"Wellll, he's here too, he's down the hall with Ly and Lyra and their new friend. We're half here cause she wanted to get out somewhere, and he doesn't wanna let her out of his sight right now cause he's a mother hen." 

"That's really sweet but I also don't think I understand all the relationships here well enough to totally follow it."

"Oh, um, so Zei and I are work partners, he lightens things which means I can take more cargo places. His partner and girlfriend is Lyra, and her brother is Ly, and he's my partner. I'm also a bit compatible with Lyra and really we're all kind of together, actually?

"Oh, and Lyra's pregnant."

"Ah, is that what Zei's being a mother hen over?  Cute.  Maybe if you and me and Bryce hit it off we will all glom together into one enormous esper polycule..."

"Ooh, you too?! I kinda thought so but-" he laughs at himself, "I mean, I guess a lot of espers are kinda poly, but- yeah. Um." 

Giggle.  "There are not actually a lot of espers in our esper polycule.  But Bryce and I - have something like the relationship of two male leads in an adventure-drama who are textually lifelong best friends and partners-in-crime and subtextually fucking - and Bryce is dating Kimberly who you briefly met, and internet dating a girl named Millie or Pandora, and Kimberly's friend Lenore is not at this time I would say romantically involved with any of us but she's attached to Kimberly enough to be part of the family.  And then Bryce and I both have a few occasional other guiding partners, but I'm not sure any of them are part of the polycule.  Jackhammer and I are kind of flirty but in a, like, non-transitive way."

Thoughtful nodding! 

"I kind of have guiding partners all over, in case I need someone in a given city. And also just cause I like meeting people," he shrugs. "That's the other part of why we're here." 

"I like meetin' people too," he says.  "And so does Bryce, I think, in controlled doses."

"...We've been going to more mixers lately, of course."  He gives Jamie a squeeze, with the arm wrapped around him, and a gentle scritch-scritch.

"...yeah. 

"...I think a lot of the newer espers don't actually know it's coming? Zei talked to a girl who didn't, earlier. I mean, they're mostly going to mixers anyway, but we should do something to warn them better I think." 

"Don't they?  It's not like it's anybody's first... I guess I don't know, if you didn't always want to run dungeons for a living, how checked in you are to stuff like the lull."  He shakes his head.  "There's not really a lot of formal onboarding, is there, for espers... maybe in guilds they do it differently, but it seems like so much of it is word of mouth."

"There's a few orgs around, but you kinda have to know they exist? There's one that works with the foster system in the Central provinces and they're how I met Zei, but I dunno about everywhere else." 

Aww.  Squeeze.  "Yeah.  I wonder if there's any way to systematically reach out to new espers... maybe that should be one of the things espers with minor powers do.  The thing nobody does of going around emergency rooms and poking everyone, I mean.  Anyone who pings them gets some literature..."

"The pamphlets in the University hospital in Saskatoon were gone because random people kept taking them to read." 

"Eesh," he says.  "Though, uh, I can't say I didn't do that once as a teenager.  I really wanted to be a dungeon esper."

"...yeah, I guess I did it too," he admits. "And if everyone does it once..." 

He chuckles ruefully.

"But that's still putting a lot of onus on the guy who just got out of hellweek," he says musingly.  "I wonder if, I don't know, we oughta compile some of this 101 stuff into, like, presentations.  Run mixers more like conventions, have introductory panels for the newbies.  ...or just talk to these orgs about sending reps out to mixers.  I don't know, I'm spitballin'."

"No, no, you're totally right. Hmmmm... I dunno if this is the time for it, right before a Confluence, but after... Or maybe it is the time for it, or at least for a sorta basic one, just to make sure they're all on the same page." 

"Round up all the newbies, give them We're Due For A Confluence 101?  ...you know, that might not be a bad idea."

"Yeah. There's at least a few of them out on the floor, and even people who were around last time could probably do with a refresher." 

He takes his phone back and starts hunting through his bookmarks. 

"I've got a few good sites and threads we could make notes off?" 

"Ooh, let's see 'em," he says.  "Did you work the 2030 confluence, by the way...?"

"I woke up, like, just after it. I'm a Confluence newbie, even if I've been active six years now. S'why I keep bookmarking stuff about it." 

Speaking of, he hands the phone over once he's opened up a few tabs. There's some esper forum stuff, but also a few Reddit threads and one interesting thread from tumblr, alongside the International and Canadian DRT sites.

"Take notes on yours?" 

"Can do."  He sets to work.

They make notes! Starting with what a confluence is, what the lead up to a confluence looks like, and what happens on the first day. Some examples of dungeons that only show up during confluences, and the ones which always do. How being an esper changes during the event, from wider deployment to cooperation to teleportation rates. How long they tend to last, and predictions on what this confluence will be like, given the long period between it and the last. 

"We should try to put together some resources, maybe... Or, just get everyones' emails and do that later?" They shouldn't spend so much time planning that other people start to leave! 

"Yeah, I like the emails idea," he says.  It would indeed be a pity to not get around to making the actual presentation until everyone else involved in the mixer has long since gone off elsewhere to do other things.  He thinks about, and talks as they're making notes about - how to convey what it feels like to work a confluence.  How everyone's on edge, how you have to learn to expect everyone to be on edge, and expect yourself to be on edge too.