"Didn't work."

"What did you try for?"

"Local language."

"Maybe try for something smaller?  Languages are really big."

"Right now we've got a lot of - oh, huh, you have the word even though it's not for this - bandwidth, but not much fine control.  But you probably don't have either of those."

"What counts as small?"

"Ummm, straightforward physical things with clear boundaries, like hair color is really small, or maybe very straightforward skills like, uh, having good form in running?  I don't know.  - Those are both very small, I just don't know if they'd be small enough that we'd know for sure either way."

"If I copy your form for running will I not have the one I learned any more?"

"Right."

" - Well, you'd still remember being taught it, and you might be able to re-create it from there.  But no, you wouldn't have it."

"I have no form while running worth keeping," says Sarham, "I'll try it." - yoink?

Zilch.

"Did it work?  - You might not be able to tell until you try it, I suppose."

"I didn't notice anything but I guess I could try running." He breaks into a jog, circles around them.

". . . No.  I don't think so."

"Go for the hair color, in case it handles skills and physical traits differently?"  His options are a brassy blond and a lighter brown.

"...if I can do it once I can find someone with black hair and do it again, right? - or just take Kyeo's, I guess."

"If it works at all it would be really weird that it only did once!"

Somewhat uncomfortably Sarham attempts to copy the brown hair.

". . . Well.  Maybe keep trying later.  It could just be that it takes a really long time for you or something."

"I assume you have to feed some people and let some people sleep. Enough for everybody to visit them routinely."

"Yes, and lots of people like to eat and sleep anyway, just not.  Literally every time they would otherwise have to."

"So perhaps we can make ourselves useful to society by being available as people who sleep every night and eat every day."

"I think in order to be a public official you have to be . . . legally allowed to be in the place you're a public official of.  - Which is of course lots of places, probably, just not here."

"People who professionally sleep are public officials?"

"Or anything else you want people hanging around in easily-accessible places to have for the general populace to copy from, yes."

Kyeo squeezes Sarham's hand. "How will we find out where it's all right for us to go?"

"We should probably go ask somebody about that soon.  Did you want to get food or anything, first?  - I.  Don't think they'll kick you out immediately or anything; the law wasn't written with suddenly-appearing accidental aliens in mind.  But."

"I won't be hungry till after I've slept."