"- are you okay -"

"I think so. Are you?"

"Yes. Where - are we -?"

Kyeo looks around. "I don't know."

They seem to be in a park.  It's a crisp spring day, a bit chilly, and there are several people around, at various distances, playing ball games in groups or reading or chatting.  Some buildings are visible over the trees, maybe ten stories tall, their facades decorated strangely.

A few of the people have apparently noticed their sudden appearance and are staring at them with mild curiosity, but not approaching.

Kyeo grabs for Sarham's hand. Makes a bit of an attempt to stand up.

Sarham stands with him, squinting for signage anywhere which might indicate where they're at.

There doesn't seem to be any in the park at least, and if the buildings have some they're not visible from this distance.

Sarham pulls out his lens.

No service. Figures. He puts it back in his pocket.

"We could try talking to them."

"I guess odds are decent somebody has enough command of one of the languages." They walk toward the nearest knot of people.

Two of them split off and jog towards them - rather quickly, for a jog, but with an easy and casual air - once they notice the approach.  One of them is unusually tall and muscular, especially for a woman, and the other has a less-discernable gender, with more of a swimmer's physique, but is still clearly quite fit.

They wave and say something incomprehensible.

"Do either of you speak Kularan?"

They share a confused glance, then spend a moment looking at him.

" - Repeat that?" requests the shorter one.

"Do either of you speak Kularan?" Sarham says, slower.

" . . . Well, we do now?"  They sound thoroughly confused and perhaps like they expect this should be obvious.

"...what do you mean, you do now?"

The shorter one seems at a loss for words.  "We - why don't you have a word for - we, uh, 'copied' it," tries the taller.

"Copied it?"

"Yes."

"Kularan doesn't have a dedicated word for suddenly knowing how to speak a new language because we can't do that."

"Oh.  Um.  . . . . Why . . . not?"

"It takes years to learn a language," says Kyeo.

These people are so confused.

"Do you just all decide to do it the slow way, for - philosophical reasons, or . . . ?"

"That still wouldn't take years, would it?  You'd still be faster than little babies who're working from nothing."

"Are you also slow at learning for philosophical reasons."

"Do you have some sort of - psychic powers, or - what planet is this?"

"Citrelia."  Maybe if she just ignores the first question something will happen such that any of this will make sense.

"Have you heard of Citrelia -"

"I've never heard of Citrelia."

"Oh - are you aliens - do you have cool alien stuff to - "  They start bouncing, light little hops that nonetheless take them several inches off the ground.

"It's probably just different in their language; I said that in Cretari - "

"No, look, they don't have anything; they're just - oh.  Aw man, they don't have anything.  I'm so disappointed; we meet aliens and they don't even have wings or faster brains or whatever, they're just like, baseline citrelians but just without any citrelièv."  They're still bouncing, but more out of momentum than excitement.

"...I'm from Ibyabek, he's from Kular, and we both live on Outer Sohaibek lately. You look like humans to me."

" - Sure, yeah, that seems to be referring to about the right thing, 'humans'.  We haven't heard of any of those places because we haven't heard of any other places with people on them at all!  - Do other places have cooler aliens."

"It's just humans. - I guess some places they genetically engineer people. Where is Citrelia?"

She takes a moment to think about it.  "I can give you the Cretari but Kularan doesn't seem to have any of the relevant names."

"And you don't know how we got here more than we do?"

"Less, probably."

"There was something that looked like a mirror."

"That doesn't sound like anything I know."

" - Uh, Sair, I just realized, is it legal for them to be here?"

". . . Probably not."

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Why would it be? We didn't go through a border control system."

"...mm."

"Yeah, uh, you don't have - why are these all separate words - you're not law-abiding and helpful and kind and charitable and nice, uh, enough.  For how you're supposed to be, here.  - You're?  Closer?" they say, gesturing at Kyeo.  "But um, still not really the way you're supposed to be."

"It's probably fine for now," says the taller one placatingly.  "I don't think you'll be in trouble, but you will probably have to leave the city at, uh, some point."

"- what is that supposed to -"

"- they can copy things besides languages," Kyeo says.

"Sure can.  Oh man, I didn't think of the implications, you guys can't do anything, huh."  They stop bouncing, all at once.  "Do you - die?  Like, outside of accidents."

"...yes."

"That's so sad!  Sair, these are the worst aliens - "

"That's extremely rude."

"I very obviously did not mean it was their fault they're the worst aliens."  They turn to Kyeo and Sarham.  "I'm very sorry if you took it that way, and also for the fact that you die."

"...thank you."

"If we have to leave the city, where will we... go?"

"Most places are fine - this is the capital city, so only Cretari citizens are allowed here, but foreigners are allowed once you get out of the district even if they don't have - all the traits that Lorn mentioned.  . . . Since you're aliens, I don't think they'll kick you out immediately?  It doesn't seem like you came here on purpose, and as long as you can, erm, emulate upstanding citizens for a bit, I don't think there'll be any trouble while it gets sorted out."

"Now who's being terribly rude.  'Inclination is not - '"

" - As long as you - act like the upstanding non-citizens, or citizens of wherever you're from - that you probably already are.  Everything will probably be fine."

"Inclination is not -? Also, what are the rules for upstanding citizens?"

"Action."

"A substantial number of them don't apply to you if you can't lièv - um, don't take things that aren't yours or try to hurt people or interfere with public officials; do what people with authority tell you, and that's stricter if there's an emergency . . ."

"Don't deface public property or make enough of a ruckus that it disturbs others . . ."

"Oh, don't do things likely to hurt yourself in ways you can't easily fix on your own - probably that's everything for you, isn't it.  Hm.  - Just stick with us for now, how about, and you can check if there's anything you're not sure about."

"Thank you, that's very kind. Are the authorities uniformed?"

"Oh, you would have to use clothes, wouldn't you - they're the ones with vitiligo?  Um, and public officials look a bunch of different ways but you can mostly tell on-duty ones because they're in designated areas - if you hear clanging, tuneless bells, get out of the way of wherever the people carrying them are running?  - And don't run with or ring a particular kind of bell if you're not on your way to help out with an emergency in an official capacity, which you probably won't be so just don't.  Little tinkly ones are fine, but probably just don't touch any bigger ones at all until you know what they look like."

". . . They aren't just sitting around everywhere; it probably won't come up."

"Would be bad if it did, though."

"Mmhm."

"Bells and vitiligo. What is vitiligo?"

"Depigmented skin splotches."

"Or more pigmented, comparatively, as the case may be; we let people pretty much look however they want here."

"So, um, what do you guys need in order to not die, like, soon?  That seems - important."

"I'm in fine health - Kyeo -?"

"I was prescribed something and I have perhaps a month's supply on me but not having it won't kill me."

"Okay - what do you need in order to . . . be alright.  You - I'm trying to think of things - you probably have to eat for yourselves all the time; you can't fix it if you get hurt - how much do you have to sleep?"

"Eight hours a night for long term sustainability but shorting it sometimes isn't dangerous."

"Are there other things we might not be thinking of for how you . . . work."

"...we also need to do our own hygiene tasks? I don't know what's copiable... What things do you copy in a normal week?"

They count off on their fingers.  "Hunger, sleep, physique if you're not working out the right way on your own, uh, stamina, um, any injuries but they don't happen that often mostly . . . any skills you need, a couple different - citrelièses, maybe - that's uh, different versions of the copying thing itself; they're specialized . . ."

"Any cosmetic changes, or if you want a different physique instead of maintaining the one you have . . ."

"I don't suppose we can learn to do this?"

"Not . . . without . . . copying it?  I don't think??  I mean if you had any you could probably get somewhere, since society has already made all the advancements, but - I don't know at all how you'd start; it's just something everyone has."  Contemplative bouncing.

"It didn't have to be invented?"

"Well, yeah, to get to where we are; it's improving all the time.  We only started to be able to use it to fix aging about two and a half centuries ago.  But I think it's - I don't think we invented the thing we started out with."

"If this were a book I'd think we could maybe do it just by being on the planet where it works but if you can't tell us how because usually you copy knowing how..."

"In our books usually people from other worlds have the same basic thing, even if they've gone in very different directions for it.  Or sometimes they have it but it takes things from people, instead of copying . . ."

" - Oh!  Maybe you do have it, but it's - not something we can have, so we can't see it - have you tried copying something from us?"  Bounce bounce bounce bounce.

"We don't know how to try."

"Can you . . . try?  To try?"

"Can you copy my ability to teach people to do things when they can't just copy the skill out of your head."

"We're not really specced for that at the moment, and - " They're looking in his direction quite intently, not quite at him and not quite past him.  " - your skills are kind of all together, compared to what we have; they're - less divided.  But I think there's a fairly discrete section here that I can just - "  They blink.  "Try - wanting something that one of us has, and intending to have it, and just - make it yours.  It's only a mental action; you don't have to do anything else."

Sarham attempts to collect the local language.

Nothing noticeably happens.

"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."

"Me either but that was going to be in just a few hours."

"Well.  I guess we should head that way now, then?  Hopefully it won't take very long."

"That might depend on how fast you normally walk. Do you have bicycles? - never mind, Kyeo doesn't know how -"

"What are bicycles?  I'm getting some of it from the language, but - "

"Two-wheeled vehicle. I usually ride one to get around anywhere more than a few blocks away."

"Huh - we have carts, but that doesn't sound like quite the same thing . . ."

" - Anyways.  We don't normally, uh, walk, but it's not that terribly far even if we did."

"What do you normally do?"

"Well, jog.  - I guess if you have to get fit on your own and you can't recharge stamina off people you pass that's probably less sustainable.  But it sounds very strange."

"How far are we going? I'm not in the best shape of my life but I can jog a ways..."

"My bike does a lot of the work but I can jog a bit."

"It's - normally I'd say we could get there in less time than this conversation has taken so far?  We could start out at a jog and then if you wanted to walk the rest of the way you could let us know."

"Okay."

Kyeo pats him on the shoulder.

The two of them take off at a speed that's faster than some people flat-out run.

Kyeo can keep up, at least at first, but Sarham falls behind immediately.

The taller one looks back soon enough that they don't leave him very far behind, and she calls a halt to the other.  "We can walk it; that's fine.  - I'm sorry, I feel like we're not making you feel very welcome in Telerta.  For reasons unrelated to your illegality here."

"Hopefully we'll get settled in somewhere somehow and it'll be - fine."

"I'm sure you will!"

The shorter one has to deliberately slow themself down multiple times, and switches to walking on their hands in pretty short order.  This doesn't seem to affect their ability to hold a conversation.  "How do bikes do work for you?"

"It's got a motor."

"What is a motor."  Being upside-down also apparently fails to inhibit bouncitude.

"...a machine that can do work, like turning wheels."

"Ooooh.  - Can you tell me more about genetically engineered people; I really wanted to ask earlier but Sair would've told me off for interrupting more-important things."

". . . More immediately relevant things, at least."

"Genes are what make people resemble their parents. You can take zygotes and fiddle with the genes, and then they grow up with specific inheritances from those parents, or with inheritances from no one in particular. If I met somebody like you on Kular I'd assume they were genetically engineered but I think you're doing magic instead."

"Can you get wings and stuff that way."

"...it's a young field, but some people have small wings that don't work very well."

They gasp excitedly.  "I know we don't - have a way to get to them yet, or anything that even looks like a way, but - it would only take getting it right once, if we did, you know - "

"Do you have radio?"

"No-o.  Tell me about radio?"

"It's the lowest-tech way of communicating over long distances such as between planets. Radio is a kind of wave, like light or sound."

"How do you - do it?  Or make it, use it - none of those sound right . . ."

"You need to build machinery for radio too. Most advanced technology relies on machinery. Do you have electricity?"

"There's some when it storms, sometimes . . ."

"Not lightning, though lightning is made of electricity."

"Do you know how to build a generator?"

"I might be able to figure out a simple one, if they have magnets and so on."

"We have magnets!"

"I don't know how to build a radio, though."

"Aww.  - You know, though, I'm not like, a researcher; I bet wherever you do end up you can probably earn enough to get by on from telling all this stuff to people who would actually be able to do something with it.  Plus the sleep thing maybe."

"Great. Okay. If we start talking in a different language are you going to copy that one too -"

"What for - oh, do you mean you want to have a private conversation?  I won't if you don't want me to."

"Me either."

"Thank you." He looks at Kyeo, switches to Ibyabekan. "I don't know if you've noticed but you're better - specced - for this place than I am," he says. "Which, like, is fine in itself, except I'm really worried that this place is going to turn out to be like Ibyabek in some unpleasant way..."

"Is there a specific way you're worried about?"

"I don't know enough to be specific. But we should, like, find out if they hate gay people before we revisit the question of whether you can kiss me, for example."

"Maybe they'll be able to get in touch with someone from the known galaxy."

"Maybe. I'd like to ever see my parents again. You're - pretty calm -"

"I was already never going to see them again. And you're here."

...Sarham pats him on the shoulder again.

"Were you guys like, done, or . . ?"

"...I mean, it might come up again, so ideally still don't take the language."

"Sure, sure, I just meant - if you're going to be leaving I should be making the most of what time I have with aliens - I don't even know what other questions I should be asking - "

"None of the aliens stories have aliens without the copying ability?"

"I mean, any of them do, probably.  I can't think of any off the top of my head.  And even if I could, I don't think that would point me to things that're actually true about where you're from."

"We have schools. And a lot of people have to be farmers to feed everyone."

"Elaborate on schools?"

"Schools are places a bunch of students - mostly children - gather to learn what they need to know in order to be productive members of society."

"I guess that makes sense, if you can't just copy what you need to know - how long does it take, when . . ."

"It depends what they need to learn. I don't know if it corresponds to how 'big' something looks to you, though."

"Hmm.  You could - list some things that people learn, and how long it takes, and I could see if they seem to match up?"

"It takes years to learn a langauge - longer if someone isn't talented at it. The amount of... geometry that I know took one year. - this isn't a year of studying that one thing constantly, geometry was one of several classes I took that year and of course the entire time I needed to sleep and so on."

"How long were the classes?"  They apparently tire of walking on their hands and right themself via a flip.

"At that level about one hour a day."

"And how much geometry do you know?"

"...I passed the exam, but I'm not sure how to quantify it for you. I was imagining if you were curious you could copy it off me to see and then copy from each other if you know more."

"Sure, if you don't mind.  . . . Huh, you have less, total, than I did, but some of it's in different places; do you mind if I keep it - or, probably I shouldn't, so you can have enough things that're just yours for when you settle down."

"I don't know what your customs are about that. Presumably anything we share will be shared from there, won't it?"

"Normally I wouldn't even feel the need to ask, no.  But - citrelians are basically always going to be okay, because even if we're in a tight spot, we can pretty much always make ourselves into people who can get out of it.  And you - can't - "

"Maybe the authorities will have an idea of how to handle the situation."

"Hopefully."

"I'm sure they will."

"Are there any laws that will apply wherever we go on the planet and might be less commonsense than 'no murder' which we might as well start learning now?"

"I - don't know; I've never been very far outside of Telerta."

"I have but still not out of Creta.  I think people I met from other countries mostly talked about having very different laws, when it came up."

"It seems like probably we should try to learn your language - or at least some language on this planet, if there are a lot - so we can read things, even if everyone we talk to learns Kularan right away with no trouble."

"Sure, um.  Have either of you ever taught someone a language; this citrelièse is really not optimized for detail work and I don't think I could pick out anything useful if you only learned it.  And obviously I don't already know how to go about teaching someone the slow way."

"I've tutored slower students in Kularan."

"I was a teacher's assistant when I first studied Sohaibekan."

"Okay.

"So uh, 'hello' is - oh you would only have one word for it, wouldn't you, if people can't look like each other - "

"There's also 'good morning' and so on, but yes. What do the different hellos mean?"

"Well, there's one for strangers, and one for people you haven't met before but you know of them, and one for people who you might not be sure if they're who you think but it doesn't actually matter for the interaction you're having, like for public officials, since as long as they have what you need to copy it doesn't actually matter if they're the same person as yesterday.  And any time you're meeting someone you know, you shouldn't just be using a regular greeting, you should be saying a phrase the two of you agreed on or referencing an inside joke or asking about an episodic memory you already know they have."  They list the relevant words.

"It's a lot less bad here than some places because it's super illegal to impersonate someone intentionally and everyone's at least a minimum amount of nice.  But everyone still does it; I think it might be a bit of a holdover from before things were like that."

" - Well, and that foreigners are allowed in most of the rest of the country, and they don't necessarily have minimum amounts of - do you really want to translate that as just 'nice'?"

"It's close enough, isn't it?"

"I suppose so."

"What are the nuances of what you're translating as 'nice'?"

"Couldn't someone overhear me greeting Kyeo with an inside reference and copy that if they wanted to impersonate me to him?"

"Just pretty much the same as what I said before for why you can't be here, it's um, niceness and kindness and respecting the law and wanting to follow it and, um - ooh, 'prosocial' is pretty close actually; I didn't notice it before - yes, they can, and that's why you switch it up sometimes, but again you don't have to be that paranoid here, it's just a basic check because it's polite."

"Sometimes in other places people only whisper them, or write them down and show each other, or come up with various convoluted things for each different person they know."

"I suppose we'll come up with something. Thank you for explaining."

"We're only doing what pretty much anyone would!"

"Do a lot of people move away, if they don't want to be that much like everyone else?"

"Some, I guess.  More people move here or to places like here than move away.  This is one of the largest cities in the world."

"It's lovely," says Kyeo. "What is it famous for?"

"Well, it's our capital!  It isn't even the largest city in Creta, though; there are two bigger and one of them's the biggest in the world.  But we have nice weather here and everyone's prosocial enough so that life's very stable.  Things can be - a lot more uncertain in other places.  Plus we have the best laws, especially about, um, what traits people can have."

"Besides being prosocial what traits are people in Creta supposed to have?"

"You can pretty much be whatever you want!  Especially with how you look; lots of places have really strict signalling for it but here you basically just have to avoid or have vitiligo.  But um - this is slightly complicated to explain - you mentioned about people resembling their parents, and we have that too, but it's from how they are at the time they make the kid, from the conception with the father and - wait.  What's up with that word why is it so loaded, that's freaky."

"- what word? I'd thought you were about to say 'mother'?"

"That one too!!  Why is there so much - stuff - on it?"

"Stuff?"

"It - means more things?  Than I meant by it.  But I don't know what they are."

"...people on our planets normally have a mother and a father who raise their children together..."

They look frustrated and somewhat upset.  "People here - have . . . a mo - they have two parents - well, mostly two - and.  The fa - the one doing the fathering - no."  They take a deep breath, and after a thought do a couple consecutive handsprings.  "Of the two parents, one of them has to have male genitalia when they conceive, and one of them has to have female genitalia for the duration of the pregnancy.  It - doesn't matter what shape they are the rest of the time???  I know you can't change stuff but why are there that many extra connotations on these?"

How disconcerting! "Kularan isn't my first language," he demurs.

"People can medically change stuff but it's an involved and usually one-time thing."

Gesture to Sarham.  "Well I got it from him.  - Of course it's on your pronouns too.  Why not."

". . . . . I don't think it's that bad, really?"

"Yeah well you wouldn't, would you."

"Most people have genders and most of them are the same all the time."

"Terrible."

". . . Some people here prefer to be a certain shape all the time?  Very strongly, even.  But that also applies to, say, their height or their hair or their physique, usually, and those don't seem to have quite the same - baggage."

"So I take it you don't care at all if the parents of a child, or anybody for that matter, are still involved while they're both female or both male -"

Long-suffering sigh.  "No."

"That's good to know."

Kyeo nods.

Sad backflip.

" - Anyway," says the taller one, "that's part of why it's so important that we let people look how they want to, here, since some people care so much about it.  But there are some things that people have a social responsibility to keep or take on even if they don't want to."

"Besides prosociality?"

"Right.  Since children get a mix of traits plus some randomness from how their parents were when they had them, and not how they started out, we as a population can change very rapidly.  This is almost exclusively a good thing, but if everybody takes something new and exciting, then we've probably lost whatever it replaced forever, unless it pops up randomly again.  And that could include some things that were useful or even very important!  Different countries have very different ideas and methods for handling this, and, well - I'll just say that ours is definitely the best one."

"If it's impolite to talk about I suppose I won't insist, though I'm curious."

"It's not impolite.  Some places just don't have any at all, which is obviously fine for them and terrible for humanity - "

"'Citrelianity', wouldn't it be, if other humans can't lièv?  It's not bad for them."

" - Sure, it's terrible for citrelianity.  Other places make it so that nearly all their citizens don't have any, but if you break the law or make certain people angry then you have to have lots and it's really horrible.  Plus you have to have so much - I know we said 'prosociality' was close enough, but you can be prosocial without being inclined to follow the law, and you can be inclined to follow the law without being constantly terrified at the thought of breaking it."

"Also, um, since you don't know - there's no way to force people to copy things, which is obviously very good in general, but it's pretty terrible for this, because you have to threaten them or their loved ones with all sorts of horrible things in order to get them to take those on."

"But here instead -"

"It's a rotating system.  You couldn't pull it off anywhere less organized; it takes a ridiculous amount of coordination.  But everyone gets a selection they're supposed to have for a certain time span, and it's set up so you alternate between minor things and the more debilitating ones, so nobody suffers too much for too long."

"It's also a lot safer than the ones where they pile everything onto a few people?  Like, if something happens to them, that's that and we're all out of luck.  There's a lot more redundancy with our system.  - Plus you can swap, if you mind something less than other people do!  It's just a little paperwork.  I've kept the hyperactivity since the first time I was old enough to get assigned things; all my friends are used to it already."

"What kinds of traits are - kept in rotation like that?"

"Um, well like Sairai has really bad eyesight - for a while we had some people keep aging, but that one's kind of a lot and we can always get it back eventually, even if takes a couple decades - there are some where you're a lot more inclined to be sad or scared or angry - some where your senses have the right amount of acuity but they don't, uh, feel? right?  Some where even if you're prosocial you sort of go about it wrong . . ."

"What do you mean don't feel right?"

"They - I've only ever had the hearing one but sometimes stuff that was not objectively very loud felt like it was, and there were specific things that did that more than others, and sometimes they were just annoying but sometimes they hurt or made it hard to concentrate on anything else."

"I guess we don't especially have to worry about this since we can't copy things anyway."

"There is that.  - It's really sad that there are whole worlds of people who can't either - but if we could reach them, and it turns out that it's definitely not contagious, and you have all the same stuff that we keep around, then - we wouldn't have to do this anymore, would we.  That would make such a huge difference."

"And the technology, too, there being people who know much more about it than we do."

"Well yeah.  Just - we have fiction about people with more technology, so I already knew to be excited about that?  And not this."

"Is it not - hard to maintain relationships when people change suddenly all the time - not just how they look but personality traits -"

"It keeps things interesting, I guess?  People almost never change enough to die - um, I'm sorry, that was a very insensitive thing to say to people whose actual bodies will actually die, but.  . . . People keep the important parts of themselves the same, mostly; everything else is just - on top.  Around here at least."

"It's not considered rude to mention death."

They look uncomfortable.

"Is it rude here?"

"It's - unkind.  To remind people of terrible things that are very relevant to them.  And - there are sometimes reasons to be unkind, but . . . "  They trail off.

'Sairai', apparently, attempts to close the gap.  "Is it more that you don't think it's rude to talk casually about painful things, or that you don't regard death as particularly painful."

"If someone specific who I knew had just died it would be cruel to mention that, but in the abstract it's not particularly painful. I suppose it would be a bit morbid if it came up all the time."

" - It - would definitely be rude of me to ask specific things about why you - only care about that as much as you do.  Maybe we should change the subject."

"Well, it's necessary for us to be accustomed," Kyeo says. "I'm sure if it were very rare it would be more affecting."

"Right . . . "

"I mean, you're not constantly upset about the existence of Bloudel, Lorn, are you?"

". . . No . . .   - I don't live in Bloudel, though, or know anyone who's moving there; it doesn't really - affect me personally . . . "

"Mm."

"Will we need to know what that is?"

" - Probably not, but - sorry - it's the smallest country in the world and you definitely shouldn't go there - although I guess they couldn't do it to you, but - everyone there is the same person.  It's really horrifying."

"I see, thank you for the advice."

"Anyone would tell you that."

"About how far is the place we're going?"

"We're maybe two-thirds of the way there?  I wish there was some way we could - hm.  . . . What if - would it be rude or bad in some way if you two got in a cart, and one of us pulled it?"

"Not especially? It would be unusual at home but that's because there are motors, human-powered rickshaws used to be popular."

"I'll go find one!"  And they take off down an alley.

Sarham waits. He leans on Kyeo a little.

It takes not very long at all for them to come back with a small colorfully-painted wooden cart in tow, even accounting for their running speed.

"Thank you," says Sarham, hopping in, pulling Kyeo after him.

"You're welcome!"

It's not a very comfortable ride; they're going fast enough that it's pretty bumpy and the cart was not especially designed to carry people, but at least it's fairly brief.

The scenery they pass is much the same as it was while they were walking.  The buildings are in an interesting set of colors and pretty tall for people without electricity, and consistently so - either they have some form of elevators or they don't mind a lot of climbing.  Probably the latter, since the outsides of buildings are covered in little ledges and notches, and have nets stretching out from them every couple of stories.  They see a few people scaling them.  Still, it's not very dense; the streets are wide and open, filled with people jogging by or standing and chatting.  A bay glitters in the distance.

At one point they pass a plaza with a large painted area on the ground.  Inside it, people are reading or exercising or chatting next to illegible signs; outside, people are mostly passing by or pausing outside it, looking in, and moving on.  The cart gives it a wide berth.

Eventually, they approach a cluster of taller buildings, in a slightly more serious and regular style than the other ones they've passed.  The cart is tucked neatly into a nearby alleyway next to several others like it.

" - Maybe I should climb up and see if we can get somebody to come to one of the lower floors, instead of us all going that far?"

"...sure," says Sarham. "What was that painted square we went by?"

"Oh, that was one of the places for public officials I mentioned.  You go there if you need to copy something."

"Who will we be meeting?"

"I don't know yet specifically?"

"Of course, I mean what general sort of person."

"Some Secretary or other, probably.  It'll depend on how many levels up whoever I go talk to first will pass it just on a random citizen's claim that there's aliens; someone less powerful than that might want to see you and then they might report it to someone with more authority; I'm not sure."

"I'm curious what the structure of the government's like. But please don't let me keep you."

"Okay.  See you in a bit."  And off they trot to scale the side of the building.

"Did you have specific questions about the government's structure?" asks Sairai.  "The ways I've interacted with them before might not be wholly applicable to this situation, though, I feel I should disclaim."

"Is there a single leader at the top? How are leaders chosen?"

"No, there's an assembly.  I'm not all that familiar with how they're chosen; I think they approach people with good dispositions for it.  I don't know how you'd go about getting a position if you wanted it and hadn't come to their attention even if you were suitably inclined, though - I was a public official for a few years and I just applied for that, but that's not leadership, just being officially endorsed by the government."

"How big is the assembly? How long do people serve?"

"I don't know; I think it changes with the population.  - As long as they both want to and are suited to it, I assume?"

"Some places have term limits. Or have people serve for life. At-will government positions are unusual."

"Our lives are indefinite."

"I suppose that might change things."

"Mmhm."

They wait. Holding hands.

Eventually the bouncy one comes bounding out of the building, from the ground level, followed at a slightly more sedate and substantially more dignified pace by someone with two-tone skin.  He examines Kyeo and Sarham for a moment.  " - I can get you a conference room on - would the fourth floor be too high for you to climb?"

"I can do three flights of stairs."

"All right."  He describes a room location to the two natives and heads back towards the building's scaffolding.

Inside, the stairs are bigger, both in the sense that the individual steps are built for larger strides and that the ceilings of each story are higher, although they're not unmanageably so.

Sarham can in fact still do three flights of it but he's breathing hard by the end.

Conveniently the conference room has chairs!  Neither of the Citrelians sit in them but they're there.

After a few minutes, another vitiligous person - patterned more densely than the other, and with clear intentionality to the shapes - enters.  She, too, looks at the two of them for a moment before speaking.  "Greetings, I'm Secretary Orthan.  Why don't you tell me about how you came to be here."

"We're not sure. We saw a mirror, suddenly appear in my room, where we were sitting together, and the mirror approached us and we were in the park. It's not a phenomenon I've ever heard of before."

"That does sound very strange.  What was the place you came from like?"

"We were on the planet Outer Sohaibek. I haven't seen much of it."

"I'm not from Outer Sohaibek but I was attending school there. It's - a democracy? Cold? Short days? I'm not sure what you're looking for."

"Primarily, I'm looking to determine whether the situation is as it was presented to me and what to do about it.  If your civilization spans multiple planets I'm more concerned with things that are consistent across it, and with things that apply to you two personally, than those at planetary scale."

"We can't copy things from other people. I'd loanword it but I'm not clear on the grammar yet... This means we need to eat and sleep, every day, and that if we're injured or sick we need to heal that ourselves too. And we'll get old eventually."

"I see.  I'm told it was explained to you that you can't remain in Telerta - or at least not permanently; we won't turn you away while we figure out what to do with you - but have you given any thought to whether you'd like to live elsewhere in Creta or in a different country."

"We'd love to hear more about our options and which places would be happiest to have us."

"If you didn't already have somewhere else in mind, I think you should head to, hm - either Chraida or Siliner, at least for the time being.  Those are both Cretari cities about a week's travel away.  They allow foreigners, and they're centrally located enough that if you find you want to move on you likely won't have to go as far, depending on where exactly you choose.  And they get enough trade that if you'd like to correspond with other nations before making a decision you'd be able to do that."

"Those sound like important considerations, thank you. - a week's travel how?"

"Trade wagon."

"With food and stops for sleep on the way?"

"Yes; it's less than a day and a half for the sprint relay."

"All right. Where will we stay when we get there?"

"I'll see that something is arranged for you.  Do you have a preference between them - Chraida's the largest city in the world, a bit more south, on a river; Siliner is slightly smaller than Telerta and is closer to the nearest border."

They look at each other. Eventually Kyeo says "Chraida sounds good to me."

"All right.  I'll get you a writ allowing you to stay here the next few days until we get your transport sorted out; you can stay with one of these two unless there's an issue with that."

"Not on my end."

"Or mine."

"Is there anything else you'd like to cover before you go on your way."

"I don't think so, thank you for your time."

She nods.  "Wait here a moment."

"Well, I'm glad we got that sorted out."

"It's good to know where we'll be for the foreseeable future! Thank you very much for your help."

"We'll need to sleep fairly soon."

"Whose house did you want to go to?"

Kyeo glances at Sarham. "Which is closer?"

"Or has a bed. I'd walk a little farther for a bed and it's possible you don't have them."

"You don't have to walk, we can use a cart again now that I've thought of it!  I do have a bed though."

"Most people have beds, I think, even if it's not most by very much.  But Lornell's place is closer."

"We appreciate the hospitality," Kyeo tells Lornell.

"Okay."

The man from before comes back and hands Kyeo and Sarham each a small piece of stiff paper with neatly handwritten illegible text.  "Keep these on you until you leave and show them to anyone who makes an issue out of your level of - hm."

"We've been translating it as prosociality."

He nods.

"Thank you very much." They both have pockets. Cards go in pockets.

Back down the stairs they go!  And to a nearly identical cart.

Aliens sit in cart and hold hands.

Zoooooooom.  Bump bump bump bump.

"Okay, I guess I'll drop by again in a little more than eight hours, then?"

"I don't suppose you have... toothbrushes, a bathroom..."

"No and yes, respectively.  - Bye, Sair."

"See you then."

Aliens make use of the bathroom, make do without toothbrushes, exchange meaningful looks over the disposition of the bed and ultimately get into it together.

Lornell is reading a book out in the other room, hanging upside-down from an installed bar and occasionally doing crunches, when they wake up.  It's dark outside, and the single candle isn't shedding much light.

"Hello... how long until sunrise? How long is a day here?"

"Good morning!  A few hours, I think.  And - having the language lets me make an estimate but I haven't done math on it - maaaaaybe twenty-six or twenty-eight hours?  Somewhere in there.  - And I can see that you're you but you should ask me questions."

"Oh, yes, I apologize. Whose hair did Sarham try to copy yesterday?"

". . . Either mine or Sairai's, presumably?  I couldn't like, see him trying; it didn't work . . ."

"Oh, he was looking, I thought it was obvious. What... did we ask for that you didn't have last night."

"Toothbrushes!"

"Do I need to assume that Sarham could also have been replaced while we slept?"

"It depends on how paranoid you think it's smart to be!  It's really quite safe here, and Chraida is less so but not by very much - but also you're aliens and might have more people trying to do - um, exciting but in a bad way - things to you, than a regular person would.  But I can see that you both can't lièv, so if you trust me enough to take my word for it then I can vouch.  But possibly you shouldn't get in the habit of trusting that."

"I suppose we'll work something out. How should we figure out breakfast - I think Sarham's more disconcerted by the - transition - than I am and I'd like to have it sorted out for him before he's quite awake."

"I didn't know what you liked or what was safe so I bought you guys a bunch of different food!  Um, I'd expect it to be mostly the same, since I do think we might be the same species underneath everything, but if you want I could - try and copy your digestion, and eat things myself, and then that would be less bad if it was poison for you and you had it.  I picked up a citrelièse with more finesse so I could do that if you want, but I didn't want to do it without asking while you were sleeping."

"I don't mind at all, thank you."

"You're welcome.  - You say thank you a lot."  They set their book on the floor, flip off of the bar, and take the candle to a kitchen area, where they start chopping various unfamiliar greens.  "Like, it made sense that time, and - when you did for the thing with the cart, because those were . . . ideas I had?  But you keep saying it for things that anyone would do."

"I'm not sure of what everyone would do, I suppose."

"I guess that makes sense.  But everyone here is helpful and you don't have to thank them for base amounts of helpfulness.  - I'm not upset by it, just.  Trying to help you calibrate."

"I appreciate that."

They nod.  Continue chopping unfamiliar greens.  "If you had any more miscellaneous questions about how things work here, this is as good a time as any."

"Do you use money here - I had been going to learn how anyway and Sarham grew up with it, but I have no practice."

"We do!  How do you . . . not . . . have money; is it just that you don't need it because you have fewer people in general or - huh, you wouldn't trend towards big cities as much as we do, would you, if you don't benefit from having more people around to copy from . . ."

"There are cities on most planets, I think. This one doesn't look obviously bigger than the one I grew up in, though I don't know that I could tell from what I've seen. My planet's advanced beyond the need for money. Ibyabek has hundreds of millions of people on it and some planets have several billion."

"Oh wow!  I guess it would make sense that - money is a technology, and moving past it would be too, and since you're more advanced than us . . .  I think there's some tens of millions of people on Citrelia, but other countries aren't well-run enough to have as good of censuses as we do.  Creta has five or six million, though, and we're the second-biggest, so I guess that's probably about the right order of magnitude.  - Creta knows exactly how many people it has, just I don't without asking."

"Oh, that's fine, I don't need an exact figure."

"What do you do instead of using money?"

"Things are allocated by our public officials."

"That sounds really complicated!  Ibyabek must be very well-run."

"They have a very important job to do."

"Well sure, everybody running a country has a very important job.  But some places are better or worse at it, by - a lot."

"I wonder if that's more true when people can all change en masse very suddenly?"

"It might be - you couldn't really have something like Bloudel, it would either be - either everyone would just be dead and then it wouldn't be a country anymore or it - wouldn't relevantly be the bad thing . . ."

Kyeo nods. Thinks for a minute, goes over to watch him cook. "I assume you need to do laundry as often as we do," he remarks after a moment. "Since the clothes can't copy being clean from other clothes."

"Right.  We can go clothes shopping later today if you want."  They finish with the greens and take out and start slicing - what at least looks like - a completely ordinary potato.

"It might help us stand out slightly less, and give us longer before we need to figure out how to wash the clothes."

"Mmhm!  There's people whose jobs it is, and we can take your clothes to them, but only once you have other ones to put on."

Oh thank goodness he doesn't need to learn to do laundry. "Shopping with - money?"

"Yep!  - The government's going to reimburse me for the expenses, within reason."

"Oh, good, I wouldn't have wanted to put you out for it, even if you don't need to buy food and such like people on most money-using planets."

"I still would have done it, just.  Maybe slightly less.  - If it'd been a lot I probably could've asked my friends to chip in a bit; pretty sure a lot of them would think it was cool to have the chance to help out an alien."

Sarham yawns and rolls over and sits up. "...is that a potato?"

"It does look like a potato..."

"Yep!  Potatoes are r - huh.  It is kind of weird that the word matches that closely, isn't it."

"Your language also says 'potato'?"

"Kularan is a creole of a bunch of Earth-derived languages, if you're some sort of lost colony that might explain why we look like the same species."

"No, our word sounds different, it just - yours means the same thing as ours.  Like, um, these are greens in general, but I'd have to loanword them to specify the individual ones . . . except chard, apparently??  Huh."

"That also suggests a common origin, if we have some of the same plants."

"Huh!"  Bounce five: return of the bounce.

"I can't figure out how your ancestors could have originally gotten here, though, faster than light travel was invented less than two hundred years ago."

"I'm not a historian but we definitely have at least a thousand years of recorded history - our years are shorter but I think not by enough for that to be the difference - "

"Maybe somebody or something else brought you here, then, there were humans a thousand years ago, they just didn't have much technology."

"How long are your years - ours are a hundred and fifty-six days - our days; I haven't worked out the exact conversion for those yet - "

"Earth standard is three hundred and sixty-five twenty-four-hour days. Since all planets have different day lengths everybody learns Earth ones too."

"That makes sense - can you please explain everything about the phrase faster than light travel now - "

"...stars are very far apart, so to get between them without it taking years, we have ships with a special kind of engine - I'm afraid we don't know the engineering details - which allow them to go much faster than the speed of light, which is around three hundred million meters per second."

"I didn't know light had a speed!"

"Oh! Well, it does, it's just very fast so it's hard to tell without particularly good measurements. The speed of sound is easier to notice, because of how lightning precedes thunder by more if you're farther away."

"Huh.  I - don't even know what questions to ask, again - except that I guess should we assume that the plants that are the same aren't poison . . ."

"I'd expect so, yes. I don't have any allergies - Kyeo?"

"Me either."

"Okay, I mixed all the greens together already but we can get you started on the potatoes - "  They transfer fire from the candle to a metal drawer thing via a piece of straw and put the sliced potatoes in a pan on top with some butter.

Sarham watches the cooking process with interest since he might need to learn how to use local kitchen implements.

It seems about the same as the low-tech stoves one might imagine, except that it's quite small.  Lornell notices him looking.  "Probably you'll want something bigger, since you have to eat all the time."

"Probably, yeah. Do you have a way to keep food cold?"

"We-in-general have iceboxes but I-in-specific don't."

"I think iceboxes require... new ice frequently, where does it come from?"

"We're pretty far south!  - Chraida is more northerly; it might be more expensive there."

"Can you give me a general idea of how much things cost, and how much we stand to make off eating and sleeping and being aliens?"

"Sure!"  They go over how much all the food they bought cost (kind of a lot, but not enough to set them back or anything, and they did go for a lot of variety), how much their stipend for being aliens will be while they settle in (they're not sure of the exact amount, but probably more than they make; they don't like to work a lot of hours), what they'll get if they talk to researchers (they have no clue, could be anything from very little to Now They're Rich, depending on how things go), and how much public officials earn (a pretty decent living for the full-time very useful ones, possibly less depending on how long after eating and sleeping they stay feeling rested and full, which seems like the sort of thing that would vary a lot on a personal level).

Sarham wants pen and paper to do some figuring about that but seems to find this reassuring.

Potatoes are done!  Lornell is not a master chef or anything but they're fine.

"Thanks for breakfast."

Sigh.  "You're welcome.  I guess I'll cook and eat these greens to see if they're okay for you guys and then we can go clothes shopping?  - Oh, I copied his digestion, so I can try stuff and then if it goes poorly I can just replace it and we'll know you shouldn't have that."