The teacher enters and puts Jing Yi out of John Lan's misery.

The teacher thinks the most important Cascadian civics lesson is Your Rights As A Citizen And/Or Resident Of Cascadia. The basic principles are as follows:

-The rule of law. This means that everyone has to be treated equally under the law. If anything, crimes by powerful people should be punished more harshly than crimes by powerless people, because they have more ability to hurt others. 
-The Harm Principle, which means that the government is not allowed to levy criminal penalties for anything except failure to pay taxes and harm to children, the legally incompetent, or the nonconsenting. (If you consent to harm, that's just stupidity, and is not the government's business.) The government is permitted to levy civil penalties if there is a compelling reason. 

Your specific rights are as follows:
-You can say anything you want, as long as it isn't fraud, libel/slander, perjury, direct incitement to violence (as in there is an actual mob about to burn people), a true threat, or violation of someone else's intellectual property. In general, you are allowed to say anything you sincerely believe to be true. 
-You can have any opinions you want, no matter what. 
-You can practice any religion you want, or no religion at all.
-You can freely assemble in public places for any reason or no reason, as long as you are not disturbing the piece, and you can join whatever private voluntary associations you want.
-You have a right to a separate, private sphere of your life, such as by using pseudonyms online, not being tracked by the government, and making your own medical decisions without excessive government interference.
-You have a right to bodily autonomy, which means that by default you can do whatever you want to your own body. 
-You have a right to own property and not to have your property taken away by the government without compensation. 
-You have a right to own firearms, as long as you know how to use them safely and don't have a history of violent crime or suicidal behavior.
-You have the right to vote. 
-You have the right not to be discriminated against by the government because of your race, ethnicity, country of origin, native language, religion, political views, biological sex, identified gender, sexuality, fertility status, disability, or neurodivergence. 
-You have the right to leave Cascadia at any time. 
-You have the right not to be deprived of your liberty or property without due process of law.

You additionally have a variety of rights that specifically apply when interacting with the justice system:
-You have the right to be informed of your rights. 
-You have the right to refuse entry to your house or car, unless the person has a warrant.
-You have the right to refuse to allow someone to search you, unless the person has a warrant.
-You have the right not to talk to police.
-You have the right to leave a conversation with police, unless they have a reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime. 
-You have the right to have a lawyer present when talking to the police.
-You have the right not to be questioned with techniques known to lead to false confessions. 
-You have the right to a speedy trial by a jury of your peers.
-You have the right to be informed of the accusation and to confront the witnesses against you. 
-You have the right to exclude evidence which has been shown by a scientific body to be pseudoscientific.
-You have the right not to be forced to testify against yourself. 
-You have the right to a lawyer. If you can't afford a lawyer, one will be provided. 
-You have the right not to be tried for the same thing twice.  
-You have the right not to be executed.
-You have the right not to be tortured. 
-You have the right not to have excessive bail or fines imposed.
-You have the right not to be subjected to cruel, undignified, or humiliating treatment. 

Government employees who violate these rights will be prosecuted appropriately; for example, searching someone without a warrant is considered assault. 

The class concludes with a roleplay where everyone practices calmly saying that they do not consent to searches and would like a lawyer. 

The class is very Cascadian, and mostly in a familiar way. The Cascadian government likes freedom and not getting in people's way and  letting people do things. Of course they would legally enshrine the right to do whatever with your own body or to say whatever. It's deeply weird, but in a way that's very "Oh, Cascadia."

It gets... more uncomfortably confusing as it goes on. How do the Cascadians punish crimes, if you can't whip or execute anyone? Fines and jail of course, but... just those? How do you ever interrogate someone if their lawyer is just there, telling them to shut up the whole time? He doesn't ask, because he doesn't want to stick out.

He is at the very least capable of saying "I do not consent to searches and would like a lawyer," while deeply uncomfortable.

John Lan also doesn't consent to searches and he does want a lawyer. 

He would be so good at the part of being arrested that involves shutting up. 

He would be so, so good at it. If he was attempting to interrogate him, instead of just trying to vaguely socialise, he would be probably hitting his own head against the table now and admitting every single wrongdoing he had never done.

...not that he's going to say this to John. Because he doubts he will take it as a compliment.

When the class is over, a... person... comes in through the door and races to John. 

The person looks approximately like they discovered colors three days ago and are still very excited by the concept. Their hair is rainbow, and patches are shaved according to some system which presumably makes sense to the hair's owner; each of his fingernails is painted a different color; his eyelids are bright purple, and birds were drawn down his face; his left arm and most of his back are tattooed bright colors, which Jing Yi can tell, because in lieu of a shirt, he's wearing glittery fishnet top. 

Somehow it works. 

"John! John, I missed you! You can't be away for this long. I was pining. I was bereft."

"Mn."

"Hello!" he says to Jing Yi. "Love your style, you look great."

"Aw, thank you! The rainbow hair is an inspired choice. Aang Wei, I presume?" Because he may have only known John briefly, but there is only one person who could get something approximating a smile from him.

"Awww! He talked about me! Darling, did you talk about me?"

"Yes."

"Did he talk to you? I told him he had to talk to people because he can't go around the rest of his life having only two friends one of whom is me and one of whom is his brother who is a kidnapping victim in Japan."

John disagrees with this assessment.

"We both said sentences at each other!"

"Cool! What's your name? Do you want to come get coffee with us?"

"I'm Jing Yi. And I'm also under strict instructions to get a social life, so sure!"

Aang Wei starts to head out. "Oh, who are your instructions from?"

"I, too, only know one person in Cascadia. And very cruelly he has 'a job' and 'a social life with other people.'"

"You're better off than a lot of refugees, they don't know anyone."

"I'm incredibly lucky! I now know a whole three people in Cascadia."

"John only sort of knew me. He knew me for two weeks! He was trying to convert me to being a Gileadite and obviously I was like 'no, what the fuck, I like getting laid' but apparently I made an impression because he just showed up at my house a couple months ago and was like 'I love you' and I was like 'Cool! That's great! I have no idea who you fucking are.' But we sorted it out."

So, more evidence of John being a shell of stony silence covering a core of deep weirdness should maybe be less surprising. "Okay, you have me beat. I ran into my friend in the woods and he decided that helping the seemingly crazy person was a good use of his time."

"Gilead or Mexico or Deseret? Or Canada. I bet Canada, you look Canadian to me."

"Gilead, actually!" What does it mean to look Canadian? How does he look Canadian? Is there something he should know about Canada?

"Oh! John too! You should talk about Gilead things. Like going to church all the time and praying and having to watch literally the worst movies of all time."

So on the one hand such a conversation could so easily blow his cover, especially as "I'm sorry it's just *sniff* too upsetting to think about" does not combine well with the way he is nosy as fuck. On the other, this would require a conversation with John Lan that actually ends up being of substance, so.

"I mostly dodged the movies, my parents didn't believe in them." (It feels weird to speak ill of his imaginary Gileadite parents, but also his actually parents didn't believe in movies, ie if he described them to them they wouldn't believe him.)