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Jing Yi meets Cascadia!Lev
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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.

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He is in a forest! 

The trees... do not look like trees that exist anywhere in China. They are enormously tall, and bring to mind words like "stately" and "majestic". The area is misty with fog. Other than the cries of strange birds, there is no sign that anyone is around.

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Well, this is... unideal. He likes being in places where he knows where he is. He does some of his best work in place where he knows where he is!

Mysterious foreign forests... are not where you get to see Jing Yis at peak capacity.

After a brief moment of panic and utter confusion (how on Earth did his window lead into a forest, why is his window gone now, WHERE IS HE), he looks around for any obvious landmarks or path like things.

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There is more of a path that-a-way? 

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'Following the path that-a-way' is probably a better plan than just sitting here waiting for rescue or death, so following the path is what he does.

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After not long on the path he encounters a sign. 

The sign is visibly not in Chinese. In fact, each of the ideograms appears to correspond not to a word but to a sound. Also, apparently he can now read whatever-this-is???

The sign informs him that he is walking along the Prairie Creek-Foothill Trail Loop.

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???

???????

??????????

You know what, mysterious literacy is probably less of a problem than having been suddenly dumped next to the Prairie Creek-Foothill Trail Loop instead of in his house.

He will... continue walking along the loop. (But he can stay productive by multitasking with baffled panic of "where is he and why can he read the language he never learned")

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Eventually he encounters a group of four children who are maybe somewhere between six and eight years old. All of them look foreign; two have very dark skin, two are paler. They're wearing absolutely outlandish clothing: some kind of odd blue trouser made out of material he doesn't recognize, and shirts. Their hair is cropped short in the barbarian style. 

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Children are great. They have no brain-to-mouth filter and are hilariously easy to manipulate. ...this may not be relevant for the sort of information gathering he's doing now, as opposed to what he does at the Three Judicial Offices, but it's something.

"Hello? I seem to be a bit lost. Do you know where we are?" (How can he also speak the mystery language? What. --Whatever, it's convenient.)

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"You're on Prairie Creek. What are you looking for?"

"Why are you hiking in costume?"

"Maybe he's part of the SCA."

"I don't think the SCA is having an event today, Folsom is happening and you wouldn't have two big events at the same time."

"It could be a small one."

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Wow, that's a series of nouns! "I think I have got very, very lost. If you know where there's someone who could help me--?" (And here's hoping whoever the kids lead him to can pass him onto someone who can deal with 'I seem to have fallen into your country by accident, terribly sorry, I pinky swear this is not an invasion').

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"I think we should take him to the police."

"No, we should take him to my dad. He runs the entire government."

"He does not."

"He does too!"

"He does NOT!"

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"I think I'm the kind of lost that might need the help of the government." The government might understandably kill him, but so will the woods.

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"They're BOTH the government."

"I think we should tell the police because they're supposed to handle weird things."

"I think we should tell Tree's dad because Tree's dad's husband always has candy."

"Do you think his husband is going to be there?"

"I mean, he's got to, right, if there's something weird. They're both going to want to talk about it."

"Let's take him to Tree's dad."

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Ah children: predictably obsessed with sweet things. Even if that involves not leading him to the people who should maybe be dealing with this. (He has a mental image of the Three Judicial Offices dealing with a mysterious foreigner who literally fell into their country. It's An Image.)

"Lead the way."

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"But we're not allowed in Folsom. It's for adults."

"No," says Tree with a tone of great wisdom. "That's what the Sisters are for. Finding people when their kids need them."

"For candy!"

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'Not for kids' and 'contains high ranking government people' makes it sound like a government meeting (...in the woods?) which is highly not ideal but he will work with it. "If you take me to the sisters, maybe they will be able to lead me to someone who could help."

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"Right!"

The children set off in a direction.

"Are you a Gileadite? I heard that Gileadites dress funny."

"I think people from Deseret dress funny too. I saw it on TV." 

"Nuhuh, a Deseret missionary visited my aunt's once and he wore a suit."

"A suit is dressing funny."

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He follows in the direction. He has heard of none of those places! Where the fuck is he!

"I'm from Great Tang."

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"I don't think that's a real place."

"It could be in Africa."

"He doesn't look like he's from Africa!"

"Maybe it's part of India."

"He doesn't look Indian either."

"How do you know what Indians and Africans look like? They can look however they want. That's racist."

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A proper noun! That he recognises! This is glorious!

"Where I'm from is to the east of India."

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"Japan?"

"China?"

"The Philippines?"

"Russia?"

"Russia isn't east of India you dumbass."

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"I'd have to check on a map," he says, instead of 'Apparently China but I'm worried about what caused it to change its name'.

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"My mom says that in China you don't get to decide who you have babies with. The government picks out whose genes are the best and makes you have babies with them. And ninety percent of the people are girls. And they can't decide to be boys either, they're not allowed."

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"I wouldn't know, really."

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"How could you stop someone from deciding to be a boy?"

"They put them in prison! And never let them out ever ever ever ever until they say they're a girl."

"You could just lie."

"I don't know that they know they can be boys if they want to."

"Huh." All the children contemplate this surprising fact.

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Jing Yi is just going to let the children saying the darnedest things do that. Apparently the children in this culture think you can just decide, how fascinating. Jing Yi has no feelings about this.

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"What does Great Tang do about babies?"

The rest of the children, realizing that they have an interesting foreigner to hand, begin to pepper him with questions. 

"And trans people?"

"Can you test out of school there?"

"Do you have to get married to someone who's a different gender? I heard that in other countries you have to get married to someone who's a different gender."

"Do you believe in God?"

"Do you think you're going to go to Hell if you're bad?"

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"I'm not sure you all are old enough to learn where babies come from."

"I have no idea who those are, so probably not?"

"You have to pass an exam to get into the civil service, and people generally stop formal education if they pass... And also if they realise there is no way they'll pass."

"If it's not to someone of the other gender, it's not a marriage."

"There's multiple gods? And also the various buddhas, et cetera. ... Do you only worship one?"

"There is a hell, and some people will pray for you to leave sooner."

 

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"I know where babies come from! They come from when you put a penis inside a vagina without protection. Or artificial insemination! Or you put an egg and a sperm together in a petri dish!"

"Trans people are when you're one gender and you decide to be a different one!"

"What if they want to learn things and not be in the civil service? I want to be an engineer. Do all your engineers work for the government?"

"My moms are married!"

"My granddad worships ALL the gods but my grandma is an atheist. I think my mom is a Christian but one of the nice ones?"

"I think there are lots of gods because why would people worship the gods if they aren't real?"

"Lots of people believe in things that aren't real. Like fairies."

"I think fairies are real."

"Can you get out of Hell? I thought once you were in Hell you were there forever."

"Maybe we should all be praying."

"To the fairies!"

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"...We do it the first way!"

"That's not a thing you decide where I'm from."

"If you're not going for the civil service, there are apprenticeships, but I am not an expert."

"People get out of hell, but it takes a really long time."

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"Oh! That's probably why two women can't get married. But what if you're infertile?"

"Maybe they get someone else to have sex with your spouse instead."

"Yeah, that's probably what they do."

"Wait, if someone has sex with your spouse when you're infertile then you can get gay-married even without artificial insemination."

"I didn't know there was a country where no one did artificial insemination."

"Well, it makes sense, it's not sperm that people are running out of."

"You can't have an apprenticeship here unless you get your GED first."

"My dad had to go to all of high school." (This is Tree.) "He says I'm so lucky that I can test out."

"Does getting out of Hell take ten million billion trillion years?"

"I bet it takes a GOOGOLPLEX years."

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"If your wife is infertile, you can take a concubine. If you're husband is, you can adopt." He is not touching the rest of that conversational thread, on account of ?????

"I would have definitely liked to test out earlier than I did, but alas."

"You're actually pretty close with the maths there! Other people can shorten your stay, but Don't Do Bad Things, Kids."

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"If men can have multiple wives and women can't have multiple husbands you're going to run out of women!"

"I heard that happened in Deseret."

"No, maybe he means like a Handmaid. Where they get married to someone else afterward."

"How much do babies cost in Great Tang?"

"You're STUPID. Outside of Cascadia they don't buy babies."

"Well, then how do they know who gets them?"

"I think they give it to the ones they think will be the best parent."

"Well, I don't want to be pregnant for months and months and MONTHS if no one is going to give me any money for it. I would just get an abortion."

"Well, abortions are illegal most places."

"Except in Canada."

"Canada sucks."

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"Being a concubine isn't the same as being a first wife, but you don't remarry unless your husband dies. Most people only marry one person though. And we also don't buy babies. Adoption is done by agreement between families, or picking up an abandoned child."

 

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"You have abandoned kids? HOW?"

"Your country needs better population policy."

"We'll buy the babies!"

"I still think you should get to have sex with someone else if you're infertile. Especially if your husband's infertile and your womb is perfectly good."

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Apparently these kids are old enough to know where babies come from, but he's not 100% sure they're old enough to know babies sometimes die. Ah, well, they'll have to learn some day.

"Sometimes families don't have enough food for their kids, so they'll leave them somewhere and... Hope."

 

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"If you sold the babies you wouldn't have that problem! Because rich people would buy them!"

"You can send them to Cascadia."

"Yeah!! You should tell Asher that we should import the babies from your country and then they can have more money and not be hungry."

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"I'll be sure to mention our extra babies to him."

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They arrive at a gate of what is, presumably, Folsom. Near the gates are a cluster of tents and campfires; from them emerge the sound of moans. 

Next to the gate itself is a table with some objects on it Jing Yi doesn't recognize, and a... woman? Man? They have a white-painted face with elaborate makeup on their eyes and lips, and also a beard. They're wearing a sort of elaborate glittery feathery headdress and a slim black dress, with fishnets on their shaved legs. 

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Jing Yi is not completely ignorant of what those noises are. Jing Yi is completely ignorant of the clothes of this place. Maybe this is the standard fashion of... People? ... Courtesans? Around here.

"Hello, I seem to have gotten very lost. As in, I am not in the country I am meant to be in. I was hoping you'd be able to direct me to someone who should be informed?"

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"He's from Great Tang!"

"We don't know where that is."

"We wanted to take him to Asher Kane," said Tree, "he's my dad, can you get him for us?"

The... person... says, "do you know where he's staying?"

"The Castro."

"Cool, I'll radio." They pick up one of the things that Jing Yi can't identify, press a button, and say, "Castro Sisters, we have a guest for Asher Kane, can you send someone to collect them?" 

The thing crackles. "Roger, Sister, we're on our way."

"Someone from his camp should be by in a few minutes, if he's not too busy."

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Update: this might be totally normal fashion for women, if this person is a 'sister'. (It doesn't explain the beard, but Something Is Up in this country that might explain it, from the way the kids talked about babies.)

"Thank you so much, sister." Polite bow.

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"My dad will definitely help you!" Tree says. "He is in charge of the whole government."

"He is not."

"Is too."

"We vote for who's in charge of the government."

"But they always do what my dad says," Tree says triumphantly.

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Ah, so this Asher is a ?king?

"I'll be glad for his help."

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A man approaches the Sister. He has shoulder-length curly hair; he's wearing the odd blue pants that the kids are wearing, alongside a shirt that says MIT. 

"I have a guest, apparently?"

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Jing Yi is starting to assume that the odd blue pants are probably the normal fashion here.

"I appear to have ended up in your country by bizarre accident. I apologise, and seek your aid." And deep bow (though not all the way on the floor, he is saving that for if he needs to escalate.)

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"Uh, why are you bowing at me?"

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"He does that," one of the kids says helpfully.

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This is not something Jing Yi expected to have to explain. "Because you are of higher standing and I am asking for your aid? If that's not done here, then I apologise."

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"I'm what? The fuck have the kids been telling you."

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"That you and my dad run the WHOLE government," Tree said. 

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"We do not."

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The children look at him expectantly. 

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"I don't have candy every time I talk to you guys!"

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The children continue to look at him expectantly.

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"Fine, here you go." He pulls out some brightly colored squares of some material Jing Yi doesn't recognize. "Leave nothing but--"

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"Footprints, God, Uncle Lev, I know, I'm not four." Tree collects the squares and distributes them to the other children, who open them up and put the contents in their mouths and the wrapping in their backpacks. 

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"And this is what you get from using children as your sources."

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"I mean I am the top-ranked forecaster in Cascadia--"

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"Second from the top."

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"Top-ranked, your dad has been busy enjoying Folsom."

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Tree screws up her face in disgust. "Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."

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"I am suitably impressed, though I'll admit I'm not sure we have those in my country."

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"Yeah, Cascadia is the only country in the world with forecasters. --I'm really not sure this is my job at all but I'm ahead on work and I hate literally every part of Folsom, so we can head back to my tent and then I can see about getting you sorted? At least I can get you a cab and a referral to an immigration social worker."

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"If you think that's best, then sure."

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"Bye kids, have fun!"

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"Bye, Lev!" the kids chorus.

As they leave, they begin to speculate furiously about the properties of Great Tang and why it has such weird population policy.

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"They're very cute." And deeply WEIRD.

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"They really are."

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Things that exist at Folsom, which Jing Yi sees as they're walking to Lev's tent:

-Tents.
-Campfires.
-Naked people.
-People in lingerie, corsets, leather harnesses, and assless chaps. Separately. Not at the same time.
-A person dressed up as a dog being walked on a leash. 
-People masturbating.
-People fucking. 
-Absolutely no one appearing to be bothered by or even notice the preceding two groups.
-People on pedestals stripping while something plays which is... probably... music? It has several music-like qualities, anyway. What instruments produce those noises. (There are no visible instruments.)
-People on pedestals being whipped.
-People on pedestals being elaborately tied up, including several people who are suspended in the air and one person who is suspended in the air upside down. 
-Innumerable booths selling whips, rope, corsets, leather harnesses, terrifying-looking objects the purpose of which is unclear, etc
-Booths selling alcohol and... pots? For some reason?
-Booths selling assorted mysterious foods such as corn dogs, candy apples, cotton candy, cheese on a stick, fried corn, funnel cakes, and poutine.
-A booth labeled "Free HIV Testing!" People there seem to be getting some kind of needle pushed into their veins.
-A booth labeled "Bad Dragon." It seems to sell dildos of such enormous size that they are presumably intended for decoration.
-A booth labeled "St. James Infirmary Fundraiser-- Get Whipped By Our Professional Mistresses! $30 for 15 minutes."
-A sign that says "Folsom 2049: Fuck You Gilead We're Still Here."

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Jing Yi has the distinct feeling that he would be more weirded out if he had slightly more context. As it is, he has absolutely no clue what is going on, and the extreme bafflement has wrapped back around to moderate bafflement. Maybe sex festivals are normal around here. (He's used to people being publically whipped... not being a festive activity? But the everything else implies 'sex festival', and he is not going to ask, out loud with his mouth, whether he is right.)

Is this normal food? No idea! Is this normal clothes around here? No clue! (He still feels distinctly overdressed in the circumstances. And he will admit the harnesses have a certain aesthetic appeal.) Do people regularly decorate their houses with dildos? People have done weirder!

Though it turns out Gilead and Cascadia Do Not Like Each Other. He Has Half A Clue About The Political Situation. Yay.

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Lev navigates them to a tent made of a very odd sort of material Jing Yi doesn't recognize at all, sits on a chair made of an equally odd material, gestures for Jing Yi to take one of the others, and says, "okay, so what is your problem?"

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He takes a seat. There is no non-crazy sounding way to explain it. "I sort of... Fell into your country? Literally. And I'm not sure my country exists, or at least the children had never heard of it, but that doesn't seem entirely plausible."

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"... ... ...what is your country named?"

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"Great Tang."

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"Yeah that is... not... a country. That exists. How do you literally fall into a country."

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Well that's unfortunate. A lot of his life revolved around, you know, the country in which he lived and that also employed him existing.

"I'd love to know too! I was in my country, fell, and then found myself in the middle of the woods." He is just going to gloss over the window part of this story. It is Not Necessary.

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"...okay so this definitely sounds like you are having a psychotic break."

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"I don't want to downplay my creativity, but I don't think I could imagine Folsom."

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"Folsom is a lot, isn't it. Only thing like it in the world."

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Update: Folsom is weird even in this country. "It's certainly Enlightening."

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"But from my perspective you had a psychotic break and started believing you're from a nonexistent country. Which is fine but we should probably get you to a social worker to see if you're a missing person and get you set up with welfare if you're not."

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"I'm also pretty sure I wouldn't imagine my whole life, somehow acquire clothes that no one else seems to be wearing, add them... What? Forget my actual life as a person in a suit from Deseret?"

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"You could have bought it at a costume store. --I admit that's odd but why else would a person be showing up in the redwoods claiming to come from a country that doesn't exist."

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"I'm not sure I can really prove that I'm from a place you don't think exists? Even if it's true. Unless you get points for elaborateness of backstory."

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"The clothes are weird. No one's worn clothes like that for centuries."

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"Well, until an hour ago, I'd never seen clothes like that." There's a gesture in the direction of the tshirt and jeans.

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"I wonder..." He pulls out an odd shiny rectangle. "Do you recognize this?"

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"I have never seen that before in my life."

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"This is called a phone. It does a lot of things, but the thing I want to do with it right now is take a picture-- which is sort of like a painting but very very fast-- and send it to a group of people whose hobby is researching historical clothing. By something which is-- kind of like a letter but very fast. And then they'll be able to tell if it looks made by machines or by hand. If you have an outfit that looks made by hand, that doesn't mean you're not psychotic, but it does make it more likely that something very strange is happening."

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"Go right ahead."

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He walks around Jing Yi, taking pictures from various angles; he also takes a closeup of the fabric. He presses a few buttons on his phone, then says, "it'll be a while before we know. --I do have a feeling that something weird is up, you don't talk like someone who's psychotic."

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"Well I'm glad I come across as sane."

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The conclusions of the historical costume people:

- definitely hand sewn

- made of high quality silk using natural dyes (at least one of the people consulted is Highly Jealous)

- looks like it was made in the late Tang Dynasty style, though the usual caveats apply-- few enough paintings, let alone actual pieces of textile, have survived for people to be able to be certain what 'late Tang style' exactly was.

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"Wow, that's a fast response, some people must be very bored," Lev says. "Apparently you look, uh, late Tang. Either you're a very dedicated reconstructor who had a psychotic break and started inhabiting their SCA persona, or you're a time traveler who-- for some reason speaks English? Why are you not babbling at me in Chinese."

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"'I also mysteriously started speaking and reading a language I never heard of' doesn't sound less crazy." 

"But I can speak in Mandarin if you'd prefer."

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Lev presses a button on his phone. "Keep doing that, I'm going to record you-- uh, fuck-- I'm going to make a copy of what you're saying and send it to people who specialize in understanding languages."

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"Oh, that's a mistake. I'm a chatterbox. Once I start talking, I don't stop--"

Random freestyle monologuing is a pleasant distraction from the discovery that Great Tang's days were not coming to a middle when he was around.

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After five minutes he presses the button again and says, "that's enough. I'm going to send it off to the amateur linguists and tell them I found a random recording on the Internet and wondered what it was. --Do you want to head to the social worker?"

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"If you think that's best."

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"Yeah, I think that whatever's up with you we're going to need to get you a place to stay." He presses some buttons on his phone. "OK, texted Asher and Rose to let them know I'm leaving for secret work reasons I don't want to discuss on a non-secure connection, called a car, and sent in a lab order for someone to look at your clothes."

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"Car?"

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"A sort of horseless driverless carriage. --Are you hungry? We should maybe grab you something before we make the walk down."

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"I would not say no to a bite to eat."

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He double-checks that he is in possession of the correct rectangles, is satisfied, and starts walking away from the camp.

"Welcome to Cascadia, I guess. I'm Lev."

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"Jing Yi. So far I'd say there are worse countries to fall on."

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"From my perspective it's the best country in the world. --Shit, you're not going to recognize any fair food, are you."

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"I understand a lot of it fried! But that's mostly smell and context clues."

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"I have no idea what fair food is broadly acceptable especially to people from the Tang Dynasty." He stops before one of the booths. "Fried corn and corn dogs sound good to you? And cotton candy."

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He has no idea what 'corn' is, but this seems like an excellent time to find out what it is. "Sounds good to me!"

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Lev purchases it by taking out a very thin rectangle and putting it inside another rectangle.

Cascadians are very fond of rectangles.

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They really are! And even though he's paying for something, he's getting the same rectangle back? Cascadia is Truly Mysterious

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The person manning the booth presents Jing Yi with some sort of odd vegetable on a stick, some sort of breaded thing on a stick, and some wispy brightly colored thing on a stick.

Lev takes the wispy brightly colored thing and hands the other two to Jing Yi.

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Jing Yi takes the mystery fried things.

Mystery breaded thing: Has a sausage inside. 10/10 excellent fried festival food, Cascadia seems to know what its doing.

Mystery vegetable: Good, but loses points for the fact he had to think about how to eat it, and also having a hard thing inside that hurts to bite down on. 7/10

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Lev hands over the wispy brightly colored thing with a look of utter delight on his face.

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Oh my goodness is that sweet. And mouth melty? But mostly absurdly sweet. In a good way though.

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"Good?"

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"It's do sweet? It's wonderful but oh my god--"

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"Oh, man, they don't even have sugarcane in Great Tang, do they-- I want to show you chocolate chip cookies and Skittles and ice cream with sprinkles--"

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"I mean yes, but maybe not right now? I'm not sure my tongue could take it."

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"Fair enough!"

They arrive at... a vehicle? It's like a carriage, but black and made of some kind of metal, and there's a flat sloped rectangular bit at the front and the back. (Cascadians love their rectangles.) Lev swipes his phone near the door handle and the door opens automatically. 

"We've got like an hour and a half to get to the nearest immigration social worker-- you, unfortunately, did not land anywhere near the border-- so if you have any questions about Cascadia you should probably ask them."

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"I feel like the most important question personally is 'how do you feel about foreigners?' but the helpfulness and lack of heads on pikes kind of answers that."

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Lev slides into the car and gestures for Jing Yi to enter as well. 

"Cascadia accepts immigrants from everywhere in the world," Lev says proudly. "If you step foot on Cascadian soil, you can stay here as long as you please."

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He sits down. "Which is highly convenient!" He's not so sure how well that would go in practice, but personal usefulness wins out right now.

"I do have some other questions, but I'm worried they'd be... Sensitive?"

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"I recognize that you're either psychotic or from a thousand years in the past and either way am not going to take offense."

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"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?"

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"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."

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"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."

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"Well that's not great." So much of what the kids were implying makes sense now. But also, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

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"What did the kids tell you?"

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"They asked about where babies came from in Great Tang, and were surprised we just... Had them?"

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"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."

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"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."

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"Yeah, that's... not a thing anymore, outside of very poor areas where parents are still reluctant to do international adoptions."

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"Which is good! But-- Shame about how it came about."

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"Man, the kids probably had such an attitude towards, uh, conventional heterosexual monogamy."

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"--yes. Yes they did."

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"Now I'm curious."

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"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."

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"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."

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"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.)

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"There... are weapons that can destroy entire cities. Gilead used them on us nearly thirty years ago. Two million people died."

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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."

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"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."

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"A war that never happens is the best kind of war."

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"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."

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"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.

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"That's-- the most important thing our government is doing. Making sure that if Gilead ever hurts us ever again they will regret it."

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"There's not much point raising children in a country that's going to be destroyed."

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"Folsom was in San Francisco when it was destroyed and-- it's one of the things the Gileadites hate about us. That some people here have weird sex and kinky sex and gay sex and public sex and sex with strangers and that-- it's okay, that we don't hate them or exile them or send them to prison or kill them--"

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"There are definitely worse vices. Like killing 2 million people."

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"I don't think it's wrong at all. At least if you have contraception and a baby shortage."

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Jing Yi has never had an ethical opinion IN HIS LIFE. And he has definitely never had one where he knew something was wrong even if he wanted to do it.

"That would help."

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"There are lots of people here who don't have weird sex. By preference or because of their beliefs. We took in some refugees from Gilead who are non-Gileadite Protestants-- uh, people who disagree with the Gileadites enough to get in trouble but not enough that, like, Tree would be able to tell them apart. I think most of them just stop off here for a bit and then fly to a different continent but we do have any who stuck around."

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"Fly?"

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"Oh, yeah, people in the future built machines that can fly."

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"That certainly sounds very handy."

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"Now I'm trying to think about things that would be surprising about Cascadia to a person from a thousand years ago. Uh, women can do anything men can do-- trans and gay people exist, you already encountered that one-- we educate everyone, everyone can read and write and do math-- probably you would be unsurprised by our level of youth rights and the fact that people own pigs they eat, for once-- you vote for the person in charge instead of having an emperor-- oh! Monotheism!"

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"The kids tried to explain monotheism. Not well, I don't think, but they tried."

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"The most popular religion in the world is Christianity, which believes that there is one God who created the world. Humans committed sins and were separated from God, so God became a human and taught people not to sin and died on a cross as a sacrifice. The sacrifice caused the sins of anyone who believes in God to be forgiven. People who accept God's forgiveness will go to Heaven when they die and live in eternal bliss, while those who don't will go to Hell when they die and be tortured for eternity. The Gileadites are a sect of Christians whose beliefs include that it's sacred for women to have sperm placed in their vaginas without having sex so that they can give birth to babies which will be raised by someone else. So naturally after the fertility crisis they became quite popular."

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"Oh, Christianity! I've met a couple back home, bit of a weird bunch. I'm surprised it ended up so popular, but I can see how the fertility crisis would help."

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"I'm Jewish! The Christians stole our religion and then murdered a bunch of us for two thousand years!"

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"--Although Christianity actually became popular when, for complicated historical and economic reasons, the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe instead of China and thus Europeans were the ones who could build all these nifty machines you see around you and thus their religion took over the globe."

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"Well, the murder's not ideal! And that maybe makes more sense than the fertility crisis by itself."

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"There are definitely Chinese people in Cascadia but I don't know how much your religious practices have changed in the past thousand years. Also the Chinese government got taken over by an officially atheist ideology but I think a bunch of immigrants aren't?"

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"Well, I'm not much help either, because I don't know what's happened in the past thousand years either." not doing the maths, not doing the maths... "We'll just have to sit in shared ignorance for a bit."

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"In Cascadia people can worship whatever deity they like or no deity at all."

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"That's good. ...I'm assuming from the way you phrased that that it's not universal?"

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"In Gilead it's technically legal to practice religions other than Judaism and the Gileadite religion but it's not legal to proselytize, for a definition of 'proselytize' that includes most group rituals and mentioning what your beliefs are. In Mexico and a bunch of other places it's legal to practice other religions but you'll have trouble interfacing with the government because it runs things through churches. In some places it's outright illegal."

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Okay that's boggling. "Another good reason to be grateful I landed in Cascadia!"

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"Isn't your Emperor, like, literally a god, I feel like you should be familiar with theocracy."

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"He's the Son of Heaven, yes, but-- you can do what you want? There's no 'sorry, you're the wrong kind of monks.'"

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"But what if you were like 'our kind of monk thinks the Emperor isn't the Son of Heaven.'"

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"Well, presumably they would be rebelling, in that case? Then it would depend on how their rebellion goes."

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"I mean Christians think that the Emperor isn't the Son of Heaven-- I guess maybe you guys are a bit confused about how Christians work."

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He shrugs. "They didn't cause any problems that I was aware of."

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"So right now my plan is to take you to an immigration social worker and get you set up with, like, an apartment and food stamps and health care, because you're probably going to need that regardless. And the immigration social worker can check if you're a missing person. And I sent in a lab order to a local university so we should be able to figure out if you're from a thousand years ago soon." 

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"I have no objections."

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"We're heading to Coalinga and you can live there if you want but I live in Portland and I am like... the only person you know who is alive in this century. So if you like my company you should tell them to get you a place in Portland."

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"I'll make sure to let them know." Being several centuries in the future is weird

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"If you turn out to be from the past, probably someone from the government will be along regardless to try to arrange you talking to historians and so on. --You don't have to talk to historians but I think they would be very interested and pay you lots of money."

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"I'm definitely interested in money! Especially as I'm not sure my job... Exists? Or if I could get it?"

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"What... is your job? We have farmers but it's a very different ecosystem and tech level."

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"Vice Minister to the Three Judicial Offices. We investigate crimes."

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"We have cops! And members of the civil service, I'm not really sure what a minister is in this context. --Depending on the nature of the crimes you're investigating I maybe should say 'we have an intelligence service' instead."

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"We did serious crimes, such as murder, but also crimes that put the state at risk, so that might be intelligence services? If I'm understanding right."

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"Intelligence services handles, you know, keeping track of whether countries want to invade us, extracting Cascadian nationals when they do things that are illegal in other countries and not here, that sort of thing."

Trying to overthrow the Gileadite government but you don't get to know that until you get TS clearance.

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"We focused more on, hmm, internal threats. External threats was very much the military's job."

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"Yeah, we don't really have those, that's what having a democracy is for. If people don't like the government they can vote for someone else."

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Democracies are weird. "Surely you'd have problems like--" he's about to say 'massive counterfeiting rings,' but it feels wrong to reveal classified information even if he is somehow several centuries in the future "--massive tax evasion?"

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"Oh, that's the IRS, that's a totally different division."

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"That makes sense."

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The car pulls up at a location!

Lev gets out and says, "can I cut off a bit of your robe?"

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"Sure. Is this for the lab?" He rolls up his sleeves and offers a bit of the sleeve of the inner layer to cut.

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"Yep! Bitoxiphosphene gets into pretty much anything that respirates. You can fake a lot of things but you can't come up with a robe that looks that new and doesn't have bitoxiphosphene in it."

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"That's going to be better proof than 'let me tell you about things that happened last month for me that you don't know about because they happened hundreds of years ago for you'."

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"I'll go deal with this, you can talk to the immigration social worker?"

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"Sure thing." And Jing Yi heads door-and-presumably-social-worker-wards

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When Lev next gets a chance to check his phone, the results from the amateur linguists are back. The language is Middle Chinese, probably Tang Dynasty based on some quirks of plosives and tonality. It's mostly similar to So-and-so's reconstruction, with some traits of Such-and-such's. (The thread discussing this is very contentious. Apparently there is drama in the Middle Chinese fandom intense academic debate about the vowels, and how dare anyone not stick to a specific reconstruction/use the Incorrect reconstruction/etc.)

The speaker is also notably fluent considering this is a dead language reconstructed mostly from poetry and rhyming dictionaries, and also they have a weird accent that is hard to place.

One person would really love to have any more context on where Lev found this recording, please, it's going to haunt them otherwise. It's one minute of rambling about the concept of talking, and then four minutes of free association about the restaurants of Chang'an? Including one that had really good food but got closed down because of a murder??? And they have to know if this is based off an existing text or what, and if so could someone please send them a digital copy of this text.

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Okay Lev is lowkey laughing his ass off.

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The immigration social work office has a woman at the front desk with blue hair and six piercings in her left ear. She says, "Glad to see you! Please take a seat, we'll be with you shortly."

The seats are very uncomfortable and made of a material Jing Yi doesn't recognize. The only entertainment in the room is the row of pamphlets, with titles as follows:

-Contradictions In The Bible
-It's Okay To Be Gay!
-It's Okay To Be Trans!
-Questioning Your Gender
-Questioning Your Sexuality
-Safer Sex: Questions You Were Afraid To Ask
-Unwanted Pregnancy? Know Your Options
-Coping With Nightmares
-Coping With Panic Attacks
-Coping With Depression
-Coping With Eating Disorders
-Substance Addiction? Need Help?
-Sex Addiction? Need Help?
-Porn Addiction? Need Help?
-Are You In An Abusive Relationship? Know The Signs
-Divorce, Child Custody, And You
-Helping A Friend With Trauma
-What's Wrong With Me? A Guide To Mental Health Self-Diagnosis
-Understanding Informed Consent Clinics
-Do Cascadians Kill Babies? And Other Questions You Might Be Scared To Ask

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What a selection of pamphlets to exist.

...for lack of anything better to do, he picks up 'It's Okay To Be Trans!' because this a cultural thing he is probably going to have to pick up a passing understanding of so he doesn't spend his time he constantly going "?", and also 'Do Cascadians Kill Babies? And Other Questions You Might Be Scared To Ask' because while he is pretty sure they wouldn't (they're in short supply), he has to know why they feel its a thing people need to be reassured about?

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It's Okay To Be Trans

People can be born in male bodies, female bodies, or intersex bodies. Usually, people born in male bodies live as men and people born in female bodies live as women; people who are intersex are assigned to one or the other gender. Sometimes, people want to live as a different gender than the one they were born as. This is called being "trans." People can want to live as a different gender for lots of different reasons. Some people believe that they have the "soul" or "essence" of another gender-- they're "born in the wrong body." Some people feel uncomfortable with their sexed body. Some people feel a strong longing or desire to live as a different gender and they don't know why. All of these reasons are okay. 

Some people who grow up in countries with strong gender roles want to be a different gender because they want to do things they weren't allowed to do. It can be hard to know whether you're trans or not! You may want to take your time and ask for a gender-competent therapist or to join a peer support group for people questioning their gender. For more about figuring out whether you're trans, please see the Questioning Your Gender pamphlet.

You don't have to do anything if you're trans, but there are lots of things you might want to do. Some people ask people to use different pronouns, most commonly "he", "she", or "they." Some people use a different name, start dressing differently, or do things that they associate with a different gender. Some people take cross-sex hormones, which can have the following effects. Some people have their breasts removed or get breast implants, or get surgery to transform their penis into a vagina or their vagina into a penis. You can receive hormones or be put on the waiting list for surgery upon request by going to any informed consent clinic. (The informed consent clinic will also arrange for you to bank sperm or eggs if you take hormones.) Adolescent trans people may request puberty blockers to give them some time to think about whether they want to hormonally transition. You don't have to do any of these to be a valid trans person. It all depends on what you feel comfortable with and what makes you feel okay in your body. 

It's okay to think you're trans for a while and change your mind. Lots of people do.

It's okay to be a trans person. Trans people can be as happy and healthy as anyone else. Hormones don't make you sick or give you permanent health problems, and the fertility problems are treatable through sperm or egg freezing. Surgery and hormones don't mutilate your body. Many trans people have jobs they like, fulfilling sexual and romantic lives, and wonderful relationships with their children. Trans people are not predators or sexual fetishists; it's safe to share bathrooms and locker rooms with them.  

If you talk to a trans person, you should use the pronouns, name, and gendered words they prefer. You shouldn't ask them questions that you wouldn't ask a nontrans person, like about what their genitals are or whether they've had surgery. It is rude to make jokes about trans people getting murdered. You should not harass or assault trans people for hitting on you. Being attracted to trans people doesn't mean you're gay, because trans people are members of their identified gender. If you make a mistake, don't worry! Trans people are very understanding of sincere, honest mistakes. As long as you're trying your best, you're not being offensive. 

Do Cascadians Kill Babies? And Other Questions You Might Be Scared To Ask

Euthanasia of children in great pain or who are going to die anyway is legal in Cascadia with parental consent; abortion is also legal. The pamphlet is at pains to point out that no one will force you into an abortion or to euthanize your child. Cascadians have a wide variety of opinions on euthanasia and abortion.

Cascadians do not murder elderly or disabled people. Euthanasia is legal but no one is ever euthanized without their consent. 

Anyone can vote in Cascadia if they pass the voting tests or have turned 18. People who pass the tests are competent to vote. Many of them know more about their government than the average Gileadite or Mexican knows about theirs!

People who have passed their GED test and voting test are high school graduates and can vote, but they are not legally adults. Some privileges, like using intoxicating substances or working in certain jobs, are reserved for those over the age of 18. 

The age of consent is twelve in Cascadia. Twelve-year-olds can consent to sex sometimes. If you aren't ready to have sex, you shouldn't have sex. It's fine for a twelve-year-old not to have sex if they don't want to. If someone forces you to have sex you don't want, that is a crime and you should report it to the police. I

Sex trafficking is not legal in Cascadia. All sex workers are consenting and over the age of 18. They have a union.

Public sex is only legal in certain areas, at night, away from main streets. There are clearly posted signs about areas where public sex is legal and you will not walk into one without your knowledge. 

Polygamy and gay marriage are legal in Cascadia. Everyone is consenting. No one will force you to be polygamously married against your will. Many polygamous relationships are all men, all women, multiple men with one woman, or two men and two women. 

Line drawings and photographs of sex are shown during Cascadian sex ed. It is opt-in and requires consent from all parents and the child. These are not pornographic images: they're artistic depictions that allow visual learners to have a better understanding of the mechanics of sex. 

It is not legal to sell babies in Cascadia. Pregnant people may be paid for the work of carrying a pregnancy to term, as a way of encouraging them to give their babies up for adoption instead of having an abortion. This is a very effective way of reducing the abortion rate. Pregnant people should be paid for their work. 

Many drugs are legal in Cascadia, mostly harmless ones. Use of more serious drugs is handled through treatment, not punishment, but it is still illegal. 

Cascadians do often raise their own pigs and chickens and eat them. But the pigs and chickens have much better lives than they'd have on a farm. Many people find it meaningful to participate in the whole cycle of life and know precisely what is on their plate.

The pamphlet is in general very reassuring about how no one will make you do any of these things that you happen to have ethical objections to.

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Jing Yi has No Feelings about the first pamphlet. Apart from the 'don't make jokes about murdering people' that just raises questions about why they felt the need to specify?

The other pamphlet raises such wonderful questions about what on Earth is going on in Cascadia and in other countries. Why did they feel the need to specify this. And also where on earth are other countries getting their pork? (Okay so it's not like he's raised his own meat animals, unless throwing seed towards Chu Chu's Office Chickens on occasion counts, but he lives in a city and is rich? Everyone else raises their own chickens if they want the eggs and the delicious extra roosters?)

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The receptionist calls him in to speak to the social worker.

The social worker's office has an Impressionist painting of an ocean that is bland to Cascadians, a shelf full of books that would be worth a small fortune in Great Tang, and a significantly more comfortable chair. The social worker is sitting at a desk in front of another goddamn rectangle. She has bright pink hair and a piercing in her nose and she is very unreasonably perky. 

"Hello! I'm Aurora, I'm going to be your immigration social worker today! Can you tell me the legal name you'd like to have?"

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Cascadia: Really Loves Their Good Chairs And Rectangles.

"Hello. I'm Jing Yi."

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She double-checks the spelling and which of those is his surname. "And which gender do you currently identify with? You can put it down as male, female, or nonbinary, and you can change it at any time."

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He has no feelings about being able to change it. "Male."

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"And your birthdate?"

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"12th of June, 715."

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Blink blink. 

Aurora recovers her cheeriness and composure. "...I'm sorry, I'm going to need a year that occurred within the past hundred years."

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"I'm... going to need what the current year is for that." ('1715' is a reasonable guess if Lev is right about how much time has passed, but he Does Not Want To Deal With any "...no, not that year either.")

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Aurora is Fully Capable Of Dealing With This Problem. 

"The current year is 2049 CE!"

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Still NOT DOING THE MATHS HERE

"I was born in 2025, then!"

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"All right!" She asks for his height, weight, race, eye color, and hair color, then says, "would you like to be an organ donor?"

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He... has no clue what that is. And also would rather not confuse this poor woman any more by asking what seems like an astonishingly ignorant question. "Am I allowed to change my mind? If I am, I'll go down as 'no.'"

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"Yes, of course." She types some more. "All right, we've got you set up to get a PIN and an ID card. Step over here for a photograph, please."

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Aha, a photograph! And thing he knows what it is. Jing Yi steps over.

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Photographs involve standing on this line, looking at this dot, "smile please!", a bright flashing light, and another goddamn rectangle.

"We'll have your ID card and PIN card by the end of this appointment," she says. "Try not to lose them. Your first is free but replacements will cost $33 each."

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He nods seriously. He has no clue how much money 33 dollars is, so he just going to assume it's a Lot. He will treat it like his pass into the Three Judicial Offices, where losing it would be a Whole Thing.

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"Would you like to provide optional demographic information?"

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There is no good way to ask 'will this end up going like asking about my birth year?' but it probably wouldn't. Hopefully. Maybe.

"Sure!"

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"What is your religion?"

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...

He has had just enough conversations with Monotheists to predict that trying to explain 'I worship ancestors and the Buddhas and the gods as is applicable to current situation" to a bureaucrat would be an incredibly circular and difficult conversation.

"I don't have One," he technically-not-lies.

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"Atheist or agnostic or just nonreligious?"

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...

He has not escaped the bureacratic ticky boxes. (And technically he asked for this, in the spirit of 'say yes to the clerks to make them like you'.) What is the least incorrect here. "Agnostic."

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"Are you attracted to men, women, both, or neither? You can also refuse to answer."

(Aurora is technically supposed to say 'are you gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual?' but has deviated from the script because refugees literally never give useful answers to that question.)

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"Both." (That's true of most people, why are the Cascadians dividing the people up like that?)

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"Do you identify as the gender the doctor said that you were when you were born?"

(Aurora is also editing the wording on this question to obtain useful answers.) 

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"Yes."

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"How many children do you have? Including adoptive children, biological children you're not in contact with, and miscarriages and abortions if you know about them."

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"Zero." (...and probably staying at the number because his fiancee probably died over a thousand years ago NOT DOING THE MATHS.)

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There is a flash of relief across Aurora's face.

Aurora would like to know the country he was born in, the country he came from, his native language, whether he is deaf or hard of hearing, whether he is blind or has serious trouble seeing even when wearing glasses, whether he has difficulty concentrating or remembering or making decisions, whether he has difficulty walking or climbing stairs, whether he has difficulty dressing or bathing, and whether he can perform errands like grocery shopping or going to the doctor's office alone.

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Jing Yi is very abled.

And hopefully the demographic form accepts "Great Tang" and "Chinese" as a country of origin and a first language.

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The form does NOT accept Great Tang as a country. Would he like to put it down as China. 

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Well, no, but if it came to hand to hand combat between him and the form, the form would win, so he'll accept it going down as 'China'.

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"What education have you had?"

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"I have had one, but I'm not sure what the equivalent here is."

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"Tell me years of education, whether you went to school or stayed at home, and what you specialized in if anything and I'll figure something out."

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"It was 14 years or so, specialised in the Five Classics."

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"Associate's degree in East Asian Studies, then. Marital status?"

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"Affianced." NOT. DOING. THE. MATHS

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"All right, that's all for the demographics." She types for a minute or two. "You can get public housing for free for as long as you like anywhere in Cascadia by asking at a public housing building. The local public housing is right next door to the immigration office and I can walk you over when we're done. The conditions are pretty spartan-- bedroom, bathroom, and living room/kitchen-- but it's yours and you never have to let anyone in that you don't want to. They come already furnished but you're welcome to customize it to your taste once you have some money."

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"I have a friend up in Portland. Is there a good way to get to the public housing there?"

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"You can check the Cascadian government website on your phone or--" She opens a filing cabinet and pulls out a piece of paper. "Here's a map."

The map has the locations of the public housing marked. It also has a bunch of areas which are BRIGHT RED, which the legend informs Jing Yi means "toxic radiation-- do not enter."

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He takes the map. He's definitely not going to any places labelled 'toxic' if he can help it. That seems like it would not be good for his lifespan.

"Thank you for your help."

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"Okay, the next questions I'm going to ask you under penalty of perjury. That means that it's illegal to lie when you answer them. It's okay to make an honest mistake. If you discover you made a mistake, you should tell me right away. You're just going to have to pay back the extra money we gave you. If we discover that you lied, then you're going to have to pay a fine of twenty percent of the extra money you got. You're not going to go to prison for lying. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth?" 

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"I so swear."

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"Do you own anything worth more than a thousand dollars?"

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"I have the clothes I'm wearing-- oh, and this." He takes a miniature claw looking object off his belt. "Today is the first day I encountered dollars, and I have no idea how much they are worth."

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"...I'm going to put that down as a 'no,'" Aurora says, "even if you have really expensive robes I really don't think that's what they meant. Do you have any current source of income, or do you expect to have one soon?"

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"I have a tentative job lead with the Portland friend, but nothing current."

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"What's your occupation?"

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Good question. Real easy to answer, too. "I don't currently have one. I was in the police force." as of eight hours ago. Before he ?fell into the future?.

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She swipes a rectangle through another rectangle. "This is your food stamps card. You get $234 a month and you can spend it on any food item you want. I've also set you up with a bank account at Chase, which often works with immigrants who don't have any assets. You'll get $1000 a month that you can spend on whatever you want. When you get a job, go to your local immigration office and tell them how much money you're making and they'll reduce your benefits accordingly. It phases out gradually, so you're always going to earn more money by working than you would by living off welfare."

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Nodnod. "Thank you."

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"All healthcare that the Cascadian government deems cost-effective is free and paid for by the government. We do ask that everyone go through a complete physical to be allowed in the country to look for any underlying medical problems we can treat."

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"Of course. Is there a place I should go to do that?"

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"Yes, I'll walk you over when we're done here. --Would you like to make an appointment to see a therapist? Seeing a therapist doesn't necessarily mean you're mentally ill. It's someone you can talk to about things you're going through in your life-- someone who is trained to be kind and nonjudgmental and a good listener. Therapy is confidential, which means that the therapist is never allowed to tell anyone anything you say, unless you're an imminent physical danger to yourself or others or you confess to currently abusing a child or elderly person. A year of therapy is free for all immigrants, and therapy might be free for longer if your therapist thinks you need it. You don't have to make a decision now, you can have your year of free therapy whenever you want it."

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"I'll take some time to think it over." Aka found out what on Earth it is before he signs up for it. Not that it sounds like a bad thing? But presumably there are therapists in Portland.

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"We also have a variety of support groups if you're interested in talking to your peers rather than professionals. Some of them meet in person, some over video chat, and some over voice chat. There are a bunch of, uh, special interest ones but I don't think we have enough Chinese people to have their own support group-- you could join one for immigrants from uncommon countries, or one for queer immigrants--"

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"I might have a look into those." Because while he does not want to be here long term, it's probably worthwhile planning for the long term. And that involves knowing people who aren't Lev or a gaggle of small children.

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"We also offer a range of free classes for immigrants--"

She offers him a piece of paper that has the following classes:

-History, Science, Math, and Literature, all of which come in Remedial and For Gileadites and For Catholics variants 
-Comparative Religions And Philosophies
-Biblical Criticism and History
-History of Christianity
-Faith and Reason
-Philosophy of Religion
-Cascadian Civics 
-Statistical Literacy
-Life Skills For Women 
-Life Skills For Men
-Sex Education
-Getting A Job
-Mindfulness-Based Skills Training
-Cognitive Behavioral Skills Training
-Coping with Intense Emotions
-Insomnia and Nightmares
-Relationship Skills 
-Parenting and Alloparenting Skills 

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Well, if he ever needs to know about Christianity, the Cascadian Government has got him covered. He takes the paper. He's probably not going to look into any of these... actually know, Civics might be useful if he gets stuck here long term and needs to do more than smile and nod about democracy.

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"Do you have any questions?"

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'Actually I have loads of them, but they're about very basic things I don't even have the vocabulary to ask about' is not a helpful answer to that question. "Not at the moment."

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"All right, you can wait for the nurse."

Back to the waiting room! More opportunity to look at pamphlets!

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He sits and waits, with only the pamphlets he currently has.

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And then eventually a nurse will return and ask him to do a series of things. He should stand here and be weighed! He should touch his nose! He should put his arm in this thing and it reports a number! He should have this thing put in his mouth, and this thing put in his ears, and this thing put on his chest. The nurse wants to poke him in various places. The numbers all seem to be good numbers judging by the nurse's incomprehensible patter that she seems to expect him to understand. 

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He will go along with what the nurse wants him to do, even though he has no clue what's going on! Medical things sure have changed! He has no feelings about this!

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The nurse would like to know if he smokes marijuana or drinks or uses tobacco or takes psychedelics or takes MDMA or takes modafinil or uses any other mind-altering substances! How many sexual partners does he have and do they have penises or vaginas and does he use condoms! Does he exercise regularly! How many servings of vegetables or fruit does he eat every day! How many servings of dessert or fried food does he eat every day! Is he getting enough sleep! In the past two weeks has he been bothered by little interest or pleasure in doing things or by feeling down, depressed, and hopeless! Has he had any of this long list of diseases half of which he does not recognize! Does he have family history of any of this long list of diseases half of which he does not recognize!

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Is alcohol mind-altering? If so, yes to that, and not the other things. He doesn't know what half of them are!

His sexual partners are zero! Also, what the heck is a condom!

He exercises, and eats food! He is good at this exercising and eating thing. ...please do not ask him about the details of his food, he is making wild guesses about servings and what counts as a vegetable around here.

He is good at sleeping! He is very practiced at it.

He is also not depressed at the moment! He is not going to mention that there's a chance once his situation catches up with him that this may change!

He sure hopes he does not have, nor has a family history of, those diseases!

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Condoms are a piece of plastic that you put on your penis to prevent babies and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. They make sex less spontaneous and pleasurable so lots of people don't like using them. If he wants to have sex outside of a monogamous relationship and doesn't want to use condoms he should get tested for sexually transmitted diseases every three to six months and go on pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV. That's a pill you take every day and as long as you take it every day no matter what you almost certainly won't get HIV.

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As someone with a strong interest in not catching Mysterious Acronyms, he will take note of this!

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Then the nurse sees the scars on his arms. 

"...is that... a very odd chickenpox scar?"

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"Some of them? Most of them are from smallpox."

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The nurse sounds very faint. "I... didn't realize there was a lab escape in the past twenty years."

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?????

A reaction isn't unexpected, it's always a "there for the grace of Heaven go I"  disease. But, uh. This is a nurse? This cannot be the first time she has seen this. "...why would a lab be involved?" (His image of a lab involves a lot of cauldrons and cinnabar and very little smallpox?)

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"Because smallpox is eradicated outside of a lab in Russia and a lab in Gilead."

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????????????

The future has many great qualities, he just wishes he knew about them ahead of time, so he could go 'Oh yeah, I had horrific chicken pox and no one could stop me from scratching.' (Technically that last part is even true!)

"That's good to know!"

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"I'm... not sure who I'm supposed to report this to?" the nurse says. "The CDC? The scars look old, you don't look contagious... I mean probably someone knows about the lab escape?" She comes to a decision. "Where were you and when did it happen? I'm going to file a report in case someone was covering up a lab escape."

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"I was eight, so--" there is a marked pause for maths "--2033. In... China."  (Sorry government of future China for the weird hot water he may be about to put them in, but also considering the fact that there's been probably several dynastic changeovers, not that sorry.)

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"Ugh. Someone needs to know about this. Thank you for telling me."

The nurse finishes up her mysterious actions (hitting him in the knee with a hammer! telling him to open his mouth wide and say "ah"!) and then sends him off to pee in a cup and get something called a 'blood draw.'

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He can go do that. He prefers not to hand off his bodily fluids to strangers, but if that's how medicine works now...?

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That is in fact how medicine works now!

The blood draw person says "this will pinch a bit" and then sticks a needle in his arm that in fact hurts quite a lot.

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He has experience with needles! Though usually not being used to steal his blood for unclear reasons.

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The blood draw person says, "are you up to date on your vaccinations?"

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"...the fact I don't know what those are makes me assume 'no.'"

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"A vaccination is where we inject a weakened version of a virus, so that your immune system gets practice fighting it, but because it's weaker you don't actually get sick and you can't transmit it to anyone else. There are vaccines for lots of illnesses-- measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis, chickenpox, influenza..."

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"I have. Had most of those. ...the diseases, not the vaccines." Please do NOT look at his arms and freak out, once was enough,

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The blood draw person visibly grimaces for a second before his face smooths over into professionalism. 

"...You should still be up to date on your vaccines, employers will ask about it and we don't really have records for people who have natural immunity to measles, mumps, and rubella."

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"Well, then I'd like to be vaccinated, then!"

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Stab stab stab needles in his arm.

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So very, very stabbed. But hey, now he can officially say he won't get measles?

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And strict instructions to come back to a nurse's office in three months for more stabbing!

The immigration office hands him two rectangles, one paper and one made of some weird material Jing Yi doesn't recognize, which are respectively his PIN card and his ID card, and now he is officially a resident of Cascadia. 

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He is now the proud owner of of some Cascadian Rectangles. (Goodness they love their Rectangles.)

He heads out, checking to see if Lev is still around.

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Lev is standing outside the immigration office on his phone. 

He looks up. "I told the lab that this was the most important thing they're going to see all year and they should set aside everything else and test it, and guess what? You are definitely from the past and not insane."

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"Well, that's good news!" Though honestly its an open question whether time travel is better or worse than going mad. "Oh, and you could have warned me about the smallpox."

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"Oh, shit, I'm sorry."

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"If there is an international incident about an imaginary lab leak, I am not taking responsibility."

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He pulls out his phone. "Going to text the head of the CDC and tell them that the lab leak is imaginary."

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Jing Yi does not have the context to find casually texting the head of the CDC remarkable.

"Well, I'm officially a resident now. The government knows who I am and everything."

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"We should get you new clothes so you aren't running around in robes and breaking the hearts of all the historians of fashion. --Incidentally, your video is confusing the linguists to no end."

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"Oh?"

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"Well, uh, we apparently reconstructed how to pronounce your native language from poetry and it is very confusing to have a fluent native speaker."

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"Oh, I can see how that would trip them up." NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO THE FACT NO ONE SPEAKS HIS LANGUAGE. NO MATHS HERE.

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Lev is going to summon another car. "It's very unfortunate that I'm the one who has to take you clothes shopping because I have... negative fashion sense. Asher would actually enjoy it."

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"I think I have some fashion sense. Though it is horribly out of date."

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"Eh, just grab things you like and you can start a new trend."

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"I'll be the most fashion forward man in Cascadia. Completely revolutionise fashion."

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"I mean, you're from the past. If you decide to tell people you're from the past you're going to become famous."

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"It really isn't something that happens every day, isn't it?"

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"As far as I know it's never happened before."

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"Ah." ... "I get to be unique!"

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"Well, I mean, it could have happened lots of times in the past, if we had records of historical time travel we'd probably think they were made up."

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"It would be hard to prove, and a shorter distance in time might not be so noticeable."

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"Also people just make shit up constantly."

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"That too. And well-- it was good luck that I could prove I wasn't just making things up, but there's probably 10 liars for everyone one of me, at least."

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"Yeah."

Cascadian stores have racks and racks of clothing which you're apparently supposed to just... buy? Without a tailor? It is also deeply unclear which clothes are supposed to be for men and which are supposed to be for women; the signs just say "dresses", "skirts", "pants", and "shirts." There are a lot of the weird blue pants, but people don't seem to dress like they're at Folsom outside of Folsom, and some clothes do come in brightly colored and sparkly.

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He cannot knock the convenience of the clothes being just there.

He can known the Cascadian's collective sense of what clothes are and how much you need. You need an undershirt AND trousers AND something over the top of that. You can't just run around in just a shirt and pants. What are the Cascadians doing here.

The Oncoming Fashion Revolution says maxi dresses over trousers is going to be big this season. Also the colour blue.

...the Oncoming Fashion Revolution is fascinated by the invention of glitter, but considers it probably a touch too gaudy.

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The Oncoming Fashion Revolution is very cute.

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Heck yeah the Oncoming Fashion Revolution is very cute, and also the only person in Cascadia who is right about clothes, apparently. ("Are you planning to ride out across the steppes in just your trousers and never bother to wash them-- No! You need more clothes.")

 

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Has the Oncoming Fashion Revolution heard of hoodies for his layering needs.

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The Oncoming Fashion Revolution was not aware of hoodies! Five stars for the pockets and synthetic fabric, negative three stars for the general shapelessness.

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Eventually the Oncoming Fashion Revolution will have what Lev considers to be a reasonable number of clothes. Lev pays for them.

"If you don't want to stay in Coalinga I can put you up in a hotel tonight? It's nicer than the public housing."

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"I wouldn't want to impose too much on your hospitality."

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"I'm rich, don't worry about it."

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"I was planning to head up towards Portland, seeing as I know one person there who is neither a social worker or a horrified nurse."

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"I'm glad my company is relatively pleasant!"

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"You're helpful! Also sort of mostly believed me!"

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"I'm a forecaster. It's what we do. Sort of mostly believe things."

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"What does a forecaster do? I don't think we had something similar."

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"Forecasters predict what's going to happen-- the outcomes of policies, what other governments are going to do, what problems we're going to face in the future. We call it the division of facts and values. Parliament is elected, so it reflects the will of the people, what people care about. But they aren't selected to be particularly good at knowing what plans will bring it about. And forecasters can't decide how to choose between tradeoffs. We can say that this policy will increase births to such a degree with thus-and-such costs to liberty, but we can't decide whether to prioritize births over liberty. Only the Cascadian people can do that." 

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"So you're-- advisers, chosen to be good at predicting things."

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"Yes! My husband and I are the top-ranked forecasters in Cascadia. We do population policy and foreign affairs."

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He is just not going to react to the 'my husband' thing. "Ahh, the two most important things."

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"Exactly."

To the hotel?

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To the hotel!

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Taking more care for his time traveler, Lev is going to demonstrate the use of the light switch, the remote control, the faucet, the toilet, the shower, the tea kettle, and the phone particularly in reference to calling up for room service. 

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Jing Yi feels very educated now.

Also, electric kettles are great. (Not that other modern conveniences like artificial lights aren't great, but he feels he should take time to appreciate all of them, and "I can set water to boil and then leave it alone?" is very good.)

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"I'm going to head off to the other room to do work, but you can call me if you need me for anything." 

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"No worries!"

Jing Yi has a brief moment of trying to come up with something productive to do, before giving up and falling face first into the bed. (Bureacracy is Tiring, and also he feels subtly ill.)

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This is the most comfortable bed imaginable. It is SO soft. He has never slept on something this soft.

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Cascadian furniture continues its streak of being strangely high quality.

He may be melting a bit and trying to become one with the bed.

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In the morning he wakes up, still in The Most Comfortable Bed Imaginable.

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Does he have to get up and do things? ... Yes, yes he does.

There is zombie-like shuffling in the direction of the kettle, to see if abstract knowledge of how kettles work and where the tea and coffee(?) making facilities are can be turned into a cup of tea. It's mostly a success, in that he ends up with caffeine inside of him without burning himself with the kettle or choking on the teabag (Cascadians really love their rectangles) or something.

There is also a bit of blearily staring at the sun trying to work out if this is an appropriate time of morning to both Cascadians eg Lev.

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Probably? The sun isn't that low.

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Bleary operation of telephone. "Hello, Lev. What do Cascadians do in mornings? Do we have plans. Hello, yes. I Am Awake." This is the most coherent string of sentences he has ever said in his life.

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"Probably you should have coffee. Tea? And eat breakfast."

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"I have done one of those things. Kettles Are Good." There's is a pause with audible mental whirring. "Right, yes, breakfast is a thing."

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This is an unbearably cute time traveler. "I'll grab you and take you down to the breakfast."

Breakfast is assorted pastries, bread, fruit, jams, oatmeal, cereal, yogurt, granola, hot chocolate, tea, coffee, and juice. He can also obtain waffles, pancakes, or french toast.

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Once they're at breakfast, Jing Yi appears much more human.

There is a touch of suspicious zombie-like staring at the food, before grabbing a bowl of oatmeal.

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Oatmeal tastes almost but not entirely quite unlike congee!

Lev grabs a plate of waffles and covers them with a truly excessive amount of maple syrup.

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Oatmeal is Definitely Food, and that's what matters right now.

And of course Lev would go for the very sweet rectangles. He's a very adorable Cascadian after all.

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"Oh man, you're going to get to fly for the first time!" 

Bounce bounce bounce.

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"I've just got to hope it doesn't require me knowing what I'm doing."

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"Nope, you just sit in your chair and let someone else fly the plane for you."

Should he tell Jing Yi about windows. Nah. That should be a surprise.

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"Oh, that's good. I was worried I would have to navigate."

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Now they will head off to the airport!

Lev is shamelessly taking advantage of his TS clearance to skip the security lines.

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Seeing as how long those queues are, Jing Yi is not complaining.

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Lev is a strong believer in the "if you never miss your flight you're spending too much time in airports" approach to flying, so they arrive about five minutes before boarding. 

Jing Yi is directed into a metal tube and told to sit on a VERY uncomfortable seat. 

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Planes look really weird. Jing Yi has no context. He does have a moment of 'Wow, that is a lot of metal.'

Alas, the streak of good Cascadian furniture had to come to an end.

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The flight attendants offer a somewhat terrifying series of instructions for what to do in the case that the plane falls out of the sky or runs out of oxygen, whatever that is. 

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... at least he knows what to do in an emergency.

But. Uh. Hopefully neither of those things happen?

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And then the plane takes off and Lev gestures towards the window and says, "look! Look!"

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Take off feels very alarming. It is very fast and loud and then they are climbing up into the air and he could have maybe guessed this would have happened from the description of flying but this is higher than he expected and they are still climbing.

He looks out the window and wow they really are very high up! Help! At least Lev seems to consider this as 'exciting' and not 'an imminent threat to life and limb'? That's... something.

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"You can see everything from up here. All of Coalinga."

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"You really can." It's pretty, but also still a bit terrifying.

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"Don't worry. Planes are one of the safest forms of transit. Safer than walking, honestly."

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"Does walking, in your experience, ever come with the risk of falling out of the sky? I'll admit I don't know how Cascadians walk."

 

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"No, but it comes with the risk of being hit by a car."

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"Okay, that's fair."

(As he gets more used to it, the balance shifts in favour of 'pretty!' of terror. And they're rising up above the first layer of wispy clouds, and he's getting to see clouds from above-- and okay that's pretty darn good.)

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"I read an essay once that said that, in spite of nuclear war and the fertility crisis and the rise of Christian fundamentalism, we're blessed because we're the only humans who have ever seen the tops of clouds."

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He stares out the window, the clouds going from wispy to something more like a fog. "I can't say I disagree with them, from where I'm sitting."

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"And now I get to show them to someone from thirteen hundred years ago."

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Oh look, the estimate has changed. Depressing maths can still wait till he's not flying though!

"I had no way to expect this. ...Not the time travel, but the--" he gestures at the plane, trying to encompass both the 'flying' and the 'tray tables and furniture made out of ?mystery material?'

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"The world is an amazing place. --It's too bad we're not flying at night. At night Portland shines like the stars."

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It takes him a second to process the how. "With enough artificial lights, it would."

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"I'm just-- constantly amazed that we can fly and we fly so much that people hate traveling on planes."

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"I mean I can very much sympathise with those who hate it--"

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"You can get drugs for it next time if you still hate it."

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"It's-- mixed? Next time I'm going to have a better idea of what to expect."

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"Five minutes of wonder at the beauty of the clouds and the remaining hour and twenty-five minutes hating the sound of screaming babies, wishing you'd bought a book at the airport, trying to figure out if twenty dollars for wifi is worth it, and contemplating whether to watch the in-flight movie."

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"I can see why some people would want to be drugged to the gills for that."

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"I wonder what the movie is now. --Spider-man? Which I guess is not a bad introduction to the concept of movies."

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"It will likely be Culturally Edifying."

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Spider-man is about a man with magic spider-themed powers who puts on a suit and uses his powers to fight crime. For some unclear reason, his suit is red and blue, which are not really colors that spiders are.

The crimes are currently being committed by someone called the Kingpin, whom we know is evil because he sells drugs, hires people to murder people, and forces women into slavery the type of which is not made clear. (Lev makes a disgusted noise at this.) The Kingpin is mad at Spider-man because Spider-man arrested him last movie. He has hired someone called Kraven the Hunter, the greatest hunter in the world, to try to kill Spider-man. Spider-man is apparently the Most Dangerous Game, presumably due to being a person with magic spider powers. (Lev makes a disgusted noise at this.)

When he is not wearing an inexplicable red-and-blue costume, Spider-man spends a lot of time doing things that are often incomprehensible to Jing Yi but generally seem meant to convey that he is broke, constantly humiliated, and forced to choose between fighting crime and having Literally Any Good Things In His Life. His boss yells at him constantly and runs newspaper stories about how Spider-man is a MENACE who is DESTROYING THE CITY. There is also a lingering thirty-second shot of an odd candelabra with nine slots. (Lev makes a disgusted noise at this.) 

When he is wearing a costume, Spider-man says a lot of incomprehensible things that make Lev laugh. He also talks a lot about how With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.    

Spider-man is dating Mary Jane. Mary Jane doesn't know that he's Spider-man and worries that he doesn't like her because he keeps missing his dates due to e.g. having to keep Kraven from destroying the city. (The city is carefully unnamed and has no distinguishing landmarks.) Also, at the climax of the movie Kraven kidnaps her and then Spider-man has to rescue her. You know that Mary Jane and Spider-man are in love with each other because they keep saying "I love you." The movie presents no other evidence of this claim. 

This obligatory romantic relationship is in contrast with the sizzling level of sexual tension between Spider-man and the freelance mercenary Deadpool, who wears a red outfit and has two swords and used to work for Kingpin but is now freelance and occasionally helps Spider-man out. Spider-man and Deadpool are forever gazing lingeringly at each other, pinning each other to walls in anger, getting tied up together, giving each other tender and romantic gifts of pizza, hanging out on rooftops talking, and arguing in a way that makes you think they're going to start making out as soon as the camera gives them some privacy. 

For the last thirty minutes of the movie, lots of things blow up and lots of people jump out of windows and climb on top of buildings and destroy expensive buildings and hit each other. It is extremely pretty. We are informed that mysteriously no one died even though definitely some people died [citation: physics]. (Lev makes a disgusted noise of this.) Then Deadpool disappears with a callback to an earlier conversation and Spider-man and Mary Jane chastely kiss. This is a second piece of evidence that they are in love with each other. 

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It is Culturally Edifying in that Jing Yi has no clue what's going on because of the massive culture clash. Why are there people with themed magic powers? Why are the magic people wearing brightly coloured skin tight clothes? (He is 99% sure the answer is not 'Folsom reasons', but that is the only place he has seen anyone wear anything remotely similar and it's the hypothesis he has.) What is a newspaper, and why do they want pictures of Spider-man? (His best guess is they're some form of distribution of wanted posters, but. If you can't recognise who the guy swinging from a web in a skin tight yet completely covering suit, a wanted poster will not help you here.)

Why is Lev making noises?

It's very entertaining though, even if it inexplicable. Watching people do flips while attacking people with swords while something explodes in the background is fun even if you have no clue why that is happening.

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And then not long after the after-credits scene (someone named Miles Morales is walking down the street and is bitten by a spider, which we are apparently supposed to think is important) the plane lands. 

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Jing Yi would like points for merely gripping the arm rests tight and not making an alarmed noise as the plane lands. Why is this so shuddery. Why are they still going so fast. Why did the plane bounce before landing properly.

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"It's okay. Everything is normal."

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There is some gentle slumping back into the chair as the plane starts taxiing gate-wards. "The future is weird."

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"Someone invented the concept of 'future shock' which is what you feel when there's too much change in too little time. I think you're suffering the worst case of future shock known to humanity."

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"Well here's hoping it isn't terminal!"

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Away from the airplane and to the public housing building!

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To the public housing! His expectations are appropriately low. The only expectation his has is that somehow, rectangles will be involved.

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Lev walks up to the receptionist, says "he would like an apartment," and without any fuss Jing Yi receives a apartment.

As advertised, it has a bathroom, a bedroom, and a living room/kitchen combination room. Probably a kitchen. The only items here whose use he recognizes are the knives and the electric kettle.

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Well that was surprisingly efficient bureaucracy!

The probably a kitchen at least contains some rectangles, as advertised. Mysterious rectangles, but really that's true of most Cascadian rectangles.

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Lev is going to explain the use of assorted other Cascadian rectangles, such as the refrigerator and the freezer and the stove and the oven and the microwave, and also some other mysterious Cascadian items such as the rice cooker. 

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He is now aware of what rectangles do what, and which ones really should not have metal put in them! Cascadians are really good with labour saving devices. It is one of their better traits.

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And now Lev is going to take Jing Yi off to the grocery store to buy food, probably microwavable food, if there is anything that looks even remotely familiar. He is also going to obtain Jing Yi his own Cascadian rectangles, i.e., a laptop and a phone. 

(If Jing Yi asks whether he should be paying Lev is going to wave a hand and say not to worry about it.)

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The grocery store ends up being an exercise in finding microwaveable food with vaguely familiar ingredients or sort of recogniseable forms, but there are some things that are 'yep that's recogniseably food.'

ID card, pin card, phone and laptop: he now has a full set of Cascadian Rectangles.

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Lev is going to get him a fifth Cascadian rectangle (debit card) and then go back to Jing Yi's apartment.

Lev will figure out how to explain how to tell apart scammers from nonscammers later but until then Jing Yi should not give people on the Internet money without checking with Lev. This is Wikipedia, it's a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Things on Wikipedia are probably true, or at least scientific consensus; things on the rest of the Internet are often full of lies. If he's looking for some particular kind of content he can enter it in this box here, this is called Google. This website has movies and TV shows, "documentaries" are nonfiction but a lot of them are full of lies, sorry about that. Jing Yi can listen to music by clicking this program, which streams music. Email is sort of like very fast letters, he has an email account now. This is Lev's phone number and Jing Yi should call him if he needs anything. This is the maps program that will let Jing Yi find his way to other locations.

Now Lev has to go get work done! Mostly related to the sudden existence of a time traveler in their midst! Jing Yi is left to his own devices. 

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Jing Yi tries to use his time left to his own devices Productively. Achieving things. He successfully microwaves his first meal. He walks a loop around the apartment several times. He opens Google, tries to think of something Useful to Google, like 'Spider-man' or 'what is corn and where did it come from,' before giving in and researching something he would rather not look into, even though he has to.

It's been two days since he fell out of a window and into the future. It is too soon to consider it hopeless to go home. But.

He has no idea how he got here.

He has to be realistic about his chances of getting back.

Of ever seeing his family and friends again. And... even if he gets back, it doesn't change that for now, they have been dead for several centuries. 

He has been avoiding the maths, and the maths has caught up. It has been thirteen centuries between where he was and where he is now.

He looks up Great Tang on Wikipedia, because surely it would be there. (And maybe he shouldn't look into his own hypothetical future, if he gets back, but haha, no, he is taking whatever information he can get.) The article is there. The article manages to be depressing in the first few paragraphs.

Apparently he worked for the last competent Emperor. Apparently in a few short decades, there will be a rebellion that would send everything spiralling into decline. Apparently he lived at the high point, just before the tumbling fall. Apparently Chang'an, his home city, the greatest city in the world with the best restaurants even if they do keep turning out to be run by murderers, fell. (The rebellion left 36 million dead at the highest estimate, but even the lower estimates are. Not Great.)

He listlessly does the maths on how likely his friends and family were to survive. He can try and comfort himself with the fact that the Jing family lands on its feet, that it went through rebellions and regime changes and survived. His friends are competent and savvy and would hopefully have the good sense to run. But that's also possibly unbridled optimism.

...and they're all dead anyway.

He does ineffectual Google searches for them, to see if there is any scrap of documentation about any of them. He is looking for obscure people from thirteen centuries ago. It doesn't go well. (He keeps getting modern day actors, and he is sure they are lovely people but they are not who he is looking for.)

He goes to listlessly watching old Spider-man movies, on account of that being the only videos he really knows the existence of. Staring blankly at explosions and people in brightly coloured costumes is less depressing than Wikipedia.

(He definitely does not calculate how long it is till the one adult he knows is no longer working-- work caused by his own existance. He doesn't calculate whether to ask something cheery like 'how does one turn being from the past into a career' or what he really wants to know like 'how good are forecasters at predicting the past, can they predict how someone died?' Because that is just a little bit too depressing.)

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That night, Jing Yi learns some of the disadvantages of free public housing, as his next-door neighbor screams every half an hour from 9pm to 6am.

Netflix learns that Jing Yi likes Spider-man and suggests that he might enjoy Thor, Ant-man, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, and also someone called Radioactive Man who appears to be Chinese.

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He manages to maintain an attitude of 'well, they're almost certainly having a worse night than I am' up until midnight. By 2am he is seriously considering whether finding the nearest patch of woodland and trying to sleep there would be more restful (the inevitable malaria from doing that not withstanding.)

He ends up sleeping in till 10am (a full uninterrupted 4 hours, yay!). Microwave meals can be made while very sleepy. Cascadia Is Great.

He also, after some brief trial and error, works out how to text. "So, how much trouble have I caused?"

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uh, none? why would you be in trouble

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Not 'in trouble' trouble. You mentioned time travel was causing work for you?

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yeah I have bad news and, uh, neutral news

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Yes?

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So it turns out we knew that time travel from the past into the future was physically possible, we just didn't know how to do it. And-- we don't know enough about the brain to know how you were taught to speak English but it seems like the sort of thing very technologically advanced people could do, if they wanted to.

But as far as we know according to physics time travel into the past is impossible.

I'm sorry.

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...

The nice thing about texting is that no one can see your face! (What a lovely Cascadian Invention! That's he's going to have his whole life to appreciate! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--)

The sympathy is appreciated. (It would be nice to make a joke, about how unless he was the very technologically advanced he has nothing to be sorry for, but it dies on his tongue typing fingers.) I guess I should start making plans for the long term. Turn being a time traveller into a career.

 

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You don't have to. That's the neutral news.

If you want to just be an anonymous Cascadian you can, we'll keep the existence of time travel top secret until you die. I can give you money or you can live off welfare until you figure out how to get a job. If you want to go to school there are scholarships.

Someone fucked you really badly and-- we're not going to compound it. It's your choice what you do with your life.

I yelled at kind of a lot of people about this.

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I'm not sure how well *I'd* be at keeping it a secret? Just with how much I manage to spook nurses by just being in the room. And being a professional time traveler is something I could do *now*.

And... there are some people who should be remembered, who I don't think they are.

But I appreciate you fighting people for me.

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They thought the Chinese tested diseases on you. So they could use them in combat. There were really glad you came here.

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But that *wasn't true*. And it is not going to be the last time I do something that makes it clear I'm not from this time.

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Yeah. Probably you're going to need some time to... recover? Get used to things? Before you become famous.

Becoming a celebrity is a lot. 

I don't know what a good metaphor is. Imagine that two billion people know who you are and if you felt like it you could read anything they're saying about you and half of them want to make sure you see it whether you like it or not. 

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If you recommend holding off, I'll hold off.

Though I'll need a cover story. I was raised in the woods by deer, and wandered into Cascadia...

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Educationally neglected Gileadite. Your parents didn't believe in modern science. No one will doubt it.

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...my imaginary parents who also failed to teach me about Gileadism?

There is a pause before the next text. I keep forgetting Wikipedia exists.

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If it comes up look sad and tell them you don't like thinking about it.

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Always good to have an excuse to strategically deploy puppy dog eyes.

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Don't deploy them on me, I already have a bias towards giving you everything you want.

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Why would I deploy them on you?  As you said, you're already biased! It wouldn't change anything!

...if someone was a hypothetically educationally neglected Gileadite, what would you recommend they do? Other than gorge on Netflix and Wikipedia, they've got that covered.

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We have classes for them so they can get their GED. You basically can't get a job without a GED. And they should study to take their voting test so they can become a citizen. Maybe take other classes if they're interested, either through the Gileadite education stuff or at a community college. Try out going to therapy so they have someone to talk to about all of their shit, although no worries if it's not for them. Meet people, see if there are any jobs they'd be good at. Try out lots of things-- like, I don't know if they'd like drugs or sex or having a tattoo or watching secular movies or crossdressing or being a pagan but there's probably something like that that sounds terrifying and also great and they should try it and see if they like it. Spend a lot of time curled up on the bed crying and watching stupid movies with lots of explosions, this seems to be an important part of the process. 

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I think they've still got the social work paperwork about GEDs. And support groups.

...and thank you for the advice.

...also, I can become a citizen???

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They could also hang out with me. If they wanted to.

And Asher but he's a lot. Rose might be easier. 

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OF COURSE YOU CAN BECOME A CITIZEN

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Lev, I very much enjoy your company, but you cannot be the whole of my social life. You have, like, a job. 

? Citizenship is something you are born with?

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I don't want to make assumptions that you enjoy my company!

Anyone who passes the Cascadian citizenship test and wants to be a citizen is a Cascadian citizen. Or anyone born in Cascadia or to at least one Cascadian parent and who has turned 18. 

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You are very good company! Assume away!

...and the citizenship you gain is not considered different to the kind you are born with?

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No!!!! That would be horrible!!!!!

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I would say 'but that's usually how it works?'  but my citizenship knowledge is 1300 years out date, apparently

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If someone wants to be Cascadian and understands what that means they should be able to. 

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A lot has changed, huh

This cannot be how it works, and yet...?

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there are all kinds of rational reasons you can come up with for this, like, there's a baby shortage it doesn't do anyone good to turn down immigrants

but tbh the reason I feel strongly about this is that people died after the bombings

and they didn't have to

we just didn't have the resources to treat them

and some of them got to the border with Canada and got turned away

because they were expensive to treat, because Canada didn't want to cause problems with Gilead, because they needed to take care of their own people first

and fuck that

Cascadia takes care of Cascadians first but anyone can be a Cascadian if they want to be

we're not going to leave kids sick or hungry or dying and begging to be let in because their parents were born in the wrong place

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Cascadia is so idealistic

...that is the *worst way* to phrase that

Cascadia has ideals and it *tries to live up to them*

A random foreigner fell on you and you gave him a house and instructions on how not to be a foreigner.

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the house is obviously a good idea, it turns out that actually homeless people are more expensive than giving anyone who wants one a free apartment

because otherwise they wind up in jail or the hospital both of which are more expensive

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That doesn't show that you aren't idealistic.

You have to be idealistic for that to be a *problem you have.*

'Homeless people are medically expensive' requires the expense to be *your problem*

We didn't do that. And we *couldn't* do that (see also: citizenship). But you try.

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We're also just richer. Idealism is easy when you're rich.

On the other hand, unlike gileadites, we point our idealism in directions that aren't stupid.

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it is, really.

but it's not just that. Democracy cannot be that expensive? Unless it is and I am making bad assumptions. And you aren't considering me becoming a citizen to be putting you at risk for an invasion, and you are doing the same for citizens from GILEAD

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let them fucking try to invade us

our schools have a special afterschool activity where everyone who attends learns how to do sabotage and make improvised explosives

it's very popular

nothing preteens love more than improvised explosives

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you are. teaching random people. how to make explosives.

...I can see how you ended up as a democracy!

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we have significantly more guns than people

[a brief pause, like someone is looking up a timeline on Wikipedia]

guns are a thing you put explosives in and then it shoots small metal pellets at people and kills them 

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I hate to ask if most of those guns are in the military.

 

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lmao no of course not

you do have to pass a test before you can have a gun so you don't accidentally kill anyone with it

[another pause]

lmao means laughing my ass off

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But you teach children how to make explosives!

...which is easier, getting a gun, or getting citizenship?

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well yeah but they don't normally make them, if you have a gun permit it's because you're going to use it

getting a gun is easier

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I honestly don't know which answer I would have preferred

Cascadia is weird.

To be clear I say this with a LOT of affection, I very much appreciate not starving to death in the woods, but ????

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see you keep saying that and you'll fit right in as an educationally neglected Gileadite

probably you're less weirded out than they are about the fact that we're cool with masturbation though

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I'm still pretty dang sure that I am at some point going to say the most un-Gileadite thing ever and not notice.

Well it's not really good for you but when has that stopped anybody? Don't tell me Gilead also frowns on fried food.

 

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Oh, masturbation's fine actually. Good for you. Prevents prostate cancer.

Gileadites think ideally you should not experience sexual attraction to or romantic interest in anyone other than your spouse.

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Okay, yes, so, *ideally*, but-- have Gileadites ever interacted with actual human beings. Do they spend all the time locked up in their houses and have you failed to tell me.

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They think that if you try very hard you can be perfect. And all that happens is a bunch of kids who are scared that whenever they fall in love they're giving away a piece of their heart to someone and wronging their future spouse.

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...I'm not saying that you can't wrong your future spouse. But. Falling in love?

 

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Because you're only supposed to love one person in your whole life, you know. If you love two you're stealing something from your spouse they have a right to expect.

Not all of them end up doing this but-- it's there. For all of them. As what they're supposed to be doing.

I'm too Cascadian for this shit, I have a husband and a partner like a normal person.

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That sounds. Suffocating

(He is just... not going to touch the husband thing. Because at this point if he's stuck in Cascadia, now is the time to be merely internally baffled.)

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It really is.

My partner is from Gilead. They, uh. Spent a lot of time crying on my bed watching bad movies full of explosions.

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Ah. That little speech was from experience.

Bad movies with lots of explosions really work better than they should. Everything is awful, but, oh look, pretty fire and colours!

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You should try a Cascadian movie since probably you'll be less scandalized than a Gileadite about the experience.

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I'm assuming an equal number of explosions but a greater number of love triangles.

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Why would we have love triangles when we can simply solve them with polyamory!

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Okay, so equal explosions, but at the end the hero dramatically kisses his wife *and* his lover. And someone learns a valuable lesson about teaching children to use explosives.

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Yes, exactly! And sometimes someone bad is in charge of the government so you murder them about it.

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... aren't you a democracy?

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Well, typically in our movies the bad politicians who are in need of murdering are dictators, and then a democracy is established afterward.

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...

well that's so much better.

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Sorry, this is not one of the areas of values difference I'm used to being sensitive about, even Gilead is allegedly a democracy.

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I'll get used to it, I'm sure.

Because 'are you sure democracy is as good as it sounds?' or 'rebellions have historically ended up with chaos and also swords to my own throat' would Not Be Helpful Replies

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Anyway if you need anything I'll be around, it's the weekend and Rose and Asher will be at Folsom until Wednesday.

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I'll let you know if something comes up. Thank you!

He should probably see if he can Bureaucracy his way GED-wards. That's probably the highest priority. And less like poking a bleeding mouth hole sore tooth than reading more Wikipedia.

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There are GED practice tests!

The language arts section is exactly what he spent his entire childhood education doing, modulo some confusion about what the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is and why one might want to drill for cooking oil in it. The math he understands, but his education seems to be located a little to the left of what they want. The technologically advanced people helpfully gave him a detailed understanding of both English grammar and math notation. (They invented this numeral "zero" which seems very nifty.)

The science section involves phrases like "kilojoules of energy" and "a genotype of Bb with brown eye color" and "evaluate the frictional work." The social studies section has more familiar words, setting aside proper nouns, but there are a bunch of pictures he doesn't know how to interpret and questions like "how did the earliest settlers arrive in America?" and "where did the Maori people migrate to from Polynesia?", and even if he sees something he thinks he knows the right answer to like "what would happen if the government forbade anyone from importing goods?" it tells him he has the wrong answer. 

He does at least get the one about the definition of filial piety right. 

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One question right! Truly he is a Master of Future Social Studies. The future needs less history. There has been enough. Oh and they should also have a normal government (or people who interact with governments in a normal way.)

He has one solution.

Hi Lev. I'm assuming Educationally Neglected Gileadites have some way of finding out who the Maori are and where they're going, and what a 'genotype' is?

Also you have too much history. You should put some back.

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There are textbooks, and classes you can do online at your own pace, and online classes that meet at a certain time, and Portland is big enough that we have in-person classes. 

Which one you want depends on your learning style and how rapidly you want to cram history and science into your brain.

I am sorry about the amount of history. A year of it keeps happening every year, you see. 

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I can forgive the science, it seems important for The Rectangles. But surely history could compromise and have a year of it every two years.

In person classes also probably help you be less of a hermit, too.

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You can meet other people who find Cascadia incredibly confusing and alienating and then commiserate about how weird it is that I have a husband.

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Smile and nod sympathetically like I know what they're talking about when they reminisce about the bad old days in Gilead where they had to ritually dance naked around a tree to other themselves of physical desire...

Honestly the democracy is weirder.

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No nudity! Only worrying about going out with your hair wet because it might make men think about you in the shower.

If it helps you can think about democracy as having a very small scheduled rebellion every so often where everyone says who they'd fight for if they were going to fight, and then you skip the part where people are pointing swords at each other's throats.

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Smile and nod sympathetically about the lengths you have to go to make sure no one ever realises you are naked sometimes???

With marriage I can just assume that you are using marriage for something different. I'm not sure how you can have a functional government with *regularly scheduled rebellions*

I am sure Social Studies Will Inform Me

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Right! Because if they realize you're naked they might masturbate and then God will be very offended and torture both of you for eternity.

Only girls have to worry about that tho because according to Gileadites girls don't masturbate.

By marriage we actually do mean something different, the current sociological consensus is that sometime in the nineteenth century marriage shifted from a primarily economic relationship to produce children and make a household together to a relationship that's primarily intended for companionship and love. Whole bunch of reasons for this, mostly that everyone works jobs outside the home now, but also birth control and the fertility crisis.

Well, you have a couple stable groups called "parties" that hand power back and forth so everyone knows broadly what kind of policies are going to be enacted, and usually the parliament has to get some votes from minority parties in order to be allowed to do anything.

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???? Gilead.

I was assuming something like "if you don't care about children, the sex of your partner doesn't matter." And if you have a fertility crisis and you *can't*--

Those sound much more reasonable than the parties I'm used to

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They do know what the clit is but they just think that women usually don't want to operate it independently. 

I think it's mostly economics, honestly? Even if I don't want kids I'd need a wife to make my clothes, if I couldn't buy my clothes from the store. You can always adopt or hire a surrogate or make an arrangement with some friendly lesbians.

What parties are you used to?

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The children are important? And the tying two families together-- though if both families didn't care about continuing then two men or women getting married wouldn't be a problem, I guess.

There was the "Qin Luan should be able to do whatever he wants" party-- I'm not sure I can briefly and coherently describe Qin Luan. He was the second most powerful man in the country and the most powerful eunuch by far and that still wasn't enough. There was the "let's put a pretender on the throne" party-- and he murdered someone purely to feed rumours about his existance. And then there was the "let's not do any of that!" party. You may guess which one I was part of.

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Oh shit your parties suck.

The two big ones here are the Libertarians and the Socialists. Broadly speaking the Libertarians want the government to do less and the Socialists want it to do more.

Families are just less important in the future, I think. Not just Cascadia, everywhere. Gilead is really into families but even with them it's all about parents and kids, you might see your uncle three times a year.

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Those seem like much more sensible parties who could share power without there being any assassinations.

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We have in fact not had any assassinations.

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Well that's good to know!

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By coincidence in-person class semester starts at the end of September and they can fit him in.

Both of his classes begin by going around and stating your name and your pronouns. (They are visibly surprised when Jing Yi says his pronouns are he/him.) The people in them look sad and quiet. Some of the people look Cascadian, but some are wearing a sort of gendered dress code: long hair, makeup, and dresses for the girls; short hair, bare faces, and pants for the guys. 

The teachers say that the classes are going to be very hard, because they're trying to cram in everything they were supposed to learn in twelve years into one year. There will be a lot of reading and videos to watch between classes; the classes themselves are for discussion and quizzes. There will be quizzes every week.  

The history class begins with a discussion of historiography-- how do we know the things we know, primary and secondary sources, skepticism about other people's point of view. They're assigned reading about hunter-gatherers. (It turns out, flipping through the syllabus, that there is entirely too much history.) The science class begins with a discussion about how empiricism works, featuring the passionate opinion of the teacher that science is not something you believe on faith, it's something you believe because of the evidence, any belief can be falsified, if you believe that humans were created by God just as they are right now that's just another hypothesis that can stand or fall on the merits, and any scientist worth their salt will take your proposals as seriously as any other as long as you can justify it. The syllabus of the science class suggests a weird emphasis on disproving the claim that the world was created in six days six thousand years ago and all evidence to the contrary was caused by a worldwide flood.  

Lev belatedly introduces Jing Yi to the concept of a library and also the fact that he can get free tickets to half the plays and music performances in Portland by presenting his food stamp card. He invites Jing Yi over to his house, which is extremely clean except for Lev's office where you have to tread through six inches of papers and books to get anywhere. They can order in food and hang out. The historians say that this Chinese restaurant is the closest in Portland to Great Tang food. (It's not very close.) 

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He has time travelled at a vaguely convenient time. Small mercies?

The fact people seemed to expect him to not be a man is... odd, but everything about Cascadia is a little odd. (And he doesn't really mind.)

He believes in his ability to cram 12 years of stuff into one year. Not that he's looking forward to it-- but it's not like he has anything better to do? And it will hopefully be some of a distraction from 'everyone I loved has died several centuries ago.' He makes careful friendly overtures towards some of his classmates, the ones who seem sad and quiet in a way that is more 'I have no friends' and less 'I would rather be literally anywhere else.'

Why are we starting from hunter-gatherers. Why is this relevant. Where is Greece and why do they care about it at all.

He was kind of looking forward to there being more on, like, microwaves in the science section. And less about the age of the Earth. (There has been more than six thousand years of history before Great Tang, and he is from more than a thousand years ago!) He has no clue why there is is so much emphasis, other than a sinking suspicion that it is Gilead. Somehow. What is Gilead doing. Could they stop it, please.

Of course Lev has an office that is more book than floor. Also it's adorable.

Probably in six months time he is going to reach terminal levels of missing food that tastes like home, but at the moment, the attempt is enough. ...also sugar improves a lot of things. Sugarcane is great, 10/10 more foods should contain it.

Jing Yi has dramatically draped himself over the couch at this point. "Are any of the Portland plays... good? ...then again even if they're terrible, I'd be getting what I paid for. "

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"You could try Shakespeare and be the first person in three centuries to be surprised by the end of Hamlet."

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"I will be providing a Service to Culture by knowing nothing about it."

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"I'd suggest Romeo and Juliet but they kind of give the end away in the prologue. --I could show you a Cascadian movie."

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"You very much could! Also it means we don't have to stand up."

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"That's true."

He kind of wants to cuddle Jing Yi while they watch a movie but who knows about casual physical affection norms in Great Tang? Not him.

"Rose's favorite is Spring Awakening, it's adapted from a nineteenth-century play."

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"Well with that review I have to try it."

You know who doesn't know Cascadian physical affection norms? Other than 'at Folsom, people whip each other FOR FUN?'

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It is the early twentieth century!

Melchior and Moritz are learning texts in a school the structure of which very familiar to Jing Yi except that the text they're studying is something called the Aeneid and it's in Latin. Melchior thinks that school is terrible and teaching people to be conformists who believe everything they're told instead of questioning authority and tradition. Moritz doesn't know what sex is. Melchior decides to explain sex with a thorough explanatory pamphlet with helpful diagrams. 

Meanwhile, a girl named Wendla doesn't know how babies are created and her mother won't tell her. A boy named Ernst quietly pines after a boy named Hanschen, who agrees with Melchior about everything but is much better than Melchior at not yelling at his teachers about it and instead cynically exploiting the system. Otto exists. There are Vague Yet Ominous Hints And Foreshadowing that there's going to be a war which kills everyone. 

Then Hanschen jerks off while talking to himself about how he wants to choke a girl named Desdemona to death. You can't see anything below the waist but it's very obvious what's going on, especially once he starts making an orgasm face. This is shortly afterward followed by a scene where Moritz reads the explanatory pamphlet and jerks off. His orgasm face is much more conflicted. 

Wendla and Melchior fall in love. Wendla discovers that her friend's father beats her with a switch, so she gets Melchior to whip her with a switch to find out what it's like. Folsom Things happen, and then Melchior is horrified and runs away. 

Moritz passes his exams, but the schoolmaster fails him anyway because you can't have everyone pass. He considers committing suicide. There are further Vague Yet Ominous Hints that a war is going to happen.  

Wendla and Melchior have sex. There are definitely some breasts and butts involved in this scene, and lots of very realistic moaning. Wendla is hesitant and nervous, because she doesn't know what it is, but Melchior convinces her that anything that feels this good must be something it's good to do. 

Meanwhile, Hanschen has decided to seduce Ernst. Ernst is sweet and frightened that he's committing a sin, but Hanschen reassures/manipulates him that their love will conquer all. There are some Pretty Obvious Parallels here to the Wendla/Melchior scene. Otto continues to exist. 

After spending like twenty minutes dithering about it, Moritz commits suicide. There are even less subtle hints that a war is going to happen. The Flower Of Our Youth Is Dying Due To The Cruelty Of Our Institutions..................

The schoolmaster finds Melchior's thorough explanatory pamphlet with helpful diagrams and concludes that the knowledge of sex is what made Moritz kill himself. He sends Melchior to a reformatory. Wendla discovers where babies come from! Unfortunately, she discovers this because she is now pregnant. Every male member of the cast who is alive and is not in the reformatory is drafted in World War I. Otto pays off his continued existence by dying tragically in a trench battle. Ernst dies in Hanschen's arms and he cries as he discovers for the first time that he has a real human non-cynical emotion.  

Someone smuggles Melchior a letter in the reformatory and he discovers Wendla is pregnant. He escapes the reformatory to track her down and marry her and raise their child together. He discovers she has died of a botched abortion, and that Otto and Ernst are also dead. He decides to kill himself. But he is visited by the ghosts of Wendla and Moritz, who encourage him to carry on. He decides that he should carry their memories with him forever and let them inspire him to challenge unjust authority which leads youths to fight in wars, commit suicide, be abused by their parents, and make bad sexual decisions out of ignorance. The music thinks this is very inspirational of him. 

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Ah yes, the explicit explanatory pamphlet. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh? ...in movies, at least.

Oh no. Not telling someone where babies come from is just. Not a great plan. This is Foreshadowing and Will End Poorly.

Wow that is more explicit than he expected. ...then again his entire view of how explicit movies are was based on non-Cascadian super hero movies (which he has a sneaking suspicion are made for children, actually.) Not one, but two masturbation scenes! Followed by sexy caning! (There is maybe some stifled giggling, not because the scene is actually funny, but because Look! A Cascadian thing he sort of has the context for!)

Wait why is not everyone passing a surprise. The pass rate is explicitly tied to the number of civil servants needed, just try again next year-- right. Different schooling system. He Definitely picked up that context.

His reaction to the Wendla/Melchior scene is very similar to how someone who knows they are watching a horror movie would react to a character going to investigate the attic making spooky noises. He is aware this is quite possibly not the reaction the film makers intended. They're Cascadian.

Okay so yes that is a sin but please chill for a second Ernst, this is way less of a big deal than you are making it. Wait is this set in Gilead? Maybe? It would make more sense if it was set in Gilead.

TAKE THE EXAMS AGAIN MORITZ (Also there is nothing in his eye, he's fine, movies are just emotionally manipulative, okay?)

How... how is killing yourself of sex knowledge even plausible. What.

Okay, so on the one hand: called it. On the other hand: OH NO, WENDLA, OH NO. Also, what the fuck, Melchior? If you could make a pamphlet about, presumably you could predict the consequences, yes? Sure, he can't solve the problem now, but he could have prevented it in the first place! Easily! Don't fuck someone you can't afford to get pregnant!

Is this the Cascadia-Gilead war? Probably not? Maybe yes? He has no idea?

OH NO WENDLA OH NO. (There is nothing in his eye about Wendla's fate or her later ghostly visit.)

So, he is still judging Melchior because he is the least ignorant of the cast, but the music is very effective and the Cascadia's sure know how to make the melody swell Dramatically and Inspirationally.

 

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After the movie is done, Lev explains that it is set in early twentieth century Germany, that you could only take the exams once, and that the war in question is World War I which is infamous for occurring for literally no reason and involving a horrifying amount of death because it was the first war in which they had modern military technology. 

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"I feel like I should maybe be more horrified about the war, than Melchior's deal or the school system, but--" (he says, not fully internalizing that people totally Died of Exam Failure in Great Tang.)

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"If you want to be horrified about World War I I'm sure Rose can recommend you a lot of excellent poetry I'm too much of a philistine to appreciate."

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"It could be useful for when it comes up in classes. And also Being Cultured."

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"But I think the movie is... trying to make you as invested in Moritz and Melchior and Wendla as in the war. Because it's about all the awful things we do to teenagers. Teaching them that school is the only way they can be successful, not telling them about sex-- that's not fake, by the way, there are people in Gilead who become handmaids without knowing that artificial insemination isn't how babies are always made--"

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"I--uh-- how do they expect them to have their own children?"

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"They read a book about it when they're engaged?"

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"That seems. Late." Why is Gilead like this.

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"Can't have sex if you don't know what it is. --Unfortunately, this works less well than one would hope."

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"Unless no one knows and no child ever asks 'Mummy, what are those two dogs doing?'-- Gilead."

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"The dogs are fighting, obviously. --And, you know, even if they know, if you want to have sex but you're not supposed to you can just put yourself in a position where sex happens and you said 'no' and it's not your fault--"

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"...Gilead has a talent for consistently exceeding expectations."

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"It's an incredibly fucked country and they think we're bad because we have sex workers and polygamy and gay marriage and sexually active fourteen-year-olds."

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"At least your fourteen year olds know what sex is!"

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"They know what sex is, and what their options for preventing pregnancy and disease are, and they know there are kids of sex other than PIV, and they know sex is better if they communicate with their partners, and they know that if they tell their partner to stop their partner is supposed to stop right away, and they can masturbate and look at porn, and if they don't want to be pregnant they can have an abortion safely, and if they want to continue their pregnancy and give it up to someone else we fucking pay them--"

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"I's not ideal but it's a whole lot better than the alternatives ...I don't know how we would have handled the fertility crisis. Marry younger? But that's not without its risks."

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"That's what the Catholics do. That and banning contraception and abortion. --It's hard because if women marry young they can't really have jobs, and most teenagers make really bad decisions about whom to marry. You do kind of wind up stuck with someone if you have a kid together but it's less stuck, Asher lives in a different state from Tree."

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"I'd say the answer to that would be not to let the teenagers make the final decision, but I doubt you would approve of that."

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"I'm not sure parents make a better one? I mean, it depends on the parents, my moms are great, but also because my moms are great if I told them to decide for me whom I should marry they'd say 'well, tell us who you like and we'll decide to let you marry that one.' And lots of parents are just awful, even in Cascadia."

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"Just because someone is not good at a responsibility doesn't mean they don't have it? And-- I was lucky, but there were things I didn't consider with my marriage and my parents did, and they were important."

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"Like what?"

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"In more general terms, our match was-- fine? But it wasn't ideal, and when you're talking about something as permanent and that affects as many people as marriage does, then 'not ideal' matters.

--And more specifically us getting married might have increased the risk of rebellion. And that was thankfully not the case! But I also was not weighing that heavily enough."

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"--honestly I am very curious how that worked."

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"The very practical version of what happened, without the squishy feelings, was that Leng Peishan was the leading general in the Southwest. An important border. Also constantly smouldering, politically speaking. And it was getting worse.

And Leng Peishan was getting old, possibly sick, and he was not communicating with the capital much. Pretty much the only family he had was his granddaughter. A brilliant granddaughter who I am definitely not biased towards.

...I'm not sure of how it is in Cascadia, your military is probably very different, but that's. A highly concerning combination. There was too much risk that he'd try and secure himself a legacy in the worst way possible.

The smartest move would be to marry his granddaughter to some young, trustworthy general who he could pass his army onto when the time comes. And another military family would have been better option tied to be tied to the Leng family.

...but it turns out he wasn't planning to rebel anyway. And one of the few things he and his granddaughter agreed on was neither of them appreciated her being used as a pawn to stop him from doing something stupid, and that she should get to marry whoever she wants." A small, sad smile. "As I said, I was very lucky."

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"Our military is half the nukes and half people who are supposed to train everyone in guerrilla warfare if we're invaded, we're not capable of doing offense. --I have to say that does seem like a point in favor of letting people marry whomever they want and also passing along generalships in some way other than nepotism."

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"I mean if you've managed to get it set up so there isn't such a thing as a military family, then maybe. ...I have other examples of ridiculous love matches, but I'm pretty sure you'd approve of them anyway."

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"I have very ridiculous love matches. My husband hit on me constantly for two years and I didn't notice and also thought I hated him for being so intelligent and attractive and charming. And Rose I fell for on Tumblr and then I paid an enormous sum of money for a coyote to rescue her from her abusive husband and bring her to Cascadia."

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"You see I have no idea if that makes more or less sense than 'the great-nephew of the Emperor married a coroner.'"

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"I spent enough to buy a kid on getting Rose out of Gilead when I'd never actually met her in person! I'd say that made very little sense."

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"--okay, so he had very much actually met this coroner several times before he dramatically fell for her, so I think you win."

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"To be fair we talked a lot online. --Asher ran past my window wearing nothing but tight underwear every afternoon for two years and that wasn't even him trying to seduce me, he mostly tried to seduce me by telling me I was wrong about economics." 

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"He tried economics. Before he tried nudity. Even though nudity was available."

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"To be fair to him I don't think the nudity without the economics would have worked at all, I'm not interested in sex with people I'm not in love with which I found out in the most embarrassing way possible."

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"...go on."

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"Fifteen minutes into a threesome."

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"Okay, I can see how that would be bad." He is NOT laughing at Lev's plight, because that would be incredibly rude.

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"But look at my husband and see how persecuted I was in college."

Lev pulls up a picture of Asher in his underwear on his phone. He is bending in a very anatomically improbable fashion. Is that something human backs can even do? Also he could probably be used to teach a class about the anatomy of the muscular system.

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"Oh, wow. You were very oppressed."

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"Every day! While I was trying to study!"

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"I'm just picturing him running past your window, mostly naked, shouting 'your opinions on monetary policy are bad!'"

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"No, the yelling was afterward. --And then I got drunk at a party and stared more openly than usual and he proposed a one-night stand and we didn't stop fucking for three days and at the end of it we were dating."

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"Well that's an order to do those things in!"

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"I mean, why shouldn't people have sex as soon as they want to? We have antibiotics and Prep and we need babies, and even if none of those things were true you could just do blowjobs and handjobs."

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"You just seemed the type to need Wooing. Date and then spend three days very distracted."

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"I was wooed with the economics arguing, I just wasn't aware I was being wooed."

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"Economics and shirtless running: the way to your heart."

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"And being tremendously sad on the Internet."

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"Now you just need to find someone posting sad economics opinions on the internet while shirtless."

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"At this rate I'm going to run out of bedrooms."

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"You're either going to need a bigger house or to stack lovers on top of each other."

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"But I'm already planning to stack the babies on top of each other!"

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"You're just going to need to get very creative with the stacking then."

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The next day is Jing Yi's Cascadian civics class, so that he can become a full citizen of Cascadia (?!). 

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Another Asian man, one Jing Yi doesn't recognize from remedial classes, is sitting at a desk in silence. 

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The fact he could get full citizenship is so weird. ...not that he's going to not do it out of principle, or anything.  (And as much as voting is also so goddamned weird, but he is also aware that he will get enough political opinions that he is going to vote.)

Look, fresh meat a new person! Who he can make social overtures at so his social life becomes less hermit-y. He sits down next to him. "Hello!"

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The new person's face doesn't change at all.

"Hello," he says, as if he has been firmly instructed that he is to return other people's attempts at small talk, which is true.

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...O...kay... Not what he expected, but maybe he should have. "I'm Jing Yi."

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"I am John."

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Is he going to be driving this whole interaction? He is going to be driving this whole interaction. Which wouldn't be too bad, except for the fact that with the information he has ('is in a civics class') there is no non-prying questions could he could ask. 'Why are you here' would be prying, 'how do you feel about voting?' is just a bizarre question.

Which leaves him only with really banal rhetorical questions. "Portland's pretty good, right?"

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"Mn."

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That's not even a response. "I'm pretty new here, but I like it so far."

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"Mn."

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"...am I bothering you?" (Because that is the polite version of what he wants to say, which is 'You don't say much, do you?')

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Yes.

"No."

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He's in too deep. There is no escape, not until the instructor shows up to explain that voting is perfectly safe and lots of fun. He just has to make the best of it. "Have you been in Portland long?"

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"I arrived three weeks ago."

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A response! A full sentence! With a verb in it! "Just in time for classes, eh?"

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"Yes."

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"What... brought you to Cascadia?" he says, lapsing into being the rudest man alive because what else is he meant to do here?

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"I visited Cascadia on a mission trip when I was fourteen and fell in love with Aang Wei. My brother was kidnapped and in the confusion I escaped to Cascadia."

(John Lan looks to be in his early twenties.)

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...

???

???

So, on the one hand, he is Qualified to deal with kidnappings. On the other, he was qualified several centuries ago and in a different country. "Is he alright?"

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"Yes."

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"That's... good?"

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"Mn."

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"And Aang is also alright?"

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"He's perfect."

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Apparently this Aang is good enough to warrant adjectives, which is high praise. "That's good!"

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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."

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"Mn."

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

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"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.

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

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"Yes."

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"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."

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John disagrees with this assessment.

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"We both said sentences at each other!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"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."

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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."

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

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

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"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."

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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.)

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"Oh, man, that sucks. That's worse than John's parents. But you're here now! And you have a fabulous fashion sense. How's Cascadia treating you?"

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"It's been pretty good. I appreciate the freedom." (Because 'I appreciate the Rectangles' while more true, is just a weird thing to say.)

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"You should come over to my place! Movie marathon! Or a documentary marathon. I know some really good documentaries. Say, do you like guys?"

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"Sure! And, uh, sure?"

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"Great! Do you want to get drunk and let me seduce you? Because I wanted to have a threesome and John is anxious about it and I thought 'oh, another Gileadite, that would be good, I bet he'd be way less scared around someone else with the same background' and also I think Gileadites might just be phenomenal at sex. With all the, like, repression? All the horny just builds up inside you like lava inside a volcano and then when it's unleashed it's like a sex beast. Volcano sex beast. But then I was like 'shit, do Gileadites know how to flirt?' because the only Gileadite I've ever flirted with, like, knocked very politely on my door and said 'if you don't mind I would like to tell you that I've been hopelessly in love with you for a decade and want to have lots of sex and babies' and I can't imagine this is how it normally works. I think you do ask each other out on dates, though, right? At least sometimes? But gay flirting is going to be different than that and I don't know how to do Gileadite gay flirting. And it would be super embarrassing if I got you drunk and crawled into your lap and then it turned out you didn't want to fuck me at all. Incredibly awkward. So I thought I'd ask and then once we were on the same page I could seduce you fine."

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His ears are bright pink. 

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He is trying not to laugh and not completely succeeding. "If we both end up in the same place drunk and John is cool with it, my lap is available."

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"Awesome! How does gay flirting in Gilead work anyway? John doesn't know because he's, like, mesexual which I don't think is even an asexual-spectrum orientation? Demisexual. Very demisexual. Is that even technically gay, like, he's only attracted to a man but I'm pretty sure he'd like me as much if I were a chick, even a regular chick with a vagina and shit. And the only other example I know about is John's brother and I think that's also super weird. Because his best friend went into his office and pointed a gun at him and is like 'I'm going to Japan with a fuckton of state secrets and the fifty million dollars I embezzled, you're coming with me or I'm going to shoot you, btw I murdered my dad' and then kept him prisoner in a hotel room until he decided God doesn't exist and gay sex was fine. And now they're in love and living it up on Ex-Dictator Street and John's brother keeps posting thirst traps on Instagram. I'm pretty sure that's not typical either, because that would be too much embezzlement. It's very romantic though. I wish someone would kidnap me to Japan."

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????

???????

So, like, the kidnapping turning out to be more concerning than John made it sound is not surprising, but, uh that is a lot concerning? Also, Japan? Copycat-backwater Japan??? And also people murdering people and then running off with state secrets is still a thing, he should not feel vindicated but he is feeling vindicated.

"I grew up in the middle of nowhere, under a rock," ie one of the largest cities in the world and pinnacle of culture "I honestly have no idea."

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"Probably they're all really weird. Every Gileadite I know who has tried to hit on someone has been really weird."

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He looks at Jing Yi suspiciously. "...are you going to try to kidnap me because John has dibs. If I'm going to be kidnapped by anyone it's John."

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"I wouldn't dare get in the way of you two lovebirds."

(Is that an actual smile? John is actually smiling. Aww, they really are in love.)

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Bounce bounce. "Do you like computers? I like computers. I'm working on a startup called Yiling and we're going to revolutionize, uh, some stuff you probably only understand if you're a fucking nerd."

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"The rock did not have much computing. I know Wikipedia exists! Such a helpful website."

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"Well what do they have on the rock?"

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"There wasn't much technology in general, really. It was a pretty quiet rock." Once again he is in too deep. Conversations with these people are cursed.

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"Oh, yeah, I heard that happens. Back-to-the-land types. Probably a lot of hiking. Good news, everyone around here fucking loves hiking."

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"If I see another forest or mountain, it will be too soon."

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"I hear they don't have very many forests in Japan! All skyscrapers and subways and cute girls in ridiculous outfits."

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"There are many forests in Japan."

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"Not in the parts where your brother is posting horny pictures of himself."

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"I mean, Cascadia has also got at least one of those covered."

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"Awwww! She's a flirt! She flirts."

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"I'm a girl now? No one told me."  Why does this keep happening? Why isn't he bothered?

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"Oh! Are you not? Sorry, I just assumed because of the dress. Gender's stupid anyway we should just abolish it. 'Ta' for everyone."

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Aha! An explanation! "It's fine. I dress like an eccentric."

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"Unlike me! I dress like a totally normal person."

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"Most Cascadians I met try and be as rainbow as possible!"

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"Some people wear a pin with their pronouns but whenever I wear pronoun pins I just wear all of them at once because gender is a spook."

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"Gotta keep people on their toes."

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They have arrived at the coffee.

Aang orders some appalling concoction which consists of a truly unwise amount of sugar, milkfat, and caffeine.

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John will have a plain green tea please.

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Jing Yi is feeling adventurous, and and gets a coffee with milk in it, to find out what coffee is.

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Coffee tastes quite bitter, apparently, even with milk and sugar in it.

Aang Wei can easily maintain his own conversation about hiking, shooting, places he has gone that he was not really supposed to go, mushrooming, the various times he mistook inedible mushrooms for edible mushrooms, his volunteer work with ROTC teaching teenagers about sabotage and explosives and shooting things and wilderness survival, his favorite books, the adorable adventures of his cousin Hope, and the more understandable things that Yiling is doing ("so the algorithm wound up pausing the Tetris game indefinitely so it couldn't lose--"). 

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Coffee tastes bitter but it sure does have caffeine in it, which is a win in his book.

It means he can vaguely keep up with Aang's monologue. Well, not the tetris, he has no clue what that is other than a ?game? of some sort, and in general his knowledge of computing is a thousand years out of date.

Also this is exactly the sort of  person who would teach the teenagers to make bombs. What other kind of person did he expect. Aang is the distillation of the sort of person who would volunteer to do that.

He scribbles down the names of the books on a napkin, to look at when he has time to read things other than 'An Introduction To Particle Theory'  and 'Models of Early Human Migration.'

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"--wait are you a virgin?"

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"...you might want to define that?" (And now for the fun game of balancing what he actually knows and has done, versus what the imaginary Gileadite version of him knows and has done.)

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"Oh, that's a good question-- uh, I just mean that my number is saved in people's phones as 'no,' 'absolutely not,' 'love yourself,' 'you can do better,' 'you deserve better than this,' and 'RECONSIDER YOUR LIFE CHOICES' all caps so if you don't have any sexual experience you should go hook up with someone else instead, I'm a bad first choice."

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"You should be nicer to yourself."

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"I'm not the one who's not being nice to me! Only the people who are saving my name in their phones are not being nice to me! And some of them give great head so I'll forgive them."

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"You would not be taking my maidenly virtue, don't worry about that."

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"Oh good! You've been having fun in Cascadia I guess."

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"Unless you were married before. Were you married before? I hear they get married really young in Gilead because they're not allowed to fuck."

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Even if he has been trying to aim for technical truths or at least approximations of them, he is... not going to get into the 'was nearly married, and then she died (on account of the time travel I am not going to mention)' That would be depressing, and for all of Aang's charms, Jing Yi doubts 'dealing with depressing information well' is one of them. "I was never good at that whole 'rule following' thing.'

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"But you don't know how gay flirting works? I guess you could try to knock up a Handmaid."

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"You're going to need to get me 50% more drunk and 50% less caffeinated if you want stories." (aka give him time to come up with a coherent backstory.)

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"Do you want to come back to my place and get a head start on that?"

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"Maybe another time? But also, yes, definitely."  (He could probably convince him of arbitrary bullshit about Gilead as long as John didn't contradict him, but... no, he'd need prep time to manage to do that coherently while drunk.)

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"He's playing hard to get."

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"Mn."

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"Never has someone suffered as greatly as I suffer. Deprived of my Gilead sex volcano."

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"Mn."

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"Oh, that's true."

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They have known each other for all of three weeks and have somehow managed to have conversations where one person doesn't even say words. It's impressive.

"I just think the thrill of the chase is an important step!"

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"Fuck the thrill of the chase, what about the thrill of getting rawed."

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"In a week, then! When I am drowning slightly less under the weight of learning physics from the ground up."

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"You don't have to. Consent is important. I'm just teasing. I just remembered that Gileadites might be confused about that because of the whole thing where your body belongs to your spouse which, kinky, I love it, but not a good approach outside of a scene."

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"Oh, I'm up for it, I just only have an afternoon free right now and not a whole evening."

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With these matters concluded Aang will tell more stories about Hope and his best friend who is named Jingyi ("just like you! But it's all one word").

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Hope sounds very adorable. He would definitely ruffle their hair if they ended up in the same room.

"Oh, that's going to end up confusing if we're ever in the same place."

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"That's why Aang is a good name. There is only ever one Aang."

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"I mean, even if it wasn't, I feel like 'rainbow Aang' would still be pretty distinguishing."

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"I'm rainbow Aang! Sweetiepie, did you hear that? I'm rainbow Aang! That's so cool."

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"Yes."

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"I think once you've gone to that amount of effort to be rainbow, you deserve it as a moniker."

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"I think I'm going to head out now! I need to throw paper balls at John while he does his homework."

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"Don't let the balls distract you too much!"

And with that, he also heads off.

After making reasonable progress with this own homework (and also cursing the name of Isaac Newton) he turns to his next most important research task. He needs a backstory. He needs a backstory. It needs to be consistent with what he's already said, it needs to be Very Gileadite, and it needs to explain how he is has obviously had a dick in his mouth before. Oh, and it needs to fool John. It probably wouldn't be too hard to pull the wool over Aang's eyes, but John has actually lived in Gilead. And to do that, he needs to know more about sex in Gilead other than 'everyone is Very Repressed.'

This seems like something Google would hopefully know.

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Google produces several contradictory websites with strong opinions about what kinds of sex Gileadites should be having.

The general consensus is that you shouldn't have sex until your (monogamous, heterosexual) marriage and then shouldn't get divorced afterward; that you shouldn't use pornography; that women should dress modestly (it doesn't seem to occur to anyone that someone might be visually attracted to men); and that husbands and wives should have sex with each other regularly. 

Subjects of debate include:

-We know it's okay to masturbate to collect sperm for artificial insemination. Is it okay to masturbate any other times? What if you and your spouse are in different states, or your spouse is too sick to have sex? What if it's treatment for sexual dysfunction? What if you fantasize about your spouse? About your future spouse? What if you don't fantasize and just concentrate on how nice it feels? What if you don't fantasize and concentrate on thanking God for the gift of sex?

-Are romance novels and romantic movies technically pornography for women because women aren't attracted to men visually and are instead interested in men's personalities and romantic devotion?

-What exactly is immodest dress? Positions range from "if you cover from the neck to the knees you're fine" to "wearing a V-neck sweater is a sin because it will make men think about the possibility that you could be wearing it without a shirt."

-If you fall in love with someone before you get married, is this permanently giving away a piece of your heart and thus robbing your spouse of something that they have a right to expect?

-Given that of course people are supposed to not lust at all, how much not-lusting can be reasonably expected? Should men 'guard their eyes' by making sure not to look at women's bodies or have extended conversations with attractive women or read informative books about sex? 

-How much should people know about sex before engagement? Positions range from "a comprehensive accurate sex education" to "nothing except that sex is a good thing which God intended for marriage and they definitely shouldn't have it before, any more specifics like 'what exactly is sex' will just encourage hanky-panky."

-How far should people go before the wedding day? Positions range from "no kissing until marriage" to "no touching genitals until marriage".

-How should people form relationships? Some people seem to go on dates with people they like, fall in love with them, and get married. Others seem to think that if you find someone you like, you should pray to find out if God wants you to marry them, and if so the man should ask permission from the woman's parents and then they should discern whether they want to get married in a committed fashion. 

-What exactly is cheating? If a woman flirts with someone or falls in love with someone else or has a male friend, is this cheating? If a man thinks another woman is sexually attractive or fantasizes about sex with her, is this cheating? 

-Is it okay to refuse your partner sex? One side holds that if a woman's husband wants sex she should say 'yes' as long as there's no medical reason to refuse, because she has to understand that sex is the only way that men feel loved, and you're just setting him up to lust and/or cheat on you. Another side holds that husbands should be understanding of women not being in the mood, and try to get them in the mood through romance and reducing their stress. (It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that women could want sex more than men.)

-What kinds of sex are allowable in marriage? Everyone is in favor of PIV and manual sex, but there is great debate about oral sex, anal sex, stripping, lingerie, sex toys, roleplaying, and BDSM. One position holds that if a man thought of these ideas it's probably because he's watched too much porn and objectifies women, because they wouldn't think of it any other way; one position holds that anything is okay as long as both people involved think it's okay; one position holds that God invented these sex acts and it's a sin to refuse any such act your husband wants. (It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that women might want these sex acts too.)  

-If pregnancy would be risky to the health of the mother, is it a sin to refrain from sex? What if you just have kinds of sex that can't lead to babies? 

-If a woman is fat and/or has short hair and/or doesn't wear nice clothes and makeup, is it kind of her fault if her husband cheats on her because she let herself go? Alternately, is this a sin?

Also, a small yet fervent group of people think that male headship means that a man should be allowed to pull his wife over his knee when she misbehaves and spank her, and then they have sex afterward because of the amount that proper relationship roles arouse everyone involved. Everyone else seems to think this is degrading, misogynistic bullpucky. (Gileadites don't swear.)

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...Gilead.

Points for variety, and some of the variety is less bizarre-to-horrifying than the rest, but... Gilead. You can't worry about clothes that might in theory make people consider the existance of nakedness, that is just banning clothes in full generality.

Also good to know that the only way he can feel loved is through sex! This has no horrifying implications about friendly and familial relationships! And that if he falls in love or ever looks at a woman, he is giving his heart away! Gilead, why?

Also why is God so involved in everyone's sex lives. Isn't he a bit too busy to be dealing with that. (Where is he getting the time to invent all these sex acts.)

At least the majority of people don't agree with the spanking thing? That's... something.

...so backstory wise, he can probably get somewhere with 'affianced, neither of us were good at instructions and were very, very technical about what sex was' which... it spectacularly untrue and weird to claim Leng Yue did that, but here we are! --except for a fact that there is a good chance(? probably?) there is going to be a penis involved and he needs an explanation.

So while in theory, Gileadites frown on any sex that is not between a man and woman ostensibly for making babies, in practice surely some men are fucking men? Surely? What does google think of that. Can he claim he tripped and fell onto a penis with no knowledge of how flirting goes.They just locked eyes and were so overcome with passion...

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Well, this website is titled "Gileadite Gay Boyz."

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Aha, a relevant search result. Click.

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The website would like him to know about its sister websites, Mormon Gay Boyz and Catholic Gay Boyz.

There are kind of a lot of videos. It is perfectly obvious from the thumbnails what these are videos of. 

The sidebar informs him that he can look at various categories, such as Virginity Loss, Rape, Romantic, Tricked, Daddy Kink, Fantasy, BDSM, Feminization, and Cascadian Immigrant.

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Head, meet desk. What a lovely acquaintance you two are making.

Of course the Cascadians would use video technology for their porn, that is exactly what they would do (and is arguably a good use of video technology. Maybe not as good as the explosions.)

He is maybe a bit tired and sleep deprived and having bad ideas. Like trying to reconstruct a culture's attitude to sex via pornography. (...made by a different culture, no less.) Would it technically be possible? Maybe. Would it be efficient? No. Does he particularly want to comb through Google again? Not really! (And is he a bit curious about what the Cascadians are using video technology for? ...yes.)

He swirls the cursor around to pick a category at random, and lands on 'Feminisation.' It probably won't be as... useful... as 'Virginity Loss' or 'Cascadian Immigrant,' but whatever.

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The protagonist of this video is informed that he's a total failure as a Gileadite man and therefore his wife is going to force him to be a woman. He's dressed up in women's clothes and makeup and then she fucks in the ass with a strapon while calling him a good girl who's going to be so much happier as a woman than he'd ever be as a man. He starts out begging for her to stop but she just tells him that if the protagonist didn't like it her little cock wouldn't be so hard. Then the protagonist's wife says that she's invited over six real men to give him an initiation to womanhood and he gets gangbanged. The video ends with the protagonist smiling, covered in come, with smeared eyeliner and lipstick, wearing a pretty little skirt and top, saying that his wife was right and he is so much happier being a girl.  

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Well, that's... interesting. And also... spectacularly useless. It would be evidence for Aang's 'Gileadite Sex Volcano' theory if there were any Gileadites involved in this production, which he highly doubts.

(He has Precisely Zero feelings about anyone being told that they would be happier as a girl and making them one, let alone pretty domineering girls doing that. Why would he have feelings about this. The only feeling he has is "Oh, Cascadians, you and your strange views of gender.")

The appropriate response would be to turn off his computer and try to do more effective research when he is clear-ish headed in the morning. The sort of appropriate response would to be to go to another section that might be something vaguely helpful for working out what they hell he is doing with his nonsense Gileadite backstory.

Instead he ends up going through the feminisation section before realising fuck, he should have been in bed several hours ago.

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In this video, a man has sex with a succubus and wakes up a succubus himself. It turns out that succubi have to feed on sex, so he goes around fucking other innocent Gileadite boys while feeling incredibly guilty about all the sinful sex he's having and trying so hard to resist it.

In this video, a demon turns a charismatic preacher into a woman because Gileadites don't take women seriously, and then she has sex with her new husband because women aren't allowed to refuse sex with their husbands.

In this video, there's a mind control device that turns good Gileadite boys into feminine sissy sluts who only think about cock, much to the horror of their former youth groups. (They then fuck the entire youth group.) 

In this video, a man walks in on his roommate masturbating in stolen girls' panties and blackmails him into sucking his cock while wearing girl clothes. 

In this video, there is a very dubious attempt to make men have more empathy for women. Strapons are involved to teach men the importance of foreplay, and they aren't allowed to come to teach them about how they should be eating their wives out.

In this video, a trans girl has decided that her Gileadite immigrant friend is Such An Egg, so she's decided to tie him up and apply makeup to him and make him wear lingerie and make him suck her cock and fuck his ass, all the while reassuring him that it's not a sin because he's getting forced to do it and so he should feel free to lie back and enjoy everything that's happening. 

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NO FEELINGS ABOUT THAT LAST ONE

CAN'T HAVING FEELINGS IF YOU'RE ASLEEP IN BED

EVEN IF YOUR NEIGHBOUR WOULD WIN ANY SCREAMING COMPETITION THEY ENTER

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In the morning, the tab is still lurking on his computer, with a little popup ad about the Gay Mormon Boyz and their very bad taste in underwear.

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And that tab is gone now! He is going to be Productive!

There is an abortive attempt at getting some actual information out of the Google, before heading off to continue his quest to become an Educated Citizen of Cascadia (that is still so weird to consider.)

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If he sorts through all the porn, he'll eventually come across an ethnography of gay life in Gilead.

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Thank you, Google! For eventually being helpful. (Not that the porn wasn't edifying in its own way.)

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Apparently there's a dating site called Closet which has very good security, and is used by gays, sex workers, Catholics, Muslims, atheists, drug dealers, and everyone else the Gileadites disapprove of. (This leads to some hilarious misunderstandings.) Gay men in particular also often hook up in certain parks and public bathrooms. Once you've connected into the community, there are a bunch of secret parties, ranging from dinner parties to orgies. The secret groups tend to be very class-segregated, each with their own cues; for example, the educated upper-middle-class to upper-class gays of the Ivy League tend to identify each other through references to the Symposium and Oscar Wilde. Gay couples are also, for obvious reasons, extremely likely to meet at ex-gay organizations, and certain ex-gay support groups are well known for being very cruisey.

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A backstory! A sane-ish backstory! His entire sexual experience was via Closet, where he didn't really know how to flirt but did know enough to communicate that he was looking to have sex with another man and not to find a Catholic to marry.

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He gets a text: Rose and Asher are finally home from Folsom if you wanna meet them.

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Sure! I like having a social life.

How secret is the time traveler thing with them?

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Uh, I told them, should I have not? Asher has a TS clearance anyway.

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It's fine, I was just checking how much *I* should dance around it with them. One less elaborate web of deception is more than fine by me!

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Cool! You can come over whenever, we're not busy.

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In which case, Jing Yi will waltz on over.

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"They're working," says the redhaired person on the couch reading a book called Masks of Nyarlathotep. 

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"Hi, you must be-- Asher or Rose? I'm Jing Yi."

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"I'm Rose, yeah. You're our time traveler?"

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"The one and only."

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"Well, as far as we know. Maybe Estonia has a pet time traveler. I don't speak Estonian."

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He sighs dramatically. "I'm forever separated from my fellow timetravelers by not sharing a language."

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"At least we don't have to try to find someone who speaks Tang Chinese."

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"Having to deal with this through charades would have been even more awkward."

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"Anyway, I'm Rose, I'm from Gilead, now I mostly hang out in Lev and Asher's house and read books and write fanfiction."

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"Well, you already know I'm from Great Tang, and I've been mostly catching up on all the history and science I missed in the centuries I skipped."

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"Oh, man, I remember that. Have you learned about evolution yet?"

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"It's on the syllabus! So far we've just covered the the Earth is definitely more than 6000 years old, for some reason?"

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"Oh, yeah, because Gileadites think it's six thousand years old. And was created in six days and then on the seventh day God took a nap."

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"I mean if I just created an entire world I would feel entitled to a day long nap."

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"And this is why we have to spend every Sunday in a boring church listening to someone tell us they're evil, instead of napping."

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"...it is very unfair not to share the naps."

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"I know right! Now I nap every Sunday instead. Much better."

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"There are very few things better than naps."

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"You should tell me about Great Tang. My girlfriend says 'pretend I asked you the question with the most interesting answer' in this sort of situation."

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Let's see if he can give an answer that's both interesting and not maudlin. "I lived my whole life in Chang'an-- the capital--" Because Rose likely doesn't know the significance of the name. "It was a massive city, one of the biggest in the world. And people from all across the world came to Chang'an, because if you were going to travel, why would you go anywhere else? Sure it was the seat of government, but it wasn't just that. We had the best artists and the best scholars and and the best courtesans and the best restaurants, all just off the banks of the Wei river. ...We also had the worst artists and restaurants, of course, but the best ones more than made up for them."

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"Oh, that sounds lovely."

They're going to ask more questions about the artists and scholars and restaurants.

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And Jing Yi is happy to share! There's snippets of poetry that he's memorised and odes to the quail at Rugui House (of the 'closed because of a murder fame'). There's also information about the scholars, but what he knows is about 50% what they actually studied and 50% what they're like when they're hammered.

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This is the important kind of historical data you can't get from books.

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"Oh, Jing Yi's here. --Weren't you going to fetch us?"

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"You seemed busy."

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This man is walking in the room on his hands. 

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"Asher, I presume?" He's as athletic in real life as he is in pictures; it's impressive.

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"Apparently I'm very recognizable."

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"I was learning about what assorted Confucian scholars were like when drunk."

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"Not good at holding their liquor, usually, but sometimes very good at pretending they are."

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"Much like college professors."

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"I'll have to keep that in mind if I meet any."

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"I want to hear more about Great Tang."

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"What do you want to know about?"

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"--Food prices."

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"Oh my god you nerd."

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"Food prices?"

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"My undergraduate thesis was on the price of corn as a means of measuring historical inflation."

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"I'd love to help, but I don't actually know the price of millet off the top of my head."

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"Terrible! Why didn't you prepare to be a time traveler taken in by a pair of economists?"

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"I'm being terribly slack!"

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"How are you finding Cascadia?"

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"It's a deeply weird place, but there are a lot worse ways it could be deeply weird. Also microwaves are very good."

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"We found the energy that pervades the universe and we used it to cook food more conveniently."

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"And that's a very Cascadian thing to do!"

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"Everyone else does it too!"

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"I think the fact that I found out about it in Cascadia makes it Officially Cascadian. It's the Rules."

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"Which means the year 2049 is officially Cascadian. And the Internet. And phones. And monotheism."

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"Exactly! A far-future Cascadian traveled back in time to introduce monotheism to the world... whenever monotheism was actually invented."

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"On Mount Sinai."

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"No."

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"Even so-- I wouldn't have chosen to time travel anywhere, but there are worse places to end up."

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"Such a ringing endorsement of Cascadia."

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"Give it time, and it might end up ringing-er."

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"I know that look. He's going to try to get you to reconstruct a macroeconomic data set from literally anything you remember about the relative prices of things."

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"I'm surprised that's a recogniseable look!"

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"I'm working out some things from context."

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"You're going to be curious about Tang sexual norms!"

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"They're boring. Very modern. Rome was better."

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He laughs. "You could have said we were ahead of the curve!"

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"Congratulations on figuring out that it's okay both for men to be gay and for them to eat a girl out."

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"We aim to please!"

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Rose and Asher are going to TEAM UP for questions about how Great Tang works.

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Asher has settled on questions about restaurants.

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If you want macroeconomic data about restaurants, he can certainly give you that. And if you want information about Tang dining culture, he has that too. He is so full of opinions about different restaurants, whether they're worth their price, et cetera, and so rarely does he have such a captive audience for it.

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Asher is SO fascinated by restaurants!

Eventually he's going to wander off to type up his notes about restaurants, muttering about professional publication.

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Lev joins him.

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"Well, at least I'm earning my keep."

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"Forecasters are all like that."

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"Prone to disappearing mid-conversation to write things?"

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"Yep. And insatiably curious about random things that most people are not curious about."

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"It'd be useful for the job. --Sorry if this rude, somehow, but how's Cascadia been treating you?"

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"I don't have a uterus anymore so there's a limit to how bad it can be."

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"That's... good?"

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"I mean I could say other things, it's a great country, but mostly my feeling is that I'm never going to get pregnant ever again."

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"I mean if you don't want to be, that's a good thing--" because he likes to think he is getting some skill at giving the Cascadian answer to things. (His actual answer is more "AAAAAAAAA?")

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"--I had six kids."

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"--That's... many." Ooh he does not like that past tense. He does not like it At All.

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"Five of them died before they were three months old and one of them I've never met."

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"...I'm sorry." It really does not seem to be enough. "How do you not even meet the baby you gestated, and if the answer is 'fucking Gilead'--"

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"I was a pervert, you don't get to be a Handmaid if you're a pervert."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And so they just-- what, stole the baby from you? I Am. So Sorry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I consented. I didn't want to hurt her either. They won't do anything without your consent, in Gilead, not unless you're a criminal."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, I really trust Gilead's ethics about this. -- time travelers offering to help kidnap people is almost certainly not the help you want."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I couldn't track her down anyway, I don't know who her parents are or what she was named. --I mean, really named, I named her Nita."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They didn't even let you know her name?"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, it's not my kid, you know, I'm the incubator. --Sorry, we can change the topic, I'm prone to depressing oversharing because everything about my life prior to eighteen months ago was depressing and talking about it is oversharing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, everything I say has the subtext of 'and everyone I knew died a thousand years ago for them and a week or so ago for me' so I can't really complain about other people being depressing. --I can stop poking, if you want."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, it's fine. It's nice to talk to someone else who lost everything else they knew. --I mean, not that it's the same, I recognize microwaves and you liked Chang'an."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not the same, but-- we can be Horrifying Backstory Buddies."

Permalink Mark Unread

"In Cascadia they kill the kids. If they're born too sick to survive. It's better."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...That'd probably be for the best.

--we just left them in graveyards. And we didn't even have the excuse of bitoxiphosphene."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We can keep them alive for so long now. Months. In incubators that breathe for them, where they're eating from IVs, machines that cuddle them for you because they're too fragile for you to hold them, and they cry and cry or, worse, they don't cry at all--"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...God. And you'd just keep going, because maybe they'd make it--"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, they wouldn't-- I mean you'd always hope, but-- the bitoxiphosphene babies don't ever get long. But it's murder to kill them, you know, and a blessing to give them what little bit of life they can have."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gilead. -- you get that a lot, probably."

Permalink Mark Unread

"After my sixth kid died I figured-- well, I was going to kill myself and go to Hell, or I was going to turn away from God and go to Hell, and I figured I wanted to do the second thing because in the second one I could eat chocolate chip cookies."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Chocolate chip cookies are worth it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're really great, aren't they?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"--But the way I see it is that Heaven is eternity with God and I don't want to spend eternity loving the person who murdered my children."

Permalink Mark Unread

"From what I've heard, someone needs to go over his head and tell him to fix his priorities."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You guys believe the universe was designed by committee, right, that seems much more plausible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"More or less. And there's plenty of evidence for it!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Anyway. My son died and I decided I was going to be evil so I stole all my husband's money and faked his signature and paid my vacation fee to go to Cascadia."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That-- honestly seems like a proportional response."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. If he wanted me not to steal his money he shouldn't have hit me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Incredibly proportional!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I kept going, you know, if I were good enough he'd stop, and then I ran off to Cascadia and now no one hits me and I can be as awful as I like."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's a point where-- it doesn't matter if you're allowed to do something, you shouldn't? ...Which is a roundabout way of saying that everything I've heard about your husband makes me dislike him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You've heard one thing about him!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"He hit you! You were pregnant five times and-- okay, so the way we would have solved this in Great Tang is probably frowned upon in Gilead, but-- Mrrm."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, a Handmaid is basically a concubine, minus some implementation details. It's what the term 'handmaid' is a reference to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The-- stability you get, being a concubine, matters."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right, because having another man's child ruins you for other men. But Gileadites like ex-Handmaids who had kids. Proven fertility. --God, my husband was pissed that he got damaged goods."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not-- just that. You get to raise your own child. They don't get sent off and then you have to hope you'll be able to have another. ...as I said before, everything you say about your husband makes me like him less."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A lot of the Cascadians seem fine with selling them, as long as they get to meet the kid afterward. Which is-- often a thing for Handmaids, you stick around in the household and help with the baby, and then you move out when you get married but you'll still visit."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I don't really approve selling babies, either, but I do... trust that the Cascadian government has thought about how people actually are, with their system."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, lots of people will just have abortions if they're not paid, pregnancies are awful. Or they'll use contraception. It's a lot easier to go 'eh, condoms suck and the pill makes me break out, I'll have sex without them and if I have a kid I'll carry it to term and get eighty thousand dollars. Not a big deal.'"

Permalink Mark Unread

He has any idea of the value of a dollar now! He can parse that statement.

"See, that system is strange to me, but it's not completely horrifying."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The idea behind Handmaids is that-- it's what you're doing if you have kids anyway. You have them and then they're adopted by God. You give them over for someone else to be their Father, no matter what. So it's just... enacting the spiritual truth on Earth, to give up your baby to someone else."

Permalink Mark Unread

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

No! No no no no!

"I-- very much would not want my children to be adopting by a God as-- like that as he seems?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, you know, God is the definition of Goodness. Which is why I don't believe in being good anymore."

Permalink Mark Unread

Excuse him, he's going to need more time to deal with children being metaphorically nonconensually adopted by deities.

"I would too if I had to deal with Him regularly!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think it would have done any good if we'd had a Handmaid anyway, my husband... did not especially believe I had a right to refuse sex."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The bar is in the floor and yet he still digs under it. If you ever need someone to go to Gilead and hit him with something, let me know."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm glad to know Great Tang has a more progressive attitude towards women's rights."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean we have terrible husbands too, I have room in my heart to intensely dislike multiple people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean it's not so much a concept I had before I got here that-- I might be allowed to object to my husband asserting his marital right."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I, uh-- there has to be some concessions to circumstances. And, you know, presumably liking your spouse?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I liked him well enough when we got married, it's just... you can't leave."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Which is all the more reason to treat you well. When you're tied together like that-- you have to keep being a good person."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, I was a bad wife, was the problem. Can't keep a clean house even if I have nothing else to do all day, tended to spend a lot of time in bed reading Tumblr, wasn't sweet to my husband when he got home, kept being a sexual pervert even though I was supposed to be cured, kept refusing sex. Cut myself. You know."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You not doing well at your end of the relationship doesn't mean your husband got to not hold up his end."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, he was trying to fix me so I'd be better. --And then I ran off to Cascadia and I can be as terrible a wife as I please, Lev and Asher don't care."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Which honestly sounds like it was for the best. Asher and Lev seem like good people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean I think by definition they're evil. Due to all the rebellion against God."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If he's all powerful, he can handle a bit of rebellion."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean he can handle it, he's going to handle it by torturing us with the absence of God for eternity. Also maybe fire and brimstone, people go back and forth on that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can't say I'm likely to be missing his company."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The weirdest thing about Cascadia is that here you can just do things."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's very strange! It's just 'this is your decision' and, like, is it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It generally is! I'm not sure how to handle it, I don't think I've ever made this many choices in my life before."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I appreciate the Cascadian love of Freedom even if it is baffling sometimes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was a kid, and then I lived in an ex-gay institution for two years, and then I got married, and now people are expecting me to choose my own meals like that's a thing I've ever been qualified to do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ex-gay?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Trying to make gay people straight and people who do weird gender things normal."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...the more I hear about Gilead, the less I'm sure that culture has ever considered how people are."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, Gilead has way fewer gay people than Cascadia."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...does it though? Does it actually have less people attracted to their own sex because I highly doubt that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...it's hard to tell how many people were repressed but I don't like saying people have secret preferences they don't know about, because Gileadites like saying I have the secret preference I don't know about to go back to my husband and devote myself to keeping the house tidy and have dead babies seven through twelve."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's fair. But in my experience most people actually are, at least a bit? And I have yet to see a Gileadite institution that deals with people as they are and not as how they want them to be?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, you know, God wants you to be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's-- there's 'having ideals' and then there's 'expecting literal perfection.'"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, you can always be forgiven. If you're not perfect. God always forgives."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...that's the first positive trait of His I've heard."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He did create everything which is popularly considered to be a good idea."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There should probably be points docked because of the design flaws though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I probably wouldn't do nearly so well if I had to rush it together in six days. --Besides, a lot of the flaws are generally considered to be humans' fault."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And who's idea was it to do it in six days anyway?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe he procrastinated until the last minute."

Permalink Mark Unread

"'Oh shit, I was meant to make a universe.'"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The orthodox opinion is that the universe was perfect and then humans rebelled against God by eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and then all bad things entered the world from our rebellion."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The rebellion of... knowing morality..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some people think God wanted them to eat the fruit at some point, just not then."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because it would be bad if humans started being moral too early."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean it's growing up, is the thing. Kids don't know anything about ethics-- or so I'm told, I never got to spend time with one much older than three months."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But children not knowing about ethics isn't a good thing, it's why we teach them. And it's not-- worse, somehow, for someone to learn stealing is wrong when they're three and not when they're seven."

Permalink Mark Unread

"God wanted us to be innocent, I think, and then we didn't do anything wrong because we didn't know what wrong was."

Permalink Mark Unread

"... Not knowing wrong doesn't stop you from doing it. Some people claim that but... Ignorance can only get you so far."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess if there's nothing bad in the world there's a limited amount you can do wrong. I wouldn't be evil if my babies hadn't died."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Allegedly there weren't predators before humans ate the fruit-- that's one of the reasons Gileadites don't believe in evolution."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Human morality made wolves?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Made wolves not eat grass."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The wolves saw the humans being evil and eating meat and went 'hey, we should get on this too.'"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, humans only started eating meat after God flooded the entire world and all of humanity drowned except for one family which took two of every animal and put it on a boat. Because the humans saved the animal species we got to eat meat."

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh, so that's why there's so much about flooding in the science syllabus. "Was this before or after the wolves started eating meat?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"After."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So how did humans knowing evil get wolves to eat meat? --also does this mean cats are some of the most moral predators, because they occasionally remember their grazing nature, because I'm sure cats would be thrilled to hear it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not that the wolves themselves are bad, it's that once humans brought rebellion into the world everything just became sort of twisted from the way it was supposed to be. It's why people do bad things and why giving birth hurts and why we have to work for a living."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It seems arrogant to assume that the rebellion of humans, specifically, caused problems with all other sentient beings."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Apparently the universe was made for us."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Just for us. Because we're very special."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know what people from Great Tang think about other animals being people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're definitely sentient, depending on who you ask, if not as complex as humans. It worries the Buddhist monks no end-- a dog is still stuck in the cycle of samsara, but it can't really do much about it, you know?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know what samsara is. --In Cascadia they think a lot of animals are people and it's wrong to be cruel to them. In Gilead most of the theologians think that animals are... basically automatons? They don't have souls. There isn't anything it's like to be them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's the cycle of suffering? You die and are reborn, over and over and over, and the only way out of the suffering is to awaken and leave it. Plenty of people want to help everyone else leave to, and that includes the dogs. ...the beings that are currently dogs. So depending on who you ask, animals have souls."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cascadians mostly think the world is pretty okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, that sounds like the Cascadian attitude."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe the world is suffering if your babies keep dying but you can end the cycle of suffering by just saving the babies."

Permalink Mark Unread

"... Heavens, I do not want to think of the karmic mess this is if that's how things work."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Man, if karma's how it works I must have been such an asshole in my past life."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And apparently most of the planet! ... Maybe this is to make up for not having smallpox."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But no I didn't mean in a karma way, just. The reason you believe life is suffering is that their lives are full of awful shit and instead you can just... get rid of the awful shit? At least until the part where I'm tortured forever for defying God."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, if you can fix whatever's going wrong with the kids-- then you're fixing a lot of hurt."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you fix smallpox and polio and malaria and kids not having enough food."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And you just keep going until you have everything. --It's a nice thought. Very Cascadian."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What else are we going to do, trust God to fix shit?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That doesn't seem to have a very good track record!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, God couldn't even fix me being gay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, could he even? He doesn't have a great track record for a supposedly omnipotent being."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I was mostly supposed to do the fixing. By praying a lot and being celibate and ignoring girls I had a crush on and trying to be more feminine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can see how the celibacy could, uh, help, but being more feminine?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're gay because you have a disturbance in your gender identity, you're not securely the gender God created you to be. Probably because of childhood trauma. --I mean, my parents sucked and observably I have a disturbance in my gender identity, I'm not sure this is wrong, it's just that no matter how sweet and submissive I was I couldn't stop wanting to be something else."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I, uh-- okay, so maybe that's how it works in Gilead, but I know--knew?-- people who were perfectly masculine who regularly had sex with other men."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think it's different if it's not a compulsion. The masculine men and feminine women would just-- stop being into the same sex, if they were in Gilead and having sex with a person of the same sex would send them to prison. I couldn't stop no matter how much I wanted to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know, with the people I know, the people who wouldn't stop even if it was a crime wouldn't have all been feminine or masculine when they shouldn't be, but its not something I could prove."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Also they might be good at pretending."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you pretend so hard that you're masculine that no one can tell the difference, is that even different than if it came naturally?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes. The part where you're miserable and want to die and your entire body feels subtly horribly wrong."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yeah, that'd be a problem. But-- masculinity and femininity are about actions. It sucks, but you're not failing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, then being gay is caused by the other thing. Where being feminine like you're supposed to makes you want to die."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe that's how it is in Gilead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I couldn't anyway. Because I'm lazy and overemotional and disobedient and kind of an asshole."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You've managed to fake being chill and nice pretty well so far."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, sure, all I'm doing is having a nice late-night conversation with a cute guy, you're not seeing me grocery shopping."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll make sure to avoid that. --unless you think two people being very bad at grocery shopping would be funny way to spend an afternoon."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, mostly I start crying in the middle of the grocery aisle because I don't know what the objectively right kind of oatmeal to buy is, it's not a fun time for anyone."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, yeah, that'd be-- unfortunate. It's great how there's so many things in one place but it's also kind of terrible, because there's just so many things."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Decisions are very difficult! This is why food magically appears in the house courtesy of the Food Fairy now.:"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Another great Cascadian invention."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Asher is a great Cascadian invention?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Could any other country have made him?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Honestly he'd have a great time in Gilead as a member of the secret police."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I feel like Gilead would disapprove of the mostly naked running, secret police or not. But you'd know better than me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Guys can run shirtless because girls don't lust after shirtless men. --Well, I do but I'm a pervert."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would have expected that only wearing underwear would cross the line for the country of 'you can't wear sweaters, people might realise you re naked under them.'"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's true. He'd have to wear blue jeans. --Only girls have to worry about the sweater thing though! Because men are visual."

They put their head on Jing Yi's shoulder.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because no woman in history has ever wondered what's going on under someone's clothes, and if they did, then something's wrong with them."

A head on his shoulder! He is Honoured. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I used to be like 'if I can't imagine how visual men are they must just be obsessed with naked women all the time' but then I moved to Cascadia and got on testosterone-- uh, that's the chemical that causes you to be a man-- and I think I am in fact just visually attracted to people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If we were that obsessed, we'd never get anything done! ...then again, the amount of times the course of history has been changed because someone got distracted by someone pretty--"

Permalink Mark Unread

"See, that's why you shouldn't put me in a position of power, I would definitely wind up changing the course of history by being distracted by someone pretty."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So many wars lost, because someone pretty walked by and Rose was in charge~"

Permalink Mark Unread

"To be fair, I would lose more by getting overwhelmed and breaking into tears or by being too lazy to order troop movements."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would also be a problem. We've just got to hope there aren't any wars where you're the only one qualified to do any general-ing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right, if there's a war we're going to put Asher in charge, he's trained. My job will be to try to work for the Gileadites and sabotage them from the inside by having my own personality."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We just need to get you as high as possible in the Gileadite army, and then send in the pretty Cascadians. This Is A Plan With No Flaws."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, yeah, if the Gileadites invade I'm going to defect and try to get as important a position as possible, this just seems correct. Finally my incompetence will be good for something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I'd probably end up having to join the explosive teenagers."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you're publicly a time traveler you're probably better suited to sabotage, they're going to want you on TV talking about your testimony."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll convert all the Gileadite with tales of good restaurants."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gileadites have good food too! You can't get real sweet tea in Cascadia."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I'm torn between being horrified and intrigued by that concept."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Real sweet tea is iced and so sugary that the spoon stands up in it by itself."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds like an affront to tea but also delicious."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can pour you a glass if you want, we have decaf or you can fuck your sleep schedule."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My sleep schedule was already a disaster. Let's live dangerously."

Permalink Mark Unread

Rose goes into the kitchen, pulls out a glass, puts some ice in it, and pours a cup from the pitcher for themself and Jing Yi. 

"Some people like bourbon in theirs but I don't drink."

Permalink Mark Unread

He takes the cup and takes a sip. "This is... incredibly sweet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Southerners like their sweets. You should try pecan pie."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll have to keep an eye out for that!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The law of Southern cooking is that it's either sweet, deep-fried, or both."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A fine culinary choice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's too bad you're a cop instead of a cook, you could start the only authentic Great Tang restaurant in the world."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I planned very poorly for this!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, at least I can make the food I can't get here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, it's-- a way. Apparently some people crossed an ocean and spread new plants everywhere, and here we are."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Potatoes! They're excellent."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can't judge the potatoes too much, they have their charms. But they're also everywhere. Like corn. And chilli."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And chocolate! Are you going to complain about chocolate?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can't stay mad at chocolate."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Apparently before white people decided that sugar should be in everything it was usually made with chili peppers."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm sure it mad sense at the time, but I can't see why you would get chilli involved in that "

Permalink Mark Unread

"White people are right about sugar and wrong about almost everything else about food."

Rose is standing slightly within Jing Yi's personal space bubble here. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do have to give you points for the sugar. ...and corn dogs, those have their merits."

He sees no reason to move.

Permalink Mark Unread

"The sin of gluttony is an excellent sin."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are certainly worse ones. Not that I know a comprehensive list." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Traditionally the list is gluttony, wrath, lust, envy, greed, sloth, and pride. We've gotten to gluttony, wrath, and sloth tonight which is not a bad showing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We've got three out of seven! That's a fair amount for such a short time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We could try to knock off another couple."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Envy and pride shouldn't be too hard, and I'd be down to investigate the others."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Possibly I inherently do pride by thinking God is an asshole and I'm better off without him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Four out of seven, we're already over halfway!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"So greed, envy, or lust?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You should pick, you've probably got a better idea of what they entail."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Greed seems hard to do on short notice although I suppose I could try to get you into ill-advised investing or online shopping decisions."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think I'm under a promise to consult with Lev about that? And I wouldn't want to distract him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So envy or lust then. Could just be very jealous of people who get to talk to their families."

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a brief laugh. "Lust seems so much less depressing, if you're willing."

Permalink Mark Unread

Rose kisses Jing Yi's cheek. "I could be."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh?" Head on shoulder? Head on shoulder.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I don't know. You could persuade me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, what would you find persuasive? A hands on demonstration of Great Tang sexual norms?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cross-cultural understanding is very important."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Definitely."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So what do you do in this sort of situation in Great Tang? Do I have to identify as a gender first?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"People usually do? But we can work around that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I don't know if you take different approaches to men and women in Great Tang. --If you do I should be a man."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're not dramatically different, but sure. We can do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So how do we start? Poetry recitation?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can, but that has-- implications. For something casual you usually don't."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And what do you do for something casual?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, you can do that dance of proving your each other's literary equals, but you can also go to the right sort of tavern and just waggle your eyebrows."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have no idea how to compare whether I'm better read than you but I usually read three or four books a week."

Permalink Mark Unread

He nods thoughtfully. "I think that would probably count at least a bit."

Permalink Mark Unread

They kiss his cheek again. "I could give you a list of recommendations, does that count."

Permalink Mark Unread

He slings an arm over their shoulder. "That would definitely count."

Permalink Mark Unread

They sit in his lap. "You should read Isaac Asimov," forehead kiss, "and Diane Duane," kiss on one cheek, "and Merrick Burns," kiss on the other cheek, "--oh, and you haven't seen any Shakespeare plays, have you? You should watch Shakespeare plays." Kiss on his nose.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Apparently I really missed out with Shakespeare."

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"Supposedly the greatest writer in the English language, although it would be interesting to see what you think if you haven't been hyped up." Now he will get a kiss on his temples.

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"Well now I have to investigate. For Science."

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"--Do you have mouth kisses in Great Tang?"

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"We certainly do." Which he then demonstrates.

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Rose is somewhat more passive of a kisser than he's used to but keeps remembering and then suddenly becoming more active.

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Which makes sense given Gilead's Everything, but hey, he can work around it.

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"Is this the part where I suggest that we move to my bedroom?"

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"Bedrooms are definitely convenient."

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"Well, I don't know, perhaps in Great Tang you traditionally have sex in the kitchen."

They stand up and start walking across said kitchen and down the hallway.

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He follows!

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Rose's room has so many books. There are books on the shelves, books piled on top of the books on the shelves, books on the floor, books on the desk, and books on the bed in the center of which they have formed a little nest.

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"I can see what you mean by reading four books a week!"

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"Half of this is my to be read pile."

They shove a bunch of books off the bed and onto the floor.

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Oh good, he doesn't have to work out how to work around the books. "You wouldn't want to run out!"

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"I was going to make a Twilight Zone reference but you've never seen the Twilight Zone. Further proof of my literary superiority."

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"I will have to be humble before your literary might."

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They lay on the bed and pulled Jing Yi towards them and started to kiss him again. "A delightful constant across cultures," they said into Jing Yi's mouth.

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"We all managed to work out mouths are good."

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"Mm. It's not like this in Gilead."

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"More proof that its a terrible nonsense country."

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"In Gilead we'd be cuddling up like this"-- they turn around so they're the little spoon-- "and then you'd be poking your dick into my ass to let me know you were horny and it's time for sex now."

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"What, no sweet nothings? Or kissing, or optional poetry improvisation?"

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"There's no poetry before sex in Cascadia or Gilead. And if there were kissing I'd have a much harder time pretending I was already asleep."

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"That is a flaw with kissing, I'll grant. It's a very active process."

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"But if I decided not to pretend I was asleep there'd be kissing." They demonstrate.

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"Gilead isn't completely barbaric, then."

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"And now you have to feel me up although that'll work less well because I don't have tits anymore."

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He does so. "It still works at all--"

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"Mm, yeah, I got good top surgery so my nipples are still super sensitive."

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"More Cascadian convenience in action."

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"The scars are right here"-- she guides his hand to them-- "they sucked all the fat out."

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"Impressive." Cascadia.

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"One important thing about sex in Gilead is that the woman is just supposed to lie there. Makes the man feel all manly and dominant."

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"That sounds impressively boring. Good thing we aren't in Gilead, then."

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"Oh, Great Tang has some different way to make men feel all manly and dominant?"

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"I mean-- it's important to last as long as possible. To Preserve Yang Energy, you understand."

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"...wouldn't that work better if you didn't come at all?"

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"People do do that, yes."

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"That's hot."

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"It's Very Practical," he says with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

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"I think it's very good when men are desperate to come and struggling against it but it feels so overwhelmingly good."

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"Oh?" He can definitely work with this. "It's very important to do your best. It's good for your health, even if it's very, ahem, hard."

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"You know they have cages now for your dick so you can't get hard even if you want to."

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"Cascadia is a Nation of Wonders."

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"There are all kinds of fun things. You can shoot lightning from your fingertips and shock people."

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"Okay, so that's kind of impressive. And also one of the more Cascadian things I have heard."

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"And vibrators. Vibrators are great."

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"Oh?"

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"Maybe I should just show you."

More enthusiastic kissing and a little feeling up of Jing Yi.

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Enthusiastic kissing is very good. "Some things are easier to learn with a hands on demonstration."

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"Mmhm. I assume they have anal in Great Tang."

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"Cascadia did not invent everything."

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Well, in that case Jing Yi should be wearing fewer clothes.

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Well, Rose should be wearing fewer clothes too. It's only fair.

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That's true, they should be. 

Between their legs Rose has what is recognizably a very small, very erect penis.

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Okay, so he hasn't encountered this configuration before, but he can work with it. "Is it-- okay to touch?"

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"It is both okay and welcome."

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Oh, well, if he has got permission, he is totally going to take advantage of that.

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It in fact functions like a tiny penis and produces similar whimpery reactions.

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Oh, that is very good

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"Hey, no getting distracted, I was going to show you a thing."

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"Okay, okay, I'll pay attention."

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This thing apparently commences with grabbing three items from under the bed, squirting some kind of substance on their hands, then sucking Jing Yi's dick while one of their fingers starts to probe his asshole.

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"Oh, both at once!" is not the most articulate response, but in his defense...

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"I feel like 'both at once' is a pretty obvious extrapolation!"

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"Maybe, but it's still a pleasant surprise!"

What even are those objects?

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Nooooo he's not going to think about that he's going to think about getting his dick sucked and his ass fingered.

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Well, if Rose insists--

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And then their fingers go away and are replaced by a very odd-feeling plastic (?) object.

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Okay, so this is going a direction. He has no clue what that direction IS, but he's guessing he'll find out soon enough.

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There's an increasing feeling of stretch and then it pops in and he's very full.

"Ready to learn what a vibrator is?"

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"So that's what that is. I'm ready as I'll ever be."

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Rose presses a button on the other thing and the thing in his butt turns on.

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It's a lot. Good a lot? Bad a lot? Unclear.

It's also unclear if the "Cascadia!" is an expression of being impressed at Cascadia's technological marvels and the directions they go in, or a startled swear that went weird.

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"You good?"

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"Fantastic but also surprised!"

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"...kind of want to handcuff you to the bed and show you the wonders of Cascadia."

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That sounds terrifying but also like a great idea. "I wouldn't say no to that."

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"Do you like pain?"

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"Not that much?"

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"All right, no fun with Wartenberg wheels." They pull out the handcuffs and secure Jing Yi to the bed.

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"I know, I'm terribly boring. I'll just have to work out how to be entertaining in other ways."

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"I'm sure you'll manage."

Now Jing Yi is being petted with The Very Softest Fur Glove In The Entire World.

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That is very very soft. "Ooh, that's nice,"

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"If you liked pain I'd hurt you first so your skin was all sensitive and then pet it with this."

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"Alas, I just have to experience this at its normal level of goodness."

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Jing Yi is too able to talk. Rose is going to correct this by tracing lines down his chest and stomach with their fingers, followed by their mouth and/or the Very Softest Thing. The whole time the vibrator is buzzing in his ass.

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This is definitely reducing his ability to talk coherently. Though he's still trying.

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"There is no name for this item that isn't incredibly gross," Rose says, and there's a squelch of lube going inside of something and then there is something incredibly tight and wet wrapped around his dick with all kinds of fascinating and unique sensations.

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Cascadia is so good at inventing things.

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It turns out Rose can totally operate this item while making out with him.

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He tries to go along with the making out, but he is comprehensively distracted, so it's pretty sloppy.

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Mm, that's all right, they can lick his nipples instead.

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Wow, its almost like they're trying to short out his brain.

... They are succeeding.

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Yeah, no, Jing Yi should not be having thoughts right now. Thoughts are for people who aren't handcuffed to a bed with a vibrator in their ass.

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All he's got are sensations and inarticulate little noises.

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Rose is just going to keep this up until he comes.

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Which maybe takes less time than is ideal, but in his defense--

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No, it takes a perfect amount of time.

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"That was-- a lot." (Actual semi coherent words are happening, but abstract thought isn't yet.)

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"I like making people feel good."

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"And you've got a talent for it?"

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"Mostly I think it's due to our thousand years of sex-related technological innovations."

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"I think the wielder still matters."

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"Aww, thanks. --Do you want to get me off or are you too flopped?"

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"I'm happy to help, but I'm going to need my hands back."

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"Fair enough."

Jing Yi is un-handcuffed.

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Jing Yi slowly works his way with his mouth from Rose's shoulder on down.

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Mmmmmm Great Tang has definitely has some good mouth-related knowledge.

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Great Tang has definitely got some knowledge about how to interface mouths with genitals.

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How do they do on tiny penises with vaginas attached?

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This is not something that came up in Great Tang that often, but Jing Yi has enough baseline knowledge to make reasonable guesses

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ooooooooooooooh those are very reasonable guesses

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Points to him for being able to improvise!

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Rose is sure with vocal feedback he can improve his guesses.

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Oh, feedback is good. He can sort of know what he is doing.

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It doesn't take long for them either. Then they flop on his shoulder.

"Does Great Tang have cuddles after sex?"

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Flopping is good. "We certainly can."

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"Gilead didn't so much, men supposedly hated cuddling after sex."

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"...What?"

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"Biologically they just want to roll over and go to sleep. Apparently."

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He nuzzles into their shoulder. "I have never in my life enjoyed a cuddle. I am completely physically incapable of it."

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"Very self-sacrificial of you."

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"I am the most generous person in the world," he mumbles into their shoulder.

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"You know, I had my first orgasm seventeen months ago."

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"...in Cascadia, I presume?"

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"Yep. I wasn't sure how lesbian sex worked so I decided to check out a book on the subject and it was very persuasive about masturbation."

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"I imagine it was."

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Now they should snuggle and go to sleep.

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This is an excellent plan, Rose is very warm and cuddleable.

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Jing Yi wakes up to the smell of pancakes. 

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Is Rose still in bed?

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Evil people think mornings are a nonexistent time.

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Aww, that's cute. But it does hinder his plans to check with them whether he should dive out a window to escape. (Probably not?)

...he can cuddle up to Rose for ten more minutes before facing the world and working out how speedy his exit should be

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Rose doesn't intend to wake up.

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Alas, he is going to have to be strong and peel himself out of the comfy warm bed and put clothes back on.

He walks out into the kitchen. "Silly ettiquette question: on a scale of one to ten, how much am I meant to be gone already?"

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"Not at all? I am going to politely fail to inquire about the sleeping arrangements of my partner. Do you want pancakes?" 

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"I wouldn't want to impose, but also yes."

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"I guessed we'd probably have guests, so." He serves them up with maple syrup. "Behold the one thing I can cook."

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"It's more things than I can."

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"I learned it in order to try to get Asher to wake up in the morning, which--"

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Asher somehow wanders into the kitchen with his eyes closed, grabs a plate with a pancake on it, shovels it into his mouth with his hands, and then zombie-walks back to the bedroom.

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"--which worked less well than I hoped."

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"Give yourself some credit, he was at least briefly out of bed."

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"Sleep-pancake-eating."

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"It's an impressive skill. Very Asher." He takes a bite. "These are really good."

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"Have a good time?"

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"It Was A Pleasant Evening."

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Social duties done, Lev is going to take out his phone and start scrolling through something muttering unclear and mostly derogatory opinions.

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"Do you mind if I ask you a stupid question?"

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He looks up. "Go ahead."

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"People keep seeming to think I'm a woman?"

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"Probably because you're wearing a dress. Men sometimes wear dresses in Cascadia but it's not usual."

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"And they just assume that despite the-- everything else? I mean, and the long hair, I do not understand why you all cut it so short, but you definitely do that."

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"When a person who looks like a man is wearing female-gendered clothing many people tend to assume that they're trying to tell everyone they're a woman, the same way that-- do you have other clothing that conveys messages in Great Tang--"

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"We have clothing that conveys class, and sex, and people do definitely try and send more subtle messages--"

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"So we assume the thing people have more control over is the thing they prefer. Especially if you're at a class for new immigrants most of whom won't have gotten to be on hormones long enough to look as androgynous as Rose."

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"So it's partially because people think I'm from Gilead."

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"Yeah, but some people are going to think you're trying to communicate that you're a woman even otherwise."

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"I know you-- Cascadia-- have a thing about personal choice, and I'm a guest here, as such--" ... "--So it's going to be an assumption people will make."

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"I mean, you can correct them, it's not like you're the only guy wearing a dress."

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"Mmm, I can." He has no mixed feelings about this.

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"Long hair is feminine and short hair masculine in most of the world, but in Cascadia enough men have long hair and women have short hair that no one will infer anything about it. Dresses and skirts are feminine, pants are unisex. There are ways you can dress that are definitely male, like suits, but it's pretty unusual for anyone to actually dress like that. Nail polish is feminine outside Cascadia but neutral here, makeup is feminine everywhere but in Cascadia wearing eyeliner to a party or a club is neutral, ear piercings are feminine outside Cascadia but neutral here, body piercings are neutral everywhere, having body hair is masculine outside Cascadia but neutral here. The rules for jewelry are complicated. I think that's all the things?"

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"I'll keep that in mind."

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"--I mean, you can also just let people assume whatever, it's fine."

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"Yeah, I can, I-- just didn't expect it?"

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"Yeah, I think Cascadia is-- very unusual in our attitude towards trans people."

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"It's not like I have that many places to compare it to but-- probably."

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"Some places being trans is illegal, some places it's not, pretty much anywhere you can transition if you're passable and don't mind lying to governments-- suspect that was probably true in Great Tang too, honestly-- but Cascadia is one of the few places in the world with gender anarchy and basically the only country that has gender anarchy. The rest are cities."

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"It seems like the thing Cascadia would do. You're very-- freedom focused."

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"Must be a change."

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"I'd defend our honour, but-- yeah, no, Cascadia is a lot more."

 

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"We have more resources to let people be free with, even if you wanted to let people transition I don't think you could if you hadn't synthesized testosterone. Or, I guess, figured out surgery well enough that people would survive having balls transplanted in them."

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"I mean, we definitely managed the other direction fine--"

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"Except you have to do that before puberty or they'll still look pretty masculine, and I think you didn't take the most gender dysphoric one percent of boys and make them eunuchs."

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"No, it definitely wasn't half as planned as that."

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"And that wouldn't get all of them, anyway, a bunch of kids start being gender dysphoric at puberty."

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"Alas, I think I have to admit your technology is superior here."

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"Anyway, yeah, it's the dress, do as you like with this knowledge."

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"I solemnly swear to only use this knowledge for good."

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Lev goes back to cursing quietly at his phone.

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Pancakes remain a great Cascadian invention.

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Jing Yi leaves, and goes about the next week trying to be productive. He keeps up with the GED studies-- he's good at stuffing a lot of information into his head quickly, but fitting twelve years into one is still a lot of hard work.

And he starts to-- deliberately settle in for the long haul. He researches and discovers and acquires earplugs. (Because at this rate he would either end up nocturnal or constantly sleep deprived and that is just not practical for learning and/or living.) He pokes about and makes lists of places he could go and meet people.

He tries to organise a proper memorial table. He tries and-- temporarily fails. Turns out someone had to change how your meant to do it in one of the centuries he skipped. And he will sort it out, sort out which set of guidielines to follow, but-- dealing with a double whammy of grief over the people he has lost and the time and place he has lost can wait at least another week.

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And then one afternoon his phone buzzes with:

I'm boooooored want to do pre-sex negotiation

it's how you're supposed to do it

best practices

consent, communication, that other C I keep forgetting

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He knows half a thing about sex in Gilead. He can do this. He can successfully not break cover.

What is there to negotiate?

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okay so the most important thing is that you gotta tell me the weird shit you're into that you think is normal sex

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...if I thought it was normal sex, how would I know if it was weird?

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that's a good question

john thought it was normal sex for him to beat me up and pretend to rape me and in case you're wondering that's not normal sex

super fun! but not normal

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Noted! Though I'm not under that mistaken impression.

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so if you're like "obviously sex is going to involve balloons or someone wearing a diaper or being hypnotized or being forced to wear lipstick while someone calls me a girl" 

you gotta tell me

I can't predict these things

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...

To my knowledge sex usually involves, like, kissing and genitals?

I am 99% sure that is totally normal and unsurprising

unless Cascadia is weirder than I thought

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right but are you touching genitals gently or kicking people in the balls

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gently! what the fuck?

He is going to get a good grade in pretending to be a Gileadite.

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what about weird orgasm denial stuff

no having orgasms except with the people you're fucking, no looking at other people and seeing if they're hot

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that's *ethics*, not *hooking up*

they're totally unrelated

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okay so normal sex is when you kiss each other and touch each other all over your bodies in a nice gentle way until you're super worked up and then you rub your dicks against each other or put your mouths on each other's dicks or touch each other's dicks or one of you puts your dick in the other one's ass or put your fingers in each other's assholes or lick each other's assholes

until you both come

and then you cuddle

and you say things during sex but like nice things like "you're so beautiful" and "you make me feel so good" and not things like "you dirty useless cum-eating whore"

also sometimes there are sex toys

if you like any other things you gotta tell me and not spring it on me unexpectedly

or look at me in bafflement when I don't start kicking you and saying "no"

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I will make sure any bafflement is expressed in words

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i'm a bad person to do sex negotiation with because I'm up for like anything

except spanking

trauma reasons

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also noted!

I think I'm going to end up being the one with boundaries and suchlike.

It's a weird sensation

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oh yeah probably everyone in gilead is like "I can't do this! I have to wait until I'm married! pegging isn't sex tho"

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Gilead has a terminal lack of imagination

...I am counting myself here, tbh

Look, he's using an internet acronym! He's still got his undercover skills, baby.

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Oh, crap, did I shock you with too many kinks at once

sorry

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you didn't shock me so much as surprise me!

As a firm member of team "we should kiss and maybe keep some of our clothes on, or not, I'm not fussy":  it's a wild world out there

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it's because I watched too much porn as a kid

permanently turned me into a pervert

and john watched too little porn and he became a pervert

you gotta titrate that shit

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By that logic wouldn't I be more like John?

Somehow I encountered the ideal amount of porn under my rock and didn't even notice!

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well you probably watched more porn than john

he was like saving himself for me for a decade

he didn't even look at shirtless dudes

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Okay, so shirtless people definitely featured and that is probably the explanation

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So tell me hot stories about Gilead!

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It's honestly not that exciting? Despite being under a rock I eventually found out about Closet, met a few people there

I imagine most people's 'and that's how I lost my virginity!' stories end up pretty similar after a while

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I have no idea how I lost mine!

too drunk

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... That's at least unique lack of a story!

Much more stylish than "there was a deserted park and a guy I didn't know the name of"

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oh yeah if you try to go to the parks when you're a kid no one will fuck you

unless you look more like an adult

or use a gloryhole I guess

do they have gloryholes in gilead

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I honestly have no clue

Probably need some secret code I never learned before I did a runner

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yeah I have no idea how people find places to cruise if they're not just like

labeled

Adults Only Between Midnight And Six AM

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At least they're easy to find here!

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you should watch more porn! and find out your kinks!

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I'm working on it! Give me some time, there's more than I thought

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Isn't that a mood

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*Opens the internet* 'Surely there's a limited amount of this?'

*There is an endless torrent of dicks*

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you haven't even found the exotic ones yet

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I'd have no way to tell, honestly

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Well have you gotten off to ovipositors

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Haven't encountered that one, no!

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Something to look forward to.

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I will savour it. Only Google it when I feel completely jaded about the world and need the spark of something bizarre to bring me back to my senses.

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I wish I had such innocence.

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Surely you're also interested in tarnishing it, as well

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whenever you want

but not this week because john and I have plans

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alas, I'm just going to have to focus on my studies this week


They do manage to arrange a time and place, and it goes well, all things considered. Aang does not end up listed as "LOVE YOURSELF" in Jing Yi's phone, and Jing Yi puts on a command performance of "innocent-but-not-THAT-innocent Gileadite.'


Jing Yi spends most of his time studying. He does well, generally. Not at the top of his class, but up there.

He gets more settled in in Cascadia. He learns to cook things that aren't just microwave meals-- though the things he learns are mostly variants "instant noodles with frozen vegetables".  He goes to see plays and gets to be surprised by Shakespeare and cries more about Ophelia and Juliet's deaths more than is seemly. He works on having an actual social life, even if it ends up being very Lev-Asher-Rose centric with a side of Aang-and-Jon. He helps form a little study group who meets after science class to wrestle with periodic tables and physics algebra and why did so much happen millions of years ago?

He even goes to a Zen temple, run mostly by white people, because it's not right, but it's the correct Vehicle and it's the right sutras even if they're in the wrong language and it's not run by the Theravadans and he will take what he can find. And he sets up a proper memorial table.

He considers his job prospects-- namely that there is no way he would do well in Cascadian law enforcement, oh fuck no, any attempts would go hilariously wrong and he is just not going to try.

...he follows Lev's to do the thing that 'that sounds terrifying and also great and they should try it and see if they like it.' His income is not a lot, but it's enough for cheap drugstore make up and costume jewelery if he saves (Fake gold and plastic gems: another great Cascadian invention.) He puts on his nicest dress (blue and glittery, natch), makes a decent stab at eyeliner and lipstick, and does his hair up in a fancy braided bun. He heads out to a bar-- it had good reviews online, because he checked, but most importantly he had never been there before. Everyone treats him as a woman. It's subtle, omnipresent. He couldn't even say how it would be different, Cascadia does not treat men and women that differently. But people read him as a woman. Because he did that deliberately. He knows exactly what assumptions people are making, and he plays into them. To see what it feels like. ...it's heady and wonderful and also terrifying enough that he gets one drink before heading back to his apartment,


He takes his GED test. He's pretty sure he will pass, he can't see any reason he won't, unless he somehow went into a fugue state and explained the Columbian Exchange in a nonsensical way and did not even noticed. But there's still those tense weeks waiting for the marking to come back.

May as well get some career prep done and not just twiddle his thumbs.

He texts Lev.

Mind if I come over to chat about the time travel thing?

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of course, come over whenever

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He heads over. "I have given this some thought, and I'm pretty sure I am deeply unqualified to be anything but a professional time traveler."

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"Oh?"

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"I mean, for one, there are very few people qualified to be a professional time traveler, so there's minimal competition there. And I spent most of my life training for my old job, and those skills are not transferable. I would be a terrible detective, no one should hire me."

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"Because we've discovered civil liberties in the past thousand years?"

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"No, you've discovered lawyers, and that's worse."

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"--did you not have lawyers in Great Tang?"

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"Not working for people charged with criminal offences, no."

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"So they only did civil law?"

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"They only worked for the government, more or less."

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"That's weird! What if you're a criminal and you don't understand the law?"

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"...then you get charged for the crime?"

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"Right, but maybe there's some defense you don't know about."

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"You can explain your circumstances to the magistrate dealing with the case?"

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"Well, sure, but you're not going to know how to present yourself in the best light."

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"Yes. If you weren't legally trained, that was a problem you could have."

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"Anyway. Yeah. Professional time traveler. --I guess we should see about getting you an agent?"

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"Really its the magistrate's job to make sure the case has a fair outcome-- agent?"

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"Probably we should figure out logistics and then get into an argument about the adversarial justice system. An agent is someone whose job is to find you work and negotiate contracts and so on, and in exchange they take a cut of the profits."

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"That seems like a more efficient plan than just standing on a street corner with sign saying 'Time Traveler: Will Tell You About The Tang Dynasty For Money.'"

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"Right. You need someone who can coordinate you talking to historians and writing your memoir and so on. Speaking tours. Self-help books maybe."

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"I feel like anyone who reads a self help book by me deserves whatever bad advice they get. Also we'd need to convince an agent that I am real and not some sort of elaborate prank or well researched psychotic break."

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"Don't worry, we can vouch for you."

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"That simplifies things, thank you."

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"Probably the right thing to do is to call a press conference with someone reasonably friendly."

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"I'm assuming that would be talking publically about being a time traveller?"

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"Yep, you're going to be interviewed by one person and then a bunch of journalists from different news sources will be there so they can cover it from their own angles. Time Traveler Fashion. The Physics Of Time Travel Explained. The Theology Of Time Travel Explained. How Time Travel Existing Will Affect The Election. Will There Be A Bunch Of New Time Traveler TV Shows This Year? Time Travel And Your Sex Life--"

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"I'll effect the election more than just maybe voting in it, my civics teacher would be so proud."

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"Fivethirtyeight Cascadia already picked up that something was weird because the forecaster predictions about science have been moving in odd directions. Higher chance of discovering faster-than-light travel."

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"Hopefully they won't be disappointed that they can't travel even faster."

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"Okay, so I should walk you through it--" And Lev explains how press conferences work!

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He is now much less ignorant about the Subtle Art of The Press Conference, and less likely to make a complete fool of myself.

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"I am so sorry about doing press, it's awful."

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"Alas, it's the best way to get people to know things all at once."

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The next morning Jing Yi is taken to an agent who has worked with the Cascadian government before, representing celebrity forecasters and so on, who has a really remarkable straight face about the fact that Jing Yi is a time traveler from the past.

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Well, that's good, because he literally is.

"Is there any action you'd recommend doing first?"

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"A lot of it depends on your interest-- do you want to write books, do you want to have your own show, do you want to consult with filmmakers to make sure that their Chinese films are historically accurate, do you want to star in a reality show, do you want to become an actor or an artist or a musician, do you want to do pornography--"

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...of course pornography would be an option in Cascadia, it's Cascadia. "--I'd be interested in helping historians? Though I have no idea if that is a thing that could be a job."

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"We can arrange a grant."

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"Really, a lot depends on whether you would like to be comfortably middle-class or phenomenally wealthy. --Oh, sperm donation also, you could make an enormous amount of money selling your sperm."

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"...because of not being exposed to bitoxiphosphene? I would like to be more than middle class, but I don't want a--" palace "--mansion." 

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"Bitoxiphosphene isn't believed to affect sperm, but we can predict that a lot of people will want their child to be descended from the time traveler, because time travelers are cool."

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"That seems-- like a strange selection process."

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"Well, how else would you choose the other parent of your child?"

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"--I think I'll hold off on that, for now. Seems like a decision where it will be easier to decide I want to do that later than deciding I don't want to later." Also, he does not want any children that he can't be personally responsible for! Especially if they're going to be raised by random strangers who think time travellers are 'cool'. (Not that he isn't cool ice cold.)

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"All right. Would you prefer to be famous enough that people recognize you on the street or not that famous? If you prefer not to be famous that'll rule out a lot of options, like most of the ones that involve showing your face."

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"I'm more than happy to be recognised."

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"All right. I think it's hard to guess what kinds of opportunities you're going to have, so I'll select the highest-paying and most interesting offers and send them your way."

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"Well, this is rather uncharted territory, and I very much appreciate your help with it."

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Now she wants to walk him through the contract.

The upshot of it is that she gets ten percent of the money he earns, and she is supposed to find him work and negotiate his contracts to make sure he isn't getting taken advantage of and manage his image, and he is supposed to show up on time and not be a nightmare for producers to deal with and give her notification if he wants to pull out of something and also he is not supposed to behave badly. Normally she will pay him a severence fee if she fires him as a client, but if he is a nightmare to work with or engages in misconduct then he might be fired with no severence fee at all.

(The severence fee is eye-poppingly huge.)

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...which definitely gives her an interest in not firing him! Also the fact that if he makes a lot of money, she makes 10% of a lot.

He signs, and makes a solemn promise to behave well for reasonable definitions of 'behave well.' (He is not going to work while drunk, and he is going to avoid breaking any laws if at all possible, but he is not going to promise to never drink at all.)

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"...okay yeah actually probably there are some assumptions here we shouldn't assume that we're on the same page on."

He should not drive while drunk or high. He should not use racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, ageist, or anti-Semitic slurs; he should also refrain from making glaringly racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, ageist, or anti-Semitic comments. (Actually, she is going to write a training for him about that, the fact that it is glaringly racist to compare black people to monkeys is probably not obvious from his perspective.) He should not imply that it is okay to use nukes or that it is wrong to secede from the government or that the Gileadite religion is correct (he may say that other evangelical Christian sects are correct). He should not be cruel to animals. He should not have sex with people who don't want him to have sex with them. He should not date people younger than the age of consent. He should not make any sort of sexual or flirtatious comment to people while he is at work; if he is making them to coworkers after work, he should be careful to ensure that the comments are welcome and that people aren't afraid that he's going to ruin their careers if they don't tolerate him flirting with them, and also he shouldn't date or have sex with anyone above or below him in the hierarchy. He should not physically attack anyone or throw objects at them or anything like that. He should especially not physically attack people he's dating, his children, service workers, or coworkers. There is some drama about who owns the island of Taiwan, and it is probably best to just refrain from having any sort of opinion on the topic of whether it is part of China; if he decides that Taiwan being its own country is the hill he wants to die on she is fine with that but he should tell her so she can cancel any speaking engagements he has on the mainland.. There is a list of atrocities that he should not deny the existence or badness of but that can wait for the training.

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He solemnly swears to avoid the above listed Bad Ideas and will have no opinions about who owns islands he's never heard about. And he will look up and follow the training to avoid making any egregiously offensive statements.

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Well, she's going to have to write it, they had not previously had to train anyone on all of the things that are considered super racist because even the Gileadites think racism is bad.  

Does he have any other questions?

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He doesn't have any other questions, and hopefully this is because they both understand each other and not because there is any knowledge that he doesn't have and doesn't know he doesn't have.

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The agent and her employees spent two frantic days pulling together a training, and Jing Yi can go through it before he does the press conference. He is NOT supposed to imply that Jewish people drink the blood of aborted children. He is NOT supposed to say that black people like watermelon. He is NOT supposed to compare fat women to whales. He is NOT supposed to say that if you just didn't have sex then you wouldn't have HIV. He is NOT supposed to put makeup on his face so he looks like a person of a different ethnicity. If he hears any of this very long list of words, they are slurs, and he is not allowed to use them. (He is allowed to use these slurs because they refer to Chinese people.)  

Also, here are all of the horrible things that happened in the past thousand years, he should try to remember that they actually happened even if he reads on a website that they didn't happen. 

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...That list is such a combination of "well, I can see exactly how that would be very offensive" to "--what the hell happened that to make that offensive." (He spends a minute staring at the "list of foods you should not imply that [insert group here] people like" in slightly horrified bafflement.)

(He spends more than a minute staring at the list of Horrible Things in actual horror.)

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"The watermelon thing is that people claimed that black people were happy being slaves because they didn't need freedom, they just needed watermelon and fried chicken."

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--He knows just enough American history to get this! "...of course it was something like that."

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Rose is going to come give him a hug about the list of Horrible Things.

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Hugs are good. "There should be less things that killed multiple millions of people."

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"Technology makes everything bigger."

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"Technology should stick to rectangles."

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And then he is taken off to a news studio!

Being in a news studio involves having quite a lot of makeup put on.

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This is a whole lot of makeup to get the affect that he is wearing none at all and he just has perfectly flawless skin (and 'please stop scratching at your pox sores' marks.)

He's wearing the clothes (plus some mending to hide where the lab sample was taken) he landed in for Verisimilitude.

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"Hello!" says the newscaster. (She has long brown hair and no piercings, which is almost weird for Cascadia.) "We have a very special report here today, everyone. Can you please introduce yourself, Jing Yi?"

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Okay, show time. He can be personalable and charming to a possibly unfriendly audience.

"Hello. I'm Jing Yi, and I'm a time traveller from the late Tang Dynasty."

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There are audible gasps from the journalists in the audience. 

"Is time travel possible?" says the newscaster, sounding remarkably full of disbelief for someone who had been preparing for it for two days.

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She's a good actor! "Time travel from the past into the future is possible, but not from the future to past, and to my knowledge we don't know how to do it deliberately."

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"I don't want to offend, but how do we know that you aren't an actor from the SCA?"

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"Tests were done on the clothes I landed in, and there was no bitoxiphosphene contamination."

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More gasps!

The newscaster opens the floor for questions from the assembled journalists.

The journalists want to know what life was like in the Tang dynasty, and what his job was, and what he did for fun, and if his children will be unaffected by bitoxiphosphene, and what it feels like to time travel, and how he feels about having traveled through time, and whether he is sad that he won't be able to make it back. 

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Very different! Cascadia has much more good rectangles technology. He appreciates all the labour saving devices and the vaccines and such like.

He was the Vice Minister for the Three Judicial Offices. The closest Cascadian equivalent would be 'a detective.'

... He's not a doctor, but probably they still would be? Even if he hasn't been exposed to all that much bitoxiphosphene, whoever is bearing his children would be?

Travelling through time felt like falling, but that may be because he was falling at the time.

He wouldn't have chosen to travel through time, but there are definitely worse places to land than Cascadia in 2050. He does miss the family and friends he has left behind.

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Journalists want to know if he was really freaked out by nukes, and what he's been doing after his arrival but before the press conference, and what he's planning to do now that he's here, and what he misses most from home, and what thing he likes best about being in Cascadia, and how the history books are most wrong about China, and whether he is planning to immigrate to either Mainland China or Taiwan since he's Chinese, and have more of a comment than a question that he should definitely immigrate to Taiwan if he is looking to immigrate anywhere, and whether he has seen Terminator. 

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Nukes are terrifying, and he does not even have any direct experience with them!

After his arrival, he was getting a GED. Hopefully he has passed his test and should be getting it soon.

He doesn't have any specific plans, though he would like to talk to historians in case he has any information they want. And he would love to correct the history books, but you see, for the past year he has been stuffing his head full of the history of Cascadia-- which has entirely too much history, it should really slow down-- and so he hasn't had the chance to check yet.

He misses the people, obviously, but he also does miss the food. The food you can get in Portland several centuries later is Just Not The Same.

There's a lot of good things about Cascadia! Picking one at random: public housing. He really appreciates not freezing to death in the woods.

...as a currently stateless person who can only speak Middle Chinese and English, he has no particular plans to immigrate. (Hopefully this is avoiding that hot potato well enough for by his agent's standards.)

He has not seen Terminator, but he has seen Spider Man. 10/10, he appreciates how the state of the art of theatrical performances and special effects has improved.

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Journalists want to know what's the most surprising thing about Cascadia, and if he could grab one person from the past who would it be, and whether he's queer, and whether he's poly, and whether he thinks it's okay to bind women's feet*, and what theory of time travel he thinks is most plausible, and what current celebrity is the hottest, and whether he's voting for the Libertarians or the Socialists in the next election, and what people should go back to doing the way that people in China did it. 

*The agent hears this question and repeatedly bangs her head against the wall.

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Cascadia is a Very, Very Free. No, even more free than that. He spent the first month or so really discombobulated by that.

...he misses all of his family. It would be very hard to choose. (...and he's going to have to rewatch the footage here to make sure he didn't react too visibly here. Fun! Hey, guys, he literally lost everything he knew a year ago. Please think this through.)

Yes, and yes. And if you want juicy details, you need to wait until the relevant tell all tv interview/memoir/etc.

...what are we doing to women's feet? What's Gilead done now?

He is a detective from over a thousand years ago who has recently got Schroedinger's GED. He thinks aliens did it.

He does have a celebrity he thinks is hottest, but he is very biased here. (He makes a winky face and points to himself.)

The fun thing about that question is that no matter which party he answers, one of them will be able to say they're the party favoured by time travelers, and the other will be able to say they're the party disfavoured by time travelers, and why are we listening to time travelers again? He's from a thousand or so years ago and knows nothing about the current political situation.

Things have changed a lot in the intervening years, so doing things the way they did it before isn't likely to... work? Even if there's some things about Cascadia he finds somewhat alarming, they are like that for reasons.

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Ancient Chinese people broke women's feet and bound them so the feet were very tiny and then they were crippled and couldn't walk without pain! Men found women's broken feet very attractive. Does Jing Yi think they should do that?

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...not in the Tang Dynasty they didn't...?

People should do what they want with their own feet. Why should his opinions matter on any feet but his own?

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Oh! Well, that's good and kind of surprising. The journalist would have done more research on Chinese history if she'd known this would come up. 

Journalists want to know what he thinks about Handmaids, and what his favorite foods were then, and what his favorite food is now, and if he misses the tea from home, and what surprised him most about the last thousand years of history, and whether it's weird that white people ended up doing the Industrial Revolution and colonialism and so on given the position of China historically, and what he thinks about democracy, and what he thinks about free speech, and what he thinks of Christianity, and whether he believes in God, and whether he's planning to be in a reality show, and what his favorite superhero is. 

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Like pretty much everything he hears about Gilead, he finds the concept kind of disturbing.

He liked mangoes, when he could get them. Another very good thing about the modern world: out of season fruit.

He hasn't had a chance to try a whole lot of foods that aren't the sort you microwave, but microwave pizza is pretty damn good. 10/10 invention there.

The tea here is unfortunately Just Not The Same.

You got rid of smallpox! He had no reason to expect this to be possible, and accidentally scared some people about it. (He found democracies even more surprising, but he is not saying that in front of the Cascadian Public.)

It was definitely kind of a surprise, but a lot of history has been surprising to him, so it isn't unique in that.

Democracy seems to work out for Cascadia, Ditto for free speech.

Did not expect Christianity to end up so big! That was another one of the surprising things.

He does not believe in one singular God, no.

It's a solid maybe!

Okay, so he's a little biased because he was in the first superhero movie he watched, but Spider Man is his favourite.

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Journalists want to know if he is a Buddhist or a Taoist or a Confucist, if he doesn't believe in a singular God.

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Yes.

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And then the interview is concluded!

His agent has a look of relief on her face.

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"Well, I'm glad I've managed to last longer than a day before turning the whole public against me."

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"You're a natural."

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His phone buzzes.

DUDE!!!!!

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in my defense it was up till now *classified*

(Not technically a lie!)

though I will apologise for depriving you of your gilead sex volcano by being from a more functional, if poxy, country

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tang dynasty china is super repressed tho right

like you gotta be a virgin until you get married to someone your parents want you to marry + being gay is a sin

right?????

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being gay was a foible but not like a particularly bad foible

unfortunately we were very sexist and the virginity thing was more for women

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I think it's better if SOME people get to be exempt from virginity policing

wait

who are you fucking if the women are supposed to be virgins and you're not supposed to be gay??????

also don't expect to see me for the next six weeks, they just declassified the time travel papers and I am PSYCHED

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there are courtesans? also you can just be gay. it really wasn't seen as particularly bad.

if you do read them, please tell me how time travel works. people keep asking *me*. i just fell here with an inexplicable knowledge of english, i know *nothing*

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u learn linear algebra then I will explain time travel to u

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i just passed my ged test. have mercy!

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never

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😔

(Behold, a true man of the people, who knows how to use emojis!)

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Various people have opinions about the time traveler!

The Queen of Hawaii gives a speech immediately after the press conference to welcome Jing Yi to Cascadia and encourage him to make a state visit to Hawaii. It is a very good speech; her charisma is obvious. 

The Cascadian government had privately informed every government except Gilead about the existence of time travel, and so various other political figures can make speeches about how time travel exists and that's kind of neat and they should fund scientific research more and mumble mumble. For something that fundamentally disrupts their understanding of how the universe works it seems to have remarkably few... implications. 

Gilead manages to get it together to have a slightly late and obviously slapdash speech about the subject. 

The Pope and various Protestant and Orthodox religious leaders announce that Jing Yi's presence is a miracle. Most of them keep it kind of vague why God would have performed such a miracle, but some of the Protestants think it was performed to save Jing Yi's soul specifically. 

The social media reaction includes:

-People who think Jing Yi is hot, expressed with varying amounts of pornography and/or body horror.
-People who think it is racist that the journalists didn't know that there wasn't footbinding in the Tang dynasty. 
-People who think that the Cascadian government made up time travel for various reasons, a surprising number of which involve Satanism, secret pedophile cabals, or lizard people. 
-People who think that God definitely performed a miracle to save Jing Yi's soul, and it is bad that he's in Cascadia where he is going to be corrupted.
-Long explanations of how time travel works that are wrong in every particular.
-References to many, many time travel movies that Jing Yi hasn't watched.
-So many memes.

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He learns to be careful about googling himself. Though the drawings of his getting fucked by tenta-clocks are at least amusing, if startling when he first encountered them.

He is also very well behaved and makes no public comments about why his soul, specifically, out of all the souls available? (And also, if he is a miracle, surely God could have put him in Gilead.)

Lev does get a text of:

good thing to know the monotheist god decided to save my soul by sending me to a cabal of satanist lizard people with too many triangles.

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I thought we had rectangles

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the gileadites think we have triangles with eyes in them, but if we do, I haven't seen them.

you've been keeping them classified, haven't you

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I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of triangles with eyes

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I knew it!

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The country of China thinks that Jing Yi was born in China, and therefore he is a Chinese citizen, and he did not receive any sort of permission to emigrate to Cascadia, so Cascadia should deport its illegal emigrant back to China where he belongs. 

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Cascadia thinks that the country of China should go eat a dick but, like, politely and diplomatically. 

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Oh, is it still the Tang Dynasty? He was a citizen of that, but Wikipedia seemed to think some regime changes have happened over the intervening centuries. But you know, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone! Very unreliable, like that.

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A week later, he has a meeting with his agent, who presents the following projects as things people seem to want:

-Interviews with various historians
-MCing at assorted nightclubs
-Giving inspirational speeches at corporations and college campuses about what he's learned about Resilience and Coping With Adversity from being a time traveler
-Appearances at fundraisers for various worthy causes
-His memoir
-A book about daily life in the Tang dynasty
-A TV show about his life (documentary)
-A TV show about his life (fictionalized)
-His cultural consultation on various movies, some of which involve the Tang dynasty and some of which involve giant robots that run on qi
-The above, but also he gets to play a character in it
-A TV show where there are twenty people he might want to date and he does various activities with each of them and rejects one of them each week and eventually has to date the one he chooses
-A TV show where he has to answer trivia questions and if he gets them right he earns money
-A TV show where people compete to make the best Chinese food and he is one of three judges who gets to pick who goes on to the next round
-The above, but it's weird avant-garde food
-A TV show where they just follow him around with cameras all the time and film all of his conversations with everyone
-The above, but he's trapped in a house with nineteen other people selected for Maximum Drama
-Cameos in literally every TV show and movie set in China and a bunch which aren't 
-Tasteful nudes (still pictures)
-Tasteful nudes (stripping)
-Hardcore pornography

Also, the Queen of Hawaii would like to officially welcome him to Cascadia. 

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He would love to be interviewed by historians, please let him be interviewed. (The nice thing about historians is he can ask 'hey, did any of these names show up in the historical record? Please tell me if they do.')

...how do the inspirational speech people feel about speeches that involve "and then I spent a lot of time crying on bed while watching superhero movies?" Because any inspirational speech that is true is going to involve that. (Though Lev's advice of 'do the terrifying tempting thing' is maybe more inspirational speech appropriate.) Also happy to be a prop at a fundraiser. Are there any fundraisers for childhood vaccines? He could be a walking cautionary tale.

He'd be very interested in a memoir or a tv show of some sort. (He would like his friends and family to be remembered.) He could do the book of daily life, but he was very rich and he's not sure how... useful... it would be.

PLEASE LET HIM HELP WITH THE GIANT ROBOTS THAT RUN ON QI MOVIE. HE WANTS THAT MOVIE TO EXIST. He doesn't care if he gets a part in it, he just wants to make it happen.

...he is not dating anyone on screen, or being followed around by cameras, thank you.

Him trying to answer trivia questions just sounds like a very awkward time for all involved. He only knows a year worth of trivia here.

He's happy to judge food, with the caveat that he probably has deeply weird food opinions, and they probably want some judges with... normal taste, here.

He can cameo in things, sure.

...okay, so "do whatever will annoy Gilead the most" is not the best guiding life principle, but he very much wants to annoy Gilead. This probably means he should do the tasteful still nudes? And maybe the other things if it doesn't blow up in his face.

He appreciates the Queen of Hawai'i wanting to officially welcome him. Look, a functioning monarchy! With a queen, but it looks like Hawai'i is making it work. If it would be possible to arrange an official welcome, he would like that.

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He flies to Hawaii and Queen Liliuokalani II welcomes him in a very nice ceremony that is half in Hawaiian and half in English. She's in her fifties by now but still quite beautiful. 

Queen Liliuokalani II is descended from the historical monarchy of Hawaii (she is not technically the oldest descendant, but no one especially cares). During the secession crisis, she took over the government partially because she had legitimacy which was totally unrelated to the Gileadite government and partially because she is very charismatic and has a lot of force of personality. She successfully oversaw Hawaii's transition to a constitutional parliamentary monarchy and, a few years later, its union with Cascadia. At present, her position is mostly ceremonial and, to put it rudely, as a tourist attraction.

After the ceremony, she has dinner with him, and Jing Yi can discover for himself how a very charismatic, very intelligent, very forceful woman who meets regularly with every important person in the Hawaiian government can have a great deal of power, even if her legal powers mostly involve cutting the ribbon at new elementary schools. She is a lot. 

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She comes across as exactly the sort of person who would make somewhere a constitutional monarchy by force of personality. It's impressive.

It's also slightly difficult to interact with her? It turns out he still has his 'dealing with the Imperial Court' instincts, and that is close to but not quite right for dealing a constitutional monarch. (No matter how badly he fucks up, she cannot order him to be executed. Not that he does fuck up, as far as he can tell.) He does his best to appreciative and respectful and impressed, and all of those are true.

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Queen Liliuokalani II is very very good at putting people at their ease, in a way that if you think about it too hard makes you much more anxious. 

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He spends some time in the hotel room realising this, and how the hell did she put him so much at ease??? How did she do this. It's a mystery. A very concerning mystery.

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And then he goes home and talks to historians, and also to a ghostwriter, because it turns out that writing a memoir is basically the same thing as talking to historians. A lot of rambling about your daily life while they take notes.  

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He is so good at rambling, and telling anecdotes. (The historians get what he remembers of prices, the ghost writer gets a lot more of the funny time his friend badly fucked up flirting.)

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There is a fad for movies set in Tang Dynasty China, especially since they don't have to deal with the issue of whether characters are Christian or not and if so what kind. He is paid to fly down to Hollywood. (His agent provides a different list of rules for Hollywood, which is in Mexico. He is not to have sex or to take drugs of any sort, almost everyone in Hollywood does both but she doesn't trust him to have a sense for the unwritten rules since he is from a thousand years ago.) The giant-robots-run-on-qi movie is made, although it turns out that they make the giant robots with computers and the actual filming process involves a lot of people making stupid faces in front of a green screen. 

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Hey, he's happy to be a trend setter. And also the most well behaved and squeaky cleanest person in all of Hollywood, if you ignore the fact he does not go to church.

Look, as long as the giant robots in the end product are cool, he's happy. Making silly faces in front of a green screen is worth it for that, he has no dignity anyway (unless he's standing next to Queen Liliuokalani.)

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There are a lot of fundraisers for medical research that would like a Jing Yi, actually. They would like him to give speeches about how pandemics are very bad, and people should spend money on pandemic prevention and vaccine development and health care for people in the developing world, and should also get their vaccines. (Did he know that lots of people don't want to get their vaccines because they think that the natural immunity you get from getting measles is better?)

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Why would you do that. Vaccines are so much nicer than measles. Why.

He can give so many impassioned speeches about how childhood diseases are terrifying and mass outbreaks are worse, and you should a) give money to stop that from happening and b) get your vaccines, come on, he got them even though he had already had those diseases.

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His book comes out. It's a bestseller.

To promote it, his agent arranges a photoshoot of tasteful nudes, which is mostly hot and uncomfortable and involves making even more stupid faces than the giant robot movie. 

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But when they come out Aang Wei sends him a series of emoticons and exclamation points.

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It's all worth it for an appreciative audience

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He is put on a cooking show! The judges are one food critic, one recipe writer who specializes in home cooking, and Jing Yi, and the contestants are supposed to make various dishes which are avant-garde or from unusual cuisines or which feature more maggots than one would normally prefer. 

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He should have probably predicted the maggots from "avant-garde." He's a good sport about it. And the judging panel is improved by having someone who is totally willing to be eccentric and have weird time traveller opinions. (Which is sometimes "there are some food textures man was not meant to know" but also "actually, savoury chocolate is good. Bring on the savoury chocolate.")

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Sometimes people recognize him on the street. There are groupies, if he wants them. He is beloved enough that when people call him out on social media most of the callouts are blatantly made up.

He gets his own house. Lev and Asher and Rose invite him for dinner all the time. Aang drifts in and out of his life on a schedule which only makes sense to himself. 

There is talk of a second memoir, and of turning his memoir into an official movie, and of the next season of the cooking show being themed around Chinese food. There are a number of unofficial movies and TV shows, mostly quite inaccurate. 

He builds a life. 

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Haunted by the possibility of something going wrong and having to explain it to his agent, he does not with the groupies.

He occasionally let's sightly unvarnished opinions slip in public, but in Cascadia "I occasionally do things to annoy Gilead (if only 1/10 of my emails is about me not being saved and being a bad influence to children, I'm not trying hard enough)" and "the nice thing about secret ballots is that they are secret" is basically non-controversial.

The nice thing about living in a city like Portland is there are clubs that have a reputation for discretion. It's not going to last forever, but for now, if one of them is frequented by a woman who looks an awful lot like Jing Yi, no one's saying anything.

He generally avoids the unofficial movies: people get his own life wrong are funny, people getting his friends' and family's life wrong is depressing.

It's not the life he had planned, or even have chosen if he was given the option, but it's good, and he's happy to keep building it.

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Eventually, a historian manages to track down a reference to a Xiao Jinyu. He was executed sixteen years after Jing Yi's disappearance for in some way irritating the emperor. The exact details of his crime were lost to history. 

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Yeah, that... Makes perfect sense. It's exactly what he would do.

It's not like he expected him to still be alive or something, or even that he would have died of old age, but it's still a punch to the gut.

Of course it happened like that.

(He can hope Chu Chu made it out-- but Chu Chu was a coroner who was even less politically skilled than him. It's not likely).