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A Lost boy somehow gets even more lost.
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It began as a normal morning in the endless forest of the Hedge, which is to say, it lasted about 9 hours because Danny kept walking continuously, with only short breaks to rest his legs and drink some water.

Patterns are hard to find in the Hedge. Or maybe they're too easy to find, deceptively easy, and then they disappear like a rug pulled out from underneath at the worst moment.

Still, one pattern that holds up relatively well is that most things don't stop traveling at the crack of morning. Which means one of Danny's basic survival strategies in this weird world a step between infinite others is that, if he finds a safe place to sleep, he leaves it as soon as the sky starts to lighten, so as not to get caught dozing if someone else arrives, and so he can keep moving between places while most other things and people are asleep.

He was having a bit of bad luck finding some food today, which isn't the huge problem it might be in a normal forest. The fruit here doesn't seem to ever rot (unless it rots within a minute of being picked, or as soon as it turns night/morning, or if it gets touched by any water, or...) and even a handful of nuts or berries seems to fill his stomach and keep him energized for "days" at a time. And if all else fails, he has his bow and can find some animal to hunt, though that's more obviously dangerous. It's hard to spot any birds through the misty treeline, and even the not-obviously-magical animals here are rarely defenseless.

He wasn't even particularly hungry when the day began, but he's learned over the years of having a really stretched out eating cycle to be extra sensitive to the differences between "full" and "no longer full" and "not really hungry" and "okay maybe I could eat" and he tries to get a head start on foraging around then before it gets to "I'm actually rather peckish," or worse, "food would sure be great about now," let alone the actually bad, "I notice I'm hungry."

When he was a kid, his mom once told him they should never shop while hungry because then they'd buy too many things they don't need. A similar principle applies in the Hedge, where you really want the luxury of saying no to some of the things you come across. Not because they wouldn't taste good, but because they might taste too good, and then you're stuck in a clearing eating rainbow flowers forever, or biting a carrot that reverses your gravity to send you screaming into the sky, only barely able to hold onto the deceptively normal looking root.

That had happened his first ~week here, and had been something of a learning experience.

So he pushed his way through stinging hedges and thorny bushes for hours on end, searching for a snack he could save for later, then, failing to find that, a snack he could eat now, and then, failing to find that, a meal he could eat soon, and then, failing to find that...

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Huh. Why would extra fingers require you to "know what you're doing?" Is the implication that people in this world all come with a detailed knowledge of a normal human biology, so they know enough to make that work when they picture someone in their head?

The simplest explanation is still (sadly) the one that involves fae or aliens grabbing humans from other worlds and inserting them into this one. Maybe they do some quick surgery if the maker is imagining something weird, but botch it on purpose to discourage that sort of thing...

"Creepy extra fingers or arms sounds bad," is all he says, still sorting through his thoughts as he focuses on his sewing. "I'm glad it's regulated in most places."

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"I mean, they're not great, but they're kind of a self-limiting problem, you've actually got to be much stricter about psychology."

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Their word for "psychology" has always felt like it had a few subtle undercurrents to it that were hard to understand out of context. "Because... some psychologies aren't as self-defeating, and they can spread through new people they make?"

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"Right, if you make somebody with something physically wrong they're not necessarily going to want to make more people like that."

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"Have... any of you heard of someone accidentally making someone?"

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"Not like tripping and falling, no, but like absentmindedly walking all the way home when you were actually meaning to go somewhere else without meaning to, that can happen."

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So... what, it just takes imagining a person for a long enough time, and they just appear? But with some ticking clock that charges up what age they can be when they appear? 

(Assuming that's right, is it like a bank account that you can withdraw from multiple times? Two 20 year olds instead of one 40 year old?)

"That must be awkward."

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"It's not common, I think it usually comes up in situations where somebody's been making a person every week for ages and then the war's over and they don't have to any more."

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Okay so you can make a new person in a week who is already prepared for war which means all his previous ideas about the age limits of this sort of person-creation thing just got tossed out of a ten story window.

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Is the cap literally just "a person a week?" Would he reveal too much ignorance if he asks about that?

But then why was Chesabit so young? Because they'd made someone within a week before that and didn't give it the full 7 days? It didn't seem like there was anyone else new on the boat, and they can't all have been so recent in having made someone, could they? Unless the ship was at half crew and made the other half within a week of his arriving? No, they were clear that it's not a common thing, and there's still no explanation for why she knew his language! You can't just imagine someone into existence knowing a language you don't know

wait he can check that one.

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Instead of dropping his needle and thread to grab people's shoulders and shake them while yelling YOUR WORLD IS THE DREAM OF A BORED AND NOT PARTICULARLY SENSIBLE FAE LORD he takes a breath and asks, "What about creating people with knowledge you don't have? I met someone who was made knowing a language none of the rest of her crew knew."

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"- well, yeah, of course you load people up with every language you've ever heard of, languages are easy."

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"Right, but... she knew a language even her maker didn't know." He looks around, checking to see if anyone gets his confusion. "Isn't that... odd? That people can be made knowing things the maker doesn't?"

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They're all staring at him like he's crazy badly made now.

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Goddammit he was being careful...

"I mean," he quickly adds, "When I think about it, I just wonder where the knowledge comes from? None of you... ever wonder that?"

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"Where does anything else about the person come from?" somebody shrugs.

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"Right, exactly! That's the question, isn't it?" Surely they've thought about this at least a little? "If you wanted to make a blacksmith, maybe that knowledge would come from, I don't know, your maker's maker's maker's maker, who was a blacksmith and so that knowledge is inside you somewhere waiting for you to bring it out in a new person."

He turns to someone else. "But maybe none of your maker's makers were blacksmiths, so if you want to make a blacksmith, they'd be less good at it? But maybe not, maybe so long as anyone in any of the rounds is a blacksmith, their knowledge can be recreated in someone you make. But if that's how it works, would they get all the knowledge from every blacksmith? I don't know anyone that's tried this, but if someone kept making a new blacksmith every week, so the skill of their maker is the same... or mostly the same, maybe they get a bit better between weeks... would each made blacksmith have the same knowledge and skill, or would they gain new knowledge and skill that the one before them had gained to stay even with them?"

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"I don't think that's... how anybody thinks about it," says somebody gently.

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I'm somebody he doesn't say, looking from face to face around him for any spark of... anything. Curiosity, confusion, hell, he'll take irritation, if this is the sort of thing people just come into existence with baked-in spiritual beliefs about and he's just coming off as irreverent.

Anything but pity, like he's some broken thing.

I'm not broken he also doesn't say. No, not broken. Warped, a little, sure, let one of them go through the Hedge without picking up a touch of madness, but if anyone here was "made wrong"...

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It's them.

The ones without curiosity, the ones without confusion, the ones that were possibly made without any, made without the ability to question these sorts of things the way a normal human might.

Which brings up the question again of whether they're really, actually human at all.

He might be the only real person in this whole world, surrounded by fetch automatons, playing out whatever role was written on the strip of paper wrapped around the sticks and leaves at their center...

If he kills one, would they turn back into twine-wrapped-twigs in a puff of glamour, with some ready explanation about how of course that's what happens to humans when they die, they're not animals after all...

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No. The cannibal rounds wouldn't make sense if they weren't flesh and blood, and he's not going to assume those are fake until he has better reason to.

And he's not going to assume these aren't real humans, real people, until he has a lot more than a lack of curiosity about their world. If they were all made that way... if the very first people populating the world were picked to lack that sort of curiosity, and they just made each generation with that same lack, if the whole world lacks that sort of thinking, it would make sense for them to just assume no one would have thoughts like this.

It doesn't make them any less victims.

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But it does leave him almost as alone as he was in the Hedge, and unlikely to find others who can help him figure out what's really happening in this world.

He drops his gaze and focuses on his sewing.

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There's some confusion, sure! But none of them seem to want to pick up the conversational thread.

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He'll mark the confused ones in his memory, maybe try to talk to them one on one later. Just in case that confusion can turn into curiosity with the right questions, away from others.

And he'll keep thinking about the implications of knowledge creation in made people, and how he might test it.

He's thought before about trying to make someone himself once he figures out how, just to see if it works for him and maybe learn something more fundamental about how this world works... and now he knows what sort of person he'd make, in case he can.

What would happen to the world if someone was made in it with all the knowledge of the industrial revolution already in their head? Knowledge of how to make radios and phones and computers, all as easily as people here are made knowing another language? If all Danny has to do is imagine them having it, and real knowledge appears...

Hell, what would stop him from making someone who could invent cold fusion? Impossibility? Could he just go down a list of sci-fi inventions until he gets one that works?

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