Going on hikes is a form of getting out of the house which doesn't require a car, so Xander does it most weekends. Mostly he walks a particular set of trails which he's timed out to last a certain number of podcast episodes, but he's nearing the end of the season and it's narratively very tense and he can tell he'll want to keep going for longer than usual. So he takes a new turn.
"...Oh boy. Church is where we go to learn about and worship God, who created this universe and - probably also yours but I'm less sure of that? And he gave us an afterlife and stuff."
"It's kind of like going, 'wow, you're really cool' or something. It's more serious than that, but - fundamentally."
He flinches. "I mean - if he did that he probably also included a way for things to be okay for you guys eventually - even if nothing else kills you you probably get to be a part of the apocalypse and go to heaven. Which is, uh, a nice place where nothing bad ever happens again. - But I don't know that he did that; maybe he didn't."
"I guess I don't know if this place is nice enough for creating it like this to be cool."
"I mean - I'm going to be really bad at explaining this and maybe I should just find you some stuff to read, but the basic idea is that the world was created perfect and then humans messed it up, but then also God did some things to fix it so now things are... fundamentally okay, pretty much."
"Yeah, it's really complicated and confusing and no one gets it, basically. But suffice to say the whole family will go someplace for a few hours every Sunday morning."
"...okay. Uh, maybe on days when they don't have work I can sleep in the woods some more, if you can haul me out." She's starting to fingercomb her hair.
"I would not want to sleep out in the woods if I had other options but I guess I'm not a fairy. Uh, just wondering, what happens if someone is ordered to do something they can't do? And is refraining from making noise in their sleep one of those things."
"...orders? You already asked to try one... If you mean orders to do something you can't do, sometimes you start trying if you don't know you can't, but otherwise it feels like nothing."
"Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
"Uh. ...Huh. Yeah, I super just don't have any idea how that actually - starts. - What about something that you can kind of do but not really?"
"If it just takes a really long time there is no particular limit to how long you can be trapped trying to brute force the cube root of seven billion."
"Oh no. ...I do have a calculator, though. Which is to say - I mean, if you ordered me to fly, would I start trying to book an airplane? If I didn't have the money for it would I start applying to jobs - I guess realistically I would probably go for stealing from my parents first, wouldn't I -"