"Agreed! And at least there is more of us to go around with you aboard. I wish we had a better ETA on when being rezzed will suck less. Does it still suck for you at all?"

"It's down to pretty ignorable levels.  There's a noticeable difference between my bodies who've slept and those that haven't, but we'll see whether I end up any perkier tomorrow aside from that."

"Oh, sleeping helps? I could make the next batch come out a little dozy hormo- I have no idea if you guys run on melatonin or magic sleep chemicals, never mind."

". . . Should we just stop at a compound of winter solstices and take whoever wants to come, it just now occurs to me, given that these sorts of questions keep coming up and an assortment of those is likely to know at least some of the answers."

"- sure, why not, if they have conveniently geographically concentrated compounds, where to?"

Felicity apparently doesn't have any trouble with the amount of heights involved in flying over the top of the cylinder rather than by its side; most of her are already looking out the shuttle's windows.  "Turn a little left?"  And she sets to looking up more specific directions.

He bears slightly to port pending detail. "Will these ones speak Latin?"

"Most of them should, we're still over Roman territory."

"Hopefully it's not a dialect of Latin that doesn't mysteriously resemble English in a weird number of particulars. Are there? Dialects, I mean?"

"Dialects in general or ones that don't resemble English?"

"Both, I guess! In my world the language we call Latin split into a bunch of languages and I speak most of them. English isn't even a pure Romance language, it's got a lot of German mixed in there."

"I think you should be able to understand most everyone; the Empire goes pretty hard on assimilation in that respect.  But there are different accents - I've mostly been using a mishmash leaning slightly Britannian, you've heard full Britannian," (she switches to it as she says so) "Gaulmanians have this fun sort sharp-gooey mix; Rome-as-in-the-city is like so; go a ways east from there and you'll find something like this . . ."

None of them sound exactly like ones Cam already knows, except that the last two both sound awfully British.  Much more so than the Britannian one, in fact.

"Well, that's an entertaining spread of accents - I'd expect those last couple to be native to the island we just set out from - but all intelligible, yes."

"Interesting.  Which reminds me, among the brands I've checked so far there haven't been any other matches."  Here are some more specific directions, they get handed to Cam.

And he descends into the solstice compound.

It takes a while for anyone to poke their heads out, but eventually someone does.

"Good morning! Do you and several of your friends want to join me and my multibodied assistant on a trip to the city I built in one of the cylinder's caverns with a buncha people I resurrected and there consult on whatever your areas of expertise may be as things come up?"

". . . What's the catch?"

"...the city's brand new and I have not explicitly ruled on most possible things that might come up in it? Commute'll be kind of a bitch?"

"Then well, yes.  Obviously.  What sort of things do you need consultation on?  How many is several?"

"We had the idea to stop here after it occurred to me that I don't know how humans from around here sleep, on, like, a hormonal level, but all kinds of wacky things might conceivably be relevant. Shuttle can fit like five more people, maybe more if you're all real friendly?"

"I expect we can be friendly for these purposes.  Would you like to come in or shall I just fetch people?"

"Is the place interesting to look at? I might as well."

"Moderately?  Do you want to come too, presumable assis - oh."  She appears to notice that the Felicity leaning out of the shuttle is one of the four-armed ones.  ". . . Presumable assistant."