"I thought only bedrooms were private?"

"Things are - various amounts of private? Like - that's a bank, over there. They have money that they're keeping safe for people, we're using a lot of cash on this planet while things are still not at five nines of reliability. Anyone can walk in, but there are cameras, there and there and probably more places, so if anything happens to the money, they can look at what those cameras recorded and see who they need to talk to to have a better idea of what happened to the money. They need to do that because sometimes people want to steal. And also, because it's a bank, while anyone can walk in, they can't do whatever they want in there - they can't wheel a grill in and have a barbecue with forty of their friends - and if they did that they would have to leave, because the owners of the bank can decide that they're not allowed in any more. The park is much more public - anybody can walk in and they can have a party with forty of their friends and grilling there - but if someone left a lot of trash lying around in the park after they did that, then we'd have to track them down and make them pay to clean it up, because the park is for everyone and nobody's allowed to make it worse because then it isn't for everyone anymore."

He got up way too early for this figuring this out. 

"I can explain to Neh that if someone asks them to leave a bank or some place she should do that? As long as they ask calmly I think she will. I don't think she's gonna have a big barbecue in a bank or steal money or make a big mess without cleaning it up."

He's also a bit confused about why no one is allowed to do a thing in a park that is for everyone but he doesn't think that's very important right now and his back is hurting him so much.

"It would be better if they just didn't teleport to places in the city at all till they know more about how it works, because a lot of how it works is based around people not being able to teleport."

"Exploring is really important to Neh, even though he's also scared of new things sometimes."

"He can teleport out of the city, when he gets overwhelmed, and just explore by walking till then?"

"Sounds like it would involve him seeing more people, not fewer? Would it work if he only teleported to special starting places and walked from there?"

"Yeah, I think that would probably work too. Do you want to go back to bed, work out where in the morning with the mayor?"

"I can't really do short naps once I'm awake, and I have a meeting in the morning already. I can do my grocery shopping anothr day and meet with the mayor in the afternoon? Or move the morning meeting again."

He takes out his schedule as he says this - it's one of the best parts about being awake!

"As long as Neh's okay staying out of the city till you've figured out where she can start from when she wants to explore it that's fine. I can put you down for, when's your afternoon slot, two? I'll put you on his scheduled for two."

"She's probably going to be sleeping soon anyways. Two works."

He changes his schedule to match.

"Okay. Sorry we had to wake you!"

"It made sense and I'm glad you did."

And with that he departs, heading to his first meeting early - he can wait there for the Amentan he's meeting with.

The agronomist he is meeting is five minutes late, apologizes, and will then, if not interrupted, talk about soil bacteria for the next three hours.

Lucien will listen with interest for the first bit but eventually he is too tired to listen even if it's really really cool.

"Were there things about amalien farming you wanted to ask me?"

"- ah, yes. So, do you cultivate crops in any systematic way?"

Lucien can talk about how they have gardens and how some amaliens have tried to make ones that last a really long time. They don't need much food but some amaliens like to breed special types of plants to get them ways they want them. They can do a lot of that cause they can keep working on it for a very long time. They also do some of that with animals by moving some animals around when the animals are okay with that so all the ones who are a way end up together.

Also they have some irrigation but nothing as cool as the Amentans have! The Amentans do such a good job with irrigation!

The green can also talk about irrigation for a while, though not as long as he can talk about soil bacteria! Amentans do a lot of things with technology and brute force that amaliens do with time and coaxing - since Amentans do need to eat, and a fair amount too, they don't have the luxury of inefficiently gardening little tastes of things. Also they eat meat, which generates fertilizer as a byproduct, so that's handy!

Oh fertilizer seems cool! Some amaliens have animal friends around their plants but they don't do anything very organized. How good is the fertilizer for plants?

It's very good, it helps them grow more food per square foot and not need to let land fallow as much. Some animal farms have pretty elaborate setups for collecting and removing the fertilizer stuff and then they compost it and mix it with other stuff and plow it in to where the plants are going to grow.

Lucien thinks the elaborate setups sound cool! How do they work?

Like, you can have the animals live somewhere with a porous floor, and then have a sheet of compostable paper under that, and then roll it out and replace it on a regular basis.

That doesn't sound that hard! He's sort of tired and having trouble imagining it but maybe he can take some amaliens there after they have lunch in the city tomorrow to show them the cool things and pet the animals? 

Sure, if they like, there's not a ton of animal agriculture set up here because they don't have enough land producing plant food for the animals to eat for it to make sense to do anything intensive but there's a small egg farm.

That sounds fun to visit! He'll pencil them in for a 4pm field trip with a bunch of amaliens?