Awesome. Okay. What next. ...She would kind of like a restraining order against kind of a lot of people but she doesn't want to be at all unclear about whether she's fucking with people, and this might be a reasonable way to eventually fuck with people, and she's kind of worried it will lose her the high ground with Vanda Nossëo. She hasn't had the high ground in anything with anyone for a long time and she's not sure how to use it but it's probably not worth throwing away before she's thought about that.

Instead she googles why Vanda Nossëo doesn't have slaves. It'll probably be even more dense reading but it's important.

There is not actually a single canonical article on "why Vanda Nossëo doesn't have slaves". She gets results about orc slavery under Melkor, the luck-potion-aided disassembly of human chattel slavery as practiced in Hazel contrasted with its messier historical equivalents in Cube/Warp/Revelation/Wish/Aurum (and an aside about Eclipse, which is more off-kilter from the other Earths in historical eventualities like this than they are from each other), and an explanatory writeup of why there is not a specific law against slavery per se and instead just a law requiring freedom of emigration (house-elves, from Hazel, and also a couple random Warp species, and some weirdos from wherever, apparently like being slaves, and this condition has held up to all the bewildered investigations thrown at it); and an article about the coup on Atarale and the resulting enfranchisement of the birdpeople there who had been kept as slaves and their eggs eaten as delicacies; and similar such material.

That's so much. Of course there'd be so much. How is she supposed to read all that.

She does not read all that. She does make some attempt to read about Melkor and Hazel.

Sesat... could look like Melkor, couldn't it, with the determination to hurt certain people as much as possible. And instead you could... just not hurt people? That's wrong, of course, justice is right and important. But if someone were wrong about that, and just wanted everyone to be as happy as possible all the time, and wanted to bribe everyone to abandon all their quarrels...

...well, they'd be wrong and unjust, exactly as unjust as Melkor, but they sure would have some fantastic bribes...

...and Fere would never let herself be bribed like that. Not knowingly, not once it was obvious.

But justice doesn't require that she go haring off without waiting for Vanda Nossëo to rescue everyone who might be in harm's way first.

So while she's waiting on that, she looks up more exotic foreign music and online games.

There is a ton of music to be had, and everything she listens to brings up margin suggestions for ten more similar things she might like. Games are more aggressively advertised but lots of them are free and many don't require reading to play.

She discovers that she likes Bob Dylan and then goes looking for something janglier and screamier.

Games are weird but sort of interesting and some of them are exciting and feel almost like being powerful and winning. She looks up from one to discover that it's suddenly almost midnight and goes wearily to bed, promising herself she'll never play another of these games again, or at least not as long as she still has things to do.

The next day she wakes with the sun already up for the first time in a long time, and starts looking for short-term work.

There are many forms of work available! Some of them don't require any skills she doesn't have that can't be covered by on the job training, such as:

- medical research subject (includes all-cause-mortality resurrection insurance)
- hand-making artisanal doodads of various sorts that cater to people who don't like mass produced stuff
- dog walker
- consumer focus group member
- Yeerk host

And there are things that do require skills, but that she can find training for that will pay her to take it for a cut of her subsequent income:

- masseuse
- daycare worker
- shopkeeper for an envoy store, like Artorian
- housekeeper (no scrubbing required, the household has a prestidigitator, she'd be organizing and tidying and managing some household inventory)
- remote quality control on some robot work

She'd like to work at an envoy store, but they'll probably ask if she's planning to eventually go torture someone for things they did before gracious and generous Vanda Nossëo came to save them, and she totally is.

She - she could take care of kids - she stops at that one and - she doesn't tear up, she tells herself she can't afford to fall apart and the jolt of terror and desperate need to move and do things distracts her. She paces while she reads the rest of the ads and doesn't look at that one again.

She can walk dogs. Dogs are nice. She likes dogs and has no particularly interesting history with them. What dogs need to be walked around here?

There is a dog walking agency two trolley stops away from her and she can show up and get a route to walk on which she will collect dogs, and then she can wander wherever with them and drop them back off again in an order determined by how much exercise each dog needs.

That's... actually the best job she's ever had, that's so awesome. Is she supposed to just walk with them or is she also supposed to take them someplace out of the way and throw things for them?

If she wants to also throw things for the dogs some of the customers will pay extra for that and they can get her a route with those customers!

Best job. She will throw things for dogs and take them for walks and tell them all that they're good dogs.

They are all good dogs. They lick her. The agency is really happy to have her! Just goes to show that for any job you still need done post-scarcity someone's going to have a grand time doing it.

It doesn't pay much more than her basic but it is on top of the basic, so she has nearly twice as much income now.

She absolutely does not mind being licked.

That is so much money. She counts it and tries to wrap her mind around how unfathomably much richer than the Star-of-Stars she is. During her kind of ridiculous amount of time off, she listens to metal and sometimes classical music and reads the news from Sesat and sometimes reads the local news too. She gets better at it. She runs out of the instant meals from the shop in Azan and goes to Keoni's restaurant again and doesn't freeze up this time and tries some kind of fish thing.

She has a nice big apartment all to herself. She's never slept alone before, never had so much space. She buys a prestidigitator. She names it. She considers whether she might like to buy a dog, too, but she's not so sure she would.

Keoni is usually home alone but sometimes Artorian is on a work break and he's there! He's really glad Fere's doing so well and would like to hug her!

She would like to hug him! She would also like to know if he brought her stuff back. She tells him she'd invite him and Keoni for dinner if it wouldn't insult Keoni.

He has her stuff! Not the clothes she was wearing and not the original birth control implant because he didn't want to draw attention to wanting her stuff that much but everything else.

"Running a restaurant doesn't mean I can't go over to people's places for dinner!" says Keoni.

Yeah she's not exactly missing her old clothes anyway.

"Well, then you guys can come over for dinner some time!"

"I'll look forward to it!" says Artorian.

And for the next few days instead of reading about Sesat and sadly imagining personality traits for her prestidigitator she spends her free time learning to cook. What can be cooked cheaply here (so she can practice), is not something Keoni does better every single day, is really popular, and will not be an insult to serve guests? Can the internet maybe suggest things that meet these criteria?

Pizza! You can buy the dough and then you just have to roll it out and put some sauce and cheese and whatever else on it. If it doesn't come out round, the internet assures her this will just make it look "rustic". She will need these items to make it.

She acquires these items and finds a chance to mention to Keoni that she's learning and ask about her and Artorian's favorite pizza toppings.

Keoni likes chicken and corn, and Artorian likes pineapple and ham!

Soon she invites them over for pizza with chicken and corn and pineapple and ham on it. It's slightly overloaded with toppings.

This is fine! They will take slices of pizza and compliment her on it and remark that her prestidigitator chassis is cute.

"Thank you, I thought it had personality. How's the store going?"