She is in a city. It has cars going by and a school over there and a police station over there and houses and trees and sunshine.

. . . Well that's not - she pats her body in a few places to assure herself it exists, as if she would be having anything resembling this sensory experience and somehow not have one.

She will - run to the police station??  - Nope; she'll try running to the police station and then stop and take a second to clench her teeth and try very hard not to throw up, and then walk there as fast as she can which isn't very.

The police station doors open to admit her! Inside there are police.

"Excuse me, I seem to have just been teleported here from the Londinium power plant.  Someone's set up an unauthorized array there that might - uh, actually it might not blow up the place, since it teleported me, uh - sorry I need to think - it's likely to be mostly safe on its own but if the person did more than one she might've done the rest the way she meant to and those could still be really dangerous - do you have some sort of special urgent police communication you can use or - actually even if you do I should still probably use a regular phone to call some other people - "

"Wow," says a police, "you teleported? I didn't know people could teleport. What's Londinium?"

"I didn't either.  It's a city on Britannia, in the Roman Empire."  The uniforms here don't look Roman at all.

"I thought the Roman Empire fell hundreds of years ago."

"Sorry, where is this?"

"Houston Police Department."

"Where is Houston."

"Texas. This conversation is more annoying than I was expecting based on the teleportation part."

" - Sorry sir.  May I please use a phone so I can call someone who might be able to prevent the plant from exploding?"

"Yeah, over there." Point.

She dials fewer digits than phone numbers here use.

The phone does not attempt to connect. It waits patiently.

Ellie hangs up after a few seconds and tries again.

"This phone seems to be broken, is there another one?  Or, again, do you have some sort of official channel, please, it's very urgent - "

"Oh, you have to dial 9 to get an outside line."

Nine plus the plant staff line!!

Still doesn't work!

"It's still not working!"

"- okay, what's the number," he says, sighing and getting up to cross the room to the phone. "I'm irritated but I couldn't cope with it if a power plant blew up because I didn't want to make a call."

She lists it, all in single digits and enunciating carefully.

"- phone numbers have seven digits. At least."

"Not where I'm from.  Is there some sort of international prefix - "

"...not for the Roman Empire. That I know of."

"How would someone find that out.  I don't mean to be uppity, I swear I would be so much less pushy with fewer lives at stake, officer - "

"Well - Rome is in Italy -" He goes back to his computer to look up the country code for Italy. "Okay, try it with a 39 at the beginning."

What?  - Doesn't matter.  "939 or just 39 or 399?"

"Nine, then three nine."

939 et cetera!!

"Can we get more people to try with other lines - does anyone have a mobile phone, I can write down other numbers to call - "

"Maybe the plant already blew up and that's why they aren't answering," someone suggests, but somebody coughs up a cell phone and will accept her directions about what to dial.

"Might be, might not - here's someone who's not there right now - " she scrawls down a number, this one with a locally-appropriate number of digits.  "That's uh - this is all um, ah, assuming I wasn't unconscious for very long when I teleported - actually, swap with me, use this one - " she writes down the first number she tried " - in case it's just that this phone is broken - " dial dial one of her coworker's cells, double-checking against the note she wrote -

"Wrong number," somebody reports, trying the first. Her coworker's cell gets a busy signal.

She checks her note four times and hums the tune that goes along with dialing it and checks it twice more.  "No it isn't; try again.  Please."

He tries again. "Same wrong number and the guy on the other end is really mad that I re-dialed," he reports.

"And you did the 939?"

"Yeah."

"Where is Texas?"

"Fractious States of America," someone says.

"Which is where.  - Is there a map - "

"Ma'am, are you still worried about your power plant blowing up?" someone says. Someone else digs up an old road map booklet and finds the most zoomed out picture in it.

"Extremely, I'm just wondering if you might use an entire different phone system because this number is c - why's this - " she rotates the map 90° and squints at it, then spins it back to read the labels.  "How old is this?"

"Uh, I think I've had that since - '68?"

"I haven't learned a lot of geography but I think these national borders are - different from the ones I'm familiar with."

"I don't think any national borders changed around here recently."

Ellie stares at the map a little more.

"Probably we aren't going to be able to contact my power plant.  It -  I can't think of anything else it's worth trying, can you?"

"Do they have a website?"

"I can try emailing them."

"You can use my computer," someone says. "I want to look heroic and have a good excuse to put off my work."

". . . Okay."  Computer computer.  " - Where's the on symbol?"

"The on symbol? The computer's on already."

"Not the power button, the thing that goes in email addresses after the specific person and before whatever site it is?"

"Oh, I call that the at symbol. It's here."

"This curves east and on symbols curve west.  And don't have an A in the middle."

"Oh. I don't have one of those on this keyboard."

"I'm going to try it with this 'at' symbol anyways.  I - don't really expect it to work."  She writes up something to 'emergency@power.rom' and has to wipe at her eyes a couple times in order to see well enough to type.

The email is returned to sender a minute later with a "not a valid address" error message.

Ellie folds her hands neatly in her lap and tilts her head forward so her hair covers the sides of her face and sniffles.

A police officer puts a shock blanket on her. Another one says, "I'm worried we're all going to be thrown off for the day on our actual jobs," and around her they try to get back to work.

These weirdly-plain-uniformed police are so nice.  " - I'm sorry, I'll get out of the way - I'll just go - . . . somewhere else - "

"Do you have somewhere else?" wonders a secretarial type person who is not even in a police uniform.

". . . No."

"I like thinking of myself as a helpful person so I'll let you sleep on my couch for a little while if you aren't going to steal or make a mess."

" - Thank you so much; I definitely wouldn't."  Has Ellie horribly misled these people.  "Or if there's any slave-specific housing I can go there and, and work at another power plant.  - It wasn't a mistake of mine that it was maybe going to blow up, it was sabotage and I just - discovered it - "

"We don't have any slave specific housing. Slavery's illegal in the FS," says one of the officers.

"I thought it was illegal in Italy too," someone muses. "Wow, fuck the Italians."

Ellie shifts the shock blanket around herself.  "Oh," she says mildly.

"You were a slave?" gasps the secretary who offered a couch. "Wow, I will have an amazing story about my generosity."

"Stots.  Uh, yes, I was.  Is - when was slavery made illegal?  And what year is it; um, your technology looks fancier than I'm used to, now that I'm - thinking about that - "

"It's 2776 and I think slavery's been illegal for - at least a hundred years? Maybe two or three hundred," says her would-be hostess.

"It doesn't look two thousand years ahead.  What's the numbering from - "

"The founding of Rome," someone says. "I think."

". . . That's also what we use.  But, um, anyways is this country - run by a set of geminis with, um, particular tastes in.  How to run a country?"

"I think the president is a Capricorn," says somebody.

"Why do you know that? It doesn't matter."

"I looked it up once. But I might remember it wrong."

"Which birthday is Capricorn a nickname for."

"December 21 to January 20," says the person who said the president was one.

". . . I s'pose it makes sense that the rest of our calendar system wouldn't match up either.  What're they like?"

"They're not, it doesn't matter," says the one who said earlier it doesn't matter.

". . . Yes it does."

"Wow, really?" says the one who said it doesn't matter. "Gosh. What does it matter for?"

"I heard you're more likely to be a hockey player if you're born around then!" someone pipes up.

"Oh. The president isn't a hockey player."

"Has your society . . . not noticed the thing where people born on the same birthday are just - fundamentally the same person underneath their life circumstances, yet."

"I haven't noticed that, no - anybody else? -"

"I have the same birthday as Josh and we hate each other."

"Yeah, we had to put two cakes in separate rooms."

"Lots of people don't get along with their geminis; like I think pretty much all of the free mes are useless.  Just, that's how I would've turned out in their situation."

"I don't think I would have turned out like Josh in his situation. He's a prick. Anyway, I'm not a Gemini, I'm a Libra."

"I don't know what that is."

"It's another star sign. There's twelve. Gemini and Libra and Capricorn and... Taurus and Leo..."

"Saggitarius, Pisces..."

"These are all out of order... Cancer, Virgo, Aries, Aquarius... that's eleven..."

"Scorpio!"

"Wow.  Your world is - twenty-four thousand years old, then?  Or twenty-five?  Ours is only six."

"Your world is six years old?"

"Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, they say..."

"Six thousand, sorry - millions?"

"Yeah, I think they died sixty-five million years ago. And there were other dinosaurs longer ago."

"The universe is billions of years old, I think. I'm not a scientist."

". . . Okay.  Sorry for taking up so much of your attention.  I'll go - is there somewhere out of the way I can stay until you're done for the day?" Ellie asks the secretary.

"Hey, boss, can I have the rest of the day off, to show this ex-slave who I am very generously putting up at my place to the -"

"No," says her boss, "I think that might set a bad precedent and make me look like a pushover."

"Okay. Well, I can give you five bucks and you can go sit at the McDonald's around the corner, get a burger or something." She produces a fiver. "That way, turn right, golden arches."

"You're very kind."  Ellie folds up the shock blanket and hands it back to the person who gave it to her.  A restaurant sounds kind of much worse than having a supply closet or something to go cry in but she's hardly going to say anything.

The McDonald's is where she was directed! It has food and will accept her fiver for it if she wants some.

She would like a cup of tap water and some fries which she will eat one at a time, ketchupless.  Halfway through she gets nauseated and pauses eating to fold up the straw wrapper into a little right triangle and then unfolds it to doodle overlapping concentric circles.

If the secretary leaves her for long enough she'll eventually finish the fries and tear the carton they came in into increasingly tiny pieces, piled on the booth's table.

The secretary comes by after she's been in the McDonald's for an hour and a half. "Hey! How are you doing?"

"Fine, thank you."  She fumbles the change out of a pocket to hand back to the secretary and starts sweeping her carton bits into the meal's bag.

Secretary accepts change and occupies herself looking vaguely at the menu while Ellie gets ready to go. "My car's parked back at the station."

Ellie nods and after disposing of her bag follows.

"My name is Queenie Reynolds. I'm embarrassed that I didn't tell you that before," says, apparently, Queenie Reynolds.

"Oh.  Nice to meet you, I'm Ellie Mitchell.  . . . Did it just not come up or is that, you know.  Um."

"I know? I must have forgotten, sorry, what is it I know?"

"Um.  Is it - political?  In Rome a queen is a type of ruler.  Which we don't have anymore.  So it would maybe - I don't think it's dangerous, especially if you didn't name yourself, but it would maybe seem a little.  Uppity.  Where I'm from."

"Oh, we don't have queens in the Fractious States, it's just a name. I don't think it's even an especially classy name, now that I think about it!"

"That's good, then."

They reach Queenie's car. Queenie drives them to her house, a somewhat ramshackle splitlevel surrounded by dandelions. "I live alone since I got divorced," she tells Ellie.

"Oh."

She parks in the driveway and hops out. "But it's only one bedroom, plus a foldout couch for you. I'll get the spare sheets."

"That's more than generous, thank you."

"More than..." Queenie's eyes sort of cross. "What else is it?"

". . . Uh.  Kind?"

"Oh! Thank you, I like being able to tell people I'm kind." Queenie lets them in and sets about readying the pullout sofa for a guest. And puts some chicken fingers and frozen fries in the oven.

"Would you like any help with that?"

"With - what, dinner? I guess it would feel really fancy if you wanted to set the table. I usually just eat off the counter when I'm by myself." The table has mail on it, and an old mug of coffee dregs, and a smear of glue.

Ellie can stack the mail neatly and put the mug by the sink and chip her thumbnail trying to scrape off the glue and set the table, sure.

And presently they sit down to chicken fingers and fries. "You can come grocery shopping with me next time, I don't know what you like."

"I'm not very picky."  Though you wouldn't know it from how slowly she's going at this meal.

Queenie, perhaps assuming that Ellie filled up on McDonald's, doesn't comment. "Okay. I eat a lot of chicken and potatoes and pasta."

"That sounds fine.  I think I might still be a little sick from teleporting but normally I like this sort of thing."

"Oh no, I didn't know teleporting could - well, actually I didn't know teleporting even existed before you showed up, but I wouldn't have guessed it would make you sick!"

"Crystals are really dangerous once you go beyond the stuff in everyday jewelry.  With something complicated and unknown enough to manage teleportation I'm lucky to be alive at all."

"Like they're poisonous?" wonders Queenie.

". . . Kind of, sure.  Except you don't have to eat them; just being near them can be enough to unheal you if the setup's wrong.  And sometimes they just explode."

"Wow! I didn't know that! That's scary. I think I'll skip the geology section of the natural history museum next time I go."

"I think people would have already noticed if the dangerous stuff was getting put in museums."

"I'd think so too but I would also think I would have noticed if crystals could explode all by themselves so I want to be more conservative than seems really necessary until I understand more!"

The state of safety education is kind of atrocious here.  "Crystals don't do anything all on their own; they have to be set in arrays.  They can still be dangerous if you put a bunch right next to each other, or if there are several bigger ones farther apart, or if you lie to healers about what your birthday is.  But the array that teleported me here was I'm pretty sure an intentional act of sabatoge, and definitely wasn't an accident."

"If you what to healers?"

"Lie to them."

"- is there some medical procedure where you have to - lie down on a particular hospital bed corresponding to your birthday -"

"If you tell them you have a different birthday than you actually do."

"If you - misread your birthdate -? Oh, or if you were a foundling or something?"

"Foundlings, yeah, sometimes.  In the past sometimes tyrants would try and kill everyone with a certain birthday, so it made sense to tell them you had a different one, if you were one of those?  But you shouldn't do that with healers because you'll just die anyway."

"Made sense to - sorry, I just don't understand -"

". . . What's your birthday."

"June seventh."

"So if your - whatever you said you had here instead of a Caesar - wanted to kill everyone born on 'June' oh seven, and some FS guards knocked on your door and asked you your birthday . . ."

"Well, I have a gun."

"But if you didn't."

"I probably wouldn't answer the door."

"Say they stop you on the street."

"Well, if someone wants to kill me and I don't have a gun I might try running away but I don't know that it would work."

"If they thought you had a different birthday they wouldn't want to kill you.  Right?"

"Seems like a very weird way to decide who to kill, but if that's how they're doing it, sure."

"So if you just told them you were born on June oh eight . . ."

"I wasn't, though. As far as I know. I guess I could call my mom and ask if it was close."

"Why would somebody want to kill everybody born on June 7 anyway?"

"If they're uppity and you're evil or if you always have bad plans and you want to stop the rest of you from also having bad plans."

"...I don't get it."

". . . Never mind; we'll come back to that later.  So, my birthday's October threect-seven, right?"

"Right," says Queenie. "When is that?"

"Right at the end of the year.  But actually it's even more at the end of the year, because it's not October threect-seven, it's October fourct.  New Year's Eve."

Queenie blinks a few times. "Huh, my calendar must be a misprint, it puts New Year's Eve on December 31."

"Or there's two more months here for some reason.  Uh, but, I just lied to you about my birthday, which was safe in this context but you absolutely shouldn't do to someone who's going to be healing you with crystals, is my point."

"You did what about your birthday?"

"Lied.  When I said I was born on October threect-seven but actually it was a day later?"

"I don't think I know what threect-seven is."

"It's uh, thirty-one in decimal."

"So you were born on Halloween, that's fun!"

"Is that another name for New Year's Eve?"

"No, it's October thirty-first. November is after that, and then December."

"In the system I'm used to October thirty-two is the last day of the year."

"System you're used to... Is this the Chinese calendar or something?"

"I don't know whether I'm billions of years in the future or twenty-some thousand years in the future or on the bottom of the world or what, but - I think I teleported much farther than just to a different country.  I guess I'd call it the Roman calendar but I think that means a different thing to you than I'd mean it as."

"I would have told you Italy uses the same calendar we do."

"Yeah."

"So in our calendar is your birthday Halloween or New Year's Eve?"

". . . Huh.  I don't know whether I match up with anyone here.  Probably if you had the same solquinoxes as us you'd have noticed - but I guess the even folks could still be the same . . ."

"What's a solquinox?"

"Somebody born at the peak of a season.  They all have really forceful personalities but I guess the ones here might be kind of subtly forceful.  . . . Or if this is the bottom of the world maybe everything's kind of opposite, and - they're actually the most, uh, even-tempered?  Or something?"

"This is the northern hemisphere."

"Northern . . . . . . . . . . 'hemisphere'."

"Yeah. Because the Earth is a sphere. We're on the half closer to the north pole than the south pole."

"The Earth is flat."  - Ellie kind of instantly regrets saying this to the person kind enough to host her but here she is, now!

"Wow! I was not paying particularly close attention in school but that really surprises me to hear! I wonder why they make globes. I guess they're sort of fun to spin around."

"What's a globe in this context."

"A model of the world as though it were round."

"That's a weird thing to make, yeah.  Is round-earthism - popular?"

"Round-earthism? Reckoning the earth is round? Well, I thought so but maybe all this time I was the only one who thought globes were meant to be accurate."

"Huh.  - And, uh, yeah that."

"I feel really stupid now," confesses Queenie. "I was never a great shakes at academics but I'd thought I could get what shape the planet is right."

"How . . . is the world being round . . . supposed to work?"

"Well, it's not, you've just said."

"But when you thought it was?"

"Oh, I thought down was toward the middle, which was molten, and it spun so it looked like the sun was rising and setting, and went around the sun at the same time for the year. I haven't the foggiest now I know better though."

"I guess it's possible that this world is round somehow; I just have no idea how that would - work - "

"Is it? Possible?" frowns Queenie. "Well, now I kind of want to look up somebody who'd know and ask."

"I don't know!  You'd think it'd feel different . . ."

"Why?"

"Well, if it's spinning, then why isn't there centrifugal force or something flinging us all off."

"You know, that's a good question. I kind of want to call my brother and ask, he's smart."

"Sure."

Queenie goes and calls her brother. "Hey, Damien, I have kind of a stupid question! Yeah. Okay, so: is the earth round? - see that's what I thought! Okay, but so why doesn't centrifugal - oh, I guess that's straightforward. I have mixed feelings about you too. See you Friday." She hangs up. "He says gravity's just plain stronger than the amount of centrifugal force but if the earth spun faster it'd fling us."

"Huh.  . . . My knowledge of crystal magic relies a lot on some constellations staying in the same place all the time.  I might not actually be very helpful to any of the power plants here."

"I don't think we have any power plants that run on crystal magic," says Queenie. "There's coal ones, and dams, and oil ones, and maybe even nuclear ones, but I never heard of a crystal magic one. Maybe they only do that in Italy."

"How do you get essential oils without crystals?"

"I think they squeeze plants."

"Like herbs and stuff?"

"Yeah. Though I think tea tree oil comes from a tree."

"Oh.  What's nuclear?"

"Something to do with making atoms into different atoms, I think. I'm embarrassed that I don't know much about it."

"Oh.

I don't really know what I'll do here then.  Slaves really only learn the one thing.  - Most of them learn different one things, but.  I don't really have - other skills - "

"I mean, not all jobs require skills, you could work at the McDonald's and they don't require you to know anything."

"I see."

"Do you want help applying?"

"I can try on my own but I think I'll probably need it."

"Okay. We can do that on my day off on Wednesday, okay?"

"Thank you so much.  What day is it?"

"It's Monday now."

". . . And how many days is that till Onesday?"

"Wednesday is the day after tomorrow. They do weeks different in Italy too? Wow."

"Maybe it's just the difference in our accents?  I call two days before Onesday 'Vensday'."

"Two days before Wednes-day is Mon-day," says Queenie.

"Understood, sorry."

"Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday."

"I probably won't remember those until I have a chance to write them down."

"I think I have paper around somewhere." Back of a receipt?

"Thank you."  Ellie writes down:

-

-  Mone^?day Munday

-  Twosday

-  Wensday

-

-

-

-  Saterday

"Wow," says Queenie. "Your spelling is really bad."

"Sorry.  How do they go - "

Queenie writes Sunday Monday Tuesday Wensday Thursday Friday Saturday.

"Thank you.  - There's just seven?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Why, how many is it in Italy?"

"Onesday Twosday Threesday Foursday Fivesday Xesday Vensday Octsday."

"Wow."

"It's very tidy."

"I guess it'd make 'half a week' less ambiguous."

"Is there a weekend?  Ours is two days long."

"Yeah, Saturday and Sunday are the weekend."

Ellie references Queenie's list.

"I'm going to put on some TV," says Queenie, and she flops onto the couch and turns on baseball.

Sure, Ellie will join in on watching this weird sport.

There's a voiceover narrating what's happening off the camera view and contextualizing the plays, but it does assume you know the rules. The commentators occasionally remark that they're tired or hungry or, in one case, that their balls itch, in among their baseball-related remarks.

O . . . kay.  Ellie doesn't have a TV, that's probably normal.  Or at least more so than this strange asymmetric game.

After the game Queenie wants ice cream, does Ellie want any?

"No thank you.  I still don't feel very well."

"Okay. You don't have health insurance and I don't like saying I'm a nice person enough to pay huge hospital bills so I really hope you feel better in the morning."

Bedtime!

It's kind of early to be going to bed, according to Ellie's internal clock, but she's out of sorts enough to fall asleep pretty quickly anyways.

Queenie has an alarm clock, and wakes up to it at a quarter to seven. She starts bustling around the house, starting the coffeemaker and getting herself showered and dressed while it runs.

"Would you like help with anything?"

"You know how to scramble eggs?" asks Queenie around some bobby pins in her mouth.

"I do!"  She does.

Then they can have scrambled eggs for breakfast! "All right, I'm working till four today," says Queenie, "and then I'll come home. You going to be okay in here? You can watch TV or whatever."

Probably the time system for hours around here will become apparent or just won't matter for today.  "I'll be fine, thank you so much."

"Mm-hm! Help yourself to anything in the fridge except my pineapple juice and my emergency pint of Half Baked."

And off goes Queenie to work.

Ellie tries to figure out how to work the TV.

It turns on like so, still tuned to the sports channel. Here is a soccer game.

What else is on?

Nature documentaries, a televised lecture about the history of paint, a reality show about a bunch of people crammed into a house together and filmed, a reality show about a guy going on dates with a bunch of different women and dismissing one every episode, a timelapse of a house being built, a piano concert, a jazz band, a guided meditation program, a weather report, the national news, a documentary about a political campaign, a combination history/reality show where some reenactment people attempt to demonstrate how medieval tools and practices work while actually temporarily living under conditions requiring them, a dance contest, a comedian making observations about how escalators can only become stairs, and an infomercial for a blanket with sleeves.

She'll start with the dating reality show.

"On our last episode..."

Shot of a pretty woman with plenty of makeup on, tossing her perfectly wavy hair, with a label naming her "Carly" superimposed. "I think of myself as pretty easygoing and able to get along with nearly anyone, which is why I thought I'd be a good fit for this show where you date a stranger. But I like some people better than others, and compared to Al... I prefer Rachel."

Swooping shot of this pretty woman kissing another pretty woman!

Closeup of an interview with Rachel! "Kissing her felt good. Like, really good. Much better than kissing Al. Next time they do a season of this program they should check if the guy is a good kisser. But it's also possible he's fine and I'm just gay. I'm sorting out my feelings on that now because it's not what I was expecting. I had a late and perhaps incomplete sexual awakening. I want to put my face on Carly's cleavage."

"On this episode of The Bachelor," says the announcer, "will Al dismiss Rachel? Will he dismiss Carly? Will he keep them both, and send away..."

Interview with someone named Delia. "I'm really homesick. I keep asking Al to send me home, so I don't have to void my contract by running away in order to leave, which sounds very scary, but he keeps telling me that he's trying to follow the rules and only get rid of the girls he likes least. Do you think if I put shaving cream on his pillow he'd stop liking me?"

Interview with someone named Vera. "I want to marry him because I think I can convince the studio to pay for a lavish wedding where I'll feel very special and beautiful, and that's important to me even if we'd probably get divorced in less than six months, but I think I really disappointed him during the talent show where I got a bunch of wrong notes by trying an overambitious song."

Interview with Tammy. "He's really hot! I think this week I can convince him to hook up with me, if I can find some condoms, but I looked moderately hard for about six minutes and didn't find any and the producers aren't telling me where they are... maybe Al has them all?"

Interview with Patrice. "I just want to be on TV as long as possible but it's possible that telling Al that I have no interest in him as a person really hurt my chances."

Interview with Charity. "I blew him but he said it was underwhelming. I think he's probably done with me."

"Or," says the announcer, "will he surprise us, and dismiss a dark horse candidate? I don't know what he's going to do and I'm kind of on tenterhooks about it because I have formed a parasocial relationship with Patrice and feel invested in her success! Now, here's - The Bachelor, The Al Season: Episode Seven: Beach Episode."

The girls are now all shown deciding what bikinis to wear and chatting with the camerapeople about their decisionmaking process; there are a few extra girls, not just the ones shown.

. . . Stots.  The future or whatever is very sexual.  And showing two women kiss who aren't even actors - are they both solquinoxes?  They probably are; it kind of seems like you wouldn't get the thing where sometimes they pair off with evener folks the same sex as them if your society hadn't even noticed they were desirable.

Ellie remembers getting sucked into infomercials when she was small enough to still live with her parents; how about that sleevey blanket?

It's currently on a part of the infomercial where it shows a bunch of people petting it or putting it on or rubbing it on their face and then exclaiming over how soft and cozy it is.

Ellie will indeed get sucked into this for at least a few minutes.

Historical reality show?

"I'm going to go collect some of my piss because under the circumstances we're operating under for this show I don't have a better way to get ahold of urea, which has various uses in agriculture and manufacture! But they're not going to film me peeing, because that wasn't in my contract!" a man wearing period garb tells the camera, and then it cuts to someone shearing sheep.

Ew.  She switches to guided meditation.

The guided meditation leads her through a body scan where she's supposed to focus on all the individual parts of her body, relax them, and move on. There are sometimes odd breaks in the continuity of the voice, like they couldn't record it in one take, but there is no extraneous commentary in this one.

Okay actually this is boring.

. . . . back to The Bachelor?

They've made Carly captain of one beach volleyball team and Rachel captain of the other team, probably to stir up drama! They're taking turns picking girls, and at the end Al is supposed to decide which team he'd like to lend his support to. He winds up choosing Rachel's team "but it's not that much to do with who I like better, I just think they'll win", and then they play volleyball in the sand.

Ellie will stick at this one for a while to see whether it ends up dramaful!  And also to try and tell whether either of the lesbians seem odd in the birthdayish sense; she's pretty sure a society couldn't go very long without noticing they had the same set of solquinoxes as at home, but she's seen at least one movie with the premise that there were different ones, so maybe that's what's going on here?

Carly and Rachel keep blowing each other kisses. Delia gets hit on the head with the ball and takes the excuse to sit out. She starts building a sandcastle. Eventually Rachel's team wins. Rachel is now supposed to throw Carly into the sea as a penalty, which she does with a lot of unnecessary groping. Tammy and a girl called Lateisha get into a fight about Tammy thinking that Lateisha should have tried harder not to kick sand in her face and Lateisha thinking that having established it was an accident they should drop the subject.

They all watch the sunset over the water; highlight clips of them splashing around, retreating from the cold water, and building more sandcastles play; they have snacks and cocktails and are inverviewed about how they feel about their chances of dismissal tonight.

Ultimately Al dismisses Patrice and Charity and a girl called Simone who has been very much in the background. Sad instrumental music plays as they collect their single stem roses from him and file off the set.

The end credits play over a still of Rachel carrying Carly to the sea to throw her in.