"It's a lot more effort than most people are interested in. Getting past just 'happy songs make people happy' is - pretty hard. Though 'be a famous healer or whatever' is in the 'be a famous star' dream package, it's... Most people aren't going 'how can I heal twenty stadiums of people with each song,' you know? At least not for healing reasons."

"Happy songs make people happy?"

"If you super don't wanna be happy or if it'd - draw you away from yourself? It doesn't really work, but, yeah, mood stuff's possible."

"Oh, consent-respecting mood stuff, that's good."

"Yeah, though theoretically someone could mess with someone, but that's - really, really hard, especially to do on accident, and I'm pretty sure a type of assault or something most places."

"And... I dunno it's running on consent exactly, but... Stuff that makes people not themselves tends not to work - on that topic, if you didn't know about music you probably don't know about self-crafting? Or person-crafting kinda in general."

"...I did not."

"So, it usually just comes up as a 'don't,' but you can do crafting to people, including yourself. That's kinda how music at humans works, it gives people temporary knacks while the song's running. The big example of permanent knacks is usually body art - piercings, tattoos, that type of thing, though like hairstyles can sometimes do weak things if they're super you. It's... The same principle about things that move you towards your fundamental self being crafty. So if you alter your body in a way that makes it very, very you, you can get a knack, but if you alter it in a way that isn't you, you can hurt yourself, and some people - don't like who their fundamental self is, so even moving towards a knack hurts them emotionally. Knacks humans can get aren't like comic book superpowers, but they're not nothing - like, my twin, Blair, they've got this tattoo that gave them the ability to understand and speak any languages they hear, though that's a pretty strong one."

"That's a really good power, wow. How does one - correspond a tattoo - to selfness?"

"It's - kinda hard to put into words? Like, there's any debates or guides or whatever about that but they're about as useful as 'what is art' or 'what is music.' And people have the same strength of contradictory opinions. I'd say... It runs on self knowledge a lot, and - your own ability to identify your own selfness? Kind of the 'this is really me' feeling, where you feel like you'd be more you if you got the tattoo or piercing or whatever than you are right now. More an emotional than logical process, I guess, unless you're fundamentally a super logical person. You could probably do it methodologically some - like, if there's any knacks you get really easily from listening to live music, those'd probably be easier to get from a tattoo, and you could find a tattoo design that sparked the same emotion in you."

"Is the situation just kinda fundamentally unfair to people who would not typically get a tattoo?"

"As far as I know, yeah? I guess you could figure out some non-tattoo way of altering yourself if you super wanted a knack but tattoos were really not you."

"I have little anticlumsiness implants in some of my joints but they were not built in a knack-ish location and I'd be worried about getting infections without access to antibiotics and such if I got them out for an upgrade."

"Yeah, I dunno how good healing'd be... I can let you know if I hit on, like, an antibiotic or healing song or something?"

"It'd be good to know, at least. Dunno how long I'll be here."

"Yeah. Rescue or whatever could come tomorrow."

"But I could also be here for the rest of my life! Makes prioritization tricky."

"I can imagine, yeah. There's probably lots of stuff you could do that'd help either way, but the best path's gonna look different in different cases..."

"Exactly. Now, if I'm very lucky, it'll turn out I can come and go. I actually like it here a lot but I miss my near-person robot and would like to ever see my parents again and would feel bad about abandoning my home to giant monsters. But that might be a bit much to expect of my rescue prospect who I have been around for like a day."

"Yeah, I wouldn't wanna get stranded away from my family and friends, even if I theoretically could do good elsewhere."

"I might take that deal under other circumstances? But probably not going to come up in any context where I can't do better."

"I'm also figuring I can do about the same amount of good here as most other places - my big advantages are in making plants grow better, which we're probably pretty high on the 'need' list of - and eventually healing, which everywhere probably needs, but we're also high on the need list for."

"I'm more exceptional here than home."

"Huh, yeah. Magic music's a rare enough talent here that I wasn't able to find a teacher."

"Maybe if I'm here long enough to get comms going you can find people!"

"Maybe by then I'll be looking for students. That'd be a trip..."