"They'll find somebody good."

Draak at the conference (who are mostly talking with various greens about various things) say that the kind of telepathic relay Sunwind thought of to remotely watch meetings is fairly rare and tricky to make. One Draak says she'd let him borrow one - and is very clear that he can not outright have it - if he'll have sex with her.

"...I can make sure your jury-rigged income category covers that if you're gonna go for it," Temnin says.

He's both exasperated and amused. That would be a distraction from boredom, I guess. Does it even count as income if it's an object? And I'm only borrowing it?

"It probably doesn't but I can make sure."

Tail-wobble... I know of her. She's not awful. Please check, I suppose. If it doesn't cause any legal complications and it's hard to move the meetings to somewhere I can be, then maybe.

Temnin sends an email. "Yeah, you're all set if you wanna," he says a minute later. "If they have to move meetings to keep you awake they probably will though."

I might hibernate no matter what I do. It's approaching winter at home, too. It's just that boredom doesn't help. Maybe I should obsessively play board and puzzle games and hope that does it. I might need you to explain how the one I bought even works!

"Sure." He can get out the instructions and read through them.

He will play board games for a while, that's not boring!

Sunwind thinks about it for the rest of the day, then the next morning flies down to the conference and ends up fighting the Draak who made that offer, winning a delicate golden feather as a prize, and then taking the original offer somewhere hidden away. He is back with a strange crown sort of thing on his head and a blocky abstract-art type metal object that is the other end of the relay.

If you just put this in the meeting room I will be able to listen properly but not speak through it.

"I can sit with you and transcribe stuff you want brought to their attention," says Temnin.

Sure.

There are meetings! They nitpick the script; they review concept art; they hire people and teams for multitudinous aspects of the film.

He often chimes in with input on whether this or that stunt is possible and safe or whether something is a reasonable way for a Draak to react. He has aesthetic opinions but pretty gentle and malleable ones, and a lot of stunt ideas. (Clawing upwards against a strong current in a pipe! Holding bits of falling-apart building together long enough to run across them! Bat style upside down landing!)

With makeup and wigs and camouflage I could pretend to be several different Draak... As long as I don't have to move too much when I'm not being red and white. 

They are happy to take his input on stunts and plan to incorporate a lot of them. They aren't planning to have other significant Draak characters but might have him play a bunch of background Draak, it'd probably be cheaper than doing it convincingly in CGI since they don't have Draak models to iterate on from previous movies. They can use camera tricks to make the background characters look different sizes.

Maybe Amentans won't notice that all the Draak are proportioned about the same, just like he's pretty bad at recognizing faces.

Yeah, they won't pick up on that and they can have them in different poses to cover it up further.

He really appreciates being able to listen in on these meetings! He feels a lot more invested now.

The starship Ice Scale would like to land in this patch of Baravic desert to deposit Bloom and company, instead of the usual spot in Tapa, for this trip. And Bloom says she wants to talk to Ruan about some important news.

The Ice Scale may do this and Ruan is at her disposal!

Seeker of New Truths bade me send this message to Amenta: 'The weapon is no longer a concern. I will teach construction of nuclear fusion powerplants if appropriately paid.' I don't know what weapon he is talking about but it seems important. He had a very dazzling fight with the Guardian of the Great Green just before being very smug at me and giving me the message. Also, I suspect one of us found a habitable planet but I am not sure.

"That's delightful! What makes you suspect that?"

More ships and people are gone at a time, for longer times, and they don't answer questions about what they're doing but seemed to be suppressing excitement.

"Okay. Did he say what proper payment would be?"

He didn't. Money, I presume. Oh - I was planning to make all my students live here in the long term. They will not be comfortable in the warehouse, it'll be too crowded, but in the very short term it will work. I have eight. Seven youths, and my friend Ink, of the Onyx Clan.