"It's okay not to answer? Wow, that's kind of neat actually."

"The government pays for questions just like everyone else. Are you sure Amenta doesn’t have slavery?"

"I'm sure! There's just, like, things you don't do to not-slaves that Amentans sometimes do to not-slaves, like with the babies thing. Nobody can sell anyone."

"Is that a language thing - can I not say we invented slavery before we invented money?"

"I don't know which one Amenta invented first, I guess, but like - that's just a really obvious way for somebody to be totally unprotected, not the only way."

"...You don't have anybody who's totally a slave, is that right? And do you have anybody who's totally free?"

"I think slavery is illegal on Amenta everywhere now, what do you mean totally free?"

"I'm free. I can go away and not talk to anyone or visit anyone or buy things or sell things or live in a busy area. If I do that, I don't have to pay taxes. I don't have to be seen. The government won't say anything about me having a baby. I can go away and not do anything. I don't want to, but I could."

"Well, if you go away and don't do anything you'd like, starve, probably. I guess Amenta doesn't have anywhere where anything works like that - like, you could get left almost all the way alone if you owned the land but you'd still have to get a credit to have a baby and if a population control observer wanted to check up on you about that you'd have to let them."

"I might starve if I didn't figure out how to not starve. It's hard for me because I'm not a wizard of carrying or something. But me starving isn't a law."

"Well, if you're starving you also can't have a baby. Or at least we can't."

"Yeah. But it's still not a law and I still might not starve."

"A lot of places you can avoid taxes but not and have a baby. - or, like, maybe you can both not pay taxes and also have a baby, somewhere, but you can't also never have anybody want to make sure you have only the right number of babies."

"So no one is really free or really a slave. They're all a secret third thing which is sometimes babies."

"I guess if the freedom to keep out population inspectors is really important to you and the freedom to touch people is not!"

"You can touch anyone who wants you to. You do understand that this is only illegal if they don't want you to, right?"

"Well, yeah, but you have to check first, not let them be like 'hey cut it out'."

"Oh! If you don't know them at all and they might be delicate, yes. If you're friends and you touch each other all the time, you can do it again and only stop if they say. You have to - be paying attention? But it can be like, you know they saw you moving closer, you know it was okay before a lot of times, you know they could say no, you know they look happy about it. If you're right, you're right."

"Oh, I guess maybe that's not as bad as it sounds."

"The government cares about taxes and lying to judges. The government - helps people with other things? But it doesn't care, it just... if someone complains, then these other things are against the law. And it can be any free person complaining, I think our courts are good at listening to poor people who had crimes happen to them. But the government doesn't want a place where you don't touch people, it wants a place where people aren't annoyed about being touched. You can do anything if the person you do it to is happy about it - touch them, take their stuff, even kill them."

"Oh that makes more sense! The government isn't making sure these things don't happen, it's just making sure it doesn't have to listen to anyone complaining. - I admit I'm not sure how that works with killing people."

"Most people don't want to be killed! The government will complain for you if you probably wanted to complain and something happened so you can't anymore. Like if you died or someone hit your head. But not if you said you want to die first. Or if you decided to play a fighting sport and the person organizing the sport said 'if you come fight here, you could die' and you said 'I understand that I could die and I want to play.'"

"Wow, those must be awfully dangerous sports... I guess I don't know how much risk they make you do that for, you can probably die playing arcball if you get really unlucky..."

"Say more about arcball?"

"It's a sport with throwing a ball around and trying to thwack it with stuff and run places... I've never played it and I'm not even sure I've ever seen a whole televised game."