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The wilderness here adjoins a road, with a bus trundling one way or the other every five minutes, and a moped or truck less often than that. White chevrons indicate which way each lane of traffic is to go; there's a sidewalk, with a railing, but it doesn't look like it sees much use.
lornell in green
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"We know some things about aging, but we don't have magic. If we did we'd probably have it solved like your people by now."
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"Yes. You've figured out so many things for people who have to learn everything on their own."
"Maybe we do more in parallel than you? - have you eaten, do you need to eat, I was about to go home and have dinner -"
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"I sometimes eat but mostly not, and I just borrowed fullness a little while ago. Food is - wow, a lot cheaper here. Probably I'll eat more in general now."
"- huh, I guess if you mostly don't need to eat you wouldn't have economies of scale - well, anyway, you can come over to my house." He leads the way through the streets; apparently he walks to work.
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"I appreciate that so much!" Maybe if Lorn concentrates really hard on doing a nice-looking job of sawing off their two new pieces of hair, walking won't feel so unbearably slow.
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"At some soonish point, before my picture series, I would like to find some people my age who I can use to look younger. And think about other changes I might want now in a world where people are mostly expected to look mostly the same from season to season. And get information from lots and lots of people so I can find the very best thing for me to be doing here."
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"Right now I look this old because I like having this general physicality and it was more convenient to match the face to that, and at home I can signal how old I really am with my hairstyle and clothes and things. Here everyone is just the age they are and people have been - looking at me. Romantically. And in general I just don't want to give an inaccurate impression."
"Oh, gotcha. Yeah, we can ask my neighbor, if a fifteen year old who otherwise looks nothing like you will do."
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"I will probably want to borrow from multiple fifteenish year olds and also research whether there are other cultural appearance markers that I'd care about."
"We can usually tell where somebody's from more or less, or where their family's from at least."
"People look like their parents - uh, and then stay that way - so if people stay in one area for a long time and intermarry they all kind of resemble each other. Like - that guy, over there, driving the pedicab, he looks like he's from Africa*, I can tell because he's got really dark skin. If I were more familiar with different ethnic groups I could maybe be more specific but it's also possible he's from Islandmost**."
*No, they don't call it Africa.
**Australia. Because it is the most island.
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"Hmm," hums Lorn as they scoop geographic information out of their new friend. - Are any of the countries here full of nicer people, not the same way Creta is back home, obviously, but maybe aiming for something similar given the resources they have?
There's a country where their tourists are always complaining about the lack of train service and don't like riding buses! There's a country where they're particular sticklers about not trying to have a conversation through an accent barrier and will just write everything in their cute color coordinated dedicated devices for that purpose that aren't sold around here! There's a country where they flee from the rainy season to here sometimes and they do tipping, which is a barbarous custom but does make them popular among service staff!
Because it makes it impossible to guess how much money you'll make from your work in advance, and furthermore incentivizes excessively pandering and obsequious behavior beyond the normal level of professionalism you want in service staff just from their background expectation that any customer may be a spy.
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"Okay." They finish sawing their hair and pocket it (and their knife) and make it about a dozen paces before they switch to hopping with their feet together in order to match the pace of their companion.