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There are things Jing Yi expects when he flies through the window to his rooms.
Like his rooms. Like the floor being where he expects. Like all the furniture being out of the way of anyone flying through a window.
He finds none of those things.
There may or may not be a crashing noise. Or a very undignified yelp.
"There seems to be something wrong with the children? --not the ones that introduced me to you, they were lovely. But it seems like there's... Not enough?"
"Bitoxiphosphene. It's-- a chemical. We put it in the air, we didn't know what effect it has. It... hurts people's wombs. They're infertile, they miscarry, their children die... and the older they get the worse it is. Cascadia's at two children per woman on average and-- this is the second, maybe third most important thing we're doing."
"Canada isn't really trying and... they're at about one child per woman right now. And in a century or so they just won't have enough soldiers to keep people from invading."
"Well that's not great." So much of what the kids were implying makes sense now. But also, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
"They asked about where babies came from in Great Tang, and were surprised we just... Had them?"
"I mean, most babies in Cascadia are still conceived the usual way, it's just more likely that you'll sell the baby or have the baby's grandparents raise it. Or do a surrogacy."
"That was part of what they were surprised by! ... And the fact we sometimes had, hmm, more children than we could handle as a nation."
"Yeah, that's... not a thing anymore, outside of very poor areas where parents are still reluctant to do international adoptions."
"Man, the kids probably had such an attitude towards, uh, conventional heterosexual monogamy."
"They were very confused that only men and women could get married, and that only men could take concubines? Also people kept picking their genders, which made the whole thing more confusing."
"Oh, yeah, all of those things are true. I... am not really sure how to explain them? Also we don't have concubines, if you get married to two people they're both legally equal as of eight months ago."
"I'm sure I'll get a feel for it if I'm here for awhile. The kids also mentioned Gilead? Which as far as I can tell is an enemy country, but I know nothing else about." (He is very deliberately not touching whatever is going on with China for his own sanity.)
"There... are weapons that can destroy entire cities. Gilead used them on us nearly thirty years ago. Two million people died."
I can see why you don't like each other feels way to trite in the face of that absurd amount of death. "I'm sorry."
"It's... not going to happen again. Because we have those weapons now and if they try we will melt every inch of their country and they know it."
"To be clear we'd-- never use them except as vengeance. In Cascadia, nuclear first use consistently polls lower than the idea that the sun is smaller than the Earth. If someone tried anyone involved in ordering it would be kidnapped by an angry mob and tortured to death and then the coroner would rule it a suicide and-- we don't even need that kind of threat to keep the politicians in line because all our politicians are Cascadian too."
"That sounds like it's... for the best." He is not going to touch the apparent rebellion(?!) involved in this statement of intent, because destroying cities is probably worse.
"That's-- the most important thing our government is doing. Making sure that if Gilead ever hurts us ever again they will regret it."
"There's not much point raising children in a country that's going to be destroyed."
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