Lucien moves a lot of the meetings he has for the next week - planet naming and amalien/Amentan social events can be delayed. Instead he needs to figure out how to coordinate making a large area safe for Amentans. He can put together some basic estimates of land amount soon - the chicken farmer from yesterday might be able to help. Regardless, he thinks they'll need something between 5 and 50 Amaliens working on helping with monsters in the immediate future and a smaller number for longer term maintenance. He can recruit a bunch of the campers nearby who might be interested but he should probably get someone who is good at organizing hard things to help them. Deet, currently one of the Volcano Watchers, is probably the best choice to at least get things set-up. 

For the money making plans he'll need a bunch of different amaliens to help. He can probably ask Vira to help with figuring out whether the underwater goo will work on Amentans and then she'll definitely want to learn about the growing meat research things. He can probably manage the other things on his own, working with monsters or amaliens who are friends with monsters and such. 

By the time he's done adding things, his schedule for the next week is more packed than it was before. So is his schedule for the week after that, which he also had to clear to make room for all the things.

The next day he gives a very excited Vira the email of a marine biologist Amentan he met a previous meeting about water purification. 

Dear Lucien's water friend,

Hi!! I'm going to figure out if Marmo's goop works on Amentans and Lucien said I should put words into an everything so you would know that! He told me you are really good at knowing things about water and that you could know if there were things I should 'periment on that I might not think of doing at first. I really love water too! I also like lots of other things but looking at water is fun and the really tiny things and the really big things and all the other things inside water are interesting. Did you know that orcas have the most brain cells in the bit of brain that I think does thinking, even more than amaliens! I'm not sure about Amentans but okay I looked it up (this everything is really really cool! it knows everything! well not everything everything, but still a bunch of things!!) Also some orcas don't have any colors at all but those orcas are easier to see so they get less food but in some places those orcas are liked more and they have more kids! Sharks don't like other all white sharks like that ever I think, and coral that's like that is usually sick but not always actually which is really cool! I figured that out cause I noticed that if a plant's in a dark place sometimes it'll end up white and then be sorta okay later and so I tried it on coral and the same thing happened!

Would Vira like to meet the marine biologist in person?

Yes! Though does Vira have to get clean for that, she sorta likes being messy.

She can't be polluted but the marine biologist will not fuss about it if she has seaweed in her hair and tracks in sand.

Vira looks up what pollution is.

Pollution is the state of uncleanliness created by death of a person (not an animal or plant), or, also only in a person, substances rejected by the body for being noxious (so urine, feces, vomit, pus, mucus under some conditions, and a few more exotic disease-related substances, but not sweat or blood or tears, typically). The caste dealing with pollution-risky situations, reds, was not historically well isolated from the pollution they worked with nor adequately decontaminated afterwards and must be presumed inherently polluted in a self-perpetuating manner at this time. Persons who have come into contact with pollution in a normal way (like going to the bathroom) follow one of these abbreviated procedures; in more exceptional or irregular circumstances the full decontamination shower is required.

Vira does one of the abbreviated things. She's sorta curious about more about how pollution works and how they tell if someone is a person and gets distracted by that for a bit before running off to see the marine biologist friend.

The marine biologist has a lab set up within offroad-vehicle-distance of the city, on the beach! It's not a construction priority so it's been behind schedule - usually not being a priority would not have put it behind schedule, since the schedule takes that into account, but the noise limiting protocols are slowing down anything that's not right in downtown, so some of the equipment is still in tents or crates. "Vira, that you?" she calls, looking up from where she is collecting and photographing tidepool life.

"Yes!!"

Vira bounces a bit while waving hi. 

"I really like your internet!"

"We like it too! Though it's slow here for anything less popular than Summary Bank. Were you talking about orca-like creatures here, or Amentan ones?"

"Both! The brains look the same. All super twisty and big and wrinkled, with surface area big enough to be okay with the amount of bits working with the blood that goes round it!"

"Yeah, they have huge brains! They don't seem to have language, or if they do it's very rudimentary, but they're still pretty neat. So what's Marmo's goop?"

"They're not just big, they also have lots of neurons! Even more than other types of whales that have bigger brains! Also I taught one to talk a while ago and it wasn't that bad at it but it wasn't that good at it either."

"Marmo is a giant sorta manta ray monster that has goop that does lots of cool water things! It's hydrophobic but also somehow sucks water in and turns it into the bit of air people breath I think! It also has some other cool things like preventing pressure from hurting! I think that one has something to do with how hard it is to squish and the little bit of air it makes between someone's skin and it! Also if you suspend it in water to move it somewhere it stays good for longer, and even better if you stir it around but not too much."

"That sounds awesome - uh - where's the orca you taught to talk?"

"Dead. Put him in a place that was good for fossil making but not sure if that's done yet. Maybe?"

"Oh. Okay. I would be interested to hear more about that later - maybe Cryptophasia helps?? - but anyway you and me are supposed to figure out goop experiments. What do you do with the goop to make it work on somebody?"

"Cryptophasia didn't help with the orca, though it is very good and that's a fun sounding idea!"

"They spread the goop all over themselves and make sure to get under their clothes and also on their gums and eyes and stuff."

"What... happens if they miss a spot?"

"Depends! It's basically like that bit isn't protected so like. If they go down really deep the pressure still pushes on that one bit and that bit can get pruny and if they miss mouth bits they can be bad at breathing and so on. Deep enough some really weird things can happen with partial application cause of the pressure!"

"How long does it last and what happens when it wears off?"

"three to five days.. It wears off slowly, the effects decreasing as it does so. People feel wet before any of the other effects wear off."

"How does the monster make the goop?"

"Sorta sweats it? More comes from crevices and everything."