"Mostly it's about how, like, we're all going to be absorbed into a superconsciousness after we die, so we should attempt to encourage traits in ourselves that it would be good for that to have?  And also set up society so that it's easier for individual people to do this.  And then a whole lot of detailed advice on how he thinks people should go about that."

"Okay, cool. In my universe Jesus founded a religion called Christianity which remains fairly popular more than two thousand years later despite numerous internal schisms."

"Wow, uh.  Wow.  - There's one of my geminis who does stuff with him."

"Is that person's name, by any bizarre interuniversal coincidence, 'Judas'."

"Yeah.  Why."

"Well, this isn't, like, especially closer to my heart than the thing where it's possible chickens and field mice are people, but it's possible that by bizarre interuniversal coincidence he is going to get Jesus killed."

"Awesome.  I'm going to continue to do absolutely nothing about this."

"Solid plan! Your curse sounds absolutely awful and I hope it is possible that one day a cure will be discovered or something."

"Statistically I will probably grow out of the part where it feels like every action I could take with effects farther-reaching than the end of my nose would be a horrible utilitarian tradeoff, and then I can just avoid actual utilitarian tradeoffs and it won't hit me.  Or I will die.  So, fine either way, really."

"Oh, it's an age-limited curse? Okay. Uh, good luck. Let's see, other ways to reveal hidden differences... I will read aloud the first bits of random Wikipedia pages from when my world was around this apparent tech level, shall I, and you shall stop me if you need to tell me that, actually, penguins are eldritch abominations from the dread realm known as Timbuktu."

"Not like inherently, just as a trend - penguins are flightless birds that live on Antarctica?"

"Cool! Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by The Coca-Cola Company?"

"Never heard of it."

Next article. "Artedidraco is a genus of barbeled plunderfishes native to the - no, I haven't even heard of these, next, next - Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter pilot?"

"Nope.  - British?"

Cam pokes the relevant island on the fridge magnet.

"We're Britannian, here."

"Okay, so the demonym differs. Plus Roald Dahl was born well after the fall of our Roman Empire. Turgut Polat is a male Turkish table tennis player - wow, it is hard to get anything out of the random article button, I'm just concerned I'll have some massive blindspot if I pick topics on my own -"

"Even if I were having suggestions - which come to think of it is safe on a scale this small as long as I pay very close attention to the shape of my thoughts - I don't know enough about Wikipedia to come up with any.  Um, we did have kind of a lot of dropped conversation topics - I could give you the five-year-old's version of spirituality; I could tell you more about Ian as an example of somebody even-tempered; I could tell you what the other solquinoxes are like; um, I know you had more questions when we digressed about the twin thing; I don't remember what those were . . ."

"The intrusive personal questions I was deliberately not asking? Those? Go ahead and give me the five year old's version of spirituality."

"No, there were ones before that, I think, about different things - oh it was whether we have parties, wasn't it, because that made me think about Nicholas too; a bunch of his geminis all run a country together - it varies by birthday and by individual how much they care about and want to interact with each other.  I'm pretty sure we have an old kids' book somewhere on stuff that might be a good introduction; do you want me to go dig it up?"

"If you give me the title I can find it in here, I just need the phrase to search." He waves his computer.

"'You Twinkle Above Us?'"

Cam hunts down "You Twinkle Above Us" and opens it.

When you look up at the night sky, what do you see?  Stars!  Far too many stars to count.  They twinkle above us and watch over everything we do.

The sun is so very bright that stars are difficult to see in the daytime.  But they're still there!  They are always shining down from the shell at the edge of the universe.

Each and every star represents a person who once existed, just like you and me.  Eventually you'll be one too!

When you're a star, what will it be like?  Well, you will start out not too different from how you are now.  You will be you-sized, and like and dislike all the same things you already do.  But you will not have a body, and you will not be down on the surface of the Earth.  You will be way up high in the sky, and you will be just your soul!  Your soul is everything that makes you who you are on the inside.

There will also be a new dot of light in the sky that night, but that type of star is not a new body.  It is a representation of you, like a drawing or a picture.  What's your favorite drawing or picture of yourself?

Off to the side, in smaller text:

(Did you know?  Stars look like little white dots from far away, but up close, you can see they actually have five points, like these!  Can you draw a star?)

There are so very many stars in the sky that you're sure to find another one who fits very well with you.  For most people, it's one of their geminis, but for other people it can be someone else, or a whole group of other stars!  It's different for every single person.

When you find them, you will no longer be just yourself and you-sized.  You will turn into one star cloud, together, like pouring lemondade and orange juice together into a pitcher.  There's twice as much to drink, and the pitcher has everything that made lemonade the way lemonade is and everything that made orange juice the way orange juice is, but it's something entirely new!

This same thing will happen again and again and again and again and again.  Someday you will be as big as you can possibly be, and all the other stars will be part of the same cloud with you!

(Some medium-sized star clouds find a size they like and stay like that for a very long time.  They are very unusual!  We think that someday they will probably join up with the biggest one, too, but that day may be very far away.)

We know all this because grownups and big kids can go up with the stars, and talk to them.  What will you say to the stars once you're old enough?  What do you hope they will say to you?

Some people are scared to be stars.  They want to be the size they are forever.  Other people are excited!  They want to grow up and become a part of something bigger.

How do you feel about becoming a star?  What do you think it will be like when you twinkle above us?