"Well that sounds kind of awful. Maybe you could all teach your kids Confederate One, if there ends up being real contact between us and your people. I bet most of us know it, and there might be a trillion of us."

"Maybe! Is it as hard to learn as a spoken second language?"

"I think so? That's why I said kids, kids'll learn anything and any number of languages if you use them around them enough, but after you're an adult it gets harder."

"That's a pretty cool idea. If it were easier to teach people to read I think there'd be lots more women who could read."

"That's probably a lot of the problem right there, then, if people could read things and you can print out lectures for them then they wouldn't need someone to repeat the lesson every time someone wanted it."

"I think people mostly don't voluntarily read lectures even when they can read. But it might help."

"Gosh, why not?"

"They don't like learning things all that much? Or they're too busy."

"That's... really weird."

" - is it? I don't think school is very many kids' favorite activity, you have to sit still and be quiet and stuff and you're punished for misbehavior and everything's hard, instead of running around. When I was a kid everyone was mostly very glad when school ended, unless they had to work after school."

"Kids who're selected for school mostly take it very seriously, I think, it's the best chance they have at a better life than agriculture or factory work. But I'm not even talking about school, I mean - people who're explaining something to their community because it's interesting, or so they can appreciate the stories better, or come up with new ones, or better inform their debates about them? And for those you just bring everybody and let the little kids run around as much as they want as long as they want as long as they don't make a lot of noise."

"I don't...really know that we have that."

" - well, there's the rest of your problem, probably. What... do you people do, besides work?"

"Spend time with their family, go to temple, pray, do chores around the house, go to museums and things, drink, care for their children...how much time are you imagining people have when they're not working, most people are working most of the time if you count work at home."

"We're on six hours of sleep and seventeen of work and one free, at home, but that's really really abnormal, usually it's more like eight and thirteen and three, maybe, and Alteri have way more free time than that? Maybe I'm confused about what spending time with your family or caring for your children consist of if they don't involve telling people about things."

" - I mean, they often do? Just not - formally, big events where you just bring everyone, we don't have those outside a temple really."

"I don't know that I'd call them events? I guess if eating dinner together is an event then they are."

"I guess people tell stories during dinner? Or talk about the world, or about what they did that day?"

"Well that's good, anyway. - I'd think that if your women are usually pregnant or have little babies they'd tell lots of stories, lots of work is harder if you're pregnant but storytelling isn't, really."

"Well, my mother died when I was little, maybe lots of them do and I just don't know."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'd think if someone didn't have a mother then someone else would do it, it's awful to think of growing up not hearing anyone else's, but maybe that's not possible for some reason."

"...well, sometimes people don't do the things they ought to do, and looking after children who aren't theirs is particularly a thing where people often don't do what they ought to."

"We do. Although I think if someone lost one parent we'd probably have the other one remarry, and if someone lost both then probably someone would adopt them."

"My father had another wife but - I think she found it hard to do what she ought to, when it came to children who weren't hers."

"Well that sounds awful. I guess sometimes people have a hard time treating new children like the ones they've had for longer, but - you can't just not tell a child stories, that's almost as bad as not feeding them."