"Uncontrolled fire in the red district, which they have no reason to care about. If cops shot - forget a hundred sixteen - if they shot ten clean citizens the place would be swarming with cameras and there'd be protests and counterprotests and a formal investigation. But we could shoot ten thousand reds without hearing more about it than 'huh, is something up?'"

"Wow."

"It has to be more convenient not to hurt them."

"Well, I know that now." Sigh. "What do you think Felix should've done?"

"When he saw the police, or earlier?"

"Either way."

"Best thing to do when you see the police hurting people and you are not willing to murder them - or at least knock them instantly unconscious - is stay and watch. And call people asking them what's going on and who authorized it. Earlier - give the reds an email address."

"...He only figured out that your city had public wifi right before the debacle. He didn't bring his pocket everything because he was afraid you could monitor it remotely. ...I guess he could've asked one borrowed from a cop. The reds were so consistently terrified that I don't know he could've considered the email as a suggestion."

"The email is important precisely because they are terrified when you talk to them in person. They're terrified that their children might reach out and grab you and get murdered for it or that you might get a cold and demand they be shot or that someone might blink funny - email. On the internet there are no colors."

"Yeah, Felix would never have thought of that. He.. he wouldn't think about the children thing. If one had he would just have patted on the head and smiled..."

"But they have absolutely no way of knowing that."

"And they were obviously terrified and doing the not-expressing-preferences thing, so Felix wouldn't even try to do anything that could be construed as a preference to something they would be afraid of-"

"Trying to touch them would not have helped. They'll be okay, they'll get a nice dimension to themselves..."

"Kind of fucked up that is the only solution, but as long it's a solution."

"We were going to try to come up with something but I think it's probably better than whatever we'd come up with."

Nod. "Hard to beat magic in terms of solutions. Or at least in available solutions."

"Yeah. And magic changes things, and it's when things are changing people are most amenable to doing something about reds."

Nod. "What is the level of.. cut off from the rest of the world are we talking about? Once reds are transferred to your pocket dimension, I mean."

"I'm going to have portals they can go through to do their jobs and then once we have robots to do their jobs I'll close those and they'll be cut off entirely."

"But like, no internet and they're going to be entirely self-governing and self-sufficient?"

"Yep - I suppose there might be a way to route internet through a really tiny portal for wires."

"I suppose there could be a need to send them supplies, but that we can't plan ahead besides committing to 'do it with minimal red and non-red interaction'."

"I guess it depends what my dimension is like but I think they'll do okay."

"I don't know what your dimension is going to look like, but I wouldn't be surprised it was something hospitable. And as long we have a place where they can live and Felix-or-someone-else to provide material needs we'll have our proof of concept."

"How fast exactly can you grow a dimension?"