"Noted.  Also, when you were talking about your greatest capability Nudge said to me in backchannel - ahem - 'Oh come on he's not even sad; he does a really good sad you know; you don't have to worry because he does an even better shitposting but that's really saying something,' end quote.  I don't know if that sheds any light on what that part of the poem meant."

"...I have no idea what that's getting at. What does 'doing a really good sad' even mean?"

"I don't know!  I got the impression if he could elaborate further he would have said it to you directly.  - Are you at all an actor?  It sounds a little like something one might say about an actor . . ."

"I haven't delved into the field! I have - stood in for an absent participant at a table reading, ever? I attended a couple of improv nights once. I'm a hundred seventy-two, one gets around. But I'm not 'an actor'."

"If you have any tendency to depression it could be that."

"I do not!"

"Well, I've got nothing then.  Except an in-progress spreadsheet of future resurrectees.  Obviously the most urgent are the singlets on either side of being in that state; recent enough and some of them can just slot back into their lives bliplessly; old enough and they're at risk of merging soon.  Although they can hold off by just not talking to anyone dead, since they can't merge with the living - you might want to hire some living people to keep singlets company, depending on how often you do resurrections in the long term?  But I think the primary bottleneck at this stage is transportation for the recent ones and temporary housing for the close-to-merging ones."

"Cool. I don't know that I can pay many people to do things, I'm still not flush with cash - are we anywhere on batteries, I could start selling batteries?"

"Those'll take a bit because no one has really done much research into 3D arrays, since they would be so difficult and dangerous to assemble precisely enough without conjuration.  You could copy existing ones but I don't know that they'd be any more profitable than what you've already been doing.  But the company-keeping would only come up in the long term - if you wanted to settle into doing a batch of resurrections daily or weekly or biweekly, then if you had people on retainer for stars to talk to you could push the time between them longer.  Getting close to merging when you've resolved not to mostly just feels like a terrible loneliness."

"Gotcha. Hm. I could maybe heal amputees for cash? Most of my medical knowledge won't transfer well but I think that should."

"Maybe so!"

"Can you call hospitals and find one that'll entertain the idea and be a staging area, while I take Cricket to the zoo?"

"Right now?"

"I can be flexible on the timing if now is no good, I think I have enough money left for a zoo admission."

"I just don't know if there are any zoos that would be open to the public at night, is the main thing."

"Oh. It's night. Amazing how that happens. Tomorrow then."

"I apologize on behalf of my universe for it being populated with entities which spend a full quarter of the time sleeping, nearly every night, and also only having one - I don't remember what they were called.  Time . . . areas?  Time codes?  - For it being the same time everywhere."

"Time zone."

"I'm sorry we only have one time zone.  I guess it'll be two-ish once there's a cavern city - daylight beginning with the sunset, at least for part of the month . . ."

"That'll be a fun adjustment for everybody!"

"I hope so!  Erm, should I have a more formal introduction with Cricket; I wasn't sure how to handle that.  Ms. Mistoffelees taught me a few words of catspeak but my pronunciation is still very poor, and it's not enough for even a very simple conversation anyways."

"Cricket is an extremely rude person except insofar as he seems fond of me personally and I'm not sure it would do either of you any good for you to introduce yourself and him to insult your accent."

"Well, I don't want to be an extremely rude person, so please do let me know if that changes."

"Will do. I guess as long as it's night here and there's nothing requiring people to be awake I should be doing, I can go visit the cavern and check it out!"

"Sounds good!"