"This all sounds very cute, but it'd probably be very disruptive and distracting to have them sliding around with messages in all directions from every polis in the world."

"A bit, yeah," he snorts. "Thus, the underground pipe system. Not disruptive at all once it's made, just when it's being made. Also, we'd have to throw money at the problem."

"Automatons could do it as long as we knew how fast they were and had someone on the other end to grab them when they'd gone far enough."

"I'd worry about a few decades down the line, though - what do we do if one of them collapses and is in need of maintenance?"

"Publish how to make tunneling automatons," shrugs Sylvi.

"Well, yes, but that doesn't solve the problem," he points out. "Finding where the collapses are is important if they happen."

"Program the shines to come back and make distressed little dances if they run into a problem?"

"Hmmm. That'll work, I think, though finding exactly where things are would be a problem without careful planning. But we do have time for that."

"We have lots of time, in a way. It's great."

"Yeah. Confusing, but - I think I'm getting over that reasonably quickly."

"It makes the dreams make more sense. Especially the ones where for no reason I'm a boy."

"That - must have been quite confusing. If I ever turn up as a woman, I'm pretty sure I'll be tremendously confused."

"Lu was worried that you'd turn up a girl and the 'bel' tradition of only liking guys would hold. She thought that would be very sad."

"Probably also quite awkward. Sadly awkward."

"Yeah." Page, page. "Apparently Kidan took a while to - buy what was going on and it upset Lu, who'd gotten a much higher ratio of - romancey dreams than I have so far. I'm not gonna be pushy, promise."

"Thank you," says Avedan after a very brief pause.

"You're welcome. Lu also took longer than I did to figure out where she was supposed to go - you've probably had more dreams than I did, since you're older, but I got lucky with landmarks."

"It took me a while to figure out the city, but I managed after Kidan mentioned some places I could look up. The others were a bit too vague."

"Kib's route between here and the smithy where he made and assembled Charp's component parts went right by that big blue tower, which was easy to look up, and he had to make the trip several times."

"I think the problem with me is that Aydanci was a recluse that never went outside unless he had to and Kidan kept traveling places. I hadn't known why, but now it's for making slavery go away, which makes sense."

"Huh. Are you - travel-y?"

"Not... Really? I will if it gets me something I want, but I don't particularly want to travel just to travel. I think Kidan's travel was specifically because of the slavery thing, not him secretly wanting to see the world."

"Right, but if you had a travel-y project underway or weren't satisfied with how Kidan left his," she says.

He shrugs. "Then, yeah, I would be. Hypothetically."

"But in fact you are not. Okay." Pause. "Should one of us get a hotel room? I'd rather not have to hunt one down while half-asleep from having stayed up to read all these notes."