"Heard.  I'll make sure everyone's out of the way momentarily."

"Say when."

"Clear."

He pilots the shuttle gently down onto the ground and opens the door. "Everybody, this is my PA, Felicity. Felicity, these are six rescued science experiments and Markus."

"We have names too!  Max Fang Iggy Nudge Gazzy Angel," she points.

"Those are sure names! I know a Nudge but he's several dead people so probably the collision won't come up."

"The scientists didn't name us so we had to pick them."

"What neglectful scientists. Oh, and that's Kennedy, hi Kennedy."

"Good noon.  Mr. Swan, I thought of something else useful about me just now that isn't in my report, which is that if you're going to be rescuing a lot of children it might be smart to have at least one untraumatized child around.  For their development."

"I do not know nearly enough about child development to contradict you. I will read your report in flight, I suppose. Felicity, do you want to learn to fly one of these? You'd need to use the manual controls since I can't chip you but it's not that hard."

"That does seem very useful and like not knowing will eventually become troublesome."

"Yeah, I keep having so many places to be and not all of them need me in particular to be there but they are ideally visited on shortish timescales." When everyone's loaded up he lifts off. "I'm going to drop off this crowd in Atriama and then head back to Chelford, I suppose."

"That sounds reasonable."  Felicity pays close attention to the liftoff and can take the controls for a while if Cam thinks she's ready!

Sure! The autopilot does a lot, honestly.

Thank the stars for that.  . . . Well, probably not the stars per se.

Kennedy's report (which a Felicity shares with Cam digitally) claims that she's an incubator baby!  Her biological parents were dead years and decades before she was even conceived.  There are lots of even kids like her but she's the first solquinox!  She lives in a house with several other unpaired autumns and is treated fine overall but doesn't much like the level of scrutiny that comes with everyone watching out for whether she came out off-model somehow because of her delayed birthday.

"Unpaired?"

"Ones who aren't romantically involved with anyone else.  If they're going to bring anyone home they have to find a different home."

Is that what the kids are calling it these days. "Gotcha."

"Thank you for bringing me to your city.  I'll try to make it nicer by my being there."

"I appreciate that."

The shuttle zooms across the surface of the world and down around the corner and docks in Atriama.

Felicity clenches her teeth through the portion of the flight that's over the infinite drop but doesn't actually leave the helm of the mostly-autopiloted shuttle.

All the new passengers emerge and go off to ogle the city.

(Except the redheaded bird kid, who goes, "Guys describe it, come on," until his flockmates start telling him what's there.)

(Which causes the surgeon to pause and head off in the other direction, guiltily.)