Ugh whatever. ...He would talk to an anthropology student if one asked. He researches what his name sounds like and watches videos aimed at kids about using public transit and drills on train schedules.

The real estate podcast is interesting, just in general, and the one with the hookup tips seems maybe also worth listening to. Surely they have episodes about other topics.

That still barely makes a dent in the more than a thousand hours of showering. What’s the most popular podcast among greys?

Valsin is apparently a name most commonly used by purples and blues; Ana is common in most castes but not yellow; Tirev is actually not unusual for greys though purples also go for it.

The most popular podcast among greys is Commentball and it's about sports takes; they have different regular experts on all the most popular sports in Voa and guests for some obscure ones now and then. They talk about team composition and field conditions and how regulation equipment gets broken in and coaching strategies and game tactics and referee decisions and player performance and sports industry drama.

Well, it... could be worse. For example he could be Ana, who's planning to go yellow. Sucks to be her. ...Also sucks to be his little sister but she seems kind of obsessed with the idea of swapping to Miolee to rule the country and he expects that plan to fail at a later stage than getting out of Voa.

Commentball would probably be more interesting if he played sports. He listens to two episodes of it anyway and then finds something else. How far down the list of podcasts popular among greys does he have to get before he finds one he likes?

There's more sports and then there's a true crime one and then there's a serial adventure about a spaceship captain with really extra sound effects and dramatic actors narrating everything and then there's one that's a history of the Seven Season War told in real time (there are four seasons of episodes now) and then there's more fiction serials.

True crime is great. The serial adventure is okay. History is worth a listen. He goes through the fiction looking for stuff that's sad or heartwarming or grimdark or epic or tightly character-focused or chill or a mystery or accompanied by beautiful instrumental music.

Assuming he's willing to listen to computer audio: there's tragic stories about families torn apart by civil war! There's heartwarming ones about explorers carving out a place for babies to grow up in untamed wildernesses, some of them in space! There are grimdark ones about backstabbing assassins and corrupt militias! There are epic ones about battles between fantastic forces of good and evil! There are character-focused ones about coming of age and the painful decision to retire and executing a coup! There are chill slices-of-life about being a lifeguard! There are mysteries, lots of those, so much copaganda. The character ones and the fantasy ones in particular sometimes have beautiful music.

About the only thing he doesn't like is the coming-of-age stuff.

Then he will have a steady supply of material for his many boring medical procedures and showers.

Yep! Toward the end he starts looking for podcasts specifically targeting the "bored and anxious in decontam" demographic on the assumption that probably at least one exists by now.

There's Cousins This Week, which only comes out once a week but is full of cheery news about how Shasali Aven is doing and anonymous anecdotes from cousins all over the cleaning world about their lives.

He listens to some of it. Are any of the anecdotes surprising or concerning?

Nah, it's a very fluffy podcast.

Well, it's good that there's enough material to make up a fluffy podcast.

It feels like decontamination lasts forever. He spent much longer waiting for it to start than waiting for it to end but he wasn't frantically preparing and trying to meet a firm deadline back when it was first invented.

He pushes himself to stay in shape even when he wants to lie down and maybe die. He stares at the calendar more than is probably reasonable. He stays utterly on top of the forum he moderates and all the blogs he reads. (Even the ex-red group blog that fields questions about how reds can stand to live.) He stops dyeing his hair.

And finally he is pronounced finally and totally clean. He gets his care package of new possessions and a month at an extended stay hotel.

It should feel like something. At least, it seems like it should feel like something. Even if the thing isn't clean, even if it's more like relieved to be done. Maybe it will later.

Do any of the people in the batch happen to be able to cut hair? Not necessarily well, just well enough that he can take the result to a real stylist.

This one can, used to do all her kids and grandkids.

"I just need all the dye out - it'd be nice to get it looking neat and pretty, like - " behold, pictures " - but I can pay pretty much anyone to do that."

"One specialty 'just make it shorter' coming right up." Snip snip.

And it's gone.

It's just gone.

He thanks her.

And then it’s time to go explore. Well, it’s time to go handle all the miscellaneous work of moving, but that sort of counts.

The extended stay hotel is not very nice but in a way that means it doesn't have a lot of staffing and the coffee maker doesn't work, it's basically fine.

As long as it has a bed and one of those little travel tubes of conditioner. He's never used conditioner before in his life but apparently it might possibly fix what's left of his hair.

He flops on the bed, which is great, takes a selfie to send to his sister, and does yet more internetting on the excuse that he needs to get used to the new everything. Does he have an email about the dispatch job yet? And how long until that apartment is available? And where's the cheapest hair place near here?

Dispatch job has sent an automated email reminding him that he has an interview at ADDRESS at TIME.

The apartment is ready as soon as he pays his first and last month's rent over what he's already deposited.

Cheapest hair place near his hotel is around the corner that way between a dumpling shop and a massage parlor.

Hair first, because nothing else is quite as urgent. He heads over that way. It's... definitely weird, that suddenly he's supposed to just do that, and not supposed to go back to any of the places he was previously supposed to be.

He takes another selfie near the hair place. He walks in. He doesn't chalk the door where he touches it. He doesn't even have chalk, and a grey wouldn't, and it's totally fine because he's probably about as clean as anyone has ever been.

...And he just, on some level, assumed it wouldn't be new, other than all the hair being different colors, and failed to look up how to get a haircut. Oops.

There is nobody conveniently ahead of him in line to model the process, either! There's just a petite purple who is sweeping the floor and looks up at him expectantly!

It's terrifying but he's being so careful with his body language anyway that he also doesn't look nervous. "Hi! I got some stuff in my hair and had to cut it all out. I have pictures of styles that seem nice and don't take much hair?"