"Vaccines and food and medicine and birth control for all teenagers and some of their adults and -- I guess that's more than I ever expected to be able to do with my life."

"We can try to figure out more things. If we're clever. I can only do so much research if everything we know about humans comes from watching children to see whether they're naughty or not."

There is some part of Mordred which he does not like very much that wants to say 'I think we should reward the poor kids and the autistic and ADHD and crazy kids and the kids with awful parents.'

What he actually says is "Yeah, that just seems like a terrible use of resources and the concept of nice and naughty lists feels like Baby's First Surveillance State, let's not."

"...Oh, I forgot to mention that you're immortal."

"....Unless killed, presumably. And I assume not in a way that scales or lets me take loved ones along."

"Most Santas wind up befriending elves because we're also immortal unless killed."

"It is probably not a surprise that I hate that." 

"...no, it is surprising. Why do you hate that?"

".................is it seriously a surprise to you that there are people I hate that I can't bring along and will instead outlive potentially by centuries. Have none of the previous Santas had siblings or friends."

"...oh, sorry, thought you meant the friends with elves thing. Um. I have only known the one Santa, I'm only a hundred and thirty years old."

"Guess that makes sense. And it's --" he cuts off whatever he was going to say and instead says "It's not your fault. I should figure out what I'm telling my brothers. I guess that can come after we decide what we're telling everyone else." 

"Everyone else like... your school?"

"What? No. -- I mean I guess maybe some of them but I meant the 'let's instead not hide that Santa is a real person who actually exists' thing." 

"...I don't really have siblings but I think probably you should tell your brothers first instead of waiting until we've sorted everything out with all the other fairytale beings and also you have to explain there being a pretty dark-haired Spirit of Zamenhof Day who constantly looks like he's about to commit a murder giving children everywhere vaccines and copies of the Language Construction Kit."

"That is... probably not wrong. I am kind of a dumbass sometimes, sorry."

It is going to be such a conversation, though. How do you even have that conversation. ...the entire goal here is to figure out how to have that conversation, Mordred is being a dumbass again isn't he. 

"You seem like a real improvement on the last guy to me."

"Kinda seems like it would be hard not to be. Like, I could manage it, but I'd have to try."

"Do you have anything else you need from me or should I head out?"

"Do I have a way to contact you?"

"Press the button on the wall and it'll alert me." 

"Cool, thank you."

Mordred's phone is in his pocket; he texts Agravaine to say that something came up and he will not be going to Morgause's over winter break after all but say hi for him. Then he pokes around the house, which is weirdly big for a house to live alone in (why does it think he needs multiple bedrooms) but has as many books as he could ask for.

Then he sits down at the desk, and starts making a list of all the things he wants to do with himself now that he has infinite time -- learn every language, read all the books he possibly can, get better at coding. Then he makes another list of things he should do but hasn't thought to yet, which is mostly just "ask Lev what elf magic can and cannot do, since they can teleport and stop time and magically rearrange houses." 

Settling in with a book takes enough time that when he emerges it's noticeably weird that he isn't hungry and also enough time that it's kind of late. (Agravaine has texted back to say, essentially, I will do that and also explain for you but you owe me one, which is not a surprise because Mordred usually owes Agravaine at least one and often more than one.) He debates calling Lev, decides that if something urgent comes up Lev will find him, and instead does his best to go to sleep.

It doesn't... really work. But there's a skylight and the North Pole is far away from significant sources of light pollution, and there are worse things to spend a couple hours doing at night.

In the morning he can have breakfast!

Breakfast options include, apparently, candy canes and hot chocolate and gingerbread and fudge and cookies and fruit cake and fruit salad with marshmallows and turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole and various sorts of pie and ham and hot buttered rum.

Most of this is not breakfast food but pie for breakfast is more breakfast-y than the rest. (How long does he have to hold this job before nobody thinks candy canes or turkey are good ideas.)

Then he calls Lev.

Lev has a big pile of papers.

It turns out his hobby for the past fifty years has been coming up with ways to use Santa's gift-giving powers to improve the lives of children as much as possible. He has incidentally reinvented a large amount of economics in this process.

Lev is very good and charming. Mordred does not know nearly enough economics for this but he can ask lots of questions.