"I don't think I understand prediction markets well enough to say what it is they do."

"Okay. So anyone can go on a market website and post a bet-statement, like 'if the school district makes this change to the math curriculum the average calculus score over the next five years will be higher than the average over the last five years' or 'the price of apples will be below X on the next full moon' or 'Raz Etvan-Neri will win the Zendo tournament'. And people can make deals with each other to buy and sell copies of that bet-statement at whatever price they want. Then if the statement comes true every copy is worth a solis and if it doesn't it's worth nothing. So if Anda sells Bor some statement for seventy-five centis and then it comes true, Anda has to pay Bor a dollar, so Anda loses 25 centis and Bor gains 25 centis. Bor makes a profit because they made a correct prediction. And if you have a lot of people trading a statement you can get a sense of how likely it is to come true or not--statements that people will pay 90 centis for come true nine times out of ten and so on."

"...ah."

"So what do you do instead, just elections? I'd have expected a society that didn't need money would do prediction markets for nonexchangeable glory points, so negapoints for me."

"A lot of what you're saying is still very confusing to me."

"In a [my Ibyabekan and the translation model are very bad] way or in an [I am not adjusting well for cultural drift] way?" 

"Probably the second thing."

"Hmm. It would probably help if I knew more of your last and our next hundred years of history. Do you know why people stopped speaking Convergentlanguage?"

"I've... never heard of Convergentlanguage."

"What, but Kars said it had only been a hundred years, surely it'd be famous enough that even people who don't care about history have heard of it! Don't people read translations of The 3432 Saga or Unwinding Evolution or The Exploits of Herad Pator-Ver and wonder what they were originally written in? Maybe I'm overestimating how much people care about languages. Can you give me a summary of human history as you know it?"

"...humans originated on Earth and when they invented faster than light travel began to explore and colonize other systems. In my system three planets were colonized but Ibyabek was poorly managed and had a popular revolution and is independent now. I know much less about other planets, I'm sorry."

Alenn has several facial expressions in a row and interlaces her hands tightly. "I am surprised. I keep being surprised, often enough that I have to be missing something. Maybe when you meet with a historian they'll be able to prompt you effectively. I guess I shouldn't assume you want to talk to historian. What do you want to do on the scale of months or years,* assuming you're stuck in this time?"

[Translator's note: literally "phases or orbits".]

"...I suppose I will need a job."

"Some people live off the negatax and just do their unmarketable hobbies but if you want to be sure you're a net benefit to society or have nice things a job is the way to go, yeah. Kars said you're specialized in emergency response in space?"

"...military patrol," he corrects, "to prevent infiltration and smuggling from the Outer Sohaibekans and other hostile interests."

"That's the kind of job where you hang around being ready for sudden emergencies, right? Whether it's people trying to invade or someone getting themself in trouble or whatever? We have that on the ocean and in the wilderness service; I don't know how similar it is to the version in space. Also what's your conflict with the Outer Sohabekans about; I'm not a physicist but maybe this is the kind of time travel where you can prevent it from ever starting."

"They didn't approve of our independence movement and there's lingering bad blood."

"I am even less of a diplomat than I am of a physicist but maybe if you go around telling everyone what happened they'll notice who was being an idiot and then not."

"...telling who?"

"The world at large. So it's public knowledge what happens in your default timeline and whoever ends up in a position to make bad independence-movement-related decisions will know it. Why would you not want to do that?"

"...well, I suppose it could erase me from existence."

"Oh yikes. I think probably if that was going to happen it would have happened already, just from the ripple effects of your language being available before it was invented and all the nonobvious-casual-chains of you existing now at all. But definitely talk to a physicist if you're worried. Oh, does the future have a grand unified theory of physics or are they still looking?"

"I'm not a physicist."

"Better than even odds they're still looking, then, if they'd gotten it there'd've been a saga-worthy party and every kid would know it as one of humanity's greatest nonpractical achievements."

"If you say so."