"Does the planetoid have a name?" Kyeo wonders, stepping out.

"I think not unless you give it one, but I wouldn't necessarily know if somebody already had."

"I suppose I'll ask whoever I'm sharing it with, then."

"Mmhm!"

Journey leads him outside to a shuttle with the approximate vibe of a limousine.

Kyeo has been in approximate limousines before.

There's no spot for a driver.  It takes off straight up and quietly, and zooms with gentle acceleration away from this pair of planetoids.

The sky stays pretty much the same color throughout, and for a while there's nothing else to see in the sky.  There aren't clouds blocking where they came from, but as if the atmosphere here were very thick, it fades out and disappears anyway.

After ten or so minutes, another planetoid starts to become visible before them.  It's several times larger than the previous, but still far too small to hold an atmosphere on its own.

Kyeo takes quiet mental notes on the futuristic technology this implies but doesn't have the background to understand answers to questions about it even if they weren't going to be "magic".

Kyeo can see a town on the way down, but they land in a cluster of cottages a ways outside it.  The decoration is as luxurious as it's been everywhere else, though it's aiming for something closer to 'quaint' than 'understated opulence' here.

"That one's yours," he points to the navy blue one and not the seafoam green one with white trim or the brick one.  "I'll let your future co-stars give you the full tour; what do you feel like you need to know before then?"

"You were going for... variety? So I do not know what kind of etiquette they're accustomed to."

"Zane I expect you'll find very casual.  The other one - hm.  So, the thing is that they didn't have a language at all until we gave them one, and had only interacted with humans the amount that implies.  Which is to say, you might offend them, but it's not really something worth going out of your way to avoid.  They've got to get through socialization somehow."

"What... caused that?"

"Their Earth was colonized by aliens who didn't realize humans were sapient and kept some of them as pets until they abruptly stopped doing that.  ...Well, this one actually lived on the local moon, but you get the picture."

"I have seen pictures of Earth's moon. It... seems like it ought to be hard to miss that humans are sapient."

"You'd expect so, wouldn't you?  I think they had some sort of psychic thing going on."

"I see."

"Anyway, there's at least one person here who's clearly going to be much stranger than you in any interaction you have.  Need anything else?"

"Assuming the - tour - will include things like where I'm meant to sleep, no."

"It should be obvious within your cottage.  Have fun!"  He gestures to the shuttle and it takes off, still very quietly although with kind of a warbly sound from the outside.  And when Kyeo turns back to look at Journey, he's gone.

Disconcerting.

He goes into the cottage.

There's a breakfast nook and some cupboards (one of which is refrigerated) stocked with snacks and staples, a home theater with an absurdly large TV, a bathroom with a tub/shower and a lot of kinds of washing products (hand soap, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face wash, full-body moisturizer, toothpaste), and, upstairs, an attic bedroom.

Seems straightforward enough. He is not hungry or tired or dirty right now though. ...is this party outfit going to have to be laundered with personal care products, or is there detergent?

There are neither detergent nor other clothes-washing objects in evidence.

There's a knock at the door.

Kyeo will of course answer the door.

A person with too-big eyes and a board slung under one arm is on the other side.  "Hello!  I'm Zane, nice to meet you."

"Kyeo. It’s a pleasure." Why are his eyes so big. Is it a modification for better vision.

He's also got tattoos on his face that move and pulse, and those eyes are an unnatural gold.  His clothes are substantially less formal than Kyeo's current set, though more garish, and he has a set of clunky bracelets on.  They look more like technology than like fashion.  "Welcome.  I wish the circumstances were better."

The tattoos are really weird and Kyeo winds up kind of looking at the guy's ear when he does not immediately get used to them. "Alas. Have you named the planetoid?"

"I haven't."

"It seems strange to have a nameless inhabited celestial body."

"Now that you mention it, sure.  Did you have any ideas?"

"No, unfortunately."

"Wanna think about it on a walk?"

"That sounds like a good idea." He steps out. "Is there a separate laundry building somewhere, I was just looking for detergent when you knocked."

"I've just been recycling my clothes.  I don't know if they're doing something where they're trying to match the setups people are used to from home, though."

"I am not used to recyclable clothes."

"Neither is Vira-la, but I think her setup is so different from anything they can provide that they put her on my system because I can help her with it.  What do you normally do?"

"I was a soldier. Vira-la is the other person here to acclimate?"

"- Oh.  I'd meant, what do you do for laundry?"

"There were uniforms and the ship had a sonic laundry."

"Her name isn't strictly Vira-la; -la is a suffix my culture uses for people we're close to.  But she objects to the way I pronounce her last vowel sometimes, in ways I can't hear the difference between, and she objects to me shortening her name to two syllables.  She seems fine with replacing the last syllable with something else."

"Oh dear."

"I think the aliens she was raised by can make different sounds than us."  He walks a few paces.  "Do you want to tell me more about your home?"

"My planet is called Ibyabek. I'm... not sure how to describe a lot of its features if you're also unfamiliar with all the planets I'd compare it to. It's hot there compared to here. ...can she pronounce her name to her satisfaction? If she can it must be humanly manageable."

"I haven't quite been able to figure that out."

"I suppose it's also possible that she has some relevant modification."

"Maybe so."

"Does she know I'm here?"

"She's probably been informed.  But I don't know whether she's received the message.  She might be asleep; her schedule's still not adjusted to an Earthlike cycle."

"What schedule is she on?"

"She stays up a really long time - two days or so - and then has two or three long naps over the next day.  I think.  She doesn't keep to that very well either."

"Huh. I'd think that must be a modification if she's not on medication for it."

"Might well be.  What's it like, being a soldier?"

"Up until I died it was usually not very eventful. Ship maintenance tasks and drills."

"How did you die?"

"It became briefly eventful. I shouldn't discuss the details."

He nods.

"On my Earth, we haven't had a war in centuries.  Except that Journey said I died in one."

"We aren't having a war exactly - or weren't, things may have changed - but there was a detente that required frequent attention. Between planets, though, not on one. A planet is the natural unit of solidarity."

"For us the relevant unit is cities.  We haven't colonized any other celestial bodies, that I know of."

"There are many, in my world, three colonized in our system alone."

"Wow."

"What is your city like?"

"Apparently it's somewhat stricter and more violent than most of them.  I'm happy to tell you about - my culture, on the planet level where it's planet-wide and more specific when it is.  It's a long story but I have a decent idea of where it differs from most other local universes."

"I'm not sure how typical my universe is for the locality."

"It seems like a lot of places are 21st-century Earths."

"Well, we used to have one of those."

"...And you lost it by exiting the 21st century?"

"Yes, the planet is still there. It has a very famous moon."

"It's a pretty good moon.  By 'ship maintenance' you meant spaceships?"

"Yes. Ibyabek has boats but they're manned by sailors, not soldiers."

Nod.  "What's being in space like?"

"Artificial gravity feels slightly different from real gravity. It's functionally the same, but it's a little like - being underwater, subjectively. And it's loud, spaceships have a lot of parts that make noise."

"Huh!  What was life like for you before you were a soldier?"

"Before that I was in school. Do you have school?"

"Through 15, yes.  - Are you used to different-length years -"

"Yes, but I know how to convert to Earth standard."

"How long are your planet's?

"About 480 Earth days. Ibyabekan days are a little longer, too, not enough to give most people circadian issues."

"Wow.

"We have the technology for space exploration, but... speaking kindly, the people in charge are more concerned with security and things staying stable than with going anywhere new."

"Well, that's important too. Ibyabek is lovely now but its original settlement was fraught."

"Less kindly I'll add the context that their vision of security and stability involves giving everyone brain damage."

"...that doesn't sound like it would help."

"It makes everyone - placid.  Agreeable.  And less smart."

"They can't do placid and agreeable without making people less smart?"

"Maybe someone could have found a way had they not been made less smart."

"This is affecting even the people who do research and development? They can't find anyone who's loyal enough to the cause without it?"

"They do reverse it for certain positions.  Or do the opposite, for others, make people - aggressive, superior..."

"What is that useful for?"

"Well, we don't call them soldiers..."

"And you are not usually having a war? Is there something looking likely to flare up into one?"

"...Apparently.  Their notional job is to protect cities from outside threats, and that's never previously risen to the level of attacking other cities."

"...Earth doesn't have difficult wildlife in my world..."

"There are people who left the cities to try and start their own society.  In objection to the brain damage.  - I'm sorry, I feel like this isn't the best order to introduce all this information -"

"I will not complain if you want to start over."

He nods.

"I have been told that many Earths have approximately the same history as each other, up to some point of divergence.  We may well have had much of the same things happen in our universes' past.  My universe's divergence point is that in the early 21st century, somebody developed a virus.  Not one that lived in people; it fed on petroleum.  And made it explode."

"...I don't have a very extensive Earth history education and don't actually know what petroleum is."

"Have you heard of oil?"

"For cooking or for machinery or for dry skin?"

"For fuel."

"I guess oil can catch fire, so it is not that strange that it would be usable as fuel."

"At least in my Earth's history, it was the main thing they used to fuel pretty much all their stuff, for a while.  And so the oil bug killed almost everyone in the world."

"...I see."

"The survivors wanted to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.  So - I don't know which came first.  But what they tell us is that people like pretty people, and they hoped no one would want to fight as long as everyone was, so everyone gets an operation when they turn 16 to make them look like this."  He gestures to himself.  "But that's when they put lesions in our brains.  It could have been a pretense all along or they could have started adding it for security later.  I don't know."

"...that sounds very strange to me but I suppose perhaps it does not if you are used to it."

"They lean pretty hard on the propaganda.  When all the adults you see look like this and living glamorously and having whatever material luxuries they want, and all the kids around you are calling each other 'uglies' and giving themselves nicknames based on their least-flattering features, and a thousand other things like that - yeah.  It doesn't sound strange to most people."

"I expect at home most people could imagine something that they'd like to improve about their appearance but it is not encouraged to focus on this in oneself or others unless one is, say, starring in films. I don't think... not being sufficiently beautiful... features as a relevant consideration in any major conflict... and in minor ones I'd expect being prettier to as often exacerbate as alleviate the situation."

Zane nods again.  "It's propaganda," he shrugs.  "However much it is or isn't grounded in truth, the story's been sufficient to keep society in this shape for a few centuries, now."

Kyeo nods.

"It sounds like your universe is more - real."

"...is that a thing that varies between universes?"

"What I mean is, it sounds like your society is constructed so that most people do things that matter."

"Everyone can do work that matters," agrees Kyeo. "This is perhaps not as true on other planets, but it is true on Ibyabek."

"What are other planets like?"

"I haven't been to any, you understand, but they use money - do you have that -"

"Not in modern times, no."

"Well, it distorts the importance of most things, and in particular inflates 'owning money' to great importance even if one does no work for it, and so the people who understand that their work is important and the people whose work is in fact important are I think mostly unrelated."

"I was doing some reading on that not too long before I died."

"Oh?"

"The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx; do you have that?"

"I've heard of it but we didn't read the original text in my philosophy classes."

A half smile.  "It wasn't exactly in our curriculum either."

"No? Just generally available as enrichment?"

"Something like that.  Where was I... a couple of doctors found out about the lesions - most of them don't know about it; nanos do it and there are a lot of nanos involved in the process anyway - and decided to leave their city and try and work out a cure."

"in... some other city?"

"No, in the wilderness.  They called it The Smoke.  It picked up a lot of runaway uglies."

"Seems a poor vantage point from which to conduct medical research."

"It was.  But they'd been shut down in the city, so there wasn't really anywhere else."

"The other cities were all united against the idea?"

"There isn't communication between the cities, for normal people.  I guess Maddy was on the Pretty Committee, but... our city had deleted all their data, so they wouldn't have had anything concrete to show the other doctors."

"And they decided not to try walking to another city?"

"Well, hoverboarding," Zane corrects, gesturing with the board slung under his arm.  "They still would have had the data issue.  My point here is somewhat weakened by the fact that they did eventually join up with another city, but - there are reasons they kept to the wild for as long as they did."

"I'm not sure I follow you but that's all right."

...Zane shrugs.  "I spent the last few weeks of my life trekking through the wilderness, aiming for the New Smoke.  And when I got there, it turned out to be another city.  They'd reversed everyone's brain damage there, and - according to Journey, the city I grew up in attacked them.  That's how I died; I was in surgery at the time."

"Are you glad to be here?"

"Instead of staying dead?  Sure.  Instead of keeping the life I was about to have?  No, not really.  Not at all."

"I suppose they're different questions, yes."

"How about you?"

"I haven't had as long as you to decide how I feel about it."

Zane stops walking to look at Kyeo.

...is there an important landmark here?

They're on a path a short way from the top of a hill in a field of wildflowers.  Probably the view will be stop-worthily nice after another 45 seconds of walking.

Which Zane resumes, after a moment.

He didn't even have a rock in his shoe or anything? What was that about. It'd be rude to ask.

"What was your favorite thing about your society?"

What a weird question. "It's hard to pick just one thing. - I can sing again, I had a medical problem but they fixed that after resurrecting me, if you would like to hear a song."

"I would."

Great, that takes care of the next three minutes of filling silence if he doesn't get too uptempo with the Anthem of the Bright Way.

When they get to the top of the hill Zane flomphs back onto some of the flowers to listen.

And then the song concludes! It is not in English so probably he will not be fielding questions about the lyrics.

"That's lovely.  What's it about?"

"It's the planetary anthem."

"...What's an anthem?"

"The song that - represents a planet - it's like a flag, but a musical one. You don't have these? Do you have flags?"

"No, but I've heard of them."

"It is a musical flag. It's played if our team wins at the Olympics and on official holidays and such."

"What sort of things do you have holidays about?"

"Anniversaries of things, like the revolution."

"Who was being revoluted against?"

"The original colonization was overseen by a corporate conglomerate which exploited its workers very badly."

"How long ago?"

"Before some but not all of my grandparents were born."

"That's somehow more recent than I expected.  What sort of sports do people do in the Olympics?  I've read about it but we don't have it in modern times."

"There are a lot of them but I can try to list some off the top of my head if you like. We medaled in the marathon, in the last games, and I know someone whose brother went for shooting, and there are various swimming events..." He can go on like this for a bit.

And does he stay looming over Zane or lie down next to him in the flowers or what?

He wasn't looming, he was just standing up after Zane chose inexplicably to lie on the ground, but he does sit down after listing relay races and before remembering that figure skating exists.

"Hoverboarding?" Zane wonders.

"No, but there are some zero-gravity sports. I haven't watched them so I don't know the rules."

Zane nods.  "There probably won't be any of it on the screens here.  I don't think they have video from any of our home universes yet."

"Then I suppose I should not bother recommending any movies."

"Maybe for after.  Do you want to learn how to hoverboard?"

"...sure, do you have a spare one?"

"They'll give you one if you ask for it in town."

"I had not realized there was an entire town."

"There is.  It's... strange.  I thought it would be better to bring you out here first."

"Strange how?"

"It's hard to tell what about it seems strange to me because it's not what I grew up with and what's because it's a fake town created in support of a very strange piece of entertainment."

"The entertainment is so strange," Kyeo agrees fervently.

"It's not the craziest thing I could have come up with if you asked me what throwing a bunch of universes together would produce after a while, but at the same time... why."

"They could just write the story they have in mind and hire actors."

"Oh, that part I get the appeal of.  It's the same reason nobody choreographs soccer matches."

"But a soccer match is..." What is a soccer match. "Different."

"Yes.  But maybe not to an audience."

"What about it struck you as odd, then?"

"...Not the immorality of it," he tries.  "But the contrast between that and... the way it's reaching for good things, in places."

"What good things?"

"It rescues people from death instead of just sourcing people like the ones who watch the show and making a nice wish-fulfillment story that people would want to imagine themselves in.  Based on what Journey said, I think they're trying to rescue our entire worlds this way.  And all the lovey stuff; I think they're genuinely trying to have us build something real, there.  But then again, it's like - I don't know your story, but why did they pick a guy who was so obviously not going to be over his ex for this."

"I do not have an ex."

"I have a few.  But only one of them's... really notable."

Zane rolls over a little to look at him again.

"Hm?"

"...It's kind of hard for me to read you."

"Is that unexpected, with someone from another planet?"

"No.  I guess I should say, it's only kind of hard for me to read you.  You're a lot more scrutable than Vira-la.  It makes me think I could understand what you mean if I just tried a bit harder."

"Well, I was raised by and among humans, so I suppose it's not strange for her to be more confusing."

"It isn't, no."

He's still looking at Kyeo.

Why is he doing that. Kyeo will examine the flowers instead of staring back at him.

They're in a patch of yellow orchids.

Pretty! They don't have those on Ibyabek.

"Tally's her name.  She got turned into one of the things we don't call soldiers."

"That's a pretty name."

"Yeah.  The last time we saw each other she made me bleed and then jumped off a cliff."

"I'm... sorry to hear that..."

"Yeah."

Maybe he can resurrect her when this is all over? Only that doesn't seem like a wise thing to say on, really, multiple levels.

"I had - tremors.  From taking an experimental cure for the brain damage.  And her new Special brain damage made it... disgust her."

"To the point of jumping off a cliff."

"- Oh.  She also had substantially augmented reflexes and durability.  It was into water; I'm sure she was fine.  It was just... dramatic."

"Oh. I see."

"Even my teeth as a regular pretty are ceramics that you need nanos to do much of anything to.  If you want to keep the rest of my head intact."

"They replaced your teeth?"

"Teeth, bones, skin, muscles, eyes...  I don't have exact knowledge of what exactly they fully replace as opposed to just change drastically."

"That seems excessive both for the brain damage aim and for the cover story that it's all about giving you - fashionable appearances."

"Many people have genuinely worked very hard to improve humanity as a whole through improvements to everyone's bodies."

"So as to make jumping off cliffs survivable?"

"Pretties don't get sick, of normal things, either...  We've made jumping off things safe but generally through bungee jackets that work like the hoverboard rather than changes to our bodies.  Journey made a comment about our society being safety obsessed, but I don't know how much weight to put on that.  He sounded flippant."

"I think that is a very available attitude for him."

"Yeah."

"I had us come out this way first because I'm reasonably assured that they aren't listening to us here.  I don't think they're doing it surreptitiously in town either but there are people there."

"That was thoughtful of you." Zane is of course himself a people and Kyeo doesn't have a ton to say anyway.

"If you don't have anything urgently private we can head back that way and get you some more comfortable clothes and stuff."

"This is actually more comfortable than it looks, but it is not the sort of thing I'm accustomed to for everyday."

"You don't look comfortable in it," Zane agrees.  He sits up.  "Clothing is sometimes valuable in your society?"

"I'm not sure what you mean. This would be a fancy party outfit and I am not at this time attending a fancy party."

"You move like you're afraid to damage it."

"You alluded to but did not demonstrate a laundry situation," Kyeo points out. "Besides, surely even if it is both thorough and trivial, it would not be ideal to have a rip in something in the time it would take to reach it."

"I guess not."  He gets up and heads back down the hill.  "I think the town is supposed to give us some amount of cultural context for the guy.  Like, they're not making us use money but the way you requisition something is still going into a 'store' and asking a person for it."

"We do have that arrangement for some things on Ibyabek."

"We kind of do, too, but it's weird to do it for clothes and food instead of just having a hole in the wall.  For me; I don't know what you're used to instead."

"For clothes I've been in uniforms, they were just issued to me. They were delivered instead of a store being involved but the idea of having them in a store isn't strange, I think Ibyabekan non-uniforms work that way."

"We keep - twelve-to-fifteen year olds - in dorm uniforms, too.  ...They get them from hole in the walls, too, though theirs are more limited.  I guess it would make sense that if most people are keeping their - drive - they'd want a lot more things than clothes, and even if you have exactly the same nanos capabilities as us, you might want to introduce a lot of trivial barriers to getting things..."

"I think we have not invented the nanos you describe, in my universe."

"Oh, that would also do it."

"They do sound very useful."

"We can drop them all over your universe once this is done.  I think.  I hope.  It wasn't made entirely clear to me how travel works for things like that."

"Did you find it as disconcerting as I did to be - employed for pay in this fashion?"

"I actually find it kind of exciting."

"I suppose it's exotic," Kyeo allows.

"From what I've been able to tell, the quality of life for a normal person is already at least as high as I'm used to.  So anything on top of that is a shot at real power and self-determination, and - I may not be able to afford it, or much of it, but I already absolutely couldn't have gotten it at home no matter what.  So at least now I have a chance, it seems like."

"There's no guarantee under a monetary system that everyone can be a normal person, which is what unsettles me, even if I happen to be positioned as a beneficiary this time. Lucky beneficiaries have wreaked horrible evil."

"There isn't much of a guarantee of that under my world's system either.  Is yours better at it?"

"Well, not on other planets."

"I wasn't counting those as your system."

"It is sometimes argued that a truly robust system would include in its perfection the ability to extend to all the other planets," says Kyeo affably. "But on Ibyabek, yes, of course everyone can be a normal person."

"Huh.  In mine it was okay for Special Circumstances to decide to do - really all sorts of horrible things.  In ways that could have or did remove people from the category of normal person."

"I mean, there are... criminals, I don't mean to say nothing ever happens, but not because people can't make money, never that."

"What sort of things can people become a criminal for?"

"...hopefully the obvious ones at least are the same, such as murder."

"People murder each other?!"

"Usually they do not! But it is a crime."

"Nobody but Special Circumstances kills anyone.  And they were still trying pretty hard not to."  He sighs.  "They're kind of the government and kind of above it.  So I don't think it was per se a crime for them."

"An execution rather than a murder," Kyeo suggests.

"No, not that either.  Accidents and collateral damage.  Very culpable accidents, but - not..."

He doesn't find an end to the sentence.

"Well. I suppose the placidity is probably helping make it unheard of instead of merely very rare, for someone to kill someone else."

"...Yeah.  It probably would do that."

"It's probably behind a lot of differences."

"Yeah.  Is there - a biggest difference you can point to, that's clearly the result of people having free minds?"

"I don't think I know enough to say."

Zane sighs again.  "Neither do I."

"I suppose - our third person, whose name I haven't heard pronounced in full and correctly - is not especially informative about what things are alike between worlds because her situation is so strange."

"She's informative as part of a pattern that humans are common but the rest of the universe surrounding them is often different.  But no, not in the way you mean.  Sometimes I've had luck talking to the people in town but it takes a lot of digging and piecing things together.  They all have different ways of not being very forthcoming."

"How many people have you spoken to?"

"At all?  A few dozen."

"Perhaps they've been coached."

"Oh, definitely."

"Will they admit that, or only one of them so the others can all be different?"

"I don't think there's an elaborate tapestry of different reasons not to talk to us designed for our enrichment.  I get the impression there was some amount of coaching on top of a lot of selection effort going into picking people who have various reasons of their own not to want to talk to us very much or very informatively despite being here."

"Why are they h- they're being paid, I suppose."

"For some of them it's the time dilation.  Which is a form of getting paid."

"Is it?"

"From what I understood, that's one of the sorts of things we can pick from in exchange for having been on the show, when this is over."

"I'm not sure I see the appeal."

"I don't specifically want it either, at least not until I've had a chance to learn more about the rest of the multiverse and accumulate stuff to do.  But there are a lot of artists here who are trying to get ahead of their audiences and things like that."

"Oh! Did they show you what they were working on?"

"Some of them!"

"I'll have to ask after their projects if I meet them."

"I can introduce you to some.  You're a musician?"

"I don't know that I'd go that far. I just like to sing."