"Which is kind of weird. Maybe interplanetary shipping is just so expensive and they've just got really interdependent manufacturing and this planet doesn't happen to make Cortex parts so it has to bring them in from outside and small towns can't afford that?"

"I don't know enough about the kind of economics you get across different planets to speculate, honestly. I rarely had to deal with different continents back home."

"We don't have settlements on any other celestial bodies where we're from but I read science fiction."

"Should've read more of that," she sighs. "Hindsight. Ah well." 

"I'm not sure early sci-fi touched on interplanetary civilization much! Maybe yours moreso what with all the space this-and-that."

"Oh, people don't know about the space this-and-that mostly, I just do because the Bazaar is my grandmother and loves me and tells me everything I ask. Or, they know about the Masters and the Devils and so on, but they don't know what all they are." 

"The Bizarre what?"

"Bazaar. As in market. I know I've used that word before." 

"I didn't notice before! I can kind of deal with stars being people but how is a market people."

"Digging partway into the ground so the only part people can see is the part that looks like a weird building!"

"Ohhhh it's a building not like an invisible hand kind of deal, okay. I thought bazaars were, like, open air kind of markets."

Shrug. "I don't know, I know the word bazaar refers to other markets but The Bazaar has always been the one thing, even before I knew that thing was a person and my grandparent." 

"At some point, though probably not right now while we're trying to orient to the Verse, I might want a family tree."

Giggle. "Sure. It's not too complicated, just the three generations, but the space stuff probably makes it trickier."

"I think it's the space stuff plus getting it all in dribs and drabs in conversation plus there not being genders so I can't be like 'ah this must be your other grandmother' the way I could normally."

"Yeah, as far as I know gender is just a human thing. Devils present with genders but I have no idea how much of that is genuine and how much is artifice, and it's not like all humans have genders anyway. Sometimes I'm surprised I have a gender." 

"Is there space stuff making some of your humans not have genders?"

"...No? Some people just don't. Or it's different day to day or they have a consistent one but it isn't just man or woman or whatever." 

"Are you sure that's not space stuff?"

"...somebody in the club at school had a distant cousin who reportedly went all Barbie-doll? But, like, did so via being a magical girl."

"I mean, I dunno, I guess it could be, humans have had souls for thousands of years. Does everyone just, what, have exactly the same gender as typical for their piping," she gestures at her abdomen, "on your Earth? People who don't have gender still have genitals, they just don't, you know, care for random people to know what they are and assign social significance to them?"

"I don't know of this being a thing!"

"Huh. I think that's weirder than you not having all the weird space stuff." 

"I guess when we can get on the Cortex we could see if everybody here has a gender or not. Majority rules, as it were."

"That works. I'm trying to imagine what kind of knock-on effects everybody having a gender would have...I guess preventing scandalous pregnancies by separating men and women would be more effective, if everybody fits one or the other and everybody who's the same gender has the same bits...you might have more gender segregation?"