They circle the planet and look at the architecture. They are somewhat disappointed.
"Maybe the aliens think they're pretty," someone says dubiously.
"No," someone else says. "Some things are universal."
"Maybe the aliens are all blind."
"That makes more sense."
"Well we have to pick somewhere."
This place has a lovely large statue-garden-monument thing that Elves would not go out of their way to avoid if it were in Tirion, though they'd probably walk through it quickly. They go for that one.
Video feed goes off.
They have instructions about complying with terms of probation. Apparently most people who have a hard time with that have substance abuse problems or return to a living situation in which they were committing survival crimes, she's urged to get help for those at her constituent support office or local clinic or from her probation officer.
Videoconference, from her pocket everything is fine, times and dates listed.
Yep.
She leaves and drives back down and collects baby from lesbian, who fortunately has not yet superglued herself to the infant. She does not sell her van; she picks up extra money by fucking plumbers and garbage collectors whose incomes aren't as spotty as the undertakers' and this is much more appealing in a van than in a tent. She makes a payment when she's got enough accumulated, goes a little hungry, still manages to buy plenty of baby formula. Calls her probation officer when the time comes.
Her probation officer is also an alien and wants to know how she's doing and how the baby is doing.
She and the baby are okay. Living in a stolen van (...the same stolen van, she did not steal a different van) but safe enough and not sick or anything.
Does she have work? Does she have people who can watch the baby?
"It turns out young healthy construction workers don't actually die all that often and nobody seems to be building a nursing home any time soon but for some reason some reds around here have, like, spending money, so I'm doing some red sex work to fill in the gaps so I can do fine installments, that's fun, and Palde watches the baby."
"All right. Are you worried about keeping up with the fine installments?"
"Um, a little bit, I'm thinking about moving up to one of the cities with more old people in it instead of waiting here."
"Okay. If they're too much, you can petition the court for smaller installments. It's better to do that before you miss a payment."
"We'd try to figure out what's going on and help give you terms you can work with before we'd send you to jail. But it looks better to be anticipating problems and helping us preempt them."
"Okay. You guys are really nice, I kind of figured I was going to die but at least you'd let Palde have the baby."
"Calado only has the death penalty for premeditated murder, treason and desertion in wartime." And boy do they work to make sure practically no cases count. "I don't think even the old government had it for theft."
"We also don't have differential sentencing by caste. - the police are a problem, with reds, but we've been consistent about following up with incidents and there've been fewer of them."
"The way to get a fine reduction is to go to your constituent services office, or to the website, and there's a form. I've just sent it to you as well. It asks what you're paying, why you want a reduction, and about how much money you earned last month from all sources."
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