"My musician brother has made some efforts at recording devices but I don't know if any of them have been successful, they hadn't last I heard."

I'd naively expect phonographs to work all right but that doesn't help at all with digital sound, I think. Maybe there's something clever to be done with interfacing phonographs and digital sound but it'd have to be pretty strange.

"Maybe we can get my father on it once he's fast again."

When will that be?

"Later this afternoon, probably. We left him a note but he has to walk to the nearest circle and it's a ways away."

Did I interrupt anything particularly important?

"He was excited about the research he was doing but he'll also be excited about you, and you're more time-sensitive."

I'll be around for a million years!

"Well we don't want to count on you wanting to spend all that time with us personally!"

I guess that's fair.

"You are here kind of randomly. I think this is one of the best courts but if I were you I'd want to go check that at some point."

I guess that would make sense, though I can hardly evaluate twenty billion people's worth of courts in any remotely reasonable expenditure of effort.

"You could invite them to send pitches and have someone filter the pitches and give you those they think you're most likely to find interesting?"

Nod. I should probably do something like that to decide where to visit in person anyway.

"Yeah. Though for that size and trade influence might matter more than personality."

I can still have everybody send combined applications, though, to streamline it.

"Sounds good." Though he looks slightly sad.

Wing goes over Econ Faery. I like you more than most people and don't think faeries as a class are going to enjoy an especially high average.

Bounce bounce bounce.

"I think you ought to check, though!"

And I will! But you looked bummed about it.

"I would be very sad if you find nicer people, I just think you ought to look anyway."

I mean, I could still visit. It would take me a long time to fly all the way around the world, or wherever, but not so long that I wouldn't do it sometimes.

"Well, that's something." Snuggle.

Snuggle. And maybe there's a way to get a shuttle working at speed.

'I don't know enough about shuttles to even speculate but that'd be great if there were."