"Wow. Does this happen all the time, whether it's sick or not? Can it stop if it wants?"

"It happens all the time, I don't think it could stop? The mechanism seems similar to skin oil glands which aren't vol-un-tary and also monsters usually won't get sick much if at all."

"Skin oil, gotcha. How much does it make?"

"Bout enough for 300 people to have it on all the time? Um, I guess more like 150 if they're Amentans cause you're bigger. Um. Hrm. 170 actually, based on how big you all seem and the sur-face area diff-erence that would mean if you have the same sorta shaped bodies as us."

"Are a lot of amaliens using it full time?"

"About a hundred seventy or something? Sometimes more."

"Does it make amaliens sick at all, or give them rashes or taste terrible or anything?"

"Nope! Tastes sorta like sea water and mucus but maybe 20% more yummy than that sounds?"

Vira decides to clarify.

"I invented a yummy scale and checked a bunch of things."

"A yummy scale! How does that work with people having different tastes?"

"People only have some different tastes! There's some things that are rough-ly invariant across people - not too many but some. I figured out those and used them to make my yummy scale."

"Wow, you should talk to food scientists and see if it replicates with Amentans, I don't think we have something like that though it's not my field at all. Anyway. When the goop wears off does it disappear or do you have to wash it off or what?"

"There's some invariants that don't apply to mammals but most of them stick. More different species are harder though."

"The goop'll flake off if you leave it alone for long enough, but water washes it off if it's long enough after it stopped working."

"Long enough? How long do people have to go around with goop on them that isn't working any more after they're done being underwater?"

"Oh you can wash it off more quickly soon after it's done if you want, you just sorta have to rub at it. Otherwise it takes maybe two hours if your underwater and thirty minutes if you're in the air and three hours if you're in a vacuum and seventeen seconds if you're in lava and 20 hours if you're in a pile of the goop and not moving and at least a few months if you are moving but maybe could take longer."

"Wow, you did a lot of experiments about this. Do you have it written down anywhere or do you just memorize all your results?"

"Usually I try to figure out the under-lying rules so I can re-derive all the things later if I need to. But I write things down while I'm working on them and then store things in Monument later."

"Monument? Is that a monster?"

"Mhm. It's very good at 'membering things."

"Wow, it must know so much. How does it remember things?"

"It can sorta copy memories? Cept I think they are only as accu-rate as the memory itself was since lots of them are in the third person and memories shouldn't be like that really."

"Oh, gosh. And then you can experience the memory by visiting it?"

"It's sorta ~glowy, but yeah. It's only the op-tic-al parts though."

"How long have amaliens had writing, do you know?"

"I don't know. No one can remember not having it, though sometimes it changes a tiny bit. I invented my own way of writing things once that used elements!"

"Oh wow, like the periodic table? That's such a cool way to do it!"