Well, fuck.  <. . . Maybe we can play along for a while and look for opportunities to copy how to make you a sun.>

<Yeah, somebody has to know, though I don't actually know who.>

<I can put up with doing some sucky job for a while.>  If it means buying time to figure out how to stop these people from KILLING their BABIES.  <We can do music and stuff at night.>

<Sorry about all the suckage.>

<Yeah.>  If she were in control and it weren't obviously dumb she'd hug (herself? themself?) - she would pilot the body to hug itself right about now.  <If there's a way to fix it we'll do that.>

They arrive at their meeting. The boss keeps them waiting for nearly twenty minutes, then waves them in.

"So you think your host is, when not strung out on every substance known to man, a good enough musician that I should have you on that instead of doing ops?" he asks, folding his hands. (He's a Yeerk, of course, so there is another dude there who technically owns the hands, but the Yeerk is driving.)

"Yeah-huh, you wanna hear?"

Shrug. "Sure. Keep it down, this is a rented office."

Ispalt sings.

It's a good voice.  Even though many things about this situation suck, singing (or being along for the ride while Ispalt does) is always nice.  Some tweaks for their song occur to her during the performance.

"All right, she's got pipes," he acknowledges, when they're done. "But that isn't all it takes to succeed in an industry. We don't already have a producer or agent onside and it's not a strategic priority. I'm assigning you to the Sharing ops arm, and you can organize a little talent show and try to get gigs and be reassigned if it pans out, but if you don't have a foot in the door you don't have a career, just an instrument."

Colley's not directing anything at Ispalt because she doesn't know how easy it is for Ispalt to multitask talking to her and this seems pretty high stakes, but she's definitely wondering how much this job is probably going to suck.

"Who should I report to, sir?"

"Raftess 552, occupying a Carol Marks, I'll email you the details."

"Yes sir."

What are the numbers.  It can't be like what Creta does with giving everyone an ID number, if it's only three digits and yeerks are """cheap""".  Maybe it's more like a last name or something.

<Yeah, more like a last name. Means there are at least 552 Yeerks named Raftess, or at least were when she was born.>

That's a lot of Raftesses and it's kind of weird to think of a government being able to keep track of all of its new citizens everywhere in that kind of detail, but not actually all that surprising; she's seen computers.

<I'm a 90451. Ispalt's a popular name.>

<. . . Wow.
So how much is this job going to suck?>

<It might not be that bad but I don't know Raftess like at all so possibly working for her will be the pits. They try to keep the Sharing nice for the humans who aren't hosts yet though, so most of the time we'll probably be in, like, a chill friendly environment?>

She's glad.  <Are we gonna have to do any horrible things to people ourselves do you think.>

<Well, get Yeerks into 'em.>

<How are most Yeerks, on a scale of you to your murdery grandboss or whatever?>  Also if there's a chance to copy not finding Yeerk bodies nauseatingly gross from someone, Ispalt is even more welcome to do that at any time.

<We're just folks, I think? I don't think I'm that special. But we want to win the war, y'know.>

<What's all that about anyways?>

<There's these blue furry aliens with hooves and knifey tails and four eyes that hate our guts.>

<Like for being slug people who need to use other people's bodies or because your bosses are super evil even to you guys?>  (Does Ispalt have guts??  - She does not actually want the answer to that.)

<I'm kind of not clear on that! Like, they knew we were slug people who needed hosts back when they landed on us in the first place, we hadn't even invented electricity, so you'd think they could have just not given us any technology. That's their policy now, word is they will no way no how give any humans a tech advantage even if we start moving openly.>

<Huh.  . . . I'm gonna need a crash course in like all of this as soon as we're somewhere convenient.>