Wow, something must really be wrong with him. He will lie in bed until a doctor shows up and tells him what he's supposed to do about having been unconscious or otherwise failing to form memories for the entire trip back from the space altercation home to Ibyabek.

Memories that would presumably include how he got into this formal outfit!

The ceiling has an interesting texture, but not that interesting.  Swoopy stucco.

A formal outfit, oh boy. He's not sure what that means but maybe it means he's waiting for his father instead of a doctor? Can't rule it out.

It's nice to lie down in normal gravity instead of the slightly weird fake gravity of the ship.

After a while he can hear hints of music, from outside the room.  Humming, which doesn't carry very well, and then wordless but open-mouthed vocalizing.

That's nice, it will make waiting less boring.

After the song wraps up, footsteps approach - hard shoes on wood flooring - and there's a knock at his door.

"Come in."

Someone leans in the doorway with a smile.  "Hi, Kyeo.  Care to come out?"

"Am I medically cleared to do that? I don't remember what's wrong with me."

"You are!"

Then he will get up and smooth his formal outfit and come out.

And here's a hallway and a living room.  The stranger sits.

"Can I get you something to eat?"  (Kyeo isn't hungry and isn't full.)  "Feel free to request something, or we can choose if you'd rather not."

"What's the occasion?"

"- Well.  Your resurrection."

"I beg your pardon?"

"...What's the last thing you remember?"

"There was a ship to ship altercation..."

"There sure was.  You passed away in it.

"And now, a very powerful society has brought you back."

"...why?"

"Are you sure I can't get you some food before we get into this?"

"...sure, whatever you're having will be fine, thank you."

The stranger snaps his fingers and two copies of an elaborately-plated pasta dish manifest on the coffee table in front of them.  Along with wine glasses full of - juice?  Maybe some kind of juice.

"This looks lovely." He will wait for the guy to have the first forkful and then tuck in.

Yup, he'll take a bite.

(The chefs on staff here are pretty far from the best in the multiverse.  It's a big multiverse, though.)

Wow. He will now be concentrating on eating at a reasonable speed without overcompensating to the point of insulting the chef.

"This is always so satisfying."  But he sets the plate back down on the table with nearly all the food left.

"Are you familiar with the genre of reality TV?"

"No."

"Documentaries, then?"

"Those I know of, yes. Is someone making a documentary about... the battle? A broader topic?"

"Not quite.  ...Not at all, actually.  But you can imagine knowing that something documentary-worthy was going to happen, and making sure to film it, yes?"

"Yes."

"And from there you can imagine the film crew contriving to make things more interesting than they otherwise would have been.  That's reality TV, at the core: contrived documentaries."

"Someone is... contriving... a documentary about... not the battle, what else would it be?"

"Falling in love.  Or, dating at least.  Sometimes marriage."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"We'd like to cast you on it, as one of the people who might find love."

"...I don't understand your casting decisions."

"The context gap here is really very large; there's a lot of things you shouldn't expect to understand just yet.  Let's just both do our best.  Do you have a specific question or should I keep trying to explain?"

"...please go ahead, thank you."

"The basic premise here is that there's one person, the bacheloret," (perhaps this is the point at which it becomes obvious that the conversation thus far has been not in Ibyabekan, or in any other language Kyeo previously knew, but instead in one that he definitely knows now) "who dates many other people, and chooses the one they like best, until there's only one other person left and then hopefully those two like each other quite a bit.  With me so far or should I break it down further?"

It's... sort of like Kularan, except not at all. "Why does this person do this?"

"Well, often because they want to find love and don't like their other prospects, or because they want to be famous.  That's not the case in this one, but - maybe we circle back to that in just a minute."

"All right..."

"Previously this was a very heterosexual setup.  A bachelor with all female contestants and in a separate season a bachelorette with male ones.  Not so, now; we're a lot more enlightened and the pools have been combined."

"I have a clean bill of health. ...at least apart from having died."

"You have a cleaner bill of health than before you died; we went ahead and fixed your throat for you."

"- oh, that's very kind of you, thank you."

"You're welcome!  That said, our target demographic does not consider nonheterosexuality to be a medical matter.  Well, inherently.  Not in the way you mean it."

"...that's as may be."

"So, we could fix that for you as well, although - well, how do you feel about that idea, if it involved direct mental editing instead of months of - you'd object, wouldn't you, if I called it - instead of months of treatment?"

"There is no longer anything to be fixed, as I said."

"No, I mean, should we put you back."

"Back to... certainly not, why would you do that?"

"For your happiness and personal flourishing."

"That does not seem like call to reverse someone's medical treatment."

"As I said, we disagree on whether what you experienced was that.  But it was only an interest check; I'm not planning to push the matter."

"I see, thank you."

"The bacheloret for the season we'd like to put you on is a man, though."

"I don't understand how you chose me or what you - know about me - but -"

The guy waits for Kyeo to finish his sentence.

"- the last time I was set up in this way it did not go well," Kyeo says eventually.

"I'm not sure I would describe you as ever having been set up in this way.  The resemblance is... very superficial.  At best."

"You want to put me in a situation where I am meant to - exhibit - availability to -" They fixed his throat but apparently not the thing where occasionally the world pretends to end hard enough that he believes it.

"Hey, woah.  Would you like to not feel like that right now?"

What kind of question is that. Does he have empathic powers. Kyeo stares at him for a moment then nods.

The guy produces a box from the inside of his suit and then a tab from inside the box.  "Under the tongue," he instructs.

This man is probably not in fact a doctor but maybe he doesn't have to be? Kyeo puts it under his tongue. The end of the world spins to a graceless halt.

"I think the difference where we're not encouraging you to do something duplicitous, and in fact are specifically trying to cultivate something authentic, is a pretty key one."

"I'm not sure any of the difficulty was due to inauthenticity."

"Seems to me that the difficulty was in the people engineering the situation expecting inauthenticity.  We don't."

"You can keep these."  He passes the rest of the box over.

"Thank you."

"What was your medical treatment for, if not your happiness and personal flourishing?  Would you say."

"I thought you knew what it was for. Are you even a doctor?"

"No, and that's hardly ever one of the things I play on TV.  If you're going to put it like that, I guess I have to ask: what was the thing it was for for?"

"...to cure my problem."

"But who was it a problem for?"

"Me and anyone who might have gotten infected, obviously."

"...Homosexuality is not transmissible.  In most universes.  But are you saying you think it was a problem for you in a way that was unrelated to your happiness and personal flourishing?"

"I don't believe I understand what you're getting at."

"Let me clarify: what purpose does ridding you of being gay serve?  It is, I would say, fairly obvious why doctors cure someone of a broken leg, and that is obviously tied to their happiness and personal flourishing.  By contrast, one doesn't often see societies seriously claiming to be curing people of the state of having a right hand, because, obviously, that usually would not in any way improve their happiness and personal flourishing.

"So, if it's not about that, what is it instead, for you?"

"I'm not responsible for hospital policy."

"Societal coherence," the man ventures.  "Or for science, so your doctors could learn whether these sorts of changes were possible.  Or for someone else's happiness and personal flourishing.  Any of these?"

"I was also not present at any of the meetings where hospital policy was decided upon."

"And you don't have any guesses either?"

"I am not aware of any purpose for which I ought to guess." Making conversation with this non-doctor is not such a purpose.

"Well.  How do you feel about going on the show anyway?"

"I don't understand what anyone is getting out of this. That is, I think I follow the manufactured documentary concept but not - the appeal of a kind of documentary where you resurrect dead soldiers to employ as manufactured documentary subjects with a... romance theme."

"Does it clarify anything if only two suitors here are soldiers?  ...Maybe three.  Two and a quarter."

"Not particularly."

"Part of the idea is that there's a set of people from diverse backgrounds.  It didn't used to be this way; in some early seasons you'd have a cast of nearly-identical people with - for a real example! - four Laurens and a Laura.  But it's much more interesting when there's more variety."

"...so you don't even particularly expect me to be to your main subject's taste."

"Not necessarily, no.  Some of the other suitors, for example, are here explicitly to drama-tically increase the entertainment factor of the show, and have very little chance of being truly compatible with the bacheloret.  You're not one of those, though."

"No?"

"Should I be expecting you to cause drama on purpose?"

"I do not wish to cause drama on purpose but you could have expected me to do it by accident. Or on demand."

"If you want to be a villain, that's something we're very willing to enable and coach people on.  But by default I was not expecting you to go for that."

"Has this anything to do with what I want?"

"Yes.  Not - everything, but anything."

Well that's uninformative but the question itself was already really going out on a limb so Kyeo doesn't have a followup right away.

"I would consider your casting a success if, for example... you hung out here for a few weeks eating delicious food, meeting and getting to know other people and what it's like in places they're from, and being the minimum amount of bought into participating in this television show that, if you get eliminated, you can collect your resources and either build a happy life by yourself or get to work on arranging things to improve the quality of life for people back home."

"...back home? I was imagining it was... very far in the future... such that someone had invented a way to resurrect space debris."

"No, it's a multiversal situation.  Some of those multiverses are far in the future compared to you, but some of them are instead magic or are instead generally boring or whatever.  There are different rates of time even on top of the intentional time dilation we're doing here, but you'll be able to get back to your original 'verse not too long after you left it."

"And since you have acquired me for reasons that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the conflict in my system I'm not strictly speaking a prisoner of war?"

"No, I wouldn't say so."

"So you would like me to treat this as some kind of... extended fancy party... which happens to have as its theme that I am being presented to some man as some kind of philosophically confused romantic prospect but you do not much expect that to matter, somehow."

"I would, to be clear, strongly prefer that it matter somehow.  You'll get more resources the more episodes you make it through without being eliminated, if that helps any with motivation."

"You are proposing to... pay me."

"Well, it doesn't have to be in money, if you wouldn't prefer."

"What do you mean by resources, then?"

"Magic, technology, promised uses of other people's time - generally powerful people - property, and yes, money, are generally what people are referring to when they say that.  Magic can look like items with either a limited number of uses or permanent effects, or powers integrated into your body or personhood.  Generally speaking."

"...magic isn't... real..."

"Oh boy, demonstration time.  Well, you saw the food appear; let's start with that.  Shall I get you a dessert so you can watch it again?"

"To relative primitives a lot of technology would seem inexplicable."

"Yes, and in fact the visual effect of this one is partially patterned after a fictional piece of technology, but it is, in reality, magic.  Which you can get dessert out of observing!"

"...I'm perfectly happy to eat dessert, of course."

Fingersnap, sparkles, chocolate lava cake.

"Magic is usually just an easy way to conceptualize that different universes run on different physics.  For example, the one that started this all - everyone there thought magic wasn't real.  They had a superficially similar technological progression; they needed centrifuges and precision manufacturing to get anything done, same as anyone else.  But when you actually look at what the processes are... it's alchemy.  Or otherwise recognizeably not running on the same sorts of processes that your world makes use of.  If you have enough technical expertise in something I can bring in an expert to get into the differences with you."

"I'm afraid I do not have a technical background."

"Hmm."  He takes a contemplative bite of the lava cake.

Kyeo will try the lava cake too. It's very good.

"Is there anything which, if you saw it, you would consider that proof of magic?"

"I'm... not sure."

"I am, for the record, fine if the issue ends up being dropped, we continue to call things magic, and you over time evaluate whether we're doing that for convenience based on what effects they have or if there really are different sets of physics at play.  It just seems proper to show off a little first - would you like to take a look around outside?"

"Why not." Up he gets.

Outside is a very well-maintained garden full of statues and fountains and plants he doesn't recognize.

And over there, only mostly above the horizon, taking up an absurd portion of the sky, is a planetoid.  With rings and at least one moon.  Small enough and close enough that he can see the buildings.  And some individual trees.

Well it's probably a screen.

"Want to go flying?"

"...if you have something for that, sure."

"I would hardly offer if I didn't!"  He holds out one hand and snaps the fingers on the opposite one; something that looks a bit like a life vest shimmers into existence being held by the first; he passes it to Kyeo.

And begins hovering a foot off the ground.  Silently and with no perceptible force.

He'd been imagining like a helicopter but some kind of magnet jetpack is also cool. "I don't know how to operate one of these."

"If you wear it and turn it on it'll make you effectively neutrally buoyant in the air here, and then I can tether you to me and tow you around.  I'll be gentle; don't worry.  I'm not going to fling you into anything."

Oh okay. Kyeo will try the weird magnet vest.

Journey carabiners himself to a ring at the center of Kyeo's chest.  "See that cord?"  It's placed a bit like a hood drawstring, coming out at two points on either side of the neck.  "With the right side long, you'll experience normal gravity, but as you pull the left side out more you'll get closer to zero G.  Or, feeling like it; the exact mechanics are complicated."

"All right. I do have some limited zero G experience."

"I know."  He tugs on the tether, testing the connection from his end.  "When you're ready."

"All right," Kyeo repeats. He assays the zero-g controls.

Kyeo's feet stay touching the ground unless he pushes off, but he does feel lighter as he adjusts the cord.  It feels a little like he's hanging from the vest, but there does seem to be some sort of gravity manipulation happening to his body itself, too.

Journey floats up, not enough to pull Kyeo up but enough that Kyeo has room to tug on the tether and pull himself, if he wants.

Is Journey using the same controls or different ones?

Journey has no vest visible (and if there's one under his suit jacket it's of a much slimmer profile than the one Kyeo's got).  He seems to have actual control of his momentum; he rose fully above Kyeo but stopped on his own without hitting anything or bouncing at the end of the tether.

Perhaps the vest is just a loaner object and there is something custom and hidey for the host to wear. Anyway, he will indulge in flying around for a polite amount of time.

His host leads him on a lazy lap around the planetoid.

It does not really remain plausible that there could be a screen displaying the other one.  It's at the very least some sort of 3D projection.

Must be. "It's well done."

"I'll pass that on.  Now, I can't take you to the main setting until it's time for the season to begin, but we can land on one of the moons, if you'd like, or go pick some rocks out of the rings."

"...sure, I've never been on a moon, even a small artificial one."

"You'll have to work the vest in order to land on it.  Just take it easy and don't yank on it and you'll be fine."  He starts ascending, as slowly as ever.

...On the lap around this planetoid, the man's hair had remained subject to gravity.  Wind resistance, too, and that stays as they go higher, but as their distance from the ground increases, so does the springiness and floatiness of his curls.

There's Olympic sports sort of like that. Kyeo attempts a landing on the moon.

It's not that hard as long as he increases his gravity slowly while the two of them are in the general vicinity of the moon.  From here he can see that there's actually a second one, too.  This one's kinda pinkish.

"What is this all for?"

"The bacheloret picked it out.  Though, we already had to fill the pocket dimension with something, and it's better for it to be visually striking."

Once the cord's all the way to the right Kyeo feels like he's in Earth-strength gravity, even though the moon is only a couple him-lengths in diameter.

If you can turn it down it's not much of a stretch to be also able to turn it up.

"So, under local terminology, the vest and my ability to Superman around are both usually called magic.  This because they were engineered in a way that doesn't much resemble the process for things that we generally call technology, and they work under a broader set of conditions than tech - for example, one of your fellow contestant's 'verse has hoverboards, which in some ways are pretty similar to what we've got here, but they run on magnets, so they can't go as high, and they stop working if there isn't enough metal below them.  But the vest'll work anywhere there's gravity to work on, unless interfered with by something else which we would generally also call magic.  Furthermore, what I've got isn't an article of clothing at all, and it's not implants or something either.  I got it by a what-we-call-magical person laying a hand on me and saying a series of words.  There's no physical evidence inside me of the fact that I can fly, but things-we-call-magic can detect it.  Hopefully this gives you an idea of the distinction we're drawing here."

"Superman?"

"An old Earth pop culture character who can fly in about the same way as me."

"Ah, thank you."

"You're welcome."

Now what.

"Did you want a rock from the rings or should we go back down?"

"I'm not sure what I'd do with it."

"Fair enough.  When you de-gravity yourself, then."

Kyeo obliges.

And they can swoop gently back to the entrance of the fancy building.  "Did you find that educational?"

"Certainly."

"Ah-huh.  Anyway, we might compensate you in ways that resemble things like that or in ones that look more like technology you're used to, or in something else."

"Thank you for demonstrating."

"...Would you prefer we didn't compensate you?"

"I'm rather wrong-footed about the idea."

"Is it really that different from... you got grades, didn't you?  And those translated to - what classes you would go on to take, eventually what job you'd get, yes?"

"Yes..."

"Does it help to conceptualize payment similarly?"

"No."

"...I've been considering whether we should give you some time to adjust to the situation here, before we put you on the show.  Maybe a month or so."

"Is the filming not... scheduled?"

"Yes, but we have nearly-arbitrary amounts and configurations of time dilation available."

"Ah."

"We have a couple other contestants who are definitely going to need adjustment periods.  So you wouldn't be alone unless you wanted to be."

"I see."

"Do you have a preference about this?"

"It seems like it might make sense to be more acquainted with this culture."

"I quite agree.  We'll probably put you on a third planetoid for the duration; any requests for what that's like?"

"You haven't already decided?"

"Well, no.  It's for the people who go on it and it's only just been determined that you should."

"I don't know what the other people's needs may be."

"Yes, we'll also be asking them."

"I don't have complicated requirements."

"Do you prefer to have access to showers?  There will at least be baths."

"I'm accustomed to showers. Do you film that part too?"

"No.  Audio, though.  Most of it gets thrown out without anything sentient looking at it, but conversations get flagged and passed on."

"I see."

"Or if you make dramatic comments out loud to yourself.  So consider not doing that there."

"Or singing in a way that can be made to seem plot relevant.  But all of this is only once the season starts."

"But you do record it before the season starts." That must be why they fixed his voice.

"No.  The adjustment period is only for adjusting.  There's not really a place it would fit into the existing structure of the show."

Well, it would be rude to call him on the inconsistency. "Mm."

"I didn't want it to be a surprise what may be recorded during the season, which is pretty much everything.  This is not a good organization but I don't want there to be surprises about what non-good things there are in store, when I can avoid it."

Why does he work for a non-good organization. Why do they let him call it that.

"I hope that things like that can make this overall a non-non-good experience for you, despite some of the inherent unpleasant aspects."

It happens that "non-non-adjective" is a really weird construction in Ibyabekan which is his excuse if he needs one for not saying anything.

"Do you want to skip to when your acclimation planetoid is ready in time dilation, or do you have anything else you want to say to me?"

"I don't believe I need to claim any more of your time."

"I'm immortal and we continue to have arbitrary time dilation."

Why can this person not interpret pleasantries normally.

Are they to have a sitting in silence contest now.

Yes.

Very well.

"It is of course perfectly fine if you'd like to skip it anyway," he suggests.

"I haven't come up with more questions."

"You will in general get more things you like out of this experience if you become somewhat more capable of speaking directly about your desires.  But let's go ahead and get you in a different room for about three subjective seconds."

He'll go where he's put.

That is into this well-lit, roomy closet.

Journey shuts the door behind him.