They'd ask for a bet on whether Celene's story is true if they actually expected to learn much from Summer's opinion, which they don't. They have about the same data she does and are more qualified to make that judgment call. But they'll ask for her gut probability estimate.

I mean obviously she's being pranked.

Conditional on her not being pranked... she really does not buy the psychosis explanation. But also Celene's story should not be possible. You're asking her to condition on an event of infinitesimal probability, here.

Right. Not the kind of thing brains are very good at doing intuitively, we know.

Well, update us on anything interesting, I guess. And if Celene ends up with money and would be willing to bet us on whether she's in on a prank, let us know.

"Hey Celene! Sorry about all that, how's your tea been?"

Celene has been slowly sipping her tea while thinking about her situation (and also absentmindedly staring at Summer without actually realizing that's what she's doing. She's very pretty).

She's been thrown into an unfamiliar environment, and she's not sure of how high the stakes are or what problems she'll have to face, so it makes sense she'd be stressed out right now. But also, every single piece of evidence she's received has been 'actually everything is fine and you do not have much in particular to worry about.'

Of course, this does not actually help her feel significantly less anxious. 

And Summer... has been very nice to her. She doesn't know how she feels about Summer. She's been nothing but helpful so far. Still, though, this is technically-

Well.

She wasn't supposed to have to deal with any more problems. That was the point.

It's technically an increase in the expected number of problems she will have to deal with.

Maybe that's why she's distressed.

But still, she can't deny that, for now, it sure does seem like everything is fine. She'll have to keep reminding herself of that consciously, probably.

Then, she hears Summer talking to her. Startled, she glances up.

"Oh! I'm doing fine, the tea is good."

"So. Uh, I hate to bring this up if you're not super comfy talking about it, but... how did you die, exactly? Do you have any medical conditions we have to go treat?"

"That's actually a very rude question to ask in my culture."

"I'm joking," she clarifies. "There'd not really be any opportunity for that to come up."

Well, you see, I died of asphyxiating on an inert gas.

"Not because of any medical condition-

Well, I suppose arguably it was."

Celene sighs. Does she actually want to tell her?

...probably, yeah.

It's still hard to say.

"I killed myself," she says as calmly and nonchalantly as possible.

It takes her a moment to actually process that at all.

"Like, uh, truicide? ...Why?"

Truicide obviously happens ever on Eifwen, but the topic is usually... talked around, a little bit. You don't want to be giving people ideas, if it can be avoided.

It does not particularly have an association with depression. Like, depression doesn't help, but most people who might be suicidal on Earth would obviously just do early cryo. It's mostly people who go insane and stop comprehending the consequences of their actions or people who develop some sort of bizarre philosophical stance or something.

"You mean as opposed to early-cryo? 'Truicide' seems to carry that implication.

We do have cryonics, but it's very expensive. Generally people pay for it with life insurance, but they don't pay out on suicides unless it's been 2 years since you've started the policy. I wasn't really willing to wait that long.

And also, even if I could afford it I don't think I'd do so. I was, not very confident that Earth's future would necessarily be a good one.

I should mention that I'm among a minority who has seriously considered the question of whether or not to be cryopreserved."

She pauses.

"That's because most people either haven't heard of it or automatically dismiss the idea."

Celene maybe might be mildly enjoying messing with Summer like this.

Summer is going to collapse and bury her face in the couch a bit over from Celene.

"I. So you have cryonics. But you aren't pouring all your resources into bootstrapping an institution that can provide high-quality cryonics to everyone?"

That's. If they'd just never figured out the idea, she'd get it. But Eifweni were fantasizing about this category of technology well before they actually found a workable method. So when they had something that seemed at all viable? Full steam ahead.

They could've done it better, there'd never been a civilizational project of that scope before so they had little experience. They're hoping they never have to again—they're carefully tracking all the existential risks, which are mostly the only sort of thing that could suddenly put that much value on the line again.

(Well okay some people feel a little iffy about dismissing cosmic waste arguments.)

"Why?"

"Um.

There are many reasons. The principal one is that they don't believe it will work, that it's just an obsession for rich people who are terrified of death. Our cryonics technology isn't good enough yet to fully prevent damage to the brain, and people are skeptical that the future will be able to rescuitate them. You're also not allowed to cryopreserve someone until they're legally dead, because that's murder, and yes I'm aware of the argument that the standards for legal death have loosened over time and will continue to loosen but many aren't. Technically there's a thing you can do called a Do Not Rescuitate where if your heart stops you are legally considered dead and they don't try to restart it. 

The other arguments are that if no one dies, they'll have overpopulation, or that the future wouldn't care enough about them to revive them, or that they don't want to live forever because death is what gives life meaning, or something similar. They could just kill themselves, of course, but suicide is considered socially unacceptable in my culture, which is... Why I was hesitant to bring it up to you.

And generally institutions that guarantee resources to everyone don't exist on Earth? There are humanitarian aid organizations but they don't have the resources to do so for everyone. Many people still don't have access to clean drinking water, or food, or basic disease prevention, although we're actually doing a lot better than most people think we are, I think it's only a very small percent who fall under that. Some countries guarantee resources to all their citizens and do a good job of it but it's not global."

"...Can you come up with some good things to say about the world you're from? I'm getting excessively mad at it."

"Well.

Probably it will become net positive for it to have existed, in my moral weighing, on expectation.

I quite enjoy the art made there?

There are a lot of cool and intelligent people.

Some systems are pretty elegantly and efficiently designed.

I mean, it wasn't exactly the best place for me, that's why I left."

Okay to be fair probably she couldn't give much better an account of why Eifwen is good—well, she couldn't've before having Earth to compare it to. Now she understands how much she was taking the cryonics thing for granted, for example. Maybe Celene simply needs an even worse planet to compare Earth to.

"Well. I'll do my best to make sure that here is exactly the best place for you."

"Aww. Thank you. I- that's really sweet of you."

She's not going to say the automatic objection that comes to mind.

Summer is well aware that that is a completely unachievable goal but she can at least move things in that direction a tad.

"So. I'd say we have two big items on our todo list." Other than each other. "You should get more acclimated to Eifwen, and we should figure out how to make a whole lot of money off of your unique situation. Do you have any opinions about how to attack either of those?"

ooaaughhh

"I guess having contacted Emergency Services is pretty good progress on making money? I don't really have amy ideas on that, you'd be a lot more knowledgeable than me.

As for getting acclimated to Eifwen, the internet might be helpful- Do you have the internet? I guess if there's some sort of standardized education system that anyone can easily access that'd work too. Uh, back on Earth there was this thing called Wikipedia which was basically a global online repository of information and had an overview of every topic of any significance with sources cited accordingly, it's one of the things I liked most about Earth. Do you have anything like that?"

"It... did not occur to me that you might have computers but not an internet. Though I suppose it was a pretty substantial infrastructure project to get it as well-established as it is now—yeah, anyways, how about I make you an account on my computer?"

The computer is sort of like an extra bulky iPad. You can use it with the touch screen, or you can stand it up and use a keyboard peripheral. Summer sets up a new account for Celene, passing it over for her to make a password. (Celene can read the text and everything fine, though she doesn't have any muscle memory for typing.)

Celene will use the keyboard peripheral!

Can she find a web browser application? Are there applications?

On a new account, she'll find a default web browser, a default chat client, a default text editor (which has IDE features that can be enabled easily), and maybe a small handful of other things. There's also a bunch of little widgets—calculators and timers and the like.

Oh, convenient! This interface is very intuitive and user-friendly.

She opens up the web browser and finds a search engine. What does she want to learn?

She's not on Earth right now, but if she was on Earth, what information would be relevant? Googling "Earth" or "Humanity" wouldn't be that relevant, so "Tinya" or "Eifwen" probably wouldn't either. History? Culture? Culture wouldn't really work, there's too much of it, but maybe she could find like "a brief history of the world" or "the world's cultures" or things like that. Philosophy? Oh wait, "Politics" would be helpful. But probably what would be even more helpful would be "Tinya Government." She'll search up "Tinya Government."

What does she find?