in the spring and early summer! In the southern hemisphere the age clusters stagger with ours," says one of the greens.

"Huh. I think a few Earth animals do ages like that? Humans and shoggoths can have kids whenever, though I think maybe Deep Ones need a specific water temperature."

"Different species even just on Amenta do things all kinds of ways. Amentans can have babies at any time if we go somewhere that doesn't have seasons, but we don't like to live in those places."

"Huh. Do you know what happens with really short or long seasons?"

"We think they probably don't have to be exactly the same length as Amenta's seasons, but we're not sure exactly how close is close enough. We know the other planets in our solar system aren't close enough."

"I guess that's something to figure out with looking for planets, too."

"Yep. We'll probably have to find a lot of planets before we wind up with one that's just right."

"Yeah."

Her mom says something.

"What's the government like here?"

"Voa's a democracy with several governors ranked by seniority - Governor Avalor is the most senior," says a different green. "The provinces have some different structures depending on what works for them but they're all democracies of one kind or another too."

"Are most countries democracies?"

"These days, yes."

"What are some other countries?"

"The next most populous country after us is called Tapa, to the east. Some other big ones are Cene, Anitam, Celenta, Tuviri, and Tuvan. There are at least sixty countries in the world depending on how you count protectorates and other edge cases like that."

"There are a hundred human countries, I think, and it is harder to say how many of the shoggoths or Deep Ones."

"What is Tapa like?"

"Tapa's a democracy too. They're a credit auction country instead of a two-per country - those are two of the major systems for deciding who gets to have children; the other one is the imperial permissions system. Instead of governors they have a system of federal departments and coordinators between the departments."

"You gotta decide who gets kids?"

"Otherwise people would have too many. We'd run out of space," says Hadri, the talkative one from the truck ride. "That's why we want to find more planets."

"Oh, okay. I think people on Earth might not have that problem, so I was confused..."

"How do they not have that problem? We would have expected it in any evolved species," says the green who was explaining about seasons earlier. "You were created, so it makes sense you don't want very many children..."

Some discussion with mom: "Mom says humans like the process of making babies and haven't had widespread contraception long. Plus when they had infant mortality lots they had cultural stuff for having lots of kids, like religions would say 'have a big family,' but then when infant mortality went down and moms were working outside the home more the culture started shifting."

"Huh! That's surprising but I guess stranger things have happened."

"Maybe humans will eventually want kids more but it'll probably take a super long time."

"And it'd require them to have enough in the meantime!"