"I don't hold you in contempt, at least not how I think of contempt, I suppose it's possible your understanding is something about thinking you could kill me if you wanted to or something like that. It's - heartbreaking, that there are chattel slaves suffering, but their owners - didn't know any better. Everyone starts out not knowing any better, and different places manage to teach them different things. I just want your grandkids to grow up somewhere they'll learn better sooner."

Feris makes a face and quietly clenches both hands into fists. "You know how you spend all your time here politely not hitting me or telling me what a monster I am, and I return the favor, because otherwise we couldn't possibly achieve what we want to achieve here and we're all professionals and it's still very stressful? I cannot put all of Sesat in that position. They will not all restrain themselves. It will be taken as an insult if you say that people are like infants and you expect no better of them. It will be taken very badly if you say that you want their grandchildren to grow up ashamed of them. I am not sure how 'contempt' is translating but possibly not very well. Can we try for a framing that involves... thinking Sesat has anything at all to offer, or that there is something impressive about its people?"

"...everywhere has something to offer," says Nelen. "But I don't know what Sesat has, yet, except - its people, who will presumably be able to contribute something eventually but I can't predict what. Maybe someone from Sesat will be an amazing inventor or wizard or explorer or ambassador or historian or scientist or artist or statesman. I don't know. If you're depending on me telling you that Sesat is, beyond having unique individuals in it the way most places do, special, that its people are better than we expect of random human societies of its tech level - no. It isn't. I'm sorry."

"I'm not depending on you telling me anything. Look. Do you care if you get just enough of Sesat won over to vote for you and the rest try to kill themselves by being such nuisances that you do it for them?"

"- I'd really rather if they didn't feel the need to do that but I guess it wouldn't be irrecoverable?"

Feris doesn't quite manage not to look disgusted. "Fine. If that's fine with you then I don't care, I'll help you arrange it, but only if you'll let me stall long enough to get my own family out of the way. And don't trace them, if I manage to pass them off as having come from Azan or somewhere I don't want everyone knowing they're really from Sesat."

"I mean, if you know how to get a better result, I'm all ears. And I certainly don't mind if you want to get your family out of Sesat and have no reason to track them down."

"Not if it'd be a bridge too far to say 'your soldiers show such courage' or 'your philosophical tradition is unique and interesting' or - it doesn't have to be something we're dramatically better at than some other society, though it does surprise me that you can't think of anything about which you could say that we're above average even for our own tech level, is there any chance you haven't checked every possible measure of societal greatness yet?"

"If 'unique and interesting' will do it I can say that! The philosophy is unique and interesting, the language is unique and interesting, the art and the folktales and the music and the - if it doesn't have to be better, just unique and interesting, then yes, you have lots of that, I can talk about that all day if it will help. That's why we want your stories. Tarwë, are there any good stats -"

"The city's actually a lot cleaner than comparable ones elsewhere," Tarwë says.

"- Really??"

"They wouldn't have assigned you to one that was less clean without warning you."

"I guess they wouldn't!" says Nelen, shaking his head.

"Cleaner! Huh. Maybe a tack like... Sesat is much cleaner than average and this matters tremendously, Sesat is unusually like a high-tech society in this important way, of course Sesat wants to go yet further down that road, by the way it turns out eventually at a certain tech level justice is obsolete...? Not sure how to sell that one but if a thing we pride ourselves on is something you hold us in high esteem for and a way we're like you, then maybe I can leverage that into 'it's obvious the thing we've wanted all along is to be Amenta'... I need to work on that a bit, figure out a sensible connection..."

"If the 'the thing we've wanted to be all along' tack seems promising I can get you books on more societies under the peal umbrella? I guess it's not impossible that Amenta's closest but you don't like children nearly enough to seem like a close match to me," muses Nelen, "I guess if you ignore that it's not a terrible analogy on other axes, though, we were also pretty retributive and authoritarian and conservative..."

"How'd they sell you on being less of those things?"

"Mostly through the children angle. Amentans will compromise on nearly anything to have more kids than we were able to stuck on one planet. This is also probably why we were retributive and authoritarian and conservative, because of the population control situation, we liberalized remarkably fast once anyone who wanted to could buy ten acres and have fifteen babies on it."

"Ah. Yeah, where else is there that's very clean?"

"Stork was relatively clean - the servants helped a lot," says Tarwë. "Disappear was too. For nonmagical unusual attention to cleanliness - let's see - a few places in Warp - some specific Earth cultures -"

"I want to hear about the places where it wasn't magically easier, are there things I should read or do you feel like giving me a summary?"

Tarwë can do a summary of nonmagically cleanliness-focused cultures. Some of them figured out germ theory way ahead of time, some of them had religious reasons, some of them have no obvious contributing factor and just prioritized things being clean.

And back in Vanda Nossëo, Fere wants to know when she can next have a talk with Artorian or Keoni. Preferably Artorian because he's the one who referred her to that job, but really whichever of them is available sooner.

Artorian has the weekend off and they're going to go to the roller coaster park, does Fere want to come?

Yes. ...On learning what a roller coaster is, she revises that to YES.

They pick her up and call a jitney and go to Plummet Park! "How're you doing?" Artorian asks.

"I'm... fine but after the consulting gig I realized I really don't know enough about the multiverse and I told the guy I'd get back to him on some of it. Would it be too much of a buzzkill if I asked about crimes and stuff here?"

"Nah, go for it. If it's a bummer we'll just buy cotton candy about it."

"Cool. Uh, what do you... do here... if someone's trying to start shit?"

"Start shit like how?" asks Artorian.

"The other day this kid threw a whole wok full of spam fried rice at somebody's head and a robot had to catch it," recalls Keoni. "But the kid was like eight, so his parents just told him off and took him home."