"Of course. I can tell her to learn Tapap or at least have the chip translation loaded."

"Cool."

"Is it okay if I follow up if I haven't heard back from you?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Thank you so much for calling."

"You're welcome!"

He hangs up.

Peka and stolen van and baby travel to the capital and park in the red district and go through the tunnel.

Sad Elf is there. She smiles sadly at Peka. "Hi. How can I help you?"

"Uh, I'm here to figure out why the other red who used to come here wouldn't talk to you."

" - oh. Rindeya, her name was Rindeya. I - figured she just found it stressful, she stopped being conversational right after we explained that they didn't have to - that was our fault, someone said something about taking immigrant reds if none of the native ones would talk to us and they heard 'if you don't talk we'll kill and replace you' - and I told her we were so so sorry, we'd never do that, and visit after that she stopped talking." She's maybe a little choked up.

"Doooo you remember what you said exactly."

"Uh. Someone did suggest getting immigrant reds but we'd just build a bigger neighborhood if we did that, we wouldn't - you thought if you didn't come we'd kill you -"

 

               "...yes, that's why we paid Colse to come here."

 

"Oh. Well. We were really upset that we couldn't get any of you to come in but we'd never kill people over it. I'm so sorry you were scared."

 

              "Why did you fire the social workers we already had?"

 

"We asked them why you didn't want to come in and asked them to ask you to and they were really unhelpful and didn't really seem to understand you at all and still none of you were coming in. So."

 

           "They could have gotten us to send someone too if they'd said something that sounded like 'or you all die'."

 

"Or they could have explained to us why you were scared to come!"

            "Oh, they're not good at their jobs or anything, I'm not sure any red social worker has ever been good at their job, but that's not a problem you can solve by hiring replacements."

 

" - okay. We couldn't even find enough replacements."

 

              "I'm not surprised."

 

"People are really weird about you all."

She does a good imitation of Rindeya. She's crying again. 

"Does... that not count as talking?"

"That was before she stopped talking."

"What did you say right around when she stopped talking?"

"What's going to happen with us once people're colonizing planets?"

 

"I think there's talk about having a red planet? Or you could stay like this, or go to Endorë where they don't care. I'm not sure. I can ask if you'd like."

"- and she nodded and I asked a couple people if there were other options -"

"Yeah, once terraforming gets cheaper they'll probably do a red planet. Or if we figure out how to chip Amentans they said if people wanted we could chip them and then kill them and make them a new body that'd be clean."

" - she didn't say which of those we should work towards, so we've been working on all of them -"

"Okay! I figured out why she might think you would kill us all! It's because you told her so, genius!"

" - if we figured out how to chip Amentans - and people wanted - so we could immediately resurrect them - you think she thought we meant that whether or not we could chip people and whether or not they wanted and even without a way to resurrect them we would just murder them?"

"You didn't even specify who would have to want it! If anything saying 'people' makes it less likely you mean 'reds'! You don't need a reason to kill us you need a reason to want us alive!"

She bursts into tears.

Someone else walks in and she takes his hand to drag herself to a standing position and staggers out of the office. 

"Uh," he says to Peka. "Wilindë asked me to take over. ...sorry."

"No problem I think she needs a new job anyway."

"To clarify," he says, "if any individual chipped person would like to discard their present body in favor of a new one, they can do so at any time, and the idea was floated that if chipping Amentans is possible some reds might want that, and if they did want that we would have the capacity to accommodate them."

"That sounds way less genocidal like that!"

"It is kind of terrifying to communicate with people who will ask no clarifying questions, default to assuming genocidal intent, and will kill themselves if you panic them!"