"Definitely. We also don't know who else might have found them - the Elder Things' portals haven't gone back up, we think we'd notice even distant nodes working again, but the fact we haven't been heavily contacted since might be a quirk instead of the way of things."

"- you'd notice portals that weren't near Earth at either end opening?"

"The existing portals were a network, and if we understand them correctly all connected to a central node, and their monitoring software - which we think was originally designed to route traffic between portals intelligently and to prevent unauthorized use - seems to have not been sabotaged. I'm hoping I can sabotage that, stealing the coordinates of intact portals as I do so to establish a new central node referencing them - which will probably be noticed by someone, but isn't as big a security risk as just restarting the network."

"I don't know what the best technological metaphor would be."

"Maybe something to do with... website servers," suggests Letra, "though that's nowhere near my field."

"Maybe. Even accessing any part of the network's going to be a lot of math, though." And she still doesn't know if she definitely trusts Amentans with other planets.

"Well, if you want local math consultation, you'll have the best of the best as soon as you say the word."

"I might want to start with 'a lot of notebooks' soon - I know computers are the thing here, but while I'm sorting out and organizing what I know I'll be more comfortable with hand-writing."

"We still manufacture notebooks, that'll be quick," Letra assures her, tapping this request on the pocket everything.

"Thank you." Not that she's planning to write them in anything other than an encoded version of a dead language they're immensely unlikely to encounter anytime soon.

"You're welcome! - ooh, looks like the news is breaking. On the food problem, not you - haven't heard of any of these distributors except that one which doesn't operate in this province and the - just the snack cakes, okay - pardon me."

"Alright? Is everything okay with the news?"

"I was just checking to see if I was likely to have eaten anything affected. Weight off my mind," says Letra apologetically, pocketing her everything. "They seem to have handled it as well as it could be handled, really, considering."

"Are they planning to break the news about Bright and I soon?"

"I think in a few hours? I don't have the right background to guess when would be the best time but I think today not right away."

"Alright." She resists the urge to wrap her arms around herself. She doesn't like the feeling of being seen. "Hm... How do you think Amentans are likely to react, immediately?"

"Uh, some people are probably going to notice that it's a distraction from the food thing, but there'll be a lot of flurrying about whether it's a fraudulent announcement and as people realize it's genuine they'll be thrilled."

"I'm still unsure the - inner workings? Of Amentan pollution instincts, speaking of the food thing."

"Well, we don't have your ability to turn acidic to kill parasites. When there's infectious disease, it can pretty easily kill an Amentan, especially one who's already fragile for any other reason. So we evolved to carefully avoid the sorts of things that are likely to carry disease, and the most unpleasant of those are polluted. Of course that's just the evolutionary explanation, but I imagine that will translate across species better - I'd be able to give a similarly evolutionary explanation if some sort of alien made of crystal or something wanted to know why we love our families -"

She nods. "What makes something polluted? - If it isn't rude to ask."

"Bearing in mind that things can be extremely disgusting without being formally polluted, the primary sources of pollution are: waste material from people of the kind that the body expels because it's noxious - so not blood, because people bleed for approximately hydraulic reasons without it meaning there's anything wrong with the blood, for example; the corpses of people; and reds, even while they're alive."

"Why are reds polluted?"

"For a lot of generations they've worked with polluted things, and we didn't use to have very thorough ways of cleaning up, so it had a lot of chance to accumulate, affect them prenatally, that sort of thing - this isn't really my area but that's the general idea -"

"It sounds like a sad way to live. Would it be possible for them to stop being polluted?"

Honestly she could probably turn them into some kind of non-polluted being but that would hinge on the Elder God that demonstrably doesn't like her. Maybe the reds would appreciate being non-Euclidean horrors, though, she has no idea.

"As far as I know there isn't a reds-specific way to do it and the sorts of things that work generically on waste and corpses, like burning them, would just kill them, so."

"And killing people's bad."

"There might be a solution someone could trade the Mi-Go for - they treat switching minds between bodies like a sport, sometimes, and I don't think growing new bodies is complicated." Which is more diplomatically complicated but less likely than 'soliciting an Elder God' to end in reality getting fucked up.