"It's not difficult to share at all, no, not at our level of wealth. We're more than happy to care for you like this. If you wish to repay us, merely raising the children well so they become hard-working adults will go a huge way. Being a parent is a huge amount of work, and it deserves a reward for the value of letting our society have a future. You getting food and shelter like this is less than the absolute minimum of what you deserve."

Thea's moves through being doubtful, awe-struck, and tearful as she absorbs and considers Charon's response. "Th-thank you. We'll try our best."

Thea quickly masters herself again, and after letting Charon know that the books and cards have both been a major balm to the children, unless there's more he or the doctor want to ask or say, she and Rom will guide the cargo-bots back to the camp.

The food is distributed, and things continue largely as they have earlier in the day. There's still an undertone of sadness or even grieving, but the relative freedom afforded by being camped in the woods rather than attached to a fishing village and the allowance to play more loudly and spaciously has been buoying their mood.

It's also discovered that robots in follow-mode possess enough 'attention' to irritate the youngest children, though fortunately they can just be turned off when not in use.

Eventually, the second day of their arrival fades into night. The children are easier to put to bed than almost any other time the caretakers can remember, having taken full advantage of the afternoon and evening to expend their energy. The adults take some time for themselves after everyone else is asleep to more quietly celebrate the generosity of the locals and the seeming brightness of the future, and to reaffirm what the plans and schedules are for the coming days, who will be going on which hikes out to the meeting place, and other such things, before beginning their sleeping shifts as the previous night.

Morning comes again. Breakfast is made (with a greater diversity of components) and distributed. Roland directs the children to set aside some of their time to read the books and practice the language inside, which evokes some moaning and whining from kids who had gotten used to not having any tasks or chores for the last couple days, but no coherent resistance forms since it's clear from Roland and the other adult's minds that things will be much harder later on if there aren't at least some of them who learn the local language. There might be some delinquency, since Hildre and Roland leave to meet with the doctor for his next session of training, but a day or two of laxness won't be the end of the world.

Just in case, the two men will also bring the cargo-bots with them. Roland's back and shoulders are still a bit sore carrying the tables all the back to camp on his own yesterday.

The two of them quickly find the doctor again, ready for another session of training. He's mildly tense, expecting another experience as intense as the one he had yesterday, but he's also excited to see what happens next.

They'll all find seats again before Hildre explains what today, and future training will be like. "We'll be working through most of the stages passed through yesterday, but we'll be focusing on one at a time now instead of going through all of them in sequence. In addition to Roland and me modifying your mind, I'll also be guiding you through the process of making these modifications into something that you can reach for on your own, with being able to summon and dismiss all three at will being the ultimate goal of the training."

The two men both settle more fully into position, closing their eyes as they did yesterday.

"Today, we'll be working on direction and texture, and learning to control them passively. We'll make contact now."

And indeed, just as before, the weight of Hildre and Roland's simple presence on the doctor's awareness magnifies considerably.

"And moving right to modification."

The weights again converge to a single point, though this time rather than beginning to drift in a circle, it simply moves to the center of the doctor's field of view.

"First, we'll make some basic modifications, slowly and one at a time, to let you develop a sense of what they're 'made of', so to speak. Then we'll make one modification, undo it, and relax our contact, then you'll try and recreate it."

And thus they do, slowly moving the weight around or changing the perceptual characteristics of the things it falls on, repeating the changes several time. Hildre and Roland are both paying close attention to the doctor's meta-cognitive attention as well, and once it seems like he's cottoned on to the granular cognition ingredients a particular modification, they'll move to practice, creating and undoing the modification they've identified as being potentially realizable, before allowing the weight of their presence to lighten almost back to normal and directing the doctor to try and put together modification on his own. If he succeeds, they'll move on to instilling the awareness of a different modification, and if he struggles, they'll gently nudge his attention towards the elements he noticed but hasn't yet put into the right mental place.

He... struggles with the unfamiliar mental motion, but he does manage to do something similar to the perceptual shifting they're trying to teach him. He concentrates very intensely, and his mind is totally devoted to recreating the perceptual modification.

It's strange, and certainly very difficult, but as he tries, and as Hildre and Roland guide him, it gets easier. Then, suddenly, it clicks in an almost physical way, and the modification stays, without Hildre, Roland, or the doctor's active effort.

"Good! That's the first. We'll keep going for today, working on other modifications. The more of it you experience, the easier it'll be to return to, and to arrive at on your own. By the time we're done today, you'll hopefully be comfortable enough with it to practice on your own, without our help."

And in this manner, they continue until the end of their scheduled time. Hildre and Roland both seem pretty drained by the end, maybe even more so than after yesterday's session, and they'll both rest in the park for a long while after the doctor head's off, recuperating from the exertion before hiking back to camp.

Time passes. The doctor's training progresses at just shy of Hildre's most optimistic projections, steadily working through implementing directional, textural, substantial, and partial-disjunctive modifications, first with Hildre and Roland's help, and then without. By the time a week passes, the doctor's ready for an unmitigated follow-up examination of the children, which goes just about perfectly (though the doctor himself likely needs some time afterwards to process and integrate the results of the examination).

Eventually, after no doubt a considerable amount of negotiation work behind the scenes sorting through potential homes and potential crews to move them there, it comes time for the first bunch of children to head off to the farmstead will they'll be staying long-term. In this case, it'll be Malou helping handle the ship's crew, Roland keeping watch of the children, Rom to help take care of the house the children will be setting up in, and a mix of teens and younger kids so that Rom won't have to be on-call handling the younger ones all of the time.

Now they just need to actually make it there in one piece.

They manage to find a cargo ship, keeping much of it empty to let the children enjoy the ride over. They've prepared a temporary in a cleared area near the back of the ship, far enough to keep any exposure to an absolute minimum. After a 5 hour trip over, they arrive at the island, consisting of vast greenhouses growing strawberries, blueberries, and other perishable, fragile foods. Past all the greenhouses, they can find a 15 story building surrounded by a beautiful garden of flowers and ponds, the view from the top reaching all the way to the end of the island. There are several cars hidden inside a garage. The front door just opens; the key, very small and cylindrical, can be found lying on a table when you get in behind it.

All them, from the smallest of children in this particular bunch to Malou and Roland who aren't staying long before making the journey in reverse to start preparing the next bunch of orphans, are simply stunned by the accommodations.

It makes sense, given the stunning wealth and technological advancement of the society that's received them, but even so, none them really stopped to think what a 'farmstead' would be to this culture, let alone what actually exploring and experiencing in person would be like.

The youngest children immediately begin familiarizing themselves with nook and cranny of the place. The older teens share a long day of making sure they aren't dreaming. Rom reads through all of the documentation, literature, and manuals for the island and the buildings and machinery present on it with the hunger of a man who has never eaten in his life. Malou and Roland both have to marshal their will to pull themselves away from the nigh-paradisaical environment, but they manage it.

All can agree, this is the beginning of something truly good.

There are quite a few dorms, consisting of wide beds attached to nice bathrooms. In addition, there's a very large common bath, with a big pool for dozens of people to play in together or swim in. The pool is empty at present. About half of one of the floors is dedicated to a kitchen, with a pantry containing enormous amounts of ingredients, probably enough to last a month or more. There's an elevator taking you all the way to the top; there's a rooftop park there, with soft and warm grass. The top floor has an entire room with a soft, comfortable floor to sit or lie on, and the walls are all made of a strangely slippery kind of glass that gives the illusion of the room being outdoors. In addition, there's a cinema room, with both ordinary cinema seats and a very comfortable carpet to sit on. Elsewhere, there is an entire hospital room. It's designed to let one doctor handle simple operations, even coming with a built-in automatic anesthesia machine.

There's a library, with several comfortable chairs to sit on. There's a shelf dedicated to information on the island, its buildings, and the farms. There are dozen of books on its shelves. All the documentation is incredibly detailed, with one book consisting of nothing but blueprints and inventories of every single article used in the main farmhouse. There are similarly detailed books describing the greenhouses, as well. They're currently worked by robots, with the book explaining how farm laborers are to replace parts and follow simple troubleshooting instructions to maintain them, together with incredibly detailed listings of all the robot's parts and blueprints for all the robot's hardware. Finally, there is a more general book about agronomy, explaining the optimal cycles of planting, harvesting, and care for a wide variety of labor-intensive, short-shelf life foods that have to be grown on compact farmsteads relatively near population centers. It also comes with information on how to optimally decide which plants to grow in which greenhouse, based on the prices of different berries.

Steadily over the following days, the orphans and their caretakers (the doctor now included) trickle out of the woods and find their places on the island. The younger kids quickly become accustomed to their new amenities, often gathering for their wordless conclaves on the roof and top-floor and playing their obscure games all across the lush island landscape, while the teens and adults (besides the doctor, naturally) have a much more persistent sense of fascination and awe at what they've been given.

Rom takes to robotics like a fish to water, and soon becomes the primary repairman of the group (and Evan elects himself to be Rom's assistant), though Malou has Roland make sure that all of the children are getting at least some experience with the tools and tasks, as well as keeping up with their language work. Notably and seemingly of their own initiative, Mina, Varts, and few of the younger teens have developed a practice of documenting the goings on of the island in notebooks, producing records of surprisingly great detail. These are a great help to Malou, who smoothly integrates the organizational tasks of the farm into her running of the orphanage, as transformed and transplanted as it is.

Thea does what she can around the island, being another pair of hands for repairs, a pair of eyes to look for books in the library, a source of unafflicted attention for the oldest teens to test themselves against, but with only three other unafflicted on the island, her former role as the primary liaison with the unafflicted people of Tunn has seemingly been rendered rather superfluous.

The 15-story compound has an endless supply of hot water, as well as a practically infinite selection of videos to see in the cinema. Having the children sit down to watch some educational programming would probably make life a bit easier for the adults. The doctor doesn't do much, most days. He spends his time reading, meditating, and helping out with the rows upon rows of greenhouses once in a while, when he isn't trying his hand at cooking. The days go by without much worry; it's not much work to harvest enough berries to pay for the modest expenses of the palatial complex, with the doctor handling the relevant finances.