In front of the palace there appears a strange party. One woman looks almost normal, even ethnically; the others are clearly not even humans. The one with red and gold hair has matching eyebrows and too many teeth, when he smiles. There's an inhumanly beautiful man, seven feet tall, and a very lovely woman, brown-armed and pink-winged and haloed; there's a man who is thoroughly improbably ugly.

They wait a beat to see what the reaction to them will be.

The people in their immediate vicinity are startled, moving away when they first appear and regarding them sort of warily, the inhumanly beautiful ones as much as the ugly one. One of the guards at the entrance to the palace runs inside immediately. 

"Hello!" says Nelen. "We are peaceful visitors from Vanda Nossëo, very far from here around another star."

"What is 'Vanda Nosseo,'" one of the remaining guards asks, "and what do you mean by around another star." 

"Your sun, like most suns, is the same kind of thing as the stars you can see at night," says Nelen. "We're from a place with a different star for its sun. Vanda Nossëo is a huge federation of many peoples and worlds all collaborating on achieving universal free movement, free trade, and free flow of information, and wealth and quality of life for all people."

"So you are not claiming to be from a different world, just a very far away place in this one?" the guard clarifies. 

"- well, we're also from a different world. Several of them," says Nelen. "But usually it's less complicated to open with 'another star'."

"But none of the worlds in question are, say, the underworld, or the Demon Realm, or wherever the gods fucked off to," the guard says.

"As far as I know none of the worlds we have preexisting contact with have also had preexisting contact with yours."

"That's probably better than not that," the guard says. 

A woman who is improbably but not implausibly beautiful for a human, dressed in a complicated silk dress that nonetheless does nothing to impede her freedom of movement, comes out of the doors to the palace with a screaming toddler on her hip. The toddler's tears look like liquid gold, and she walks with a swinging enough gait to gently bounce them. 

"What is going on?" she asks the guard. 

"These people claim to be emissaries from another world, which is not the underworld or the Demon Realm, and they claim no affiliation with the gods from whom Tianyin Pavilion claims descent," the guard says, bowing to her. 

"Well, that's good."

She turns to the Vanda Nosseo representatives, not blinking at any of their strange appearances. 

"Hello. I'm Imperial Princess Mo Lisao. What do you want?" 

Ohhhhh that's a baby. Nelen melts and is speechless for a moment. What a good baby even if they're screaming. Valid for babies to scream. They drilled him on this but Cassiel steps in to help rather than wait for him to recover.

"We're here to see if your people would like to join Vanda Nossëo, or if not, if there's anything else we can do for you," says Cassiel.

"What is Vanda Nosseo, besides in another world." 

"Vanda Nossëo," Nelen says, as though he's addressing the baby since he's still staring at the baby, "is a federation of many peoples and worlds all collaborating on achieving universal free movement, free trade, and free flow of information, and wealth and quality of life for all people." He nods seriously to the baby at the end of this sentence.

She manages to stifle her giggle, but not her smile. 

"Can you elaborate on what you mean by those things?" 

"Member states of Vanda Nossëo commit to enabling emigration for all their people, and agree to minimum laws against murder, rape, and torture. Emigration is sufficient but not necessary for trade and information flow... The details differ, but that's what we're here for, to figure out if you have unique needs and how we can best help with them." That baby sure might have unique needs.

That baby sure does have unique needs, at least for relevant definitions of unique. 

"How does Vanda Nosseo define 'people'?"

"Sapient cognition, membership in a species that typically has sapient cognition, we have edge case law for hive minds, if there's a species you're not sure about we can call in someone with psychic powers?" Nelen coos at the baby.

"Oh, we're sure, where we is the royal family, but for much of our history we haven't been considered people. --Although I am, also, separately, concerned about how your laws cover angry ghosts, if we can't put those down then that's pretty much a non-starter." 

"Self-defense is legal, though I'd hope we could find some way to improve on the state of the art for dealing with angry ghosts. May I ask why the royal family hasn't been considered people?"

"Because eating our flesh improves your cultivation. --To be clear, we only became the royal family in my father's generation, the general term is 'butterfly-boned beauty.' 'Butterfly-boned beauty feast' if you're being crass." 

"I see. Being - magically useful to eat - does not make someone not a person under Vanda Nossëo law."

"Good." She hugs the little boy, then passes him off to a teenaged girl who hurried up in her wake. "--Speaking of becoming the royal family in my father's generation, it's also important to ask whether you have a practice of prosecuting crimes committed before Vanda Nosseo made contact, and also, to what extent is being mind-controlled an exonerating defense." 

Nelen manages to stop staring at the baby now that he's no longer in the possession of the person he's talking to. "By and large unless there is a plainly ongoing danger connected to such a crime we consider our arrival to be a perfect occasion for blanket amnesty. A lot of people commit crimes under conditions of scarcity or danger that we can help with. Being mind-controlled just makes that an even easier case."

"That's good to hear. Since you do not have the context everyone here does: Mo Weiyu, the future First Emperor of the Cultivation World, was placed under the effect of the Eight-Sufferings-Long-Hatred Flower at the age of fifteen. The effect of this was to gradually mind-control him into becoming extremely evil, to the point of causing a bloodbath as he conquered everything under the name Taxian-jun. My mother, the empress, was able to devise a way to free him from this curse when I was just a baby. He remembers everything. Don't speak of it lightly to his face; it still pains him." 

"I understand," nods Nelen.

"Excellent." She turns to go inside, beckoning them to follow her. 

"In general, Butterfly-Boned Beauties have golden tears. It skips generations; my father didn't know he was one until I was born. I have more questions but at this point I think it's time to bring you to Father's attention; you're probably more important than whatever else he's dealing with right now." 

"Thank you, we appreciate that."

She leads them through hallways and courtyards filled with people; servants going about their business, but also non-servant people of various ages, mostly not more than a little older than Lisao herself, plenty of them much younger. She deftly weaves through children chasing each other and yelling and teenagers talking in low voices. There isn't a lot of crying, but what few tears are visible are golden. 

She brings them to the doors of a large, opulent hall, peeks inside, finds that her father is not in the throne room at the moment, and leads them past and down a few more hallways to a much less richly appointed office, stuffed with books and papers, in which a man in a chinese-style crown and a slender person all in veils have their heads bent over something. 

She enters and bows. "Father, Mother, I have visitors you'll want to speak to." 

The man in the crown lifts his head, looking past her at the visitors. "Who are they?" 

"They say that they are emissaries of Vanda Nosseo, a group from another world which wishes to promote free movement, trade, and the spreading of laws against murder, torture, and rape to cover anything that can think. They aren't anything we already know of and they don't recognize the dehumanization of certain groups for convenience' sake." 

"Thank you for the introduction," says Nelen, smiling. "I'm Nelen Utopia, and these are Cassiel Jones, Tanaka Natsuko, Tarwë, and Zanro."

The veiled figure turns when Tanaka Natsuko is introduced, scrutinizing her. "Dongying?" they ask after a moment.

"I'm from a planet with the same landmasses as this one! Dongying might be your word for the islands corresponding to where my family's from." She pulls up a map on her chiplock, produced from her pocket, and points. "They look like this, from the sky."

"Yes, that's Dongying--what is that your map is on, though?"

"This is called a computer! Four of us have this kind, but we control them with a brain implant, and Nelen has a different kind of brain, so he has to use a different kind."

Nelen produces his tablet with a self-deprecating smile. "They're working on it. Anyway, computers hold and organize a lot of information in a very small space, and we also have technological lights that let them display it like this."

"That is fascinating--what does it mean to have a different kind of brain?"

"I'm not a human," Nelen says. "Neither are any of us except Natsuko, actually, but they all have their brains organized in a similar way, and the implant works the same for all of them. I have part of what I'd need the implant to connect to over here," tap, "and another part over here," tap, "and the brain scientists are still trying to figure out how to make it work properly without messing up anything I'm using in the middle."

"What do those things do, and what's in the middle--I should probably wait until later to ask questions like that, sorry," she says, giving her father a slight embarrassed nod. 

He gives her the kind of smile that signals that if they didn't have Important Guests then he would get up and hug her and possibly ruffle her hair. "That's probably for the best." 

To the delegates: "So, besides having marvelous gadgets, what else is there of note about Vanda Nosseo?"

"We've also got magic, like the translation magic we're using to talk to you right now!" says Nelen. "And many, many member peoples across lots of worlds. We're here today to see if you're interested in joining them."

"You're using translation magic?" Dammit she really needs to stop letting herself get nerdsniped by things that are not politics. "What would it mean to join, exactly?" she asks, to cover her slip. 

"To join Vanda Nossëo we make sure you have and are enforcing laws against murder, torture, and rape, which most places already have but some need tightened up a bit," says Nelen, "and you agree that anyone can leave your polity at any time - that's intended to be a broad-spectrum incentive to be a nice place to live, and also is our relatively simple low-overhead solution to cases of domestic abuse, slavery and other untenable working conditions, that sort of thing. Then, if a majority of your population votes that yes, they'd like to join, you're in. That gets you defensive support from Vanda Nossëo if anyone attacks you, and gets everyone signed up for universal basic income, a periodic payment all individuals in Vanda Nossëo get as a baseline. Even if you don't want to join, you can still get a 'bus station' - a place to get rides to and from Vanda Nossëo and allied locations - and some shops that sell some of our stuff, and some automata that can teach people about things like math and science."

"How does 'anyone can leave at any time' interact with situations of, say, prison, and house arrest." 

"We normally consider our arrival to be a suitable occasion for universal amnesty if there's not an obvious ongoing danger," says Nelen. "A lot of people commit crimes because they're hungry or frightened or cornered, and if they could instead just go live somewhere totally else - let's see, what's the most else place -"

"My friend's niece and a bunch of her buddies turned into dolphins and are just dolphins all the time," volunteers Natsuko.

"Sure, maybe some of them would rather be... dolphins... really?"

"Yup," says Natsuko.

"Wow. So anyone who is currently in prison or on house arrest and is not obviously a danger under conditions where they can just, apparently, turn into dolphins -"

"You know we can turn into dolphins!"

"I didn't know anyone was staying that way full time! Gets a chance to try again. But if after that they reoffend, Vanda Nossëo does have prisons. Prisoners can pick which one they stay in, different people - on the species but also the individual level - find different conditions preferable. For example, if Tarwë decided to commit murder for some reason, he'd have to be on one of the ones where the entire planet is a prison; Elves spontaneously die if they're confined."

"What if there is an obvious ongoing danger. Such as, say for example, unresolved grudges that one might be pretty sure someone might try very hard to resolve given complete freedom of movement."

"We have truth magic," replies Nelen promptly.

"So--absolute freedom to leave with the caveat that people who leave have to say under truth spell that they aren't planning to gather a bunch of resources and come back and assault or kidnap with them? Or are you imagining something else when you say that." 

"...You said you have to let anyone leave, not that you have to let anyone come back."

"That's right, you can restrict immigration. Uh, you aren't allowed to forcibly displace large populations unless you have something deeply weird going on, but you can exile a small number of criminals."

"There are not any large populations we have any wish to displace. --I'm particularly concerned about a specific individual, and if he chooses not to leave I don't intend to force him, but if he does leave it doesn't seem wise to let him back." 

"I assume if exile is fine then 'you can pick between continuing to be under house arrest or being exiled' is fine." 

"Yup!" says Nelen. "That shouldn't be a problem at all."

"We might want to have promising under truth-effect that you're not immigrating for nefarious reasons, as a condition for immigrating, just in general, if that's possible, but it seems a bit premature to get into such levels of detail so early."

"That's possible, the truth effect isn't one of our scarcer things."

"What is scarce, to you?"

"Resurrection, immortality, and new planets. Some particularly large-scale magic."

He goes very still. 

"Resurrection?"

"- yes, for most species. Do you know if people here have souls?"

"...Do...people elsewhere not?" 

"I guess that would explain how you reacted like angry ghosts aren't a common problem to have. Although I think most of the rest of the world has less of that problem, anyway, it's just that the barriers to the Underworld are thinner in the cultivation world--if you think people elsewhere have souls I am going to guess you have checked based on your astonishing level of technology--"

"Souls are actually hard to check for, that's why we ask - a lot of our checking protocol only catches material objects," says Nelen. "We can resurrect people without souls - like me, or Natsuko, say - pretty easily; we can resurrect people with immaterial souls, like Zanro, as long as we can find the soul and coax it into a new body. If the soul both exists and goes missing we don't currently have a way to retrieve them reliably, although there are some things we could try."

"We know where most of the souls are, they're in the Underworld. Or, uh, reincarnated, which is a bigger problem probably." 

"- yeah, reincarnated we do not have a graceful solution for although if those people want their memories back there are again some things we can try. Can you tell me about the Underworld?"

"We don't know that much about it because you can't exactly come and go freely, but it's got a bunch of levels and if you burn paper effigies of stuff you can send it to dead people, and most people reincarnate after spending a while there but some people get detained for a long time. And it's ruled over by a group of really powerful beings called Ghost Kings. And one of them tried to invade the cultivation world several centuries ago. Possibly there have been other attempts, by that one or others, but we're very sure of the one." 

"Okay. That's... a bit above my pay grade, but we have very dedicated people working on the trickier resurrection situations. I just can't have it done in five minutes."

"That's good to know." She glances at her father, then continues: "It would be valuable to this regime if those whose lives were lost due to the effects of the Eight-Sufferings-Long-Hatred Flower could be retrieved. On a more...personal level, well, I'm sure everyone has someone they miss." 

Nelen nods solemnly.

"Are new planets in very high demand? --I suppose they must be, if you have a meaningfully growing population of immortals--how does immortality work."

"Immortality can be achieved in a variety of ways, but the most straightforwardly commoditized is an enchanted ring that prevents further aging after that point. You can combine it with a trip to Natsuko's homeworld and use a local artifact to also become younger - and change anything else you'd like about your shape and appearance. The rings don't prevent violent death."

"So, extremely valuable to anyone who isn't a cultivator, less valuable but still valuable to anyone who is. --I'm curious what your medicine is like."

"I can heal basically any ailment in any humanoid - uh, or bird, for complicated historical reasons - with a touch," says Nelen. "Access to that magic system is very tightly screened, I'm the only one on this team who has it, but Natsuko can use a different magic system to heal most common things and Cassiel can do a lot too. If you have an acute need I can call in backup. For everyday purposes it's often cheaper and easier to use nonmagical medicine, which I don't personally know a lot about, but my understanding is it's pretty good."

"What counts as an ailment?"

"Injuries, illnesses, poisoning, the condition of being starving - I can't make hungry people feel full but I can make them not starve indefinitely if I'm in some weird situation where that makes sense - I'm not actually sure we've ever found a nonmagical problem that it couldn't cover. It doesn't cover all magical conditions, like if a Hex wizard causes you to sprout rabbit ears."

"What about really old injuries? A scarred-over stump, for example." 

"Both Natsuko and I can handle those."

"Father, if Nelen Utopia agrees, I would like to ask your permission to see if he can do anything for any of the remaining Zhenlong Chess Pieces."

"...You have permission." 

"What is a Zhenlong Chess Piece?" inquires Nelen.

"A victim of a forbidden technique for which Taxian-jun was infamous. Those affected lose all personal agency and sense of self and fall completely under the control of the person using the technique." 

"- I see. That doesn't sound like a physical problem but I'd be happy to try. We have some more mentally-oriented healers who might have luck with it if I don't."

"I think it would be interesting to know how your healing interacts with purely magical ailments. Of which not very many people are afflicted per capita, but they can be disproportionately disastrous." 

"Would you like me to check now?"

"...It isn't getting worse. If you'd rather not interrupt this conversation it isn't necessary."

"Checking is quick, and bringing in a psychic healer may not be, they're harder to come by than physical healers."

"I suspect that if you can't do anything for them then the problem is just that they're functionally dead. But it's not impossible."

"Where can I find them?"

"They're mostly used to guard particularly sensitive locations--follow me," she says, gesturing. 

Nelen follows.

She brings them to a door that two figures are standing in front of. 

The two figures are blank-faced in a way that speaks of excellent autonomic control and nobody whatsoever home. They're wearing uniforms different from the ones the ordinary guards were wearing, all in black. 

Nelen pokes one on the back of the hand.

The man's face shifts briefly from blankness to shock, and then he collapses to his knees sobbing into his hands. 

"I'm going to call that a promising result, under the circumstances."

"- would you like me to have him teleported to a place where we tend to put people who've had - supernaturally traumatizing experiences, or do you think he can likely recuperate locally?"

"I mean, he could, probably, but we don't have a great place to...put him...that wouldn't make him interact with Father, which, uh, wouldn't be fair to him."

"Okay. I'm going to put him in a Lórien, that's a kind of magic forest that's very soothing for the most similar cases we've tried -" Pop.

And then Nelen's back a minute later. "Sorry for the wait, I had to explain him."

"You know what, that's fair, it's the kind of situation that bears explaining. Given that your role is Ambassador rather than, uh, atrocity relief, do you want to--call someone else in to handle the rest of them, table talks until the rest are done, table doing the rest until talks have progressed--also could you tap my mother at some point, it's considerably less urgent but my mother did, also, sustain a significant magical injury while Father was being mind-controlled."

"I can call in a float healer with the same powers as mine who can heal them all and bring them all to the Lórien, and I'd be happy to heal your mother."

"Thank you. I thought it was very promising when you reacted well to the implication that meeting powerful strangers was not more important than comforting an upset child, but you have nonetheless far outstripped my expectations."

"...my species likes babies more than most," he says a little sheepishly. He takes a picture of where they are, and presently a float healer - she's naked, but covered by a moving illusion of millet stalks that obscure her torso - appears. "Millie, hi, this place has some people who are in a sort of catatonia and need a poke and a ride to Lórien, possibly not in that order."

"Okay, where are they at?" Millie asks.

"They aren't all currently gathered at a central location--I'll alert Father and he'll send them all here."

She raises her hand, and a glowing purple butterfly appears above it and flutters off much faster than a normal butterfly could fly. 

This urgent task having been accomplished, she looks at Millie more closely, eyes tracing up and down her without particular hesitation or prurient interest, and says, "--Some kind of nature spirit? I suppose it's none of my business, but you almost seem to fit into the paradigm I'm familiar with, you see."

"Pretty close! I'm a nymph, and the goddess who invented us made nature spirits, but I'm from a domesticated strain."

Nod. "Millet?"

"Right in one!"

"I like your," she waves her hand in the general direction of her own torso, "effect, it's very pretty. And thematic." 

"Thanks! Nymphs don't wear clothes, so this is a compromise solution."

"Oh, huh, is that the kind of thing that requires a lot of compromising? I mean, maybe I'm biased, apparently most places don't have angry ghosts, but as inhuman eccentricities go that sounds extremely harmless."

"Some people are very serious about their nudity taboos! Fortunately Elves aren't too stuffy about theirs, because they think it's lewd for people to have unbraided hair!"

"Oh no," she chortles, one hand going up to her hair, which is considerably less indecent than loose but not actually decent, by elf standards. "Mother would about die to learn about that if it weren't for all the veils, he's so easily embarrassed." 

"Don't worry, Tarwë's used to it," Nelen assures her. "Natsuko and I don't braid our hair."

"You underestimate how thin Mother's face is. I'm not bothered, but I wouldn't be anyway, I managed not to take after him that way nearly at all."

"How many people am I going to be healing?" Millie asks.

"Uh, I've never personally counted, a feeew hundred probably?"

The first handful start to trickle in. 

"Okay. I'll just bring them all to Lórien first and then heal them there?"

"That sounds like a good idea for several reasons." 

Millie teleports off with the first batch.

"All right, they're in good hands," says Nelen.

"Yeah." Sigh. "I'm glad. Let's head back?"

"Mm-hm." Pop! Back in the meeting room.

The Emperor gives his daughter a questioning look. 

She bows slightly. "The ambassador was able to restore the victims of the Zhenlong Chess technique to what I can only assume from the description of the spell was their full faculties. The example I personally witnessed was admittedly not especially coherent. He started crying," she elaborates.

"I see. You have the Empire's gratitude for this assistance in repairing the damage done in my...earlier years."

"We're glad to be able to help," Nelen says earnestly. "I hope they're able to recover completely in time."

"I think we all hope so. --Mother. The damage done by Zhenlong Chess is entirely magical in nature--they can probably heal you. Will you let them try?"

The veiled figure nods after a moment, pulling off a glove and extending an uncovered hand. 

Nelen taps his fingertip.

He inhales sharply, withdrawing his hand carefully and tucking it back inside the glove. 

"Did it work?" the Emperor asks, tension in every line of his body. 

The Empress nods, and the Emperor HUGS him. He manages to simultaneously hug back while also hissing that they have COMPANY and making a token effort to push him off. 

"Should I take care of negotiations for the next little while, Father?" 

Nod nod.

She leads Nelen out of the room and shuts the door firmly. "Sorry about that." 

"It's quite all right," Nelen assures her.

"Your powers are amazing. --How difficult are they to learn?"

"Mine in particular? Not very difficult per se but they're very easy to abuse so there's pretty heavy screening for it."

"Screened how? What other kinds of powers are there in Vanda Nosseo that people can learn?"

"Lots of interviewing with truth magic, some training exercises intended to elicit stress reactions, background check, that kind of thing," says Nelen. "Natsuko's a wizard, that's also learnable and also takes screening plus you have to be very smart to get very far with it. If you're good at singing, there's magic songs; recordings also work. Magic rocks are mostly a Mîr thing, that's Vanda Nossëo's sister polity, though we have some too; their magic doesn't take much learning but you do have to pass a screen to get it. Sometimes people wind up with magic if they turn into vampires but it's not reliable. There's the Dwarf method of making artifacts, but it's too slow for most humans to bother with. So far everything else we've got is either trivial or something you can't get if you weren't born with it, though Mîr can 'wish on' duplicate versions of some powers."

"I'm smart! And have spent a bunch of time working on not doing bad things when I'm angry on account of the evil mind-control thing! --Right I should be doing politics not being a huge nerd."

"There'll be plenty of time to go sign up for wizard classes," Natsuko smiles.

Bounce bounce. 

"--Right. Tell me more about Vanda Nosseo. What usually happens when someone joins? I mean, besides the official stuff."

"It's pretty common for there to be a lot of emigration early on," says Nelen. "Adventurous types moving out into the multiverse to learn magic or science or to travel or to go on speaking tours or to start a restaurant for their culinary niche somewhere or to turn into a bird for a while or something. Some of them send remittances back home, and some will ferry multiversal goods in, so everything gets cheaper and everyone's buying power increases, fast, even before factoring basic income in - that can start before you even join, since you're allowed to visit Vanda Nossëo without belonging to it, and allowed to move there as an individual. There's often some unrest in certain classes or age groups if their way of life becomes economically awkward - farming and textile work in particular are hit very hard and not everyone's always delighted that they can just retire if they like. You'll get tourists; I'm not sure how many, it varies a lot, but there's always someone who's determined to visit every single planet they possibly can, and fans of various fiction genres you near-enough match, and people who like your art, and some fraction of the people who pick their vacation destinations at random. They'll show up and buy local authentic souvenirs for outrageous amounts of money and you may feel free to soak them for it, they know their own budgets. The envoy teams pack up and go home, the Department of Integration takes over and will want to train some locals for cultural competence reasons; that's a good opportunity for anyone who wants to pick up magic to get a foot in the door in the Vanda Nossëo organization and establish a track record."

"The farmers thing does sound like a problem--not, like, enough of a one to make joining seem like a bad idea, but--is this kind of thing handled in a standard way, I remember something about a basic income, how economically awkward is it...?"

"Vanda Nossëo issues every citizen a basic income; the pay schedule is currently every four weeks except in experimental regions or for people who want it in smaller more frequent amounts for whatever reason. If you join, or move to Vanda Nossëo as an individual, you can get a bank account - that's a formal record in our financial system that you exist - and it will automatically update with those payments. It's enough to live on, reasonably comfortably, by our standards, without working - it'll pay for a place to live on any planet, though not necessarily any city, and food and clothes, and frequent supplementary expenditures for entertainment or travel or charity or convenience or savings. It is very normal for a large chunk of people on a newly contacted planet, especially a lower-tech one, to immediately retire from their jobs and spend years living off basic income as soon as they're confident it's real; that's expected and fine and will not threaten Vanda Nossëo's finances at all."

"Can't the people who don't want to retire just--not retire? And live off the basic income anyway while continuing to practice their craft even if people aren't paying them for it? --I don't have the best perspective on this, on account of being a princess and also a cultivator."

"Yes, they can just not retire. Some people do that but others find it lessens their satisfaction in what they do if it's not also an economic niche, or feel less valued by society, or don't like not providing for their family themselves."

"That makes sense. But it still seems thoroughly worth it, on net. What would be the first steps in joining?"

"We need to make sure that your local laws are within or can be amended to accommodate the Vanda Nossëo requirements, and then we need to hold a vote of your population - everyone has to be allowed to vote, and turnout is very important, since the result is based on percentage of your actual population who vote yes, not percentage of people who turn in a ballot at all."

"What's a ballot?"

"A written record of a vote. It makes counting them easier if they're written down, but we can have poll workers writing down people's opinions for them if they don't feel up to writing it down themselves."

"Or if they can't read, I assume."

"That's the most common reason but not the only one."

"We'll probably need a lot of poll workers, then; most people can't read."

"Yep, we can deploy a bunch of them whenever you feel ready to hold the vote."