...She looks indelibly worn, as she heads for Wheat's office.

"...I'm not sure the kind of cohabitation you have going on is working adequately," he says, handing over the clay.

"It's the bureaucracy.  And the way it's not capable of handling me.  It's depression, not fatigue.  ...Or it's kind of both, I suppose, but not in the way that sleeping resets except as and if drowsing might.  Except it didn't, so.  Yeah.  Just been having a rough day, because - I don't really know how to even begin acquiring legal existence, at the moment?  Since...well...y'all hardly take Earth records.  And I need to get something like that somehow, or my dreams will mostly be stillborn, because going from zero to industrial powerhouse on my lonesome...that's just impossible.  I need to be able to do business to run a business.  ...As much as I mislike the inevitable concentration of wealth that both feudalism and capitalism provoke if left unattended."

"Maybe you need a business partner? I realize that might also be hard but it's at least not dependent on having records."

"Are you volunteering?", she deadpans.  "Honestly, yes I do need someone with local business experience, but I'm not sure where I'd even begin looking, yet."

"I'm not, I like the job I have, but if you'd met anyone else you got along with..."

"I still haven't actually gotten past the culture shock, unfortunately, as far as I know.  I think everyone I've met is...acculturated in a particular way I don't gel with?  It's eerie."

"Is... everyone in your culture more like you?"

"I'm an outlier both here and there, but...maybe?  I - am having the damnedest time trying to frame it appropriately, but it's...

"No-one seems to expect the unexpected, around here, whereas the first thing I do with the slightest bit of ambiguity is find and poke at the edge cases."

"I don't think anything like you has ever happened before."

"Yeah; there's a concept in disaster planning back home, called a black swan event.  It goes something like this: You have never seen a black swan.  All the swans you've seen are white.  So, by logical induction, you predict that all the swans you'll ever see are white.

"Then a black swan shows up anyway because the universe doesn't care about that; the rules allow for black swans, so here one is, and now you have to deal with it.

"That's basically this entire thing."

"- I assume that example makes more sense when you can't change what color a swan is whenever you want but even accounting for that I'm not sure why an unexpectedly colored swan would be such a big deal."

"It's - you have built your worldview on a false assumption that only certain kinds of events are possible.  Also, yeah, it makes less sense when troportation exists.  Hmm.  Think of it like...well actually for all I know this happens - stars are presumed to last forever, but one day one goes out."

"- what is a star?"

"Generally, the flaming balls of whatever-your-suns-are-made-of in the sky.  Ours are a lot bigger and further away because we don't live on an infinite plane."

"Those are suns. Why don't you just call them suns?"

"Because suns have planets, and not all stars do.  I suppose that's meaningless over here.  You, well, don't have planets."

"I don't know what a planet is," he agrees. "The suns are suns. I'd be more optimistic about you finding a business partner if I thought you were going to reliably talk sensible Nlaaki to people you met."

"A planet's what happens when there's not an infinite plane declaring that this direction is down.  ...I wonder if there's a bottom of the world, here.  Or a top.  I think you'd have probably observed something eventually happen to evidence the latter, though.

"...hang on, how the fuck do you even have minerals without stellar fusion?  Who created this universe?  It shouldn't have this much similarity to mine!  The nuclear stuff just doesn't work in - what if it's the pressure - but then you have no upwelling - and what makes suns?

"Maybe the suns and the bottom of the world or lack thereof have something in common, some sort of weird spatial shenanigans, because I'm pretty sure this shouldn't be stable, and that the suns would have to either have had some very weird universe formation conditions occur or, honestly more likely in my opinion, have been designed and then scattered somehow, leaving alone whatever the hell keeps them moving stably!

"Anyway.  Businesspersoning is Ophelia's job."

"And it is my pleasure to demonstrate to you that I can in fact speak sensible Nlaaki, given the chance; despite having quite a tendency to ramble on when prompted, our Mira does know the virtue of letting professionals work in their fields of expertise.  She simply thinks that she is often the most knowledgeable in the room, or in our head, I suppose.  It's not that we don't share information, but she does find connections other mindsets simply wouldn't."

"Well, I hope that works for you... If you're going to switch that seamlessly you should maybe get a swatch to change the color of your shirt whenever you do it."

"It does seem like it might be useful; I'll add it to our list.  My thanks.  Might I inquire as to the appropriate nonverbal cues with which one might politely show appreciation for services rendered?  And, one supposes, other useful gestural communication.  Mira's quite curious if any particularly enterprising linguists have invented sign language, speaking of - and furthermore, if there's any analogue to Deaf culture here, given the very differing social pressures involved when it is at most an outpatient procedure to alter the capability to hear, or lack thereof, on a body, especially when it seems like that would happen in the lifecycle of a born-deaf local without particular intervention, given the nature of most cohabitation.  Then again, one imagines it is hard to determine if a child is deaf before introspection, thought, and, therefore, opinion comes to them, including such about their body and its proper form and function...

"...Ah.  We have stumbled on to my particular field of interest.  My apologies; that is a discussion for sociologists, and likely in and of itself a rather fraught topic.  There is certainly heated discourse levied on this subject at home, and I wouldn't recommend bringing it here without particular need.  I would, however, be gladdened to have an opportunity to talk about the workings of the mind in more detail, if you have such interests.  One thing we, Mira and I, do share is a love of spreading knowledge, even if she is a much poorer teacher than I."

"...none of my kids are deaf so, yeah, I have no idea."

"And in the off-chance that Mira's right about something truly absurd, we would prefer to avoid stoking discourse.

"Let's move on to some other topic of discussion, shall we?  I believe there are a few projects we could talk about, if you have the time."

"I don't have forever but I've got the rest of this sand."