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like a thief in the day
maurabel and penumbra go on an adventure
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They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.

One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.

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People are startled. They turn to stare. Some of them pull devices out of their pockets and purses - or are already holding them - and snap pictures.

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They are clearly aliens; the more normal-looking of the two has brown hair and her companion with the glowy light wings that cast stark black shadows on the pavement below has black hair. They look around and murmur to each other in a language no one around speaks.

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People back up and jostle each other and whisper and take more pictures.

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Brown haired alien says something tentative and pleasant.

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...someone with green hair steps forward and attempts to repeat it.

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She nods and points at herself and says, "Maurabel," and then at her companion, "Penumbra."

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"Maurabel. Penumbra." Self- "Aveline."

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"[first word she said], Aveline."

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Gesture at the city. "Lakla."

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...nod.

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She points at Maurabel's hair and says something questioning.

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Maurabel touches her hair, looks at Penumbra, asks her a question, gets an answer, looks back at Aveline in puzzlement.

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She asks Penumbra the same question.

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Penumbra can make her hair glow?

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Shrug. Smile. She attempts to communicate with gestures that the picture-taking can be made to stop if they object.

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Maurabel and Penumbra clearly have no idea what those people are doing.

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Aveline cautiously walks closer, holding a little glowy glass thing.

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Maurabel watches her.

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Little glowy glass thing can be a mirror, see, like this. And then you press this and you get an instant portrait. That is what everybody around them is doing.

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"Ooh!"

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Smile. (Low-tech aliens. That's a twist. She hopes nothing horrible happens.) She gives Maurabel her pocket everything to try it.

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Maurabel tentatively accepts it. She pokes it.

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If she pokes it in the right place she can get a selfie. Aveline supplies vocabulary words.

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Maurabel puts down the pocket everything and starts taking notes; she has a notebook tucked in her outfit. (The outfit looks low-tech. So does the paper. She writes with a stick of charcoal wrapped in more paper so it doesn't get on her hands.)

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...would she like a pen.

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"Ooh!" she says of the pen. She draws some squiggles with it and then switches to it.

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Giggle. 

 

 

Police officers have closed the street and started redirecting the crowds.

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Maurabel looks up at what's going on occasionally but is mostly doing the notes thing. Penumbra is more watchful.

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The police officers wear bulky vests and carry sticks and guns, neither of which they have out; people are agreeable about being shooed. Some people talk to Aveline; she smiles at them and says something confidently.

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Maurabel talks to Penumbra and waits.

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Shiny metal things roll up at high speeds. More people get out of the shiny metal things. 

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One of them ducks the police line and hurries over towards Maurabel and perfectly repeats the greeting she gave earlier. 

 

A few of the police seem to contemplate going after him and then decide not to do that.

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She greets him back. "Hi. I'm Maurabel."

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"Hi. I'm Afen Kisantami? I'm Maurabel. I'm Penumbra?"

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"That's Penumbra." Point. "Nice to meet you, Afen Kisantami."

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"Nice to meet you. That's Penumbra, that's Maurabel, that's -"

      "Aveline Santami."

"That's Aveline Santami?"

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"That's Aveline, she didn't say Santami - what does antami mean -"

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"Say Santami? I say Santami? She say Santami? Say?"

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"Uh, I showed up and said, 'Hi. Maurabel', and she said 'Aveline' and some other stuff and when you got here you said 'hi' -"

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"You said hi, I said hi. She said you Aveline, she said me Aveline Santami. You said what does Santami mean."

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"She told me her name was Aveline. What does antami mean, it's in both your - names, if those are your names and not titles - Santami, Kisantami -"

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"Ah. antami means -" he pantomimes writing something lengthy. "Title name."

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"Writing?" she asks, picking up her pen and paper.

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"Title name for - in writing. Writing -" he gestures to suggest a large category -"antami -" subcategory.

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"Huh. Uh, I'm a human, Penumbra is an elemental, what are all of you -"

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"Human. Elemental. I am Anitami? All of you are Anitami?"

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"Well, I'm not. Probably. Depending on what Anitami means. Maybe you wanted to say 'all of us' - that would be you all but not me and Penumbra -"

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"All of us Anitami. You not Anitami. All of those Anitami."

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"It'd be 'all of us are' and 'you are not' and I'm not sure what you were trying to say with the last part."

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He gestures out at the city. "All of those are Anitami."

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"All of those people," she suggests.

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"All of those people are Anitami -" he takes the paper, draws a squiggly map. "Lakla." He points at the ground. "Anitam." Place on map. "Tapa - all of those people are not Anitami." Another place on the map.

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"Oh - uh - Anitam's a country and Lakla's a city and Tapa's another country? What are all of you though - everyone -"

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"Everyone is Amentan. No human, no elemental."

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"Well. Uh, nice to meet you all."

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"Nice to meet you!" There are more people approaching. These ones have blue hair. They exchange some words with the green-haired ones. "They want you to the cars."

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"To - get in the - those things like what you came out of?"

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"Yes, to get in those things. Cars."

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"Cars," she repeats. She turns to Penumbra. "Is that okay with you -"

Penumbra nods.

Maurabel gets up and Penumbra follows her to the cars.

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People smile at them. People get into the cars with them. The interiors are warm and well-lit with unusual fabrics. He sits down across from them and takes detailed notes on a glowy glass thing. "Okay with you means yes get in the cars, not okay means no?"

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"Yeah, she might have wanted to fly." She hooks her thumbs together and flaps her hands rather than grabbing Penumbra's wing.

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The cars drive off. "She fly here?"

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"Nope, she got us here by magic!"

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"Amentans are not magic. No people here are magic."

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"Nobody? At all? Even a little -" She wiggles her fingers and light dances across them like trick marbles.

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"Ooooooohhhh. No people here have that - can you write it -"

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...she writes the word 'magic' with her borrowed pen. "Magic?"

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"Not write, I was trying to say - when a person knows and they saying it so more people know -"

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"Oh, can I teach it, could you learn it - uh, you have to learn things to be good at it, but you have to be born able to do it."

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"How do you say if you are born able to do it?"

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"How do you tell. Uh, you can do simple magic things and do them - even very young -" She gestures. "Like you figure out how to walk and talk, you figure out simple stuff."

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"No one here has even simple magic."

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"I'm sorry."

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"We can - you get pens and cars, we get magic, all people nice to meet."

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She giggles, a little nervously.

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"Your country not nice to meet?"

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"It's complicated."

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"Countries are complicated. Are you -" he gestures at one of the other people in the car and says an Anitami word.

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She looks at the other person in the car.

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They have blue hair and are sitting there smiling and trying to follow along.

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"Am I what?"

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"Countries have people who tell people what to do. In Anitam that's -" unfamiliar word again. 

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"I don't tell a country what to do."

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"I also don't tell a country what to do! They tell the country what to do."

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"My country is called Rixo and it has an Appointee."

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"Do they tell people good things to do?"

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"Some things."

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" - I should let our people-who-tell-what-to-do talk with you about ways we can give pens and cars and get magic and worlds. I don't know the things they would say and they will be not-nice if I say a thing that makes it not work out."

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"...it's. Complicated."

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"That is why I should not say things about it, yes. We can talk about other things."

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"Okay... um, now I can't think of anything."

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"Magic!!"

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Giggle. "Okay. There are twelve kinds! Um, zero, one two, three -" She counts on her fingers, goes as far as twelve. "- twelve kinds. Glass, lightning, water, shine, wood, adamant, earth, fire, stone, air, ice, shadow. Elementals can do one or two kinds, very well. Penumbra is two kinds - shadow and shine -" Penumbra dims and brightens her halo when Maurabel says that. "- and humans can do more kinds, always weaker than elementals but different amounts of weaker per element."

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He taps his glass eagerly and listens. "Stronger means stronger effects or more effects or faster or..."

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"Not faster to perform the magic, but they don't have to learn how to do most things to do them, so they can do more things that way, and stronger effects by a lot, which means they can do some things humans can't do at all."

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"What things can be done with magic -"

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"We don't know all of them yet. There didn't use to be a lot of mages and now there are huge numbers and we're finding out."

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"Ooooohh. What changed?"

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"Uh -" Sigh. "There's a thing people who are going to have babies can eat and that makes it more likely, we learned that."

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"Oooooohh. Is the use of magic to get to other worlds recently discovered?"

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"Yes."

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"We don't have a way to get to other worlds and would give very much for one."

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"How many people do magic?"

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"All the elementals, but we don't know how many there are. Most humans my age or younger."

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"What is your age?"

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"I'm seventeen. ...twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Eighteen nineteen twenty."

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"I'm eighteen."

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"...okay..."

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"Do humans and elementals age the same -"

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"Elementals don't age."

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" - how do new elementals start?"

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"They - coalesce - they don't have parents."

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"How interesting. Humans have parents?"

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"Yeah, we do."

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"And humans age and be parents and die?"

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"Yes."

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"Amentans also. We live four tens years."

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"Forty. That's not very long."

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Shrug. "If we had more worlds people would want longer."

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"They don't want longer now?"

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"This world has - as many people as it can feed. Wanting longer now is like wanting to fly."

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"Wow."

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"Your world does not have as many people as it can feed?"

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"I don't think very many people go hungry..."

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"Do the people-who-tell-people-what-to-do tell them only two children?"

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"...no."

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"Here they do. Not just Anitam every country. Otherwise people go hungry and die, or they - go to the next country and make space for themselves -"

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"...people go to other countries sometimes..."

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"No other country will say 'yes, we take you', they all have as many people as they can feed too. If one country is telling their people more children, they mean eventually for people to die to have space for the children."

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"Oh."

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"But that is not good so everyone tells people how many children and then there is no telling by making people die."

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"How do people... do that? The only two?"

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"They are very sad, is that what you mean?"

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"No, I mean... I don't have any brothers or sisters because my parents got divorced -" She puts her hands together, takes them apart. "If they hadn't, I would have brothers and sisters."

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"- oh, you don't have pens or cars or a way for no children when not allowed or not wanted -"

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"We don't have that! Someone should invent it. It's probably possible with magic now that there's lots."

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"We have it, we will teach you. Even without learning any magic. It is very needed - maybe not for you since you can find new worlds, but still, some people don't want -"

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"Yeah, we should definitely have it."

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"Most Amentans still want more than two. Five, usually. Some none, some just one or two, but most want more."

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"I don't know how many humans want since they don't get to decide."

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"It would be good for humans if they only want two. No need for telling and people dying."

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"When people who run countries tell the people in them what to do this is called making laws, and if people try to do different things the laws are enforced."

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He notes these. "What laws do humans and elementals have?"

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"Elementals don't, by themselves, they just kind of fly around. Humans have, uh, don't kill each other, don't... steal things, don't spy on people..."

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"Elementals don't have any laws?" he asks Penumbra interestedly. "Do you not have things to steal, or hurt?"

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"We don't have countries," murmurs Penumbra.

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"I think Amentans without a country would make a country. Maybe if no one dies you don't have need."

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"Elementals don't die," Penumbra confirms.

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"And no children."

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"No."

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"Do elementals want children?"

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"I wouldn't know what to do with one."

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"How did you two say hi?"

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"We were at the same magic school."

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"Oooooh magic school."

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"Yeah. It was fun."

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"Do lots of humans and elementals know how to go to worlds?"

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"No."

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"New magic?"

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Nod.

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"Did you write the magic?"

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"Penumbra did."

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"Wow!" he says to Penumbra.

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Penumbra smiles slightly.

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"How many people can go with you? How many worlds have you gone to?"

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"This is the first one and we're not sure if there's a way for her to bring more than one extra person."

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He types. "We are - glad to be first world you meet."

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"It seems pretty nice so far!"

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"It is nice! We have people who want to meet you - government and school people and people who write things for everyone to read and learn what is happening in the world."

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"...okay."

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"You can not-meet people if you don't want to."

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"It makes sense. I'll need you to translate."

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"I will translate! I like translate! So much."

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"Okay. You're really good at it."

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"Nice of you to say!"

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Giggle.

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"Tell me more about your world?"

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"It has lots of countries and everyone is very excited about there being lots of humans who can do magic now - what else do you want to know -"

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"Everyone but not you?"

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"It's kind of worrying. I like being magic though."

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"Worrying?"

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"A lot of things have changed very fast."

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He nods solemnly. "Have there been things between countries?"

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"...things?"

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"I don't have all the words. People dying, people telling people to do things or there will be people dying..."

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"Wars. Uh, there was a - big, big country, and then we found out how to have more mages, and then there was a lot of war and now there are a bunch of small countries."

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He nods pensively. "And now not war?"

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"Now not war."

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"Are there other things we should know?"

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"I'm not sure. I'm not good at this."

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"We will be at the place we are going soon, you could ask for things to -" he pantomimes eating - "and time before you decide who you want to talk to."

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"That'll be good."

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"If you keep talking I'll have more words for later."

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...she starts reciting a poem.

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He listens and nods.

 

They reach a very shiny very tall building built into a curve around a sort of courtyard and a pool.

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"Everything here is really - big and impressive."

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"It fits lots of people into not much space. This is a - place where visitors from other cities stay when visiting this one."

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"Inn."

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"This is an inn." They go inside. They walk through a large opulent space with people at desks.

There's a gilded little doorway and a woman with purple hair in a neatly trimmed suit holding the door open for them. The room is tiny and has mirrors.

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"...do we stay in there?"

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"- oh. No. It - you'll see."

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"Okay."

She and Penumbra step in.

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So do a few of their escort, but not all of them because it really is a small room.

 

There's a swooping sensation. The door opens on somewhere else.

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"Whoa."

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"We can't fly and otherwise it would be so so much walking up to get to the tops of our buildings."

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"I guess! They're really tall!"

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"They are! They are so tall we actually are trying to invent a better kind of that - it's called an elevator - and we need that before they can be any taller."

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...giggle.

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And they show her to her room! It is ridiculously extravagant and has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. "Do you know what kind of food you would like them to bring?"

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"I don't know what you eat! I'm not allergic to anything and I'm not picky."

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"Then I will just have them send up something they make very well. We have the room right across the hall if you need anything, should we leave you alone?"

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"- oh, can they also bring Penumbra food, she doesn't have to eat but she likes to - and can you show me how all this, uh, stuff, works?" She gestures at appliances and plumbing.

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"They will definitely bring you both food. And yes -" and he demonstrates a toilet and a shower and a coffee maker and a microwave and a minifridge and the bar - "drinks in the bar are, hmm, if you have too much you will be giggly and maybe your head hurt later -"

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"Alcohol? I'll skip it."

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"I don't like it either. And this is -" he presses a button and the screen flickers to life - "called a television, people with things to say - stories to tell or true things - can use a special thing to send from their -" he waves his pocket everything - "out to the whole world and then we can all scroll through the ones that are available - this is how you scroll - and learn about them. The ones you can watch from here are ones that lots of people like, if someone just starts one and talks about their cat and no one watches it then you need a pocket everything to find it and watch it."

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"...their cat." She giggles. Penumbra starts channel flipping in fascination.

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All of the news channels have variously sharp footage of the aliens and yellow-haired newscasters excitedly speculating! This channel has dancing. This one has singing. This one is about the aliens too. This one has some sport played with rackets. This one has a very pretty purple-haired woman sobbing heartbroken on the floor of her apartment while snowflakes drift in through the window. "That's one of the ones that is telling a story, not real," he says.

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"Oh, good," says Maurabel. "Wow. We're very exciting."

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"Aliens! Other worlds!"

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"Yep."

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"Should I leave you be?"

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"For a little while, thank you."

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He leaves and goes across the hall and improves on the notes he was taking and corrects the pronunciation of the blues who were valiantly trying to keep up with the conversation in the car. Someone with purple hair brings them food.

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Maurabel and Penumbra eat their delicious food. They talk quietly.

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Amentans strategize and debate and listen to this conversation.

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"You should talk more."

"I'm shy."

"It's - even more important than I would've thought, that they understand you're a person."

"I can try."

"When will you be able to do that again -"

"Another day or two."

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He frowns.

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"If you don't have it figured out I'm certainly not going to."

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"If anyone at any point in a conversation with either of them says 'reds aren't really people' or anything analogous I will have them shot."

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"Why would reds even come up?" someone says.

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"They had better not."

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"They're not starting with preconceptions or anything."

"I know. They've been very nice."

"Are you sure you're the only one -"

"I'm not sure. But I never heard of another Penumbra."

"- which is sort of good and sort of bad." Sigh.

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" - so it might be only her for the worlds."

       "We can probably trade for it, they're - twitchy but they're not - if they were convinced we're trustworthy -" 

      "Maulabel's not blue, she said, she might just be twitchy because she's out of her depth."

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"It wouldn't be impossible to do it with a regular Shine and a Shadow -"

"You told me it shouldn't be impossible for me to steer a regular shadow-walk."

"...it wasn't."

"Yeah, but still. You're probably it until a few more generations of magic study have gone by."

"Mm."

"Sorry. If you'd rather find somewhere that doesn't want it this desperately I guess we can but they're being very nice about it."

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"We are not trying to forcibly stop them we have no idea what else they can do."

      "If they're leaving anyway -"

"They might come back. We are not trying to stop them."

      "No one's voted for you, Neli -"

"And that's not the capacity in which I'm here. We are not trying to forcibly stop them from leaving if they decide to leave."

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"I'll stop translating if you're difficult."

       "What does Aitim have on you -"

       " - he's his father, remember, it's that stupid fucking thing -"

       " - wait, really?"

       

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"I might want to go suddenly."

"Okay. Please don't strand me."

"I won't."

"And then when you feel safe we'll figure out what's next."

"Yeah."

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      "We could at least have greys on standby, make the call based on the circumstances instead of making it in advance by not even being prepared -."

"No."

      "I'm going over your head on this one, I'm going to ask if we can have a team."

Sigh.

      "And if you neglect to translate plans to leave that's treason, Kisantami."

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"I resign, get yourself a new translator." 

       "Oh, for fuck's sake -"

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Words. Words words. Words? Words.

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      "Damn right we want someone who will do their job -" 

      "Stay until we have a replacement -"

      "What did they just say -"

"I wasn't listening. Have a lovely evening." 

      "Aitim -"

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"He's within his rights. Threatening to kill people is a very blunt instrument and sometimes employing it will backfire -" 

       "You just said you'd have people shot -"

"Because if you'd taken umbrage and walked off in a huff we wouldn't have lost anything."

 

Afen leaves.

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Human and elemental finish dinner and go to bed.

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New greens frantically pore over the recordings all night.

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Something something countries something shadow, apparently.

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In the morning a purple brings Maurabel and Penumbra breakfast.

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"Thanks!"

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Smile, bow, departure. There is a lot of food.

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Yum. They eat it.

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And when they're done there's a knock on the door and a young man with light green hair says "Hello!" with only a bit of an accent.

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"Hi, what's your name?"

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"Vashal Intami. You good?"

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"We're doing fine, thanks. Is the other guy sick or something?"

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" - yes. Afen Kisantami says no talk, regrets."

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"Uh. Okay. What's wrong with him, I can heal."

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" - sorry?"

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"If he's sick we might be able to fix him with magic."

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"If he - Afen is he - is sick you might be able to magic? Sick is what?"

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"...sick is -" She coughs into her hand, mimes stomachache.

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"Afen is not sick he had - work."

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"...but he didn't have work yesterday and today we're, what, not the most exciting things ever any more?"

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"...slower?"

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"He didn't have work yesterday. Today we are not the most exciting things in the world."

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"You are the most exciting things in the world. He left work early yesterday." He shrugs helplessly. "Afen Kisantami is Afen Kisantami."

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"...okay. Nice to meet you, Vashel Intami."

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"Nice to meet you. Sorry you have to talk again with no understanding. I will learn fast."

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"I'm sure. What do you want to talk about?"

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"Do you like the inn? Do you have questions?"

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"The inn is great! I'm curious about this country and all the other countries here."

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"I can tell you about countries. A little. This country is Anitam. Lakla is the two city in Anitam. Inat is the one city, Lina is the government city. Anitam has - ten tens is what?"

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"Ten tens is a hundred. The - one city? Biggest?"

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He looks at the coffee machine, makes stacks of creamer. "The biggest stack of creamer?" he asks, pointing at what is in fact the biggest.

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"Yes. ...I would like to learn your language!"

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So he provides her with the Anitami words for 'biggest' and 'one' 'two' 'three' and some simple sentences.

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She takes notes.

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He pulls up a map on his pocket everything and then bounces it to the television, points out the cities, zooms in on the map until you can walk around any of them at street level.

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She points at things and wants to know what they are. She asks for more paper.

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There's a notepad in the desk next to her bed! It has the name of the hotel on it. He names things. They zip around the city on the screen - that's a rail line, that's a sports stadium, that's a courthouse, that's some billionaire's private skyscraper, that's the headquarters of a large Anitami business, that's a public art installation, that's a city park, that's an airport.

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Penumbra watches over Maurabel's shoulder. Maurabel also wants basic vocabulary like "hello" and colors and stuff.

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He can provide that also. He smiles cheerfully at Penumbra and attempts to show her how to use the controls.

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Penumbra learns to do that and walks them around the city.

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That's a university! That's a public library. That's a coffeeshop. That's a hotel. That's a housing project. This is the blue part of town, those are private estates. 

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And how does grammar in Anitami work?

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He explains that too, with a little bit of confusion.

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"Will Afen be back tomorrow?"

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"I don't think so, no. By tomorrow I'll have the language better."

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"...why isn't he coming back?"

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Shrug. "Afen Kisantami is Afen Kisantami."

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"That's not very helpful."

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"I don't have the words - he is a person who makes choices fast without much thinking, and then sticks with them."

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"What, did he decide he didn't like me?"

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"No he likes you great he didn't like the other people here to arrange you a place to stay and a tour and things."

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"I am sure those people are great but they might be easier to replace."

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"He doesn't like most people. Would no like the ones who replaced them any better."

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Sigh. "Well, you're doing pretty good."

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"Sorry." Sigh. 

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She shrugs. She wants the Anitami alphabet.

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He can do that!

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She studies diligently.

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His accent gets less bad! 

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She can understand around the accent, it's the vocabulary.

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He's slower than Afen at vocabulary, no way around it. Remarkably fast if one hasn't met Afen, but much slower than Afen. 

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"Would Afen have to actually talk to the inn people to talk to me?"

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" - if people could call your room all the people would do that because they would be so yay aliens and there are so many of them."

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"...well, I don't speak Anitami yet, so how about just him."

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Sigh. "I can ask."

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"Thanks."

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"Maybe help if I say a point problem."

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"...what?"

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"It maybe help if I say a - not say 'is a problem, need Afen', say 'problem is this, need Afen'."

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"...well, for example, I don't know what you're talking about."

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"Example. It would help to have an example."

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"Will that one do?"

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        He goes across the hall. "She wants your father back."

"He went back to Lina."

        "Well, she thinks that's fishy as hell and she wants him back."

"You're doing great."

        "I'm doing adequately but I don't think it's even about that, it's about how when your translator vanishes overnight you wonder if this is a place where one gets shot for stepping on someone's toe -"

"And we couldn't have her thinking that."

        "So get someone to drag him back," someone else says.

"I guarantee you that will backfire."

       "Because he'd rather die than follow orders for three fucking days."

"Because he would rather be the kind of person who everyone knows will be dead inside three days if made to follow orders. I can't say it's a strategy that would serve most people in most contexts but he's very committed to it."

       "Then bribe him."

Aitim calls his father.

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He gets his voicemail.

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Aitim calls his mother.

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"Hi sweetheart, how are you."

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"Anxious alien who can give us planets wants Dad back, please can he at least pick up the phone?"

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Sigh. "I'll tell him you called."

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"Thanks."

 

...he calls Kefin.

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" - Aitim? I'm in class."

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"Ditch it and get on the train to Lakla? I'll arrange for orders to be waved in the right peoples' faces."

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"Why."

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"To meet the alien."

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" - seriously? Yeah, okay, I'm on my way."

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Afen calls Aitim fifteen minutes later. 

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"Alien wants you back, name your terms."

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"I will consent to translate for the alien in a private capacity for as long as I see fit and I'll stop whenever I please, including declining to translate any conversation I don't want translated, and I will face no criminal or civil penalties for so doing. And I want that pompous idiot fired."

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"I can do reassigned."

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"Fired."

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"Kefin's already on the train, I invited him."

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"I am coming only because I would be sad not to get proficient with the language."

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"You're reassigned," says Aitim blandly, hanging up.

 

Vashal heads back across the hall to tell Maurabel and Penumbra that Afen is on his way.

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"Oh good!"

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"They got rid of the people he didn't get along with."

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"I appreciate your help in the meantime."

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"My pleasure." Sigh. "It will take a while, he lives in Lina. He is on the train."

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"That's fine. Why is this spelled like that -"

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"- I'm not sure, I can look it up."

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"It's not that important." She resumes attempting to read an Anitami children's book.

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Childrens' books are meticulous about representation: there is a blue child and a green child and a yellow child and a grey child and an orange child and a purple child.

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She doesn't quite understand the significance of castes yet but yes she is now aware of the array of hair colors.

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Room service brings lunch.

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"Thank you!"

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They bow and nod and leave again. They brought food for three this time; Vashal eats with them and names things.

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All of which Maurabel writes down.

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And after lunch there's a knock at the door!

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She answers it.

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"Hello! How are you -"

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"I'm good! It's nice to see you, Vashal's been trying really hard but..."

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Slightly smug smile. "Sorry. I should maybe have had more tolerance for annoying people when it means getting to learn with aliens! This is my son Kefin -"

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"Hello."

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"Hi. ...Your son? You said you were eighteen."

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" - yes. And he's coming up on four."

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"Four what?"

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"Four years old."

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"You must - grow differently - or something -"

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"We are fully grown at five, we can have children until twenty..."

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"We're fully grown at like sixteen and I don't think there's a specific age after which no kids, it just gets gradually less likely... live to be sixty, longer for people who've always had access to mage healing..."

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"We usually die around forty, maybe late thirties if you had a hard life - people who grew up during the last war died younger... you are likely to have a significantly shorter year."

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"...if years can be different lengths, I guess that would do it. The days seem right."

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"The length of a year is based on the seasons? The days get longer and shorter gradually, there's accompanying rain or cold?"

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"I think formally it's to do with the stars and when things grow, it doesn't get very rainy or cold where I live."

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He does something to his pocket everything and now there is a globe floating on the screen. "You may know this already - planets are round, they circle their suns?"

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"...we know that but it's, uh, new."

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Nod. "Planets are tilted like so? And the tilt creates seasons - you could have been not-tilted and have none of them -"

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"Some places it snows sometimes."

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"And the year is how long it takes to circle, so if your star were weaker and you were closer to it, you would have a shorter year."

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"Huh."

"That sounds right," volunteers Penumbra.

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" - that our star is stronger and farther? Can you sense that kind of thing?"

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"Sort of - that's not what I meant -"

Maurabel says, "We know that the world is round because elementals can travel a lot better than humans can and we recently started talking to them more."

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He nods. "I think some people guessed early from shadows but it wasn't common knowledge until we'd travelled a lot more. Do you have boats that can sail your whole world -"

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"No."

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"I will add that to the list! With birth control and vaccines - vaccines give you a dead version of a disease and then you don't get sick, magic can maybe do that anyway -"

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"Magic doesn't make it so you don't get sick, but it can make you better. I asked Vashal if you were sick, he accidentally said yes, I said I might be able to fix it."

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"I was not sick I was -" Sigh. "Making a point. Did not mean to leave you without good translation."

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"He wasn't awful, I'd have been really impressed if I met him first."

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Smile. "Aitim said it wasn't just having good translation you might also worried. It was a good point so I came back."

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"Worry. Or be worried. He said you had work."

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"I mean, I did, but I would have ignored my work."

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"That's what I thought! I'm just that exciting."

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"You are so exciting! Everyone is so excited. What would you like to do today?"

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"I would like to learn more Anitami! Penumbra's been watching the television a lot but mostly things we don't have to understand the language to enjoy. I'm going to be a lot slower than you, of course. Though I have memorized the alphabet and can mostly spell things if they are said slowly."

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"Good for you! I can teach words and also translate some television if you want to watch things where it helps to understand the language."

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"Penumbra was trying to figure out the structure of the - we think it's a contest, the dancing contest. Because whatever it is booted her favorite. But we're not even sure if they explain that or if they just expect you to know when you watch it."

Penumbra giggles and looks away.

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"They explain it, but probably in the first episode, by mid-season they probably don't keep explaining - I don't watch that one but I can look it up." He does. "- oh, the viewers vote! If you get a pocket everything," he says to Penumbra, "then install that show's app, then you can say who you want to keep, and they count everyone up and whoever gets the most wins. That's how we do government, too."

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"How do I get one?" asks Penumbra.

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"I will tell them to bring you one now." He sends a message. 

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"I want one too."

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"They are very useful! I will tell them bring two."

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"Are they hard to learn to use?"

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" - very easy, for a person from here, children learn very small, but they might be harder for humans and elementals, since your culture is different."

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"Maybe, yeah. Even writing isn't that old."

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"Writing and symbols - we all know this means play and this means pause and this means warning or alert, there might be lots of things like that. Still I don't think it will take you two very long."

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"And then maybe Penumbra can, uh, prevent her second favorite dancer from disappearing off the show."

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"Yes! Though lots of people vote. Anitam has - six hundred hundred hundred hundred people."

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"...six hundred million people?"

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"A million is a hundred hundred hundred?"

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...she scribbles some figures but then nods.

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"Yes, that many. Anitam is smaller than our big neighbors but bigger than many places."

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"I'm not sure there are that many people in my whole world."

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"It takes lots of science to feed that many people and keep them safe and sheltered. You probably have lots less but once you have the science and magic it will grow."

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Nod.

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"Science makes places nicer, too. When Amentans were poor there was - people made to work without pay, and wars for the glory of Kings, and no rules against hurting people if you were important and they were not. And then we got better. Not perfect but better."

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"We have some of those problems."

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"Some of the blues will want to talk with you about how the problems were abolished here and where it went well and where it went less well so maybe in your world it can be done right the first time."

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"That would be nice."

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"There are still people alive who remember when we ended people belonging to other people but it was long before I was born."

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Nod.

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He translates the dancing show.

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This is useful.

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He has to pick up more vocabulary to do it! Dancing show has professional contestants and civilian contestants; all the pros have grey or white hair.

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"Does your hair lose its color if you dance too much or something?"

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" - oh, no, dancing is a grey job."

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Blink.

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"Do you not have that?"

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"Uh, old humans' hair turns gray, but that doesn't have anything to do with dancing."

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"Elementals would not have - do humans have it that children will look like and be good at the same things as their parents?"

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"Uh, we do look like them, I look more like my mom. My dad is a city watch officer and my mom teaches kids to read."

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"With Amentans - might be a teaching difference, might be a species difference - people are good at the same things as their parents the same way they look like their parents - so not all of the time but usually, and often quite strongly."

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"And all the dancers generations ago had gray hair for some reason?"

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"Yes. There was a culture who did it that way and they - did very well, won all the wars - a very long time ago."

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"Huh. Okay. I guess that explains some things."

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He nods. "Grey is also city watch officers - grey is most things that need you strong and untiring. Blue is government, green is learning and discovering and art, yellow is attention to detail, orange is caring and teaching and healing, purple is making things. Not - perfect, but very strong, because it has been that way so long. If you don't fit you can color your hair - I was supposed to be blue but I hate government and like learning."

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"I guess if you can do that it's not a problem."

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"It would be so a problem if I had to be government! Some colors it's easier to do the thing that interests you than others. Some people think we should stop the colors, but most people like the colors - like having a country or a religion, people like having something that is theirs and they are good at and respected for and that comes with a community."

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"Guess that makes sense. We don't have that. Uh, we have nobility, which is like - your ancestors were in charge and they want you to be in charge after they die - but it's not a color and if you didn't want to be nobility you could probably go do something else easily. My country doesn't technically have this any more since the war."

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"What do you have instead?"

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"The country is ruled by a guy whose title is Appointee and people vote on lots of lesser positions like who runs the guard and who handles taxes and stuff and all those people decide on an Appointee, who can be one of them."

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"That makes sense. Here countries also used to have nobility and now mostly vote. Some small places still have nobility, and more places have it but have the real decisions made elsewhere."

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"There was an Emperor who ruled - a lot of - not the whole world but all the parts of it we knew about before we talked to elementals more. But then when more people had magic there were a lot of rebellions and he died and his empire split up into a lot of countries like mine."

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Nod. "When the population pressure started to get bad there was an empire here who conquered everybody he wanted or who wasn't being strict enough about laws about children. When he died Anitam got free and built our own country."

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"Your country is so big. It's hard to imagine somebody conquering it."

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"The wars at the time of the Oahk Empire were very terrible, tens of millions of people dying. And when the Empire won they had soldiers take all the blues in a line and go down the line killing one in three, that was nearly a million people dead that way."

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She shivers.

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"Done now. We have peace."

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"Good."

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He nods fervently. 

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"Are other countries excited about us being here too?"

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"They are! They have been calling our government to say how did the aliens get here can they meet you can they take you home if there are worlds they should get a world first because their children are hungry, that kind of thing. The government has been saying wait and give the aliens time to learn things."

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"If people's children are hungry why don't they have fewer children, since you can do that?"

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"A good government figures out how many children there will be food for and allows not quite that many children, so if there is a disaster or famine there is still enough food for all the children. But some governments guess not quite well enough, or people break the rule and have not-allowed children."

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"I don't have to eat," says Penumbra. "If you need the food."

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"That is very kind of you but Anitam does not have hungry children and has rules about how to help other countries in need because we don't want - countries to be irresponsible on purpose knowing the responsible ones will fix it. That sounds very unkind but - it is worse next year if we are thoughtless this year."

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"...yeah, makes sense."

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"The government is not sure how to - let you meet everyone you want but not let you be manipulated by a country that will lie or think you haven't thought of the responsible-next-year problem. That's why they are saying wait until you have learned more. You can say no, I want to meet everyone now, if you think they are deciding wrong."

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"It's probably a good idea to wait. I'm not sure how long. It's tempting to say until I can read Anitami all right but that could take a long time."

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"All the other countries have some people who can speak Anitami so at least you would not have to learn other things too. I think it is reasonable to take your time."

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"Thanks."

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"Of course!"

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"If at some point I no longer require translation maybe Penumbra will teach you more languages."

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"Oooooh! You speak more languages?" he says to Penumbra.

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Penumbra nods.

"When elementals coalesce they know all the languages spoken anywhere in the world at that time," Maurabel says.

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His eyes rather pop. "That's amazing!"

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...giggle. "We started talking to them more because we invented writing, and new ones knew about that and told the others, and they came to see what was going on!"

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" - wow!"

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Slightly strained smile.

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"Would you like to teach Kefin some languages - he can teach me later -"

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"I don't know how to teach," says Penumbra.

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"You just talk, and correct him when he tries to say things but gets them wrong, or supply words he's trying to find."

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"...I can try," Penumbra says, and she switches languages.

"I think that's Siruscan," says Maurabel.

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He echoes her tentatively.

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"I don't really know what to talk about," says Penumbra in Siruscan.

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"I don't really know what to talk about?"

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"I... guess that makes two of us."

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"I guess that makes two of us. I guess I don't really know what to talk about? I guess two of us don't really know what to talk about? I guess that makes what?"

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She wraps herself in her wings but they are invisible and not very good for hiding behind. She corrects his grammar.

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"Am I upsetting her?" he asks his father in Anitami.

      "I think she's just shy. - and expecting us to get pushy on the planets thing."

"Uh huh." And to Penumbra - "I know what to talk about, elementals. Talk about elementals?"

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She uses the word from Maurabel's language for them even though it turns out to have a forbidden vowel and a consonant cluster for Siruscan. "There are twelve simple kinds and there could be sixty-six hybrid kinds but we're not sure that all of us actually exist."

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"What makes a hybrid kind, if no parents?"

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"We just happen. Nobody knows how."

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"What is it being an elemental?"

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"...what is it like?" she suggests.

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"Yes, what is it like?"

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"I... haven't ever not been an elemental."

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"What do elementals do - do you know many others -"

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"I know some others... we do magic and fly and... stuff..."

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"Stuff?"

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"Stuff." She squirms uncomfortably.

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"I don't know the word."

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"Stuff," she says in Maurabel's language.

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"Uh. Okay. Is there something better to talk."

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"I don't know I'm not good at this," Penumbra says helplessly.

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"Talk about the dance show?"

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"...it wasn't fair that they got rid of Sasa because the lamp fell on her, that wasn't supposed to happen."

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"They got rid of Sasa because the lamp fell on her?"

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"Yeah. She missed a step, but only because of that."

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"Wasn't fair. Get rid of lamp person maybe."

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"Yes, that would have made more sense."

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"Why Sasa good?"

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"Why was she good. She - danced happily."

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"Elementals dance?"

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"Sometimes."

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"Do you?"

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"No. I don't know how."

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"Me neither." He gestures at his hair. "Sasa learned in school but not me."

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"Elementals don't have school."

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"Where do elementals who dance learn dance?"

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"They just do it by themselves."

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"I guess I would learn languages even no school."

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Nod.

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"Why dancing show not other television shows?"

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"It was easiest to understand without knowing Anitami."

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"Was there an elementals humans war?" he asks Maurabel, frowning.

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"...no. Not really."

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He doesn't press it. "Are there other books you'd like?"

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"I don't know if I'm ready for anything that isn't intended for children yet but maybe there are kids' history books or something?"

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"Probably! I can ask them to bring some." Type type.

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"Thanks. The thing where you touch letters so they appear is really clever."

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"It is! They spent a long time on designs so people could write on a pocket everything fast, since people do so much writing that way. More than on paper, most people."

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"Makes sense. Paper is new, you can make it with wood magic but before we had to write in clay, which would have been so annoying."

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"So many new things, it must be such an exciting time."

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"It is."

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Someone brings illustrated Anitami children's history books.

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She picks her way through them and asks questions.

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Anitam was a poor country all privately owned by dukes and duchesses with big estates where other people worked as farmers! There were cities for trade on the coast but no way to get to them if you didn't live on a river and they were mostly not governed at all. Anitam got trains and power plants and started growing up, but then the mean evil Oahk Empire invaded. Their soldiers hurt people and they had cruel rules about children. This half of Anitam didn't let the soldiers come and there was war for a long time. Finally the Empire collapsed of being mean and evil and Anitam was free! They worked very hard and became a rich happy modern country with enough for everybody, and now they are safe and strong so no one can attack them again.

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"Approximately how dumbed down is this?"

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"Exceptionally so - it's not false, but the intended audience has a sophistication to match their vocabulary - do you want clarifications -"

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"Yes please."

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"Lots of pre-modern countries had a government arrangement with - a monarch, but a relatively weak one, who ruled mostly by appeasing local rulers and could be overthrown if the local rulers managed to coalesce around a different one. Anitam was like that. The local rulers had more-or-less arbitrary control in their lands as long as they paid taxes and raised soldiers on request. That gets you a - patchwork government, a good ruler could be very good and their people thrive, but a bad ruler would not be held to account unless it got so bad their people started flooding into their neighbors' lands. Few places do that today - the downside is too bad - though some do a weaker version where regions can set their own laws as long as they meet basic standards of rights for their populace."

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"Okay."

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"Anitam was - less developed technologically than most of our neighbors, we industrialized late. That and the weak central government meant weaker population enforcement - it was set differently by region and you could subvert it by moving, and regional dukes and duchesses could have as many as they wanted. We had wealthy trade cities and good farming, our children weren't starving, but the Oahk Empire was invading anyone who didn't have strict enough rules and we didn't. They conquered -" map - "this part. The mountains and this coast were resource-poor and had poor infrastructure and they weren't really worth conquering; occasionally a general would have a go and the locals would shoot back and they would slaughter a few towns in retaliation but it was never properly under Imperial control."

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Nod.

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"The Oahk Empire really was evil - war generally is, but unusually so even for that. And their child credits system was very coercive - you got them for service to the Empire, so people who objected to what it was doing or wanted a quiet role doing something less harmful could do that but they'd never have children."

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"I get the sense that's a really big deal here. Maybe more than for humans."

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"Maybe. It's - a really big deal. People save up their entire lives to afford a credit, in civilized countries where credits are available for purchase. In the Oahk Empire, they - started wars, committed horrible crimes, planted evidence of horrible crimes by others so they could get credit for stopping them, betrayed their loved ones, followed all kinds of evil orders - and some didn't, and those died quietly alone with no children."

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"...I think humans are different but it's hard to be sure."

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Nod. "So the Oahk Empire - the book says they died of being mean and evil? It's not too far off - blues needed the personal approval of the Empire to have children, and so they were constantly starting or suppressing internal rebellions, plunging all their money into long-shot military weapon projects, framing people for sedition or for assassination plots, created an atmosphere where the Emperor was constantly hearing about enemies internal and external - it had started out well-run, if evil, but it got worse. Eventually there was a coup. After the coup they granted secession to everyone with a claim and Anitam reunified. It was - not in good shape, post-occupation, although some very nice well-funded universities were established in that time period. Tapa - our neighbor - invested lots and lots of money in getting us modernized, because it was inconvenient for them to share so much border with a country with instability. It worked very well, we modernized, we became a democracy, we wrote good laws. There are international agreements - about when to go to war and how to conduct yourself in wartime, about how to be transparent with your population controls, about how to manage pollution and hazardous materials and trade standards - and we are a signatory to all the important ones and good at compliance, which is important, wars are avoided best when countries are known for keeping their word."

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"Some of that sort of thing happened when our Empire fell apart. I think less formally."

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He nods. "More useful than the book?"

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"Well, the book is more useful for learning to read but you're more useful for learning history."

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"Fair!"

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Giggle.

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They also brought other books. They're approximately as sophisticated.

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She would like more sophisticated glosses on those too.

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This one about the world hits the major points. Equatorial regions are unsettled or not densely settled because people can't season properly there. 

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"Season?"

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"- yes. When do humans have children?"

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"Uh, about nine months after they get pregnant."

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"- I mean when do they get pregnant."

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"When they have sex."

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" - Amentans get pregnant only in springtime."

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"Oh. Humans don't have that."

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"Huh. If we live near the equator then we don't have that, but people dislike it, it feels wrong."

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"Huh."

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This book is about how bills become law - "It's correct as far as the formal steps go, there are probably informal ones, you'd really have to ask a blue -" and this one about animals - "I haven't much to add, we don't oversimplify animals that much -" and this one about ways they have tried to get around being out of space. They have built places to live on the moon and underwater and tried ones in the sky but it didn't work well.

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Many Amentan animals are similar but not that similar to the ones on her world that she knows of. "Wow - the moon -"

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"It was so hard! When we figure out how to season the moon so many people will want to live there but we haven't got that yet."

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"I didn't even know the moon was a - thing."

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He pulls up a picture on the television to show how a moon goes around the world like so and the way they reflect light results from this like so.

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"Wow. I wonder how long it would have taken us to find out all this stuff."

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"Your technology matches ours maybe five hundred of our years ago. But magic will probably change it - and people who live forever will certainly change it -"

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"Magic is definitely changing things."

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"If you like there are lots of scientists who want to go to your world and learn about the people and learn the languages and get samples and pictures, and they could teach everything we know. Or at least every peacetime thing we know."

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"...um."

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"Hmm?"

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"My world is not very nice in some ways and I am concerned people would... learn the wrong things."

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" - you could pick ones who are all right not coming home, if you can give them safe lives there."

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"...I'm not sure how that would help."

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"We could teach your world things to make it nicer without anyone here learning whatever you don't want us to learn."

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"That... only might be good."

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"Are you worried it'd start wars?"

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"A little but not mostly."

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"Hmm."

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"It's complicated."

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He raises his hand to his hair unconsciously. "Okay. More books?"

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"Sure."

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More books! This one is about a little purple girl who gets lost in a big shopping mall and responsibly finds the police so they can get her home. This one is about a little girl from the equator who is smaller than all the girls in her cohort because of being born out of season; they tease her until they learn not to tease. This one is about electricity. 

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Electricity is interesting!

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Electricity is great!!!

 

 

This book is about how planets form. This book is about airplanes.

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"Do you have anything on how you overcame various social problems?"

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" - probably there are blue childrens' books about that, yeah -" Type type type.

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They can make them right now and get them printed down the street. "How All The World Ended Slavery" and "Laws of War" and "Workers' Rights!" and "Rule of Law" and "Birthright Citizenship".

 

They get delivered with dinner.

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"...hi, you're new."

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"I barely talk! These are blue child books, Afen said you're reading."

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"I am!" She sounds out the titles. Apparently she doesn't think it's weird that there is a children's book about war.

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There will be soon, they're publishing it online so it's verifiably a real childrens' book you can really buy your little blue. 

 

 

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She pauses over the slavery one but grabs the rule of law book first.

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It used to be that the rulers of countries made the law, and it was silly to think that they could break the law. Some of them ignored it all the time, and some of them could not afford to anger their subjects, and some liked to follow the law because it was better for their subjects if they were predictable. (Queen Ghastly: What pretty land. Give it to me. Queen Grand: I want to own that land! But if I take it, then my people will not work as hard on their land, knowing it might be taken from them. I suppose I will leave it.)

But then a few small countries with weak kings made their rulers subject to their courts. If the ruler took something, their subjects could demand restitution. The courts would order the ruler to make it right. Some rulers ignored their courts, or bullied them. But some didn't. And their countries flourished, because people knew nothing could be taken from them. And the good rulers said to themselves 'well, I am predictable; my people know I won't steal from them. But I have some irresponsible grandchildren and rivals and advisors. I want to bind them to be predictable like I am, for the good of the land'. And they built courts, and empowered the courts to make their laws. (Queen Ghastly: ewwwwww. Queen Grand: Hmmm.)

With this change came a change in how we think about the law. The law is not 'the set of rules the ruler uses to decide disputes' - the law is the set of rules the country uses to decide disputes. And everybody can get in trouble if they break it. Anitam has a council. The council is very powerful. But if a councilperson does not pay for lunch, they will get in as much trouble as the rest of us - because that's a stabler system than even the most virtuous queen. 

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Next the slavery one.

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What do you do if you don't like your work? You leave! That company will have to find someone else to do the work. Every caste can do this - blues can leave the courts and greens can leave their universities and yellows can leave their computer jobs and greys can leave their dance team and oranges can leave their school and purples can leave their restaurant. This is very important, because it means companies cannot treat their employees too badly.

Says Elis the Evil, "what if I want to treat my employees badly?" 

A long time ago, it was legal to take prisoners from a war, or people who were in lots of debt, and make them work for you without pay and with no right to leave. This was called slavery, and many countries practiced it in different forms. Some allowed enslaving foreigners but not natives; some allowed purple slaves but not anyone else; some allowed twenty-year terms of indenture but not longer than that. In some places slaves could be traded or sold at auction; in some this was disallowed. But all of them allowed forcing a person to work for you with threats. 

There were always people who said that this was wrong and had to stop. Some of these people bought slaves and let them go free; some helped slaves escape to places that did not allow slavery. And some of them tried to convince governments to make it end. In 3380 Anitam abolished slavery by edict of the king. When Anitam was independent, they wrote the laws against slavery into their new government. And eventually, in 3397, an international convention of 122 countries signed an agreement never to allow slavery and to punish anyone who still did. Soon after that, almost all the countries that still had slavery stopped so their neighbors would trade with them.

 

Discussion questions: Anitam and most other countries do not allow soldiers who signed up for the army to run away in the middle of a war. Is this slavery? Why or why not? Would you allow this? 

Anitam and many other countries do not allow strikes which shut down essential public services like hospitals and ambulances. You may quit, but you may not arrange for all your colleagues to quit at once. Is this slavery? Why or why not? Would you allow this?

A person wants to sign a contract that says their employer will pay for a child credit for them every year, and in exchange they will work without pay. They may not leave the arrangement. Should this contract be allowed? Why or why not?

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"Why purple slaves but not anyone else?"

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"I'm not sure, I don't think that was the law here. Might be the other castes successfully lobbied against being undercut by slave labor."

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"Why wouldn't a purple who was going to be a slave change to be something else?"

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"Not allowed."

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"...you said people could change colors, you did -"

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"I did and one of my sons did and another one informally does but it's not, like, anyone can go in any time and register as a different color, it's more like if it's obvious from very young and you move and live as your new caste and don't get into trouble then no one will bother objecting. "

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"Oh."

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"I do think it's strange that people don't mind more. The selection is very strong but still."

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"How do you know they don't mind?"

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"There's a site to petition the government for things you want them to do. There are petitions to build new sports stadiums and petitions to subsidize all kinds of things and petitions to have the whole council quit and petitions to require the whole council to be purple and there is a petition on there to make a easier process to change castes but it has many thousands of times less signatures than the other ones."

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"Hm."

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"People have a very strong sense of identity with their caste."

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"I guess that could happen."

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"It's like - gender? Every once in a while you get someone who wants to change it but most people don't even if there'd be some advantage in some contexts."

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"Okay."

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"My family is not very representative." Giggle. 

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"Why's that?"

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"Well, intercaste marriages are very rare, less than 5 percent, and that's where you usually get people who badly fit. And also I have seven children, that's vanishingly rare - one in a thousand - which makes it likelier I'd have two who weren't green and ran off to do something else."

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"Hm."

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"If you want you might have enough Anitami now to go meet people, you could ask them."

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"I could actually stand a walk outside, it's been a while cooped up. Penumbra?"

"I'd like to go flying," says Penumbra.

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"The hotel room has a balcony if you want to take off from there and meet us down below?"

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"- I mean I don't want to walk I just want to fly around," says Penumbra.

"She can't carry me, either, if that's what you meant."

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"Oh, okay. Then we can go for a walk and meet you back here later. ...it might be a good idea to not make it clear which hotel room you're leaving from, actually, just in case someone wanted to bother you, would you mind going down in the elevator with us and then going flying?"

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Penumbra turns invisible.

The door to the balcony opens.

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" - even better."

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Giggle.

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"People from here won't bother you but I bet all our neighbors have sent in diplomatic teams which are waiting to pounce. And you can talk to them as soon as you'd like, of course, but - no pouncing should be involved."

 

They take the elevator down.

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"I prefer not to be pounced on!" she agrees.

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In the lobby there are yellows behind the desks and a purple janitor mopping and unobtrusive grey security at the doors.

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And she steps outside.

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They accompany! Outside there are lots of people of all colors and in all kinds of outfits and of many different skin tones, bustling down the street. Some of them stop to stare and take pictures.

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" - you could put on a hat, if you don't want everyone to get all excited -"

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"I don't mind if they have pictures of me..."

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"All right! Where do you want to go, anywhere in particular?"

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"I don't know what's in walking distance of here. Schools? Gardens? Do you have temples, at home those are often very pretty."

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"There are schools and gardens. I don't know the word 'temples' -"

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"Uh, people build them to honor powerful beings who supposedly stuff."

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"...there are monuments to people who died fighting for important things?"

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"No, like, there's humans, and elementals, and then temple things, which are called gods. Except they aren't actually... around."

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"I don't think we have those."

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"I don't think we do either but the buildings are nice."

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"I will look up the prettiest buildings in this area," he says, and types that into the pocket everything, and then points them ahead to a public park with an accompanying greenhouse.

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Nice.

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And then they can meander onto this university campus and through its art museum! People crowd around taking pictures. News helicopters fly overhead getting video.

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"I hope those things aren't hard to avoid flying," Maurabel remarks of the helicopters.

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"They go really slow but we can ground them if you think she'd be safer."

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"I'm not really sure how flight works, like that. Probably she won't get close."

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"Up to you."

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"They can do their thing."

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Art museum!! More interested people!

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Wow, the art here is cooler than most art they have at home, they haven't even invented perspective yet!

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Does she want to learn, these art students will totally explain!

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Sure why not!

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Deliriously excited art students get materials brought in and explain how perspective works and various other inventions of post-Bronze-Age painting.

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Maurabel is not an artist but this is interesting!

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They're glad she enjoys it! They ask all kinds of questions about her world, which Afen translates: what work does she do there, why did she decide to travel worlds, why did she come here in particular, what is the thing she likes most about here, does she miss anything about home, how long is she staying...

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She's a student in a mage school and does simple magic to earn her keep, mostly stuff with glass because she's good at glass. The school's principal purpose is discovering new magic, and she discovered that they could travel that way, so they did. They wanted to go somewhere inhabited and weren't sure what else to specify. She is really impressed with running water and television. She will want to go home eventually but mostly just because her parents live there, not because it was nice or anything. She doesn't have a specific itinerary.

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Is she the first interworld traveller? Wow. Is she going to find lots of planets for her country?

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They don't have the same need to expand that Amentans seem to. Like, there are hungry people, but she tentatively suspects this is because they are bad at farming.

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Oh, yeah, if they still have lots of space on their planet and anticipate they'll get to others eventually then they're all set.

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Yeah-huh.

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The artists chatter about art and aliens and aliens in springtime and Afen translates and eventually suggests they go get dinner somewhere.

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Dinner somewhere sounds great.

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Does her world have restaurants? Restaurants are places where you go and look at a big list of food and pick something and they make it for you.

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Uh, inns sometimes serve food but there's usually not a list, you just get what they have!

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They can go to a restaurant, then! There's one on the fourth story of the skyscraper across the street, tables lined up for a view of the university campus. Afen tries to translate everything on the menu, with limited success.

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She's still not picky or allergic! She picks a platter with some of lots of things.

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Purple-haired waitress brings out lots of things.

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She eats them. ...deep-frying is good. What a good thing.

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"It's really interesting the things you appreciate - I have no idea when deep frying was invented -"

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"I think it probably would take more oil than we usually get all in one place except for trading."

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" - huh. That'd do it."

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"It's so good though." Nom nom.

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The restaurant brings out seconds!

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Eee!

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And after dinner would she like ice cream.

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Oh wow. Oh wow.

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This is adorable.

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It is delicious. "I would not have guessed that one of the most impressive things about a society with so much more stuff would be the food but apparently food gets way better!"

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"I'm so glad you enjoy it!!"

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Giggle.

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"Should we get some to take home for Penumbra?"

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"Yes."

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So he waves over the waitress and asks about this and a short time later she brings a pint of ice cream in a little insulated bag, and smilingly hands it to Maurabel and tentatively says 'for Penumbra'.

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"Thank you, she'll be delighted."

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Afen translates this and she smiles at Maurabel. And then they can head out.

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Penumbra is back when they get there and has not had any helicopter incidents. She loves the ice cream.

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Oh good! Should Amentans leave them alone for the evening again! They promise to be back in the morning this time.

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"See you tomorrow."

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They go across the hall. 

 

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"Thanks for coming back."

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"They're nice!"

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"It's important that we realize Penumbra is a person, Penumbra is scared, and she wanted the book about slavery. I think there's a way to control elementals and that it's popular back home."

 

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" - huh. But, I mean, why control them when we can just bribe them with ice cream -"

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"If she's the only one that does interworld transit, and wants to do it occasionally but not on demand..." People walk into the room. He shuts up. 

         "You're handling foreign inquiries, Neli, right?"

"Yes." He goes off to do that.

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"Wow, ice cream, huh," says Penumbra.

"Ice cream!" agree Maurabel. "There were also these hot things - maybe they wouldn't have kept well - dipped in something bready and then cooked in a whole bath of hot oil -"

"Oooh."

"Maybe you should come with next time."

"There's so many people, here, it's even worse than the cities back there."

"It was a bit much. I think they'd back off if you asked."

"Still."

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Afen dutifully translates, though by now several other people in the room can do it.

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"They're really nice. I mean, probably mostly because we're exciting, but they - had niceness lying around?"

"They're rich."

"They're unfathomably rich, I suppose that could look similar."

Penumbra makes a noncommittal noise. Maurabel picks up the book on workers' rights.

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Alik wants to work. Anat wants to hire her. Why should the government have anything to say about it? In some countries, they say that the government shouldn't. Everyone can decide if they want to work, and no one should get in trouble for it. In practice, though, sometimes a government might want rules. What if Anat lies to Alik, and says the work is safe, but it's dangerous? What if he locks the exits to the room where she's working so she doesn't sneak out, and then when a fire starts she has no way to escape? 

In Anitam a long time ago, workers got angry about things like that and demanded that the law protect them. They had strikes and protests and petitions. Sometimes, factories hired private security to fight the strikers; people died fighting to get better work conditions. This brought public attention to the unacceptable conditions they were working under.

Today, the law is that work environments have to meet safety standards. Workers cannot be forced to work for more than ten hours at a time, and they have to have access to breaks and water and restrooms. You are not allowed to misrepresent how much you will pay someone, deduct mistakes they make at work or costs of work from their pay, or assess them penalties that decrease their pay below a minimum. Workers cannot be fired for reporting workplace safety violations, reporting harassment, or reporting anyone at their job breaking the law. Salary and pension plans must be reviewed by a board that makes sure they are explained clearly and not misleadingly so people know what they'll get. Contracts are not enforceable if they are misleading or unconscionable.

Discussion questions: adding new workplace protections is expensive: companies have to spend money on compliance, and will hire fewer people. Some worker protections might sound nice but would be far too expensive, like requiring that no jobs have any risk at all or requiring that all jobs pay enough for everyone to afford a baby every year. How should we decide which protections are a good trade?

Should it be legal to hire private security to break up a strike, if they don't use violence?

Should it be legal to nullify contracts for being unconscionable if everybody understood them and agreed?

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"Everything is in terms of kids. How would all jobs affording a baby every year even work, if they're limiting how many total -"

"I can't read Anitami," Penumbra reminds her.

Maurabel starts haltingly translating.

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Blues tell all their neighbors that the aliens have been told ambassadors are eager to meet them and that Anitam has no additional comment. They practice the language.

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Maurabel asks questions about the worker's rights book the next day. Her world has not invented striking. It being illegal to fire you sounds like it would make things mighty awkward. Not forcing people to work more than ten hours at a time seems to just overlap with the slavery thing? What is an unconscionable contract?

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" - we're pretty far outside my area of expertise, do you want to talk to some blues."

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"Sure."

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So he goes across the hall and introduces her to blues!

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"Hi Maurabel! Hi Penumbra."

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"Hello again!"

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"What can we do for you?"

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She repeats her questions, which she has written down.

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"Oh, the book's not describing overtime law very well at all - if someone works more than ten hours you have to pay them extra past that point, it's not disallowed. The rule against retaliatory firing allows for monetary damages - uh, they have to pay you if they fire you unfairly, they don't have to let you come back to work."

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"Okay. Unconscionable contract?"

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"If someone says they'll do whatever you want forever in exchange for ten ni then we just won't hold them to it, because it's not reasonable. Judgment call by the courts, but the general principle is that agreeing to something doesn't absolutely categorically make it all right."

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"If and only if somebody goes to court about it, right?"

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"Well, what would usually happen is that they would breach the contract and then their employer would have to take them to court to get it enforced and then the court would look at it and say 'no'."

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Nod.

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"I don't expect it'd work in a place where literacy is pretty new - lots of rights only work if people know they've got them."

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"Yeah, I have a hard time seeing this implemented at home. Like - people were waiting to learn to read till they were adults and then someone said they didn't think children could and my mother said 'that's not true, my daughter can already read' and now she teaches people's kids, but 'kids can learn to read' was new information."

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"If any people from your world came to live in a place I was running I would aim for a much more - navigable government, one that works even if no one has any idea what they're allowed to have. But this works for people here, who do know it."

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"How would you design the navigable government?"

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"I'd have to give it some thought, I don't know much about humans and elementals. How would you do it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd have to know what resources I was doing it with."

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"WIth a small enough population you can just have very simple laws - no hurting people, no stealing from people - and then let the community vote in new ones, which means they only happen after community debate. There's a problem with that, though, which is that if you have a majority in favor of unjust laws then they can pass - that's why Anitam isn't a direct democracy -"

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"Yeah. What kind of things would Anitam vote for -"

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"People are not great about sticking with treaties and trade agreements, even though they understand there are lots of advantages to being the kind of country that does - people tend to vote to be tougher on crime, even when there's evidence it wouldn't have much of a deterrent effect - confiscating rich peoples' money is always popular even though it's hard to do in a way that doesn't discourage people from starting businesses..."

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...she nods along, apparently having to figure out half of what he's describing a priori but managing.

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"Does your world have currency?"

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"Uh, not like ni seem to be - do the ni represent anything or are they just numbers? - but you can buy most things in salt or shells. It used to be metal but it's too easy to do metal with magic, now."

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"Ni don't represent anything, they're just - an agreement. Everyone knows that everyone else will take them as payment, so they work. It used to be you could trade ni for metals, but eventually we wanted more control over the ni supply than we could reasonably have over the metal supply."

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"That's good, otherwise I could just magic up some gold, ruin your day. Well, I'd have a hard time, I'm not great with adamant."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It would rather undermine the financial system! Controlling how many ni are in circulation lets us keep prices stable, which is important so people can save."

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"Why's that important?"

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"People save for children, and for grandchildren, and for retirement. If we're careless about the money supply then they can't know how much they'll need to save and plan accordingly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How does there being a certain number of ni make prices stable?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I might need someone with more vocabulary to translate -"

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"Sure." And a minute later he translates - "Imagine if we handed everybody an extra ten thousand ni. Would they all be ten thousand ni richer? Not really, because there's still only so much food and so many apartments and so many child credits. Those things would just get more expensive. The only way to make people richer is to produce more value, printing more money doesn't do it. Now, usually when a government prints money they don't send everybody their share, they use it to pay government debts. But the principle is the same. If you print more money, there's still the same amount of real wealth, and so prices go up."

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"...huh."

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Smile. "Running a big country is very complicated. There is lots and lots of history to learn from, I can't imagine doing it from a standing start."

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"We're - newer, I guess."

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"Yes! And you'll make different mistakes than us and get different things right. You don't have castes, that's interesting. There are no countries here without castes."

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"I think I remember there used to be?"

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"Very long ago, no surviving writing. And it is not clear if they had no castes or just different castes. But yes."

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"We don't have them and I'm not sure they'd do anybody any good."

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"Imposing them does not sound good, no. Are there differences in jobs humans tend to do and jobs elementals tend to do?"

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"Yeah. There are a lot more humans, and all elementals are magic but some humans aren't or aren't very."

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"And elementals live forever, I would expect that to change what interests them and what they like."

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"It does."

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"One might worry about getting a - caste system by species, but maybe you can avoid that."

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"It is kinda happening already. Although human mages can do things elementals can't."

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"Every caste on Amenta can do things the others can't. That can be - insurance against one group of people deciding they don't need the others, but not against mistreating them necessarily."

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"I mean, literally magically can't, not, isn't good at it."

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"What things can only human mages do?"

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"Almost anything to do with making an object stay magic needs three or more kinds. If there's ever such a thing as a three-element elemental we don't know about them."

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"But human mages can use many kinds at once?"

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"If we have them - some mages are weaker or have fewer specialties - but most of us who are doing magic as opposed to something else have multiple affinities, yeah. There's only two elements I can't do on my own at all."

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"What decides which someone's specialties will be?"

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"Dunno."

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"I suppose lots more will be known about magic eventually."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What can we do for you and Penumbra today?"

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"I might go flying invisible again today," Penumbra says.

"Do you think I have enough Anitami to be understood by the very excited other countries' people?"

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"Afen would know better than me -"

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"She's picking it up very fast! Probably? Possibly I could stay around to offer words at need."

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"I don't want them to think I'm picking favorites. We could've landed on them too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I agree! Random is not a good way to pick who to meet. You will have to pick somehow, though, there are two hundred countries and they all sent delegates as soon as we said yes of course you can talk to the aliens."

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"Oh boy. Uh."

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"We can advise but that maybe misses the point."

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"I don't know that I can improve on random..."

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"You could do big countries before small ones? Big countries have less variance, they are not usually very liberal or very conservative."

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"How big is 'big', here -"

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"There are two countries with more than ten hundred million people and eight countries with more than five hundred million."

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"Aaaah."

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"They will understand if you want to wait more."

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"That's not it, that's just - huge. Uh, maybe they could send me written questions."

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"I will let them know."

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"Then I can decide whose questions I like best and meet them."

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"Sounds great!" He taps at his device.

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Meanwhile, Penumbra turns invisible again and goes out the window.

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"Have fun!" they call after her absently. 

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She flies. Takes a different route than last time.

Maurabel awaits questions from foreigners!

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Foreigners want to know if she'd like to visit their countries and various historical and cultural monuments within, and if they can get her anything or get her world anything, and what her world is like, and what the interdimensional travel is like, and whether her country would like to ally with theirs, and whether she would like to try their food, and whether she would like citizenship and arbitrarily many children for her and her family.

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She might travel more at some point. She is comfortable and not yet entertaining trade agreements on behalf of her world. Her world is low tech and undergoing a magical revolution and does not have castes. The colors between worlds are pretty crazy. She is not a representative of her country per se. She would probably like to try their food. She does not especially want kids right now and neither of her parents has even remarried since the divorce.

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When she travels they hope she'll come here! Someone hints ominously that they hope Anitam will let her. They can trade her world so many things if it's low tech. They'll send their food. Tell them more about the colors between worlds?

Permalink Mark Unread

Anitam had better not try to stop her.

Both shine and shadow magic can involve seeing light or its absence differently. Traveling by a combination of the two got indescribably strange.

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More questions about her world and offers to give her things pour in. Someone asks if Penumbra would like any of the offered things either.

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She'll ask when Penumbra gets back.

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"Are the blues being tolerable?" he asks when he brings lunch.

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"They keep offering me stuff."

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"That's not too bad!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not!"

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"Should we leave you to it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm gonna take a break from this, read the remaining books."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay! Have fun!"

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She reads the laws of war book.

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When a country goes to war, lots of people die. "Well," says Salie, "when I run the country we will never ever go to war."

Unfortunately, this is not as safe a rule as it seems. If everyone knows that Salie's country will never ever go to war, they might kill her citizens and intercept shipping and demand lots of money for no reason. The safest rule, if you want the country you run to never go to war, is to be very clear about which things you would go to war over, so no one is confused about what will happen if they do those things, and invest in defending yourself so no one wants to go to war with you. Another thing to do is to have lots of trade with everyone, so no one wants to risk their economy by starting a fight.

Another thing to do is to have agreements with your neighbors. If they are responsible and someone attacks them anyway, you will help them protect themselves. And if you are responsible and you are attacked anyway, they will help defend you.

Countries that do these things see more peace than countries which try to be threatening or countries that promise never to go to war. But no one has figured out yet how to be perfectly sure of never having a war (maybe you will be the one to figure it out!). For that reason, there are rules about how countries should conduct themselves in war, to make sure the wars are less awful and that they can quickly be ended and peace restored. 

It is absolutely forbidden to attack people sent to negotiate things about the war. ("That sounds silly," says Salie. "People don't think it's inexcusable to kill a thousand people, but it's really evil to kill one if they are negotiating?") But this is because no one can negotiate if they have to fear for the safety of their negotiators, and that means wars will never end.

It is absolutely forbidden to press into service on your side of the war people who you have conquered during the fighting. This is because it makes wars unstable - whoever makes initial gains can put those gains to work for them and get even stronger and gain more and use that also. This makes people more likely to jump into wars in the first place, since if they don't move first they will probably lose. 

It is absolutely forbidden to break explicit agreements made with the other side of a war.

It is forbidden to deliberately spread pollution or use pollution as a weapon in the course of war. 

It is forbidden to target medics on the battlefield.

Discussion questions: what are the reasons for the last three rules presented? If you were to add a rule, what rule would you add?

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"Pollution?" asks Maurabel.

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"I don't know how to translate the concept, it doesn't seem like you have it - when lots of people live close together, like in a city, there can be horrible plagues that spread from person to person and kill nearly everyone. So after a long time living in close quarters people develop a very very strong sense of horror at certain things that are - reservoirs of contagion. All Amentans have this very strongly. If people know a place is polluted they'll be - disgusted - a while back someone polluted all the food, because they thought people would get over it if they had no choice. Instead, there was mass starvation - it was just that intolerable to try to force yourself to eat something you knew to be polluted."

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"I mean, I'd have to be really hungry to eat something that was moldy or something..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's entirely psychological. Not food that will make you sick, just food handled in ways we associate with sickness - like, by a person who works in the sewage, but who has washed their hands."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Huh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was surprised it was such a mess, honestly, I also would have guessed before the disaster that people would get over it if they really had to. But - no."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why did somebody want them to get over it - is it because of the feeding children problem -"

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"Well, it's hard on the people who work in sewage."

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"How do you even get anyone to do that?"

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"There's this little independent community that doesn't have the disgust problem, they do it and live separately since no one will touch them. But it's hard on them, which is why that guy tried to change it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why don't they have it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"My best guess is that if you raise someone from birth around sewage and bodies and so on then you get desensitized enough but it might be they're also selected for not having the problem - how intensely it affects people does vary -"

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"Selected?"

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"If the people who can do the work without being too disgusted make more money and have more children, and disgustedness is heritable..."

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There's a sound of footsteps. The balcony door closes. Penumbra remains invisible.

"I'm curious about heritability, you seem to know a lot more about it than we do."

Permalink Mark Unread

He can explain! At great length, with disclaimers that humans might work differently. 

Permalink Mark Unread

They can hear Penumbra moving around sometimes but she stays invisible and doesn't say anything.

When heritability has been explained to Maurabel's temporary satisfaction she reads the birthright citizenship book.

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No country in the world takes immigrants anymore, unless you can find someone who wants to swap with you and live in your old country. If we did take immigrants, then we couldn't have as many children. This is a sad situation, if a necessary one, because immigration used to be the greatest check on abuses by governments. If they treated their people badly, their people would leave for somewhere better! If their city was destroyed in a war, they could flee somewhere that was at peace. 

Even though immigration is not allowed anymore, some people do come to Anitam without permission. Sometimes they cross as a tourist and then never leave, living with friends or under a fake name; sometimes they hike in across the mountains; sometimes they buy false papers. When we find these people, we send them home. (If we did not do that, what would happen?)

Children born to people who came here illegally are in a hard position. Under the law until recently, they were not Anitami, but they can't return to their parents' country either. This happened rarely, but in a country as big as ours, even rare things can be a problem; if one person in every ten thousand is here illegally and has children, then there are sixty thousand non-citizen children born every year. (Usually their parents purchase a credit. If they do not purchase a credit, the children are adopted out and are Anitami citizens like their adoptive parents.)

People became worried that these children would form a permanent class of shadow people, not allowed to take most jobs or have children, poor because the rules on foreign workers are not designed for people in this situation or illegal because they are ignoring the rules on foreign workers. They proposed a rule: everyone born in Anitam is Anitami, regardless of whether their parents were here legally.  

This was controversial. People worried that immigrants might illegally cross in order to have Anitami babies. But eventually, a form of the rule was agreed on that resolved everyone's worries. There are no shadow people in Anitam today. 

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"...what is the form of the rule that resolved everyone's worries?"

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He reads over shoulder to figure out what she means. Then he looks it up. "If children born here are eligible for citizenship elsewhere then they're citizens there - since the idea was helping people who've nowhere to go. And you can only buy a credit if you've been living here for a year unless you get a waiver, so the kids the rules apply to are all children of parents who have been living here for a year."

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"How do you get waivers?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Apply to the relevant agency. There's a web form."

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"Huh, okay."

The hem of her shirt (she accepted local clothes after learning it was customary here to change one's outfit on a routine basis) is disturbed like Penumbra's tugging on it. "I think I'm done for the day," Maurabel says.

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"Okay. Should someone bring dinner?"

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"Uh, yes please."

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"Have a good evening." And he leaves.

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"Their hair comes in red," says Penumbra.

"- they never mentioned -"

"The people with the red hair all live together and they - if we'd gone there first they would still look rich, they have electricity and things, but they aren't, not for here -"

Permalink Mark Unread

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"What exactly happened?"

"I was just flying around and I found a place with much shorter buildings, and then I saw they had red hair, I landed - I couldn't understand much of what they were saying, I haven't learned much Anitami. They looked really - busy and tired - I don't think more busy and tired than human farmers or something but for here -"

"Uh-huh."

"I didn't go visible. I might go again tomorrow."

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"We'll have to replace the carpet," someone murmurs. "You should've explained it to them."

     "She seemed to take the bit about pollution okay..."

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"Maybe, yeah," says Maurabel, "see what there is to see -"

"What?"

"I have a guess, that's all, I'm going to check." She has learned the basics of the internet and she knows her color words.

Permalink Mark Unread

There's a red caste. Reds are unclean. They do unclean work. They live in the red districts. Anitam is in compliance with trade agreements which include terms about being very sure your reds haven't touched anything anyone else might touch.

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"Well?" asks Penumbra.

"I was right. They sort of - implied it, but..."

"...yeah."

"Do you want to leave -"

Penumbra hesitates.

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"Dinner!" someone says at the door.

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Maurabel answers the door.

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"Hi! Eight different countries wanted their cuisine served, I hope it's not too much for the two of you.  - should we talk."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We can probably do eight countries of food between the two of us."

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"Then here you go. Is everything okay?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Got a lot to think about."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't have the pollution thing, probably shouldn't bring any Amentans back to my world."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some people cope with it okay. It's definitely something we would have to warn them about, given that you don't have running water. Shame to send a infrastructure and medical team who is debilitated by it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, that sort of thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But people do vary. There are social workers who spend a lot of time in unclean areas and they tend to acclimate over time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What do social workers do?"

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" - people are - hesitant to discuss this with you too bluntly because if you decide to leave it would be hard to live with having cost our world so much."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Penumbra found a neighborhood of red haired people today."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. "Social workers are formally supposed to be the interface between red communities and Anitam, but the reds don't like them and we've phased them out in some districts."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why don't reds like them?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"One common complaint was that the social workers didn't want to hear 'this is unfair' or 'we need help' or 'you're mistreating us', and would get upset with people who implied that, so everyone felt pressured to put on a convincing presentation of happiness when they were around. Another common complaint was the social workers not treating them as equals."

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"Are they?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"In a couple decades there'll probably be a cute childrens' book that summarizes it as 'people used to be mean to reds. "But why would they do that?" asks Timali. The answer is that they felt sick to think about them and they didn't care enough to try to overcome that feeling'."

Permalink Mark Unread

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"We talked about failures of democracy? If you put it to a vote people would want to drive them all out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But you don't vote like that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't. It's our job to do better than 'whatever people want, even if it's horrible'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What will Penumbra find if she goes and watches reds all day?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - we have to replace the carpet and anything else she's stepped on. They're poor, they're tired, they'd be terrified if she showed herself because they expect that, should she want to kill them, we wouldn't intervene to protect them, and that she might want to kill them because they're reds, lots of people do."

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"She turns invisible and is not going to remember everything she might have stepped on."

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"They'll cope with just the carpet, maybe all the furniture in the room. I have seen a lot of good, smart people try to do something about reds and not taking seriously enough how much pollution matters to people is where they often fail."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Try to do things like what?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Get them paid better, get them treated better, punish people who hurt them, invent technology that can do the disgusting jobs..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What, would your number money get icky if they had it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Your purples will get upset you're giving their hard-earned money to reds and throw a brick at one the next time they see one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And the rule of law doesn't actually work?"

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"The police aren't great at investigating crimes against reds. I know someone who bought all the reds cameras and we made a law that no one could tamper with those and that made it easier to identify troublemakers even without police cooperation, but some crimes are legitimately hard to solve if all the witnesses saw nothing."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Sigh.

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"You've been trying to evaluate if we're the kind of people who'd enslave elementals if we knew how."

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"- uh -"

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"We won't. I haven't told anyone I don't completely trust not to be stupid and there's absolutely nothing stopping you from leaving and we won't. - we might have. If the first visitor had been someone from your government who said 'oh, they're more like forces than people -' not even because we'd have believed them, just because it would have been enough to make it not something we had to think about. Two planets and then a moral revelation, that's how lots of people work."

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"They don't even have to let them talk. You could've just never found out."

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"I think I'd have noticed. But I don't run this country yet, couldn't've done anything - is there any chance they'll do planetary transit for ice cream? This is not even remotely a dangerous secret if we can sell it as 'elementals will give us planets for reasonable payment, except the humans are enslaving them, let's bribe the humans to stop and then bribe the elementals for planets'. It is a dangerous secret if they won't want to help on their own."

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"You're more like humans than like elementals and humans have just - it took years before Penumbra would even talk to me -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. 

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Why don't you come in - or I suppose you could stand in the hall, since Penumbra landed in the neighborhood -" Sigh. "Is there possibly magic I could do that would be sufficiently soothing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If there's magic that does cleaning very thoroughly that'd do it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know what constitutes thorough. I have good water magic, but..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Decontamination takes about five hours, normally. There's an agreed-upon sequence of soaps, though no one thinks it has to be those in particular, that's just the standard and definitely good enough."

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"Soap is not an element."

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"I'll stay out here, if it's okay with you."

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"Whatever," she says exasperatedly. She gets the chair with wheels and magics it towards herself with a jerk of her wrist. She sits. "It's more complicated than you think."

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He nods.

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"Elementals can be enslaved magically. It's - it's easy. It had to be invented but it's easy, I know how and I wasn't even trying to learn. You have to be a mage to use one like that, and it's probable that no matter how much seaweed you eat you just can't ever be mages, even before we knew seaweed helped there were some."

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"It doesn't seem likely, no, unless it's something about your world."

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"Yeah-huh." Sigh. "Penumbra belongs to my school. It has rentals. So students can borrow them and play with more powerful magic. I could've just refused to go to school at all but that wasn't going to help - I didn't have any luck with any other humans though. So I just tried to - I'd trade the elementals for their time, I couldn't give them stuff, they couldn't keep it, but I could arrange for them to have privacy or teach them to read if they were too old to know how or arrange to rent them when somebody particularly awful was otherwise going to."

Permalink Mark Unread

...nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can't let her free outright because literally no one has ever survived doing that and no one knows why. Like, we have a pretty good idea why the Emperor's elementals killed him as soon as he was persuaded to let some go - they convinced him they'd handle his hundreds of simultaneous rebellions, let him act in more places at once, but - sometimes people have just said 'well, around here it's customary to manumit slaves after twenty years' and - magical explosion, dead."

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" - we could ask if there are people on death row who'd volunteer -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're not mages."

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"Has to be mages? Do any of the elementals know why -"

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"You have to do a magic thing to use one or free one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So until someone invents a way that doesn't involve a magic explosion, it's a matter of better conditions, we can't just bribe the human societies to free them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And there are free elementals but they are still free because they kill humans - which you'd look like - on sight, or make themselves very hard to find."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do enslaved elementals have a wishlist, given all that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lots of them would probably be happy to see all humans dead, at this point. Some of them might except me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do they have a wishlist given unwillingness to kill all humans."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If Penumbra went around personally vouching - uh, we can shut them up, we can't make them talk, although if you are ever not sure of that I don't speak any of the other languages she knows - maybe they'd settle for me nominally holding them all till I was really old and then having an explosion party."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But then it'd almost certainly be a very very long time before any of them wanted to trade ice cream for colonization help."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ice cream's pretty good, but - I don't think you can just use the history of local slavery here, there's - I can make her blink, I can make her hold perfectly still, I can make her do anything, I used to have a serious problem of doing it by accident, it's easier than moving my own body, if she's nearby and it would be marginally more convenient for her to be doing something else. They don't have to sleep or eat or rest or ever do anything that isn't be convenient magic vessels for their owners and occasional or not so occasional sex toys. Even if their owners have to sleep we can share them. They've been so - so -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. Sigh. "Can more than one be let go in a fatal magical explosion -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think so."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But elderly or terminally ill humans can't be convinced to do it..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most mages are about my age or younger. Anybody my age who's dying is well within the range of things magic can heal."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Prospects of inventing a spell that releases them remotely?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think so."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is it legal to capture new ones?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Encouraged."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How hard would that be to change?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wild elementals are both extremely dangerous and worth a lot of money, so, hard."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What's the concern exactly with sending some people to teach you science and vaccinate you and so on -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Somebody would say 'sure, get the stolen Penumbra back and I will bring you to another planet and make my elementals make it all nice to live on. Pay me in salt.' And you would."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You obviously should not clarify this point but as far as we know we couldn't."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, we'd make it really hard, but it is not impossible to recover stolen elementals."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And there are other ways of getting here from there?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Penumbra might be it till another Penumbra coalesces unless someone can do it simultaneously tapping a regular shadow and a regular shine, which someone could maybe figure out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If Penumbra's our only way of getting between planets then it's a lot more straightforward, as long as she's off where no one can bother her we can't be bribed into cooperating with slavery."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No. Planets is easier than worlds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ah." Sigh. "So, letting them go is absurdly difficult and even if accomplished they'll likely be recaptured, or else kill lots of humans, which might not be an innate tendency at all but just self-defense under the circumstances, more are getting captured all the time, and the only way to get the thing we want is to participate. ...what would you need in order to successfully steal a bunch more?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...uh. If you could render everyone in a decent radius unconscious I could grab all the university rentals. And some other big collections."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How big a radius, how close to simultaneously, does 'incapacitated' do it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Has to be mentally incapacitated too or they could direct any elementals they had on them. They don't have to all go down at once but they have to all be down at once. Maybe a block?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - tentative plan, we send you back with the resources to steal lots more of them, we announce elementals get asylum in Anitam due to being enslaved on their home planet, we explain to the elementals once they get here that they can't be released until you're elderly unless they know a way but that under local law you're not allowed to order them and if they like we can have a social worker routinely check with them about whether they have been ordered and stop you if you're doing it. We hope that after a couple seasons some of them are feeling recovered enough to consider finding us planets, but we know that might not happen and we make it work regardless."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How're you going to do the knocking people out thing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would have to ask our military, I don't know of something offhand. Lots of stun grenades or something might do it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What's a stun grenade?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Grenades are thrown weapons which explode shortly after being thrown. A stun one makes a - noise so loud 'noise' isn't even precisely the right characterization, ideally debilitating but not killing everyone in range."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That - only might work - a lot of elementals in one place is a very appealing target, they have magical defenses too, I don't know about all of them -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Could we bribe the right people?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mmmaybe. I'm not sure what you're picturing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think I have enough of a picture - we have weapons that would, just, not leave anything larger than a speck of dust in the area for quite some distance around, the hard thing here isn't doing it at all but doing it without casualties. If there are people who would smuggle you elementals for lots and lots of salt and shells, you could take that back with you - Penumbra can go invisible, will she help with this?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some other elementals can see her."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And might be obliged to say something?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can't make them talk, can sure threaten them. And they can be tapped to let their owners see them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you find this plan potentially valuable I'm inclined at this point to put you in touch with someone with more relevant expertise. 'here's a target, how do we get what we want' is a thing some people do professionally and they'll almost certainly catch things I'd miss."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It has potential but - I think common knowledge would be dangerous -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I won't tell anyone until you feel comfortable with that but we're talking 'bring in an Anitami special forces team' not 'go on the news', it would not become publicly known."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...mm."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know how my people work, you're entirely right that if they were on your planet and told they had to use slaves to get a new one they'd rationalize it away but they're not going to go from 'Penumbra wants her friends, who are prisoners and who might when freed be inclined to do terraforming' to 'or we could try to take the one alien hostage to get the other alien, who has a lot of magic we know nothing about, to take us to their home world where doubtless everyone will think this was brilliant of us and want to teach us how to use elemental slaves."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"I'll talk it over with her."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. I'm right across the hall if you think of any more questions."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Any more nasty surprises like the reds?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"One country recently transitioned away from using reds for red jobs and killed almost all the reds except the ones Anitam took in. Another country is in the middle of doing the same thing. Everything else is less obviously horrible but I'd expect you might genuinely have different sensibilities than us - Anitam executes people for serious crimes? Some places do less of that. ...we let people do sex work before their first spring if they're of age? There's some place down south that's been sanctioning us over that for the last twenty years but no one else cares. Different castes have different penalties for the same crime, by law in some cases and in practice in others. There's a province on the coast that's been experimenting with corporal punishment in place of prison."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Those seem less like - things you could get permanently stuck in - can I fix the red thing -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Planets fix the red thing. Otherwise not really."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do planets help with deciding to kill them all?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Olvala didn't kill them all. They kicked them out, and there was nowhere for them to go, except the ones we could squeeze in."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Will they wait? The ones in the middle of it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - I don't think so, the situation has kind of escalated to the point where it'd be hard for them to back down. Other places will probably wait on starting."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Escalated how?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They didn't offer any red credits, this spring. The reds figured that was precursor to a massacre - correctly so - and they snuck out of their district and burned a blue district to the ground and attempted the same with less success elsewhere. Government shot a lot of them and then tried to make the rest train their replacements in how to do their jobs. The reds refused. The government took their children hostage and is now holding the children to make the parents train their replacements in exchange for periodic verification that their children are alive and unmutilated."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"You think I can't fix that or you think I shouldn't?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm unclear on the limitations of your magic system but I think they won't back down on the strength of the information that the alien strongly disapproves, and if you kill a lot of people then you've got a panicked international community and panicked people are stupid."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Penumbra can teleport."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Where're you going to put them?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aren't there lots of places you can live and just don't like, that would be fine for a little while?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's unoccupied equator but it still belongs to someone, there's unoccupied poles but they're cold."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How many people are we talking about?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"A hundred thousand."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That is too many to teleport out in any reasonable time frame, honestly, but maybe they'd stop wasting our time if she did it a couple times as proof of concept?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Stop wasting your time and do what exactly?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Send the reds somewhere else. People keep asking me what I want, what do you think would happen if I said I wanted some rainforest?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You'd get some rainforest. They might want more than vague goodwill in exchange for substantial amounts of rainforest."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We're working on a plan to get the resources we'd need to terraform. There are lots of countries. I can do some before others. What do you think would happen if I pointed out that Penumbra can teleport and be invisible, and might be conducting secret inspections of random red neighborhoods to make sure they're okay?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some people would try with varying degrees of ineptness to make their reds more okay, some would threaten the reds, some would explain to you at length how it's hard not to mistreat your reds, might be an improvement on net - do you want to talk to Anitam's reds person, she would know who in the red communities to ask about this directly -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems worthwhile."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will shoot her a message." He does that.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Of course." Sigh. "Do you mind advice on which rainforest to accept if you get it from several places."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds useful."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Isel - my friend who does red things - says she'll get on the train."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It has in fact been a longish day so I don't know how much I'll talk to her today but I appreciate that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Of course. Should I let you talk with Penumbra?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

He leaves.

Permalink Mark Unread

And she clarifies for Penumbra what happened, since Penumbra's Anitami is not very good and some of that conversation was in Anitami.

"But they don't know how to steal me?"

"No."

"Okay."

"Are you okay with running errands, teleporting around -"

"A little - not all the time -"

"Okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

       "That implies there is a way, even though we're not mages."

"We're going to get what we want anyway, Maurabel wants the leverage."

       "Mmmhmm."

       "Of all the things to get upset about -"

"Biyan's torturing children, of course anyone who wasn't in the habit of thinking 'well, reds'  would be upset."

       "They're not torturing them."

"But if they were, who cares really, right?"

       "What's your point?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We'll get some rainforest, we'll ask for the reds anywhere too unstable to hang onto them to be put there, you can prove that you could take them there yourself..."

"That's not going to leave me anything for healing them if they're hurt."

"No. I can do some, but that's probably going to have to be mostly locally managed."

Permalink Mark Unread

     "What'd you say to her, Aitim, the mic didn't reach -"

"I promised confidentiality."

     "If this goes wrong and costs us the planets - you've ignored the recommended handling over and over -"

"I am well aware."

     "At least he didn't storm out in a huff at the implication he might be accountable," says someone else. 

    

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you think Aitim's -' says Penumbra.

"Uh - helps he admitted that they'd totally have been all over you like I thought if we'd just kinda -"

"It does?"

"I mean, it's not better than if they wouldn't be, but given that they would have he's more likely to be in good faith, saying that."

Permalink Mark Unread

Isel arrives and joins the blues, quietly.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you know anything I don't about how the school makes sure people don't steal the elementals?"

"No, you probably know more than I do."

"Hrmm."

Permalink Mark Unread

In the morning someone new accompanies breakfast.

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"Hi."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hi. I don't have any of your language but Aitim said you were picking up Anitami. I'm Isel, I'm the person who does reds policy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hi. Might need Afen if you say anything complicated."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think he is accessible to be fetched."

Permalink Mark Unread

She gets out some notes. "What do you think about getting some rainforest and telling Biyan they'd better put reds there -"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - might do it on your say-so. Once the reds have trained replacements, which the reds are not going to want to do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't blame them - what are alternatives there -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unless magic can do it, not sure - could probably get the reds to agree to train their replacements in exchange for their children getting safe passage to the rainforest but..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Two people can't do it, for a huge country or even one of your very tall cities."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Whole country of Biyan has the population of this city. But yeah, not the best use of your time." Sigh. "Biyan has an ambassador, right, I can try to feel them out about whether there's anyone there competent and reasonable enough to retreat from the purple training thing..."

Permalink Mark Unread

Maurabel looks up some of those words. "Yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wouldn't count on it, though. Everyone hates reds and they're scared in addition to angry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It really seems like as excited as everyone is about finding new places to live I ought to be able to make them be nice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, the fact you care about reds is the best news in all of history for them. It's just - still harder than it should be."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh. "Should I be working on other places -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No one else is moving to rotation right now, couple places are debating it and waiting to see how it goes in Biyan. If you have somewhere to put them then it gets much easier."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So I should make it known that I'd like some rainforest?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I think so. Though that's not a long-term solution - not for all of them -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Long term, I hope, is planets."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They'll be delighted."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you mention you're upset at the treatment of reds it might deter some places from various horribleness. Also might inspire stupidity but I think it comes out ahead on balance. I'll ask the reds if there are specific policy changes they'd like you to mention you approve of."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably better than flailing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Too much too fast gets you backlash, too little too slow and they don't trust you enough to give you accurate information, it's a bit of a balancing act."

Permalink Mark Unread

Maurabel looks up words. "They don't trust you -?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most people want them dead. Almost anybody, given the chance to press a button and replace them all with robots, would. They - it makes no sense to them that anyone would care for its own sake. So if someone shows up acting like they care, it's likelier to be a - test, or a self-aggrandizing performance of altruism - until you actually do things for them, they just won't believe you that you care at all."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But I'm an alien."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Doesn't matter. - I guess it might help a little on the margin. But - you're an alien, you met us, smart and kind with impressive things to give you, why would you decide we were all wrong -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because you are so rich and then Penumbra found a red neighborhood and had not been told reds existed and they were not so rich, and they're your -" Note consultation. "- species, and I'm not."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You don't actually need to be scared, you're clean, it's easier to care about clean aliens than unclean neighbors."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You didn't check," she points out. "For all you knew school mages have unclean chores."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It'd be the kind of unclean you could fix with a shower, it has to be generational to get - reds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mentioned what my parents do but I didn't say what their parents do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"At that distance it just wouldn't be expedient to consider you unclean so they won't."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"They're just making it up?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not - exactly? There are things that aren't at all up for debate and then there are things which you wouldn't want to risk guessing wrong on lest there's a pollution hysteria and then there are things where whatever the ruling people'll be fine with it and you may as well rule the overwhelmingly convenient way, and 'alien whose grandparents might have done red work' is the last thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you for doing this."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Of course."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aside from the thing where we treat three million of our people like garbage, how's everything?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aside from that it's so much better here!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I don't know that the reds would trade you. No internet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The internet is great. We have books but not very many and - I'm new at Anitami but I think people here are just better at writing -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think there are inventions in storytelling like in any other field. TV dramas from fifty years ago are awfully badly shot and tedious compared to modern ones. And our best greens are really something, in every field."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And you have so many people that even if you only look at greens you'd have more people than a few dozen countries in my world to go through!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"One thing we are not short on is people! You met my cousins, right?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not clear on how everyone is related except that Kefin is Afen's son."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So is Aitim but he doesn't remind people of it because technically that ought to make him green. Aitim is also dating my brother. Separately they are our cousins."

Permalink Mark Unread

Vocabulary check on 'brother'. "...huh. I don't actually know if humans do that amongst themselves... elementals do in the wild and humans will if they have elementals, sometimes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Will they. Charming. If we had slavery I expect gay people might get that on the side and marry for children, plenty of them do anyway."

Permalink Mark Unread

Maurabel adds 'gay' to her dictionary! "The school elementals talked to me. Penumbra took longer than most of them, she's shy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, I'm not surprised at all, just." She makes a face.

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aitim said it's all really really secret - moreso than everything to do with alien stuff, I mean - but there's a tentative plan."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Penumbra is stolen. I can steal more, if I can be sufficiently surprising."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well. We spend a big chunk of our unimaginable wealth on creative ways to do violence, you landed in the right place."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It would have been nice if you had invented a way to stop that instead but less useful for this."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd rather not kill anybody over it but the humans will die eventually anyway and if I don't figure something out the elementals will be like this forever."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. First thing they taught you in school is that you're not ready to order military operations if you're only okay with them given that no one dies. But also, you can and should work really hard to make sure no one dies."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My school is not like that. I am not sure there are human schools like that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are a lot of things wrong with the way we raise blues but we sure do teach them young the things we think they need to know to run a country."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think kings' children -" Dictionary - "princes and princesses have tutors, not whole schools."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are three million Anitami blues. Not all of 'em on a politics track, of course, but - a schoolful."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So, so many people - and more as soon as you have planets, wow -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It must be so overwhelming. You're taking it really well."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Anything else I can do for you before I get in touch with the reds?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"How did you start doing reds things?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aitim wants to win an election someday and if you do reds stuff you just - can't, you're radioactive, no one will work with you or acknowledge they ever met you. So he asked if I'd do it - I don't really want a political career. And I looked into it and - yeah, someone was needed. So."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll get back to you when I hear from them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you. I would also like - advice about how to talk about it without being - 'radioactive'. What is that -"

Permalink Mark Unread

" - really complicated to explain. Uh. Poisonous. You have a lot of latitude, you're an alien, but - people don't even like thinking about it, they just get stupid on the topic even if they're generally sensible...I think you could definitely get away with 'one consideration as we decide in what order to terraform planets is who has humane policies towards their reds and plans to humanely transition away from using them. Bids to be the first to get a terraformed planet should include a discussion of how your reds are treated, rates of police violence against reds, red mortality rates, and legal protections reds in your country enjoy and routinely are able to exercise.'"

Permalink Mark Unread

Maurabel needs some of that repeated so she can look things up.

Permalink Mark Unread

She repeats it several times and rephrases where it's still confusing with a dictionary.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, that sounds okay," Maurabel agrees when she understands it.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Great!"

And she writes the reds:

As I imagine you heard on the news, there are aliens. They're upset about the treatment of reds and want to bribe people with planets to get better about that. Can you think of simple, concrete reforms that are worth demanding and that'll be a good idea in other countries as well as here? We're discussing getting somewhere to put Biyan's reds - a rainforest now, a planet later. Suggestions are welcome there, too.

Permalink Mark Unread
Why are they upset about us?


Everywhere should do our social worker replacement scheme and the cameras.


Delivery chutes.


The aliens can do planets? That's the first I heard of that for sure besides just guessing because aliens
Permalink Mark Unread

They are upset about the treatment of reds because the treatment of reds is very bad. Planets aren't straightforward but we're negotiating for something.

Permalink Mark Unread
Can Biyan stop now even for a planet?
Permalink Mark Unread

My contacts who work in foreign affairs don't really think so but the aliens are going to try. 

Permalink Mark Unread
Will they still be able to help the rest of us if they do that?
Permalink Mark Unread

Even if they can't get Biyan's reds to the rainforest they're still going to own the rainforest, and own a planet eventually. 

Permalink Mark Unread
How long in the rainforest?
Permalink Mark Unread

No idea, I'll ask. Anitam's not going to try to get rid of you guys until there's a planet to send you to, the right people came out ahead on all the alien stuff and anyway we want to keep the aliens happy.

Permalink Mark Unread
Thank you.


Was it you who told them about us?
Permalink Mark Unread

They wouldn't let me near them, and everyone they did let near them would have been in a lot of trouble for saying anything that made the aliens upset. But the aliens flew around a bit and noticed and then confirmed on the internet. 

Permalink Mark Unread
Nobody saw them.
Permalink Mark Unread

They can go invisible. I told them you'd be terrified if they tried to say hi.

Permalink Mark Unread
Oh.


Thank you that would have been horrible we have no idea how to not offend aliens.
Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah, I can imagine. I'll tell them to email you if they need to interact with you.

Permalink Mark Unread
We might be okay emailing normally, anyone abroad will need anonymous ways so they don't get in trouble for talking to the aliens
Permalink Mark Unread

I'll look into it. Do the Biyan reds have internet access at all?

Permalink Mark Unread
Some.
Permalink Mark Unread

Is there an unmonitored way of getting in touch with them?

Permalink Mark Unread
We don't know for sure what the Biyan authorities are monitoring.
It's not a no.
Permalink Mark Unread

If anyone happened to have an opening to ask them what could be done for them with somewhere for them to go and the ability to go around invisibly and maybe teleport one or two people at a time, I'd be interested in the answer.

Permalink Mark Unread
The aliens can teleport????
Permalink Mark Unread

Yep. They were going to just grab every red out of Biyan but there are too many. (Also Biyan would drown in garbage. I am not sure if the aliens care about that.)

Permalink Mark Unread
Biyan deserves it.
Permalink Mark Unread

Their government certainly does. Anyway, if there's anything we can do it'd be good to hear about it.

Permalink Mark Unread
Do we tell you or aliens?
Permalink Mark Unread

Either way. Copying aliens on this email so you have their address.

Permalink Mark Unread

Maurabel introduces herself. The reds are shy. She doesn't push it.

Permalink Mark Unread

Isel sends her a summary of the rest of the conversation.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cameras?" she asks.

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's this thing Anitam tried to manage the police violence, if they go around all the time with their pocket everything video running then if anyone randomly attacks them there's video proof, and people are less likely to attack them with proof it was unprovoked as compared to just everyone-sort-of-knows-it-was-unprovoked."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. "Delivery chutes?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you want to buy something you can order it online and then get it delivered. Unless you live in a red neighborhood, no one delivers there. That means reds can't buy lots of things everyone else can buy, and the things they can buy cost them more. If you set up a chute so the packages can get delivered without the delivery driver getting polluted, then reds can buy more things and pay less for them and be less vulnerable to coercion by the one supplier who serves their neighborhood."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And they didn't all already have that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Anitam might be the only place that has that."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh.

 

She lets her various foreign correspondents know that humans don't have seasons like Amentans do and she might like some rainforest at some point.

Permalink Mark Unread

Six countries have some rainforest. They all would like her to come visit their countries and check out the rainforest.

Permalink Mark Unread

Her invisible teleporting friend may inspect the rainforest at some point. Make sure there's nobody already living there or anything.

Permalink Mark Unread

...no, they would like her to make a actual visit to their country. Teleporting in is fine. 

Permalink Mark Unread

She consults Aitim.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Don't go to Calado. Oahk Free State is better than Calado but not so nice I'd wholeheartedly recommend it. Cayolee can't possibly be offering that much rainforest... Cene is probably safe enough to visit."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Does anything bad happen if I only accept the one invitation?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"People will complain disgruntledly. They're not going to pick a fight with Cene or anything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. How do I arrange a visit to Cene?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We can do that - they'll want first planet, but Anitam's also going to want first planet if we're supplying and planning rescue operations, they'll probably settle for second."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think maybe the reds get first planet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I really recommend against that. If there are other planets, even if a particular country hasn't gotten one yet, everyone'll be patient; if the first planet ever is for reds it'll seem like a colossal insulting waste of resources, like lighting money on fire in front of a homeless person, people'll be mad and they'll be less cooperative with sending their reds there. They'll be safe in the rainforest and can take advantage of the time spent somewhere with internet access to learn the things they'll need to manage on their own planet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is this enough rainforest to fit all the reds who might need it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not if every country expelled their reds but I wouldn't expect most of them to - Anitam's not going to, Voa's not going to, Tapa's not going to, it might be enough to fit everyone else."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Should I go ahead and talk to the appropriate people about elemental theft?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

And he takes it to the council - elementals are the ones who can do interplanetary travel, and Penumbra has friends who are currently enslaved and prevented from using their magic, she can't make promises on their behalf but they'd probably look kindly on a country who rescued them, it seems to him that Anitam would be much advantaged by a rescue operation. 

The council agrees.

He writes Kalana Shenla.

Council should be forwarding authorization for an operation to rescue some elementals who can terraform for us. What do you need to know to make that happen?

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As much as possible about the layout and terrain, nature of resistance especially magical, nature of exit strategy, likely reception from rescued elementals, and how many we can field from what fallback position.
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He goes to visit Maurabel again. "This a good time for rescue operation planning?"

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"As good as any."

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Email. "Here's what they need to know."

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She needs help with some of the words, and then she can draw a school map and start speculating on defenses. "Penumbra can only take people between worlds every now and then and even regular teleportation is expensive but she can go between places that are dark more cheaply and so can regular Shadows if any of those want to help. We could set up over as long as we need to bring in all the soldiers somewhere, and go in at night, and fall back to wherever we set up - in a cave or something. The school elementals know me and I think will cooperate once they can, it'll be harder if we have to try again with more who don't."

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"How well does information travel, will elementals in other places hear there was a mass breakout at the mage school -"

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"Elementals are used as messengers and translators, so some will. They won't know anything about the intentions of who stole them though."

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"And we can't tell them lest some relay it to the slaveowners. All right. Mage school first and then maybe some people rescued there will have information about where else might be tractable."

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"Yeah. There might be some elementals checked out, so we won't be able to get all the ones the university owns in one strike. They have several of all the non-hybrids, though. You want Shadow for going to other planets and Air and Earth and Water and maybe Wood and Fire for making planets nice, but the other kinds can be useful too."

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"And we're not going to leave anyone a slave because we don't have an immediate need for them ourselves."

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"Yeah, I mean if for some reason all the Shadows are checked out when we go in you might want to abort and try again, or go looking for who has them, but if all the Adamants are missing you might not want to do that."

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"Makes sense." And he forwards Maurabel's comments to Kalana.

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Kalana has a few more questions (if it's important that it be dark, how dark, what's the lighting on campus like? If someone is injured what are prospects for solving that with magic?) and Maurabel has answers (some torches, some magical lighting objects, but it's still dark enough for there to be lots of places suitable for shadow-walking at night, as long as they aren't stuck right under a light stone; magical healing is pretty good, Shine for healed-or-dead-in-the-next-five-minutes emergencies one per elemental in any reasonable amount of time, Lightning for that but you have to wait more than five minutes to get to a Shine and also one per elemental, Ice for that but you think you could fix it without Shine in particular, Earth for smallish patch jobs - Fire's for youth and infection and Water's for disease and not directly relevant.)

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"Will the elementals do healing for us -"

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"Penumbra can but that's drawing on the same reserves she'd use to do shadow-walking, Shine healing is expensive. I have some Earth and I know how to use it - no humans have enough Shine or Lightning to use those for healing. Uh, same caveats as basically everything else, regarding elemental willingness, but probably at least some of them would."

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"Okay. Want to visit Cene first or do this first?"

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"Is the rainforest still useful if I die?"

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"We would probably have enough leverage to put it to the use you intended if there were still prospects of planets. What happens to the elementals we rescue if you die -"

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"You'd still need a mage to hold them but -" She tugs her necklace out of her shirt. "If you have these you can hang on to them till you find someone to do that, if you can, you just won't be able to let them do stuff on your own. Penumbra will still be about as free as she is now unless another mage gets this one, so will any elementals whose amulets I manage to touch, any you steal yourselves will have whatever their last constraints were stuck that way."

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"Do you take off all the constraints when you touch it?"

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"Can't, some of them are built in. I used to comply with school minimums too, but Penumbra's looser than that."

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"Okay. Worst-case we'll get the necklaces and scout for another mage who can unrestrict them."

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"Once they have them they can do anything they want. You have to be sure of them."

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"Understood."

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Sigh. "I hope this works."

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"Yeah. Since the rainforest might be relevant either way, do you want to go to Cene first? Or afterwards?"

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"First."

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Anitam arranges with Cene a three-day trip for Maurabel to see Cene and the offered rainforest.

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And she will go ahead and take a plane because that's interesting and Penumbra can save her magic.

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Anitam plans the school retrieval operation for once she returns.

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She comes back without incident loaded up with souvenirs and an entire case of Cene's finest berry-jam-filled chocolates.

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Anitami reds say they have reason to believe that Biyani reds would not mind very much if the aliens happened to stir up horrendous chaos in the course of rescuing some kids.

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She lets Maurabel know this, a bit reluctantly.

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"I kind of don't want to stir up horrendous chaos."

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"Yeah, me neither. I think what they probably mean is that there's some kind of plan for if the situation holding the kids hostage was disrupted but it might not be a plan we like."

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"Is there a way to find out?"

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"They trust me not zero, I don't think they trust me that much. Or trust that it'd be up to me if it were actually important. I'll try."

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"If we get a bunch of helpfully inclined Shadows and the kids happen to be somewhere dark we could get them out."

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"Why don't you get to that right now, and I'll tell our reds to tell Biyan's reds that there might be a way to get the kids out safely without even any chaos."

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Nod.

 

Penumbra takes soldiers and their gear to a wooded area not too far from the school for them to run it if they find themselves needing to do so, but not easily found by random travelers; the Amentans have scent-masking chemicals so they won't be found with dogs as Penumbra takes them back home one by one afterwards. They send a squad of eight, which takes more than a week, then Maurabel. They study some phrases in the local language so they'll be able to yell at people and attempt to soothe elementals. They wait till Penumbra is full up on magic.

She can shadow-walk them all at once, after it's full dark and the moon has set.

Only a handful of elementals are checked out this late at night, but their barracks is guarded. Soldiers and Penumbra and Maurabel have hearing protection against the sonic thing, and the guards go down except for one who has some sort of applicable ward; that one they hit with a net gun and a cocktail of four knockout drugs in the hope that at least one works on humans and if any of them are poison Maurabel can water-heal him in time to save him. He's out but not before he has time to yell. Some lights come on in the dormitories and the study tower.

The checkout clerk is still keeled over from the noise but grabbed some amulets before being completely overcome with the need to twitch on the floor and dry-heave. Elementals are standing over him, interrupted in his attempt to force them to heal him. They can't help her but she can reach between their legs, pull the necklaces out of his hand and clear them, get the rest out of the safe, murmur quick to some of the Shadows.

Shadows go out to the soldiers who are standing ready to interfere if anyone wakes up enough to come bother them, which is looking likely - there's someone with a Fire, there's someone holding a lantern -

Shadows bring soldiers and Maurabel in a total of three trips back to their camp. They have stolen twenty-two elementals.

They trickle back to Anitam, Maurabel first, elementals after. The Shadows and Shines can share some power with Penumbra so she doesn't take a whole month to bring everyone where they're going.

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Anitam welcomes them with nice hotel rooms and a wide array of tasty foods and people to confirm they are not under any orders except the ones that can't be cleared and to answer any questions.

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The elementals kind of cluster around Maurabel and are nervous of the Amentans, but eventually spread out into their own rooms and confirm in the languages Kefin learned a little of that they're still amuleted but not worse than that.

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Oh good. Do they know whether there's a way to safely set them entirely free?

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A few of them have been temporarily free before being recaptured and totally murdered the people who let them go. It was a very intense experience, being suddenly free, and then all of a sudden, murder had happened. They don't want to hurt Maurabel but there is no telling what might happen.

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The plan is to wait until Maurabel is old, then, is that okay?

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They'll live. ...since they're immortal.

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And how does Biyan feel about the announcement that treatment of reds will be considered in applications for planets once Anitam and Cene get theirs and that the rainforest is accessible to send reds to.

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Planets will not help them if their insane awful reds stop work and cause a PLAGUE or just outright MURDER THEM ALL.

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Seems like maybe if they sent all the kids to the rainforest as a show of good faith their reds would be less hostile.

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The kids are the only thing holding their insane, awful reds back! Their reds are insane and awful.

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Will they be sending them to the rainforest once the replacements are trained.

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Why does the alien even care about (insane, awful) reds?

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The aliens don't find reds gross because of being aliens and so they find holding children hostage to be objectionable.

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But they are, in addition to being red, insane and awful.

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The aliens will be on much better terms with Biyan if they get credible assurance that Biyan is going to send the reds to the rainforest once the training is done, and that the kids are unharmed in the meantime. 

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Maybe she is making that up.

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She forwards the conversation to Maurabel.

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She's not making that up. I am not going to bother being upset about things that happened before I got here, but now I'm telling you that planets take a while and if you want one before somebody else has seconds you should stop doing awful things to reds. I have some rainforest they can be in if you can't handle them yourselves.
(Some of the elementals have also gone to live in the rainforest; it is more like being wild again than living in a hotel is.)
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"If Penumbra would be willing to go check on the hostage kids -"

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"I don't know where they are," says Penumbra.

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Do Biyan reds maybe have any idea.

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They are not sure where the children are when they aren't being trotted out for brief awful visits.

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They could maybe be invisibly followed from brief awful visits.

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Brief awful visits are in thus and such a place in this city, and there in that one, and so on. Penumbra is not sure what exactly she would be doing?

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"If we know where they're being kept, and if they're being mistreated, then we could ask any of the Shadows if they'd like to take them to the rainforest."

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Penumbra is not super sure about this.

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Well, she doesn't have to.

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It sounds scary.

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Yes, it does.

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A Shadow might be willing to go but they can't turn completely invisible.

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It would not be great if they were noticed.

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Yeah. Shines can turn invisible but they can't travel like Shadows. Penumbra is very special.

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Well, if they want to travel to Biyan by airplane Isel can go visit Biyan with them. It's supposed to have good seafood.

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This Shine will go to Biyan by airplane!

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Isel appreciates it so much. Off they go to Biyan by airplane.

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And the Shine (...Elementals mostly don't have or want names, they are just their kinds) goes and hides and follows children and then comes back and cries.

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...yeah.

"Anything I can do-"

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"I wanted to heal them but I could only do one and it would have been so bright."

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"Some of the Shadows might want to move them. Then we could get them healing - elemental or just regular -"

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Sniffle. Nod.

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"I'm sorry. I wish we could rescue you all into a world that doesn't have anything horrible."

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The Shine goes and tracks all the remaining repositories of red children and tells the Shadows where they are.

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"Biyan's going to drown in garbage, lots of people are going to die. I'm not saying we should try to deter them from rescuing tortured children. Just."

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"Who's going to die, exactly?"

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"The reds aren't going to keep working once the kids are free. They'll probably flee, Biyan'll probably kill them, Biyan won't be able to handle its pollution and everyone'll stop trade with them, someone'll overthrow the government internally or a neighbor'll conquer them -"

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"Demonstrate ability, issue ultimatum?"

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"You can maybe get the reds out but that doesn't solve Biyan's pollution problem."

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"There ought to be some way to magically purify things. I mean, water, I can do water, so can Waters, but I mean something that will let people do stuff without freaking out."

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"I don't think I understand the - thing that magic can do - well enough to guess. Can it vanish garbage or something -"

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"...a Fire could burn it..."

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"Can a Fire do, like, fire which avoids harming a person."

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"Kind of. Their halos can be like that - like how they look like they're on fire but don't light up the carpet."

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"The case could probably be made to some theologians that that suffices for decontamination, depending what exactly it does, but - there aren't many of you and you aren't going to want to do chores all the time..."

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"Is handling garbage actually that complicated? I don't understand why training people takes so long."

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"Garbage no - I mean, you have to learn to operate the trucks, but it's a weeklong course, not this - protracted tragedy - but maintaining the sewage systems has a lot to it and preparing bodies for burial does too and there's a lot of turnover because non-reds are likely to get too grossed out."

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"If there were easier travel between worlds maybe they could hire humans, we're harder to gross out." Sigh.

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"People would end up seeing them as reds, I worry. Still might be an improvement. Maybe if you're not decent to your humans they just wouldn't have kids at all."

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"Maybe. And like, some humans are magic, watch out."

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"If reds were magic people wouldn't treat them better, they'd just panic and massacre them. It might stop people from seeing the humans as red in the first place."

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"And we could avoid the generational thing."

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"Uh huh. Biyan might be far enough along in the transition that it won't be a catastrophe."

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"Well, we can't actually bring that many humans here."

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"I think the way to do it is to get out the kids and then immediately contact the government and say the aliens dropped in to check on the kids, saw them being tortured, and took them somewhere safe. The aliens recommend, so as to avert further violence, that Biyan immediately escort all the adult reds out of their country. They think the reds are insane and evil; they shouldn't want them to have magic allies. Then maybe have a couple elementals around to observe if they don't mind doing that."

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"Think that'd work?"

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"- I think it'll get some of them out as opposed to none? I don't think it saves them all. I don't know how to save them all."

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"I'll ask the elementals if any of them want to supervise. They aren't going to speak a word of whatever they speak in Biyan."

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"They're just supposed to look scary, they wouldn't need to."

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"That they can do."

A Fire and a Lightning and two Ices and an Adamant will go look scary!

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They can book a flight.

Isel lets Anitami reds know that it might be good for Biyan's reds to have a heads-up that if anything has happened to the kids, which she of course wouldn't know anything about personally, Biyan will lose its hostages tomorrow. And there'll be people waiting in the rainforest.

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Who's going to be waiting in the rainforest?

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Aliens with healing powers. And possibly someone to take pictures, not that she expects the torture of red children to particularly shock the conscience but she at least wants it on the record.

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"The elementals can heal the kids - over time - but they can't talk to them."

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"And we've got people who speak Biyani but they won't go hang out with red kids. I can probably send some reds who want to take care of kids and who can make do with internet translation."

Can she be recommended some Anitami reds who want to do that.

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Yes. They are going to need, like, food and shelter and amusements for the kids though.

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Is Aitim getting a paycheck for successfully wrangling the aliens into giving Anitam a planet.

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He's got a pretty generous project expense budget but it probably won't extend to a red rescue that Anitam cannot afford to formally have anything to do with; people'd be mad at them if they let Biyan drown in garbage.

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Fine.

 

She can fund food and shelter and toys and stuff.

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The reds do not have expensive tastes.

Shadows wait for the go-ahead.

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On the one hand the longer they wait the better the replacements are trained. On the other hand, torturing kids.


Shadows can go ahead.

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Shadows take six trips to get them all.

After photographers are appeased, Shines take a couple critical cases and Earths start on everyone else.

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Isel thinks Maurabel should write Biyan because it will be a diplomatic mess if it looks like Anitam had anything to do with this.

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So she does! Some of her elemental friends went to investigate allegations of tortured children and were very alarmed by what they found and now the children are safe. They should probably send the rest of the reds after them so the elementals don't suspect them of doing horrible things to more reds.

The observing scary elementals are parked in red neighborhoods.

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Pictures are online of the tortured children! One of the photographers cleverly worked in black and white so they just look like they could be anyone's tortured children.

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The observing scary elementals scare the reds, some, but they also scare the cops, and they loom threateningly at the cops, and the cops mostly take the hint. They repurpose a boat and cram it brimful of reds and send it to the rainforest.

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Is that all the reds -

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No, not all of them. Some of the more directly coerceable ones are being kept back to train purples and there were some casualties in the Adamant-handled neighborhood and one un-elementaled neighborhood.

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Uh huh. 

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It's most of them, though!

Now there are a ton of undersupplied reds in a rainforest. Their translation assistants and the elementals determine that some volunteers should start eating random plants and Waters can fix it if they get sick, as a stopgap.

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Hey would-be benefactors she wants stuff for her refugees.

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Ugh, seriously? Places come up with stuff.

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Yes, seriously. She's an alien. Thank you, benefactors! She appreciates it! (Should she publish a ranking of how much she likes various people?)

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"The conventional way is to have some diplomatic privileges for, say, the three places you like most, and some other for only the place you like most, and some other for the top six, but all informally so, such that everyone knows where they stand without saying it and inviting offense. You could invite the Cene and Voa and Anitam ambassadors to a dinner, says 'we're on good terms', and then when someone else impresses you they get invited next dinner..."

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"I guess if that's how it works."

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"It is more conventional than posting scores on the internet, though you do have a lot of latitude."

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"I'm spending it; I'm not clear how fast."

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"Depends on when the planets start progressing. I can draft you dinner invitations."

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"Thanks. I want to give the elementals a chance to settle in a bit more before I start pestering them about planets."

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"Makes perfect sense. Did any of them have thoughts on another rescue operation?"

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"They're in favor in principle. I might send some back to go around on their own - if I've got their amulets they can't be recaptured - and spread word, so others know -"

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"Sounds like a good idea to me."

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"They can't be recaptured but other stuff could happen. I'd worry. It's probably best though."

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"What else could happen?"

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"They'll probably get into fights. They could be hurt or trapped or scared or tricked."

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"Anything we can send them with that might help?"

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"I'm not sure."

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"Could do a setup so they carry little microphones and can hear if the others get into trouble."

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"That might be good. At least until they get into a fight with a much bigger group."

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Nod.

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"To get to other planets, Shadows are going to need to know just where they are."

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"In an astronomical sense?"

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"Like, that direction and this distance."

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"I shall have people get that for them."

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"And then they can see what they can do. It might be hard for Airs to actually give a whole planet air."

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"We know how to do arcologies - uh, little bubbles to live in and from which to direct terraforming outwards."

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"...if you can do those why aren't you already?"

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"We can't get to other planets and we can't make them have seasons."

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"Shadows can't move that many people. You have so many. And I'm not sure they can do seasons, I don't know how those work."

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"Yeah, it won't do everything for population pressure here, but it'll be amazing for the people who can go. If you can't move all the reds what are you planning to do about them?"

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"Not sure. If elementals can do seasons maybe they can do them in the rainforest."

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"If they can, other people'll want it."

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"It's mine."

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"They might go to war for it."

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"And reds have been in it, now."

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"Makes it less likely."

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"And maybe seasons need maintenance."

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"It would sure be convenient if seasons needed maintenance."

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"If they didn't it'd probably be humans doing it somehow, not elementals. Artifacts."

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"Do rainforest seasons temporarily and then maybe we can get artifacts for the planets."

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"The artifacts would be a lot of development time off."

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"Years or decades?"

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"I don't know."

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Nod. "How many people can a Shadow move at a time?"

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"Couple dozen, maybe, but that's a single trip, they'd have to wait before they could go back."

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"If we rescue all the Shadows in the world how many will that be?"

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"I don't know. Hundreds probably."

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"And of course many of them will just want to go about their lives and have nothing to do with this." Headshake. "Well, we'll figure something out."

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"I hope so. Thanks for helping me pull off the rescue."

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"Of course. I am glad it went smoothly and look forward to doing it as many times as needed until there are not elemental slaves."

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"Could an artifact be made that does interworld travel?"

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"...maybe. I'd need a lot of elementals helping if I could do it at all."

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"That'd be the best solution in the long run, but I know you can't rush it."

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"I can start thinking about it, though. And things to make air constantly so Airs don't have to just hang out filling up planets."

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"I bet they will appreciate not doing that. And if you have a product you have a lot more invisible leeway on things."

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"Oh?"

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"It's obvious you're not bluffing about planets, and people have something concrete to take home to their superiors."

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Nod. "People haven't been trying to do shadow-walking without an elemental, since you can just do it with one, although it takes a lot of practice to steer right. But that one seems harder than something that makes air."

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"Once you can do it once is it straightforward to repeat?"

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"Uh, sort of. It's a craft, there's still complex steps even if I know what they all are. Easier, definitely."

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"I think it'd be an exciting step if you can get it working."

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"In the long run you will need more humans. Maybe I should empty a mage orphanage. Except Amentans would probably raise them with that stupid red prejudice. Unless I gave them to reds, which I assume you will tell me would be a disaster even if their adoptees washed their artifacts before they were sold."

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"People might conclude it was fine or there might be pollution hysteria or they might try to rescue the poor children from the reds. Humans also might not have it even if raised with it, it's not clear how much it's cultural and how much we've been selected for much stronger disgust reactions as a result of a long history of high-density living."

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"Humans mostly pick up stupid things they are raised with."

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"Fair enough. You could have a couple elementals terraform some moon and I could send my brother there to found a casteless experimental community and they could be raised there."

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"It'd probably be good to start with a moon you can travel to without Shadows anyway, make sure terraforming with elementals even works right."

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"Uh huh."

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"This won't upset people who are vying for early planets? If I do a moon for an experimental community? - Can reds go there, since it's casteless?"

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"Not if anyone else is going to live there. I think if you say it's practice terraforming for the planets it'll go over fine."

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"Even for a casteless community reds are still no good, huh."

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"There are probably people progressive-minded enough to cope with red neighbors but not with no one they care about ever visiting and no exports and everyone considering them revolting."

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"You have reds around here."

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"Oh, the moon colony could have them if they lived separately according to all the usual precautions but that kind of defeats the purpose of 'casteless'."

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"So you can't actually do 'casteless' anyway. Just a red caste and a non-red caste."

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"I think you are underestimating how much social progress a clean casteless society would represent."

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Sigh.

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"I promise I'm not trying to throw up obstacles, here."

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"I even believe you. I just have this rainforest full of people with nowhere to go and I am separately going to make places for people to go and I ought to be able to solve the one with the other."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can put reds on the moon! No one else will go live with them, but you can still do it!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"But nobody will trade with them or anything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh huh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And therefore ugh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The rainforest people will be okay in the rainforest, it's nice rainforest and they probably want a bit of a break from being around clean castes anyway."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're not dying but they're not thriving either, they don't know how to go live in the rainforest without help and all their help is from individual elementals and what I can get people to give them in case it will make me like them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe they can swap with reds from elsewhere who want to go live in the rainforest."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are there those?"

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"I expect there are some. Maybe not eighty-six thousand. People who aren't going to get children in their country, people who are unusually adventurous, people who cope unusually poorly with the degree of performative docility reds have to exhibit around clean castes..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess I can look into it. ...Am I going to be in trouble if I don't police the reds in my rainforest on the children thing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They might come up with a way to do it internally, they know if they don't then eventually children are born with no resources to feed them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If they don't manage it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"People will probably scold you over it but I doubt they'll go to war."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"It really is important to do population controls, but it might make more sense for them to do it than for you to try to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, just wanted to know if I would be in trouble over owning the land or whatever."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No. If you were calling it a country you're ruling, then sure, but a bit of land of yours that you're letting reds settle on, no."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

"So, mage orphanage or no?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Once I have a place I'm satisfied to put them where they will not be pariahs or inculcated with anything stupid."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Moon colony's the best I've got on that front."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We'll see how the moon turns out. Which moon?"

Permalink Mark Unread

He looks up moon land prices and picks a moon for her.

Permalink Mark Unread

She coaxes some elementals to the moon. Airs and Waters can turn up their halos as high as they go.

Permalink Mark Unread

This will gradually give the moon an atmosphere, but not season it.

Permalink Mark Unread

"So do you know what causes season-ing, exactly?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not just length of the day, we tried that. We think it's a combination of angle of the light, length of the day, and temperature and pressure changes."

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"Well, if light can do it Shines can do it. I guess I can ask if the reds mind being experimented on."

Reds don't mind. Shines fiddle with the light in the rainforest.

"I'm gonna need more elementals. I want to send the ones who aren't doing anything right now and are willing to go back to my world to spread rumors and tell us where to go, can you get the microphones -"

Permalink Mark Unread

He can!!!

Permalink Mark Unread

And Ices and Glasses and an Adamant and a Stone and Woods and a Lightning and an air/stone hybrid whose halo is not usefully air-producing are one by one dropped all around the fractured empire of Maurabel's home world. Penumbra also delivers Maurabel's parents each letters.

Permalink Mark Unread

And Amentans continue to clamor for planetsplanetsplanets and Anitam gets some documentaries on elementals that play up the 'the people now helping us terraform, horribly mistreated and enslaved by primitive humans' angle.

Permalink Mark Unread

Penumbra is too shy but the Shines in the rainforest and a Fire and an Earth will happily give interviews.

Permalink Mark Unread

Are they angry at humans? Are they eager to see their fellows rescued? Are there specific experiences they're willing to talk about?

Permalink Mark Unread

They are angry at humans! Most humans. Maurabel was always very nice even when this was inconvenient for her. They want more elementals rescued, as many as possible before Maurabel is old enough to free them all at once. They will talk about being captured and tapped for magic and the Fire in particular has lurid tales of sexual use that she doesn't mind expounding on for hours.

Permalink Mark Unread

And Amentans who would happily have participated in this can instead righteously rage about it on the internet and condemn those terrible humans.

Permalink Mark Unread

There are some nice humans. Maurabel is thinking about bringing human children so there will be more mages available but she is concerned about how they would be brought up wrt reds and she can't just short-circuit this by giving them to reds without a lot of complications.

Permalink Mark Unread

What why would she do that that would be terrible the poor children. Amentans would be happy to adopt mage children.

Permalink Mark Unread

Of course they would but then they would teach them that reds were gross, and humans who aren't Maurabel are susceptible to things like being told that reds are gross or elementals aren't people and stuff like that.

Permalink Mark Unread

...reds are gross.

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See, if they told mage children that, they might believe them.

Permalink Mark Unread

...okay? And?

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They think that would be bad.

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If the children don't know that reds are gross they might touch one.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sometimes the elementals do that, like to heal tortured children.

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They have to touch them to do that? Do they shower afterwards?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes they do and no not really. Since their interviewers came to this red-inhabited rainforest to interview them that seems like the interviewers' job.

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Yeah they will but it's just weird that the elementals wouldn't want to.

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Wanting to shower for five hours after healing people seems like a them problem and Maurabel doesn't want little mages to have it and the elementals think she is right.

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They write to Maurabel saying they are concerned that if she teaches humans to have contempt for decontamination some of them might break the law and get into trouble.

(If Maurabel looks it up, Anitam executes people for willful pollution violations.)

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Maurabel assures them that she will not bring more mages to Amenta till she's sure that's a good idea all things considered, and that's a thing she's considering.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh good.

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Reds themselves seem to be very responsible about avoiding pollution violations, for instance! If she gave the human children to reds they would not learn unlawful habits. She's not totally happy with this solution but it would solve the problem of thinking reds are disgusting and the problem her concerned correspondents bring up.

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But it'd be horribly unfair to the human children and also they might be brought up with other bad habits. And what if they sympathized with the reds and did magic for them?

Permalink Mark Unread

She's curious what other bad habits they think they might have. Maurabel does not consider sympathy with or doing magic for reds a problem.

Permalink Mark Unread

...doing magic for reds would be a catastrophe they could touch anything no one could leave their houses ever again and they'd have to stockpile food and what would they do when it ran out? In Voa didn't they have trouble keeping the trains running on time because people kept jumping in front of them? Something like that, anyway.

Permalink Mark Unread

Only elementals can do the shadow-walking and outright teleporting things. Human mages would, like, make them magic lamps or something. Anything else would require more education.

She tells Aitim, "The more I think about it the more I like the idea of emptying a mage orphanage, then placing one mage kid with a red family in any country who thinks that will be good for them. Sorts kind of neatly, doesn't it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know if you'll get any takers. And the kids will have a hard impoverished life with parents who are unusually likely to be murdered -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was imagining the country would subsidize them and not shoot anyone they liked if they knew what was good for them. No?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You don't win elections by giving reds money. Maybe some places would be subtle enough to pull it off. And - most red murders aren't on the orders of the government, they're random citizens who get startled or just want to hurt someone they won't get in trouble for hurting."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wonder how many worlds I'd have to land on before I found one that wasn't fucked up."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Could try finding ones with more magic so you could have more leverage."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe. But maybe they'd just have their own urgent awful problems."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's not really an argument for not visiting. Or are you worried you'd have trouble prioritizing, presented with lots of urgent awful problems?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I could prioritize but it would be awkward to do so between 'tractable urgent problem' and, like, 'I don't look like a flake to people here who did stuff like give me a rainforest'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Being knowably reliable about commitments is a reasonable priority."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mm-hm. I'll go looking for more worlds when I don't need to coordinate terraforming any more I guess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds good. - you could raise the mage kids in Olvala, it doesn't have reds anymore."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You don't really think that solves it, do you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do not."

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Snort. "If my parents weren't divorced I'd see how they felt about bringing up a bunch more, maybe they could get more of me if I'm not a freak accident."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My parents did all right and would absolutely do it but you're rather taking my word for it that they did all right."

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"I like your family and if you and all your siblings will line up and hug an elemental who has just spent all afternoon patching up reds without wincing I will consider giving them some mage orphans to bring up. I say an elemental and not a red only because I don't want to terrify the reds."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - yeah, all right."

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...she giggles slightly. She phones the rainforest elementals. There is an Earth who is not too traumatized to hug people and will come over via Shadow next time he's taking a break from healing.

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And Aitim will call up his relatives. "My mother won't do it, but she has a good reason, she works on pollution theology in her spare time so she can make the case for the adequacy of new cleaning procedures and if she didn't take it seriously enough she'd be less credible there. We understood that, growing up, it didn't interfere with respecting reds as people or managing the disgust thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I could make this a standard vetting procedure! You can maybe bring up human children if your existing children can get the fuck over themselves about pollution and vouch for your parenting!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some of my siblings would not benefit from attention called to their nonchalance on pollution but if you want to announce in future that that's the rule going forward you could."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- not benefit like how -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some other time, maybe."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You realize it'll still be weird if your parents turn up with mage children and then I announce this is my procedure for anyone else who wants some."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That I can spin as 'I charmed the alien into letting my parents adopt and then she decided in future she was going to use principled rules for that kind of thing'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I dunno about that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then pick other people."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

She announces to the world on her blog sort of thing that she is considering importing human mage children but considers their careful acculturation of paramount importance and while she does not advocate illegal activity wrt reds she does not hold with accompanying attitudes thereunto and you are only even theoretically eligible if you and everyone else who might be helping raise the little mage can demonstrate (especially with evidence of pre-alien-contact behavior) that they are not going to let prevailing culture fuck up the mages on that too much. She will try to find a huggable red volunteer; failing that an elemental who has been in contact with reds.

Permalink Mark Unread

Uh, you can think reds are fine while also being disgusted at touching one. She could find people who've donated to red charities?

They can shower afterwards, right? 

How old will the children be?

What caste will the children be?

Permalink Mark Unread

This is going to be a small number of children by Amenta population standards and she's going to be really stringent. Gotta touch a red. And not make a face. They may shower afterwards because she does not advocate doing anything illegal but if there are a lot of applicants there might be a contest to see how long they can sit around chatting with the huggable red before they run and do that, narrow the field. Mage orphans are funneled into schools when they are eight of her years which seems to be about two Amentan years, so younger than that. She is not sure what caste magic is; it's got a lot of green to it but she worked for her tuition principally by manufacturing windowpanes.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's horribly cruel and coercive to tell people who will never have any other opportunity to have children that their only chance is to put themselves through something disgusting and degrading and pretend to like it.

Permalink Mark Unread

She will be surprised if she can get ten kids on a first pass, although there might be other batches later. If they find it disgusting degrading etc. then competing for this particular offspring scholarship is probably not for them and they should look into some other option.

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It's just, objectively, disgusting and degrading. 

 

(Someone writes anonymously that even if someone didn't mind touching a red they could lose their job or get beaten in the street and would certainly lose all the informal social capital poor people need to make ends meet, if word got around they'd got their child by kissing up to reds.)

Permalink Mark Unread

She writes to this person that the important thing is finding good places to bring up a small handful of mage children and if that is the kind of environment in which someone finds themselves she is honestly very sorry, she is working on the planets angle of children too, but that doesn't sound like a good place to bring up a mage child, around people who want to enforce this rule that way.

Permalink Mark Unread

So they have to hug a red and then they still might not get a child, if they didn't act pleased enough about it? She and her scholarship can go fuck themselves, Anitam could just stop executing pregnant people and that'd free up way more babies.

Permalink Mark Unread

Okay, no Amentan mage children, that will just have to wait till she finds a world that doesn't have a problem like this!

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There are still applicants, even if all the mail she's getting about it is angry.

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And what are they like?

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Buncha greens who donated to red charities for idealistic reasons and think magic would be cool and can probably stomach the red thing if they take anti-nausea medication first, an orange ex-social-worker who says he's used to it but his wife refuses, would that be a problem, an orange ex-social worker who Isel checks up on and says had three sexual relationships with reds, all of them abusive; two sad yellow couples who could never afford one and will eat raw sewage with a smile on their faces if she'd like.

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Sigh. She announces that she has decided raising human mages on Amenta is intractable for now unless she can find human adults to do it.

Permalink Mark Unread

"What were you expecting?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You have so many people! You have so stupidly many people - humans think elementals are impersonal forces of nature but I don't, you should have hundreds of, of me -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We do, they just cannot afford to be publicly labelled as such - I know people who are already engaged in illegal relationships with reds, I know people who snuck endangered reds out of Olvala or out of Biyan or helped them disguise themselves as clean castes, you're not asking for people who can see past it you're asking for people who can see past it, afford for that to be publicly known, and don't expect to ever be in a position of regretting the scrutiny they've invited."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, if they're hiding disguised reds, good for them, but I have the impression it might be a lot of work to contradict every television show and every book and every neighbor and every custom that doesn't have the force of law and if they've already spent the resources they'd need to do that - good for them but that doesn't mean they'd be able to get a little mage brought up how I think they need."

Permalink Mark Unread

He does not comment.

Permalink Mark Unread

She focuses on artifacting. It looks like sculpting glass and turning it colors in her hands without having to heat it. She does not mind being filmed doing this.

Permalink Mark Unread

Interested people will film her.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's a slow process.

She concludes she's going to need more elementals. Penumbra goes and checks on the ones they dropped back on their homeworld. They have found another school collection and a hunter's collection that seem usefully stealable.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Same approach?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They'll probably have tighter security but we didn't use all the layers of subdual last time. They might be keeping the place brightly lit though. Do you have anything for that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I bet so, let's check."

Permalink Mark Unread

Smoke bombs work. They'll have to be fast, even human grade air magic can clear it away.

Permalink Mark Unread

Makes sense.

Permalink Mark Unread

Also makes it harder to see for everyone who isn't a Shadow - and costlier for the Shadows - but Maurabel has enough Glass to manage vision boost without help and it's her who needs to lay hands on the amulets. "They might be stored farther apart than they were at the school, that was honestly pretty dumb of the school."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would it help to have more soldiers?'

Permalink Mark Unread

"It means it takes longer to get everyone back again after we're out, since Penumbra can only do one at a time between worlds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"With equipment and supplies they could stay there and do more raids."

Permalink Mark Unread

"True. I wish we had a way to communicate that wasn't physically going there but even Penumbra can't scry it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That'd be useful, yeah. Is shadow-walking harder with distance, our base of operations could be on a different planet in that universe -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's harder to find where you're going if you have to sort of fumble around for it but if you know for sure it's not, no. I don't know of any livable planets there though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Depending how many operations we're going to conduct it might be worth sending people equipped to do survey, next time, and having them identify some."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you even know of livable planets here? Isn't that why I'm terraforming them?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"None are suited for permanent residence, there are some that are within tolerances for a team who takes their supplies with them and only plans to stay a month. A couple Airs would need to go with but it wouldn't be impossible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Airs're busy on the moon. I guess once we have more."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Makes sense."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It was hard for the Shadows to get to the moon when they couldn't see it in the sky, it was far enough away that even with a description they had to pan around looking for a landing spot a while."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then planets'll probably be a fair bit harder. Does your world have a moon -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, but just one. I don't think any Shadows have moved there - they don't die of not breathing but they don't like it at all, and wouldn't be able to fly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hmmm." Frown. "Would we get anywhere by announcing to humans that we're paying outrageously well for elementals and they can bring them to us at a fixed location -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh... they are bought and sold, so maybe..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe after we hit the other places with a high concentration - has the added benefit that people who are worried theirs might be stolen might be tempted to sell rather than lose it all -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. There's some risk people won't sell to you without a mage on hand to take possession so I'd have to hang out there any time you were open for business."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would that put you in danger?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It doesn't play well with previously stolen elementals rumoring my existence all over the place, honestly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right. Hmm. There have got to be more humans like you - maybe ones who aren't mages, it might be easier to notice if you're not benefitting -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you just need a human for this my parents are okay - I mean, they weren't going to crusade about elementals but they wouldn't go out of their way to be awful to them if I explained what I was doing, which I have - but you need an actual mage who can be like yes observe I have magic and can totally control that elemental you want to sell me for Ridiculous Amounts Of Salt."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are we going to crash the salt market?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know enough about it to say."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh. "Okay. Let me know if you think of anything else useful here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will."

 

They find an island with a cave in it on Maurabel's home planet. They set up there for the longish haul. They steal a private collection and another school collection, with an Adamant acting as Maurabel's bodyguard. A couple of soldiers are casualties in the second school raid, dead before any Shines can get to them. They get a lot of elementals free and Penumbra starts taking them to Amenta, one at a time.

Permalink Mark Unread

Anitam understands more about elementals and has a place set up for them on a mountain lake with food and people to confirm that they are not being ordered.

Permalink Mark Unread

The mountain lake is nice and fewer of these fuck off to the rainforest from it. Maurabel is not making them do stuff.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh good. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Yup.

Satellite photography, radar supervising airspace, birdwatchers, seismic sensors, the personnel of a geothermal energy plant, weather metrics, and beachgoers notice, uh... stuff.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

...stuff.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes. Uh, elementals... starting to exist? Out of nowhere?

Permalink Mark Unread

 

That sure is stuff.

 

Does Maurabel know or do any of the elementals know if this is the same way elementals started existing back in her world. 

...also the rate is much higher than it must be in her world if there are only hundreds in her world and they live forever, does anyone have guesses about that.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, we'd be less good at noticing them, there's that - we don't have history that far back and elementals aren't all that sociable, they'll have small groups but don't form civilizations, so they wouldn't know if they were first -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"How recent could they plausibly be - we've got eight so far -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know one who is personally hundreds of years old... our years."

Permalink Mark Unread

" - if we assume that on Amenta they're born in bursts like Amentans it could maybe not represent a higher rate."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is it spring where they were?"

Permalink Mark Unread

He looks it up. " - not all of them, no."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I dunno about that then. ...at least nobody here can amulet them. Unless you start throwing mages too, and even then maybe they'll have the decency not to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is there a straightforward way to check?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"For mages? Not that I know of till they start doing little magic."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That a mage has captured an elemental, I mean."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh. Other mages can tell and so can Glasses and glass hybrids."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Great, okay, so then if we have mages at all, before they grow up and become powerful we have everyone amend the anti-slavery treaty to include enforcement of rules against enslaving elementals. Everyone'll be in favor of that, no one wants magic destabilizing the political landscape. 

- if there are red mages we have a problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Besides the one you already have, you mean."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We have a new and much bigger problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

"By themselves they aren't likely to do much."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I actually think they'd mostly use it for - internal things. Making their lives less bad. Not things that'll get their country riled up. But it'll be riled up anyway, just at the fact they have the option - people might kill them before they're old enough to hide it -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why does your planet suck."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because we can't get to any other ones."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can see how that will help with most of the problems you still have in spite of being unfathomably rich but I'm not actually sure it helps very much with that one except in the sense that cutting off a gangrenous limb and cauterizing the wound can. You know, you might have a problem earlier, if elementals keep popping. They will all know all your languages and they are immortal and powerful and can fly and they have not been raised to hate reds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If they ask the reds what they want the reds will probably not propose things that'll start a massacre."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're developmentally adults in the sense that all their future growth is experiential and not in fundamental capacity but they are brand new. They might not think to ask."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If they decide to intervene in things without asking whether this is what anyone involved wants then there'll be problems that have nothing to do with reds. They could - stage prison breaks or rescue murderers from execution or show up invisibly in secure facilities and make it unclear whether they're spying on behalf of a distrusted neighbor -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're more likely to stay out of populated areas if they can, that's what elementals like is wilderness, but you don't have all that much of it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't. Maybe they'll frequently be interested in helping with colony projects just for the wilderness."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe. Do you know what kinds?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ice, Shine, Glass, Stone, Lightning/Fire hybrid, Air, Water, Adamant," he recites.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh, I never heard of a lightning/fire hybrid, wonder what it'll call itself."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Did Penumbra decide she'd be called that? If she's the only one?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Part of popping with the languages, they know what kinds they are."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So the Lightning/Fire probably already knows?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Are people talking to them?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Don't know if anyone spoke to that one, though, I am not an elemental and don't speak a word of Lasane."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...they're elementals. They will speak every language spoken in the world at the time they appeared. I'm not sure if they will know mine, because there's just me and a few of you and some of the stolen elementals who speak it here and I don't know how many speakers they need, but they're going to all know Anitami."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, I know, but the people who that one appeared near spoke Lasane and wrote excited blog posts in Lasane of which I have only a horrendous machine translation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ah, okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"None of the elementals have yet shown much interest in starting a blog."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They don't know what a blog is yet!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That'd do it! - if they do start committing crimes that'll make it harder to get a consensus against enslaving them. Not for the use, just to serve in place of prison - but then once it's available..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I won't do it. It had to be invented. If you have mages, they could invent it but I'm not helping."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I hope they don't. But they're a lot less likely to if we can - acclimate elementals in a way that gets them to not commit crimes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Could ask some of the stolen ones to go talk to them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Might be good. It'd - it'd be appreciated if they mentioned that going into the red districts and other parts of inhabited areas is a thing that'll scare people very badly."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod.

Permalink Mark Unread

And attempts (which are not likely to succeed) can be arranged to make the argument that elementals are just too magic to transmit pollution - actual fire wouldn't - and that tracing down elementals zipping across the countryside is as practical as tracing down breezes, and just as unnecessary.

Permalink Mark Unread

"At bare minimum if they have a physical halo and then pull it in then neither their unhaloed skin nor their new halo has touched whatever the discarded halo touched."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If they're willing to do that I bet I can build a consensus it counts."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Doesn't help with immaterial halos or any elemental who is like 'or how about I ignore you, you are not the boss of me'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It doesn't. If we have mages, then someone is going to try to arrest elementals who are going around happily breaking the law and they're going to stumble on the slavery thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It - it took a while relative to all human history but it didn't take long for someone to come up with it once elementals were around more trying to figure out what this new writing thing was."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are few enough elementals we can maybe hold interventions with each of them explaining that for fragile mortal people who'll be gone forever pretty soon it's terrifying to have people able to do whatever they want with no consequences, and it'd be really nice of them to avoid places where they don't like the rules?"

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"There are few enough now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So let's try to say hi."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My point is there will be more, this is just a thing that happens now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can have a hundred people whose job it is to have relations with elementals individually. But yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you don't turn out to have mages, how much of a disaster is it if elementals innocently visit reds - or touch garbage or whatever - and then just go around about their business -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Pollution hysteria is hard to predict, it's not guaranteed that it'll be a disaster but it could be. Probably if it gets known elementals do that people will be uncomfortable interacting with elementals. Places will be tempted to get rid of their reds but they don't want to offend you either."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do birds not go through your trash and then fly off?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The dumpsters are designed to keep out animals. I'm sure the rate isn't zero."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do birds not land in red neighborhoods?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Only so much we can do about birds but a stray animal that wandered into the red district would be killed, maybe decontaminated if it was someone's treasured pet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can't elementals be like birds?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't expect it to be a winning argument but I can arrange for someone to float it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They fly. They don't know any better - even if you tell one they'd need to be very invested in interacting with Amentans to distinguish this very charged superstition from something that was just made up, it'll be 'gullible' and 'skeptical', not 'cooperative' and 'hostile'. They fly and don't know any better, they're more likely to do the halo thing than a bird for sure..."

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"They could ask the reds, they could ask anyone, it's not hard to verify at all."

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"You've only met elementals who've been enslaved for a while. Wild ones are different. They are not going to have coalesced mid-cloud with fact-checking habits that happen to suit you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do they have other personlike variance in - personalities - such that eventually we'll get one who'll attack or murder humans for fun -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can't rule it out but all the stories I have about pre-slavery elemental/human contact don't get worse than 'dangerous misunderstanding'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then hopefully we can avoid hostility arising. I'll work on it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

And how does everybody feel about 'wild elementals: kind of like birds' as an argument?

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Many locales have laws on the books against reds doing anything to attract birds. That at least should be copied over.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah, that seems reasonable.

Permalink Mark Unread

Since the elementals can read, perhaps red districts should have signs: Elementals Not Welcome, Do Not Land Here.

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He will push for the signs to say 'please'.

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They can A/B test that.

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Uh-huh. Are there more of the elementals.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes. There seem to have been more than eight to start with, some in less monitored locations, and there are a few more happening every day.

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" - there'll be billions soon enough -"

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"I have no idea how the rate is determined. There aren't billions at home, we'd have noticed billions, even before we started hunting them they were hard to find."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Relative to some environmental feature? We didn't have any until recently - how long do they take to coalesce, did it start when you arrived -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They are neither observable nor conscious till the moment they're all coalesced so I don't know if there's some preparatory process stage. If we assume it's instant it started happening when there were more than a couple dozen of them here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But it can't be relative to current numbers or you'd still have more. To our population maybe but why would it be tied to that - I hope they are universally non-hostile..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"From the sample I have information on they start out really innocent and simple, which isn't necessarily safe but isn't hard to make safe. You could talk to some of them about it - some of the ones from my world I mean, although I guess you could try to chase down one of the new ones if you wanted."

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"I'll try the immigrant ones first." Would any of them like to talk with him about how to make Amenta safe for all the newborn elementals.

Permalink Mark Unread

This newly rescued Wood is up for that.

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He appreciates it. He's curious what being a new elemental is like.

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"We're interested in different things than - I don't know what to call you-and-humans. Flesh people? We're interested in different things than flesh people at least until we've spent a lot of time around flesh people. It wouldn't have occurred to me to try to meet other elementals or find out who spoke the languages I knew on my own for a very long time."

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"We could encourage people to think of this as - some kind of natural phenomenon, rather than as strange people appearing, but obviously thinking of you as less people-like has been awful for you also. What would be the best way for people to treat new elementals, ignore them or..."

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"I guess it depends on what they're doing. If one is just sitting in a forest playing with magic you can probably just leave them alone. If they come where you are and they seem curious you can talk to them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is it a good idea to explain to them rules that we have in the city or will that just make them - more flesh-people-like?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It would make them that way. I don't think that's bad if they want it to happen, though, it would just be a weird thing to do to someone who's completely happy all wild."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So going to meet ones who are not seeking us out seems unfair, but if they arrive and are curious explaining city rules is okay?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes. But they might be interested in only some flesh people things and want to look at bricks or pet dogs and not listen to you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh huh. Thank you. Will any of them come up with - wanting to hurt flesh people - if we don't horribly mistreat elementals like humans did?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That doesn't sound interesting for its own sake. Maybe Earths or Fires? Lightnings? I think most kinds wouldn't think that sounded fun."

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"If someone does that, what do you suppose we should do?"

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"Maybe get another elemental to go around with them and find other things for them to do."

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He nods. "Anything else we should know?"

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"Just because we aren't flesh people doesn't mean we aren't people. I don't know why you'd have to think we weren't people to know we weren't going to coalesce wanting to live in cities and wear clothes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's more that the Amentan concept of people includes 'is obliged to obey the laws' and 'needs permission to cross national borders' and so on."

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"You make people need permission to exist," Wood points out.

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"Yes. Because otherwise we can't feed them."

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"We don't need food and still don't need food if we cross a border."

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"No one's trying to propose credits for elementals who coalesce. But the concept that the law applies to all people is harder to shake off."

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"Maybe there could be an elemental country that is everywhere and says it is legal to act like a wild elemental."

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"- I can see if that will make everyone feel more comfortable and if it does then we can arrange it. Thank you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're welcome."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are there other things we should think about?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Thank you."

 

 

How does everyone feel about some kind of international elemental governing authority that resolves problems with wild elementals, since they're not very suited to Amentans doing it. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, that depends on how it resolves those problems.

Permalink Mark Unread

They can't actually do much of anything about wild elementals, so the elemental buddy-system solution to violence or troublemaking improves on having nothing at all.

Permalink Mark Unread

It does improve on nothing at all but are they sure they can't do anything about them? Even if they really have to?

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What are they thinking they might be able to do?

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Well, they don't advocate slavery, but whatever mechanism is used to accomplish it could probably be tweaked to just do imprisonment.

Permalink Mark Unread

Maybe they can figure something out if there are elementals who do something problematic enough to be worth importing mages to arrest them and keeping them until a mage dying of old age can release them.

Permalink Mark Unread

Seems like the sort of procedure you want worked out in advance.

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On the human world there were no recorded incidents of elementals making trouble before the slavery started. It seems silly to prepare too exhaustively for something that may never happen, thereby alienating the people who are doing interplanetary travel and terraforming for them.

Permalink Mark Unread

Why would non-criminal elementals be alienated by having plans to handle criminal ones?

Permalink Mark Unread

They're really touchy about the slavery thing and will be equally touchy about proposed modifications, plus worried that once anyone has an elemental imprisoned they'll be tempted to enslave it.

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Can they be persuaded not to worry about that?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep! Working out plans to imprison people who are currently less than a season old is probably not the way to do it. Maybe they could come up with safeguards to make sure the imprisonment can't be exploited?

Permalink Mark Unread

...like how?

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, the big problem is the thing where it's inherently permanent unless someone dies ending it.

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They could reserve it for things that would normally carry a life or a death sentence.

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That varies a lot country-to-country. He would know; Anitam is on the unusually execution-happy side.

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In the jurisdiction where the crime was committed.

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"No one keeps track of what's illegal under two hundred different legal systems."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They could keep track of capital crimes, I'm sure."

"But what caste would we try them as, what caste are they -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're aliens, they've got the element categories, they're not a caste - this is why we should have a single oversight board with laws consistent everywhere -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose it'd be simplifying -"

"But agreed on how -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That I wholeheartedly agree should be started on now, long before it becomes a problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

They get to work on that.

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Shadows who are interested get a long list of candidate planets they can see through a sufficiently sophisticated telescope. Hopefully some won't require tons of terraforming.

Permalink Mark Unread

The interested Shadows find it easiest to be looking straight at the thing they are looking at, with no reflection or any other intervening complications, which limits telescopic sophistication, but they can still check out most of the planets and take pictures and samples.

Permalink Mark Unread

And are any of them interested in dropping off the supplies to set up an arcology, and a few dozen people who can set it up and start a colony project?

Permalink Mark Unread

Sure.

"If there's ever a Shadow/Glass hybrid they wouldn't have that problem with the weird telescopes," one remarks.

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"At the rate we're getting them I bet we'll have every kind of hybrid soon enough."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, one who wanted to help."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Might take a little longer, but - at this rate within ten years there'll be millions of them."

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There are in fact all kinds of interesting hybrids popping up at a rate of about 5% of elementals. The wild elementals are mostly just staying wild, especially the ones who can hang out in the ocean or the sky.

One day a Wood/Earth wanders into a garden on somebody's estate to look at flowers.

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The gardener is not sure if it is allowed to be there. "There are public gardens in the city, sir. Or ma'am."

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"I'm a girl," says the Wood/Earth. She keeps looking at flowers. She has purple hair and a twiggy halo growing out all over her.

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"There are public gardens. These are not public gardens."

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"Okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So you need to leave."

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"...why?"

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"Because this garden belongs to somebody and they don't allow trespassing."

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"Why?"

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"Because then everybody would come and some of them would trample the flowers or walk off the paths or just crowd the place and then she couldn't enjoy it. There are flowers that are for everyone to enjoy, in the botanical garden in the city, you can go there and look at all the flowers you want."

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"Do they not have trampled flowers? I like not-trampled flowers."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They set it up so it can handle higher traffic."

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"I don't know if I like high traffic."

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"Look, you just got to leave, I don't care if you check out the public gardens or not."

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"I'm not trampling flowers. I like flowers."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You still have to leave."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because these flowers belong to somebody and not to you."

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"I'm not going to take them."

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"Please go away."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But I like it here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's not my problem."

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"Oh," she says, "it seemed like you thought it was, but all right." She goes back to looking at the flowers.

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He gets the hose and turns it on her.

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She giggles.

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"Look, I'm going to call the police if you don't leave."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...okay."

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"And then they will make you leave. By dragging you."

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She thinks about that, then steps off the path and sinks roots into the ground from her legs.

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" - the fuck -"

He calls the police. "There's one of those weird alien things trespassing on my employer's property -" he gives an address -

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is anybody in immediate danger?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, she's just hanging around putting down roots. In Tuxu Vur's estate."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Leave her alone for now, we'll call in an older elemental to help. What kind, do you know?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The kind that puts down roots. I'm a gardener."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, all right. Just leave it alone. They don't have very many helpful elementals so it'll be a while before one can come talk to yours."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh huh."

 

He sprays her with weedkiller but leaves her otherwise alone.

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"Ow!" she whines when he sprays her. "Don't do that, it hurts!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then leave!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Don't put that stuff on me!"

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He ignores her and goes back to work.

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As long as he does not spray her again she will leave it at that.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah he'll wait for the cops.

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A Fire is working with the international thingamabob and gets tapped to help and meets her escort at the airport.

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"Hi. She just settled down in someone's garden, just needs it explained that people don't always want an elemental living in their garden."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And that people can own gardens, probably."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The duchess of Dyucha County owns that garden."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think who in particular owns the garden will come up, just that owning gardens is a thing. Hell of a world to come into when somebody already owns all of it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gardener said he suggested she check out the public botanical gardens."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If somebody told you they owned all the air and light around here and you should go somewhere else if you wanted to breathe and look at things... not because they owned the land, because they owned the air and light..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If I were an elemental I'd go to the duchess and offer to occasionally magic the plants healthier in exchange for staying there, I bet she'd agree to that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The elemental might do that once I've explained, that's just where I'll have to start explaining, people owning places."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh huh." They go to the estate.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Will the Duchess want to give us permission before we go in to talk to the Wood-or-whatever -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We wrote her, we're allowed on the grounds."

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"Mkay." In she goes to find the elemental. She has turned herself into a shrub sort of thing near a bunch of climbing flowers. "Hi - what are you -"

"I'm Leaf," says the elemental.

"- Wood and Earth?"

"Yeah."

"Well, hi, I'm Fire."

"Hi."

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Escort watches grumpily.

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And Fire explains to Leaf that people here have it so they can own places and plants and stuff, who knew, right.

"The gardener sprayed me with something and it hurt," says the Leaf, as she starts pulling herself up.

"- that's no good -" Fire turns to the escort.

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"I can ask him." He does. "He sprayed the whole area with weed killer. You can't really hurt elementals anyway, right?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...you can't kill us. It can still hurt."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He needs to be able to do his job."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aren't people supposed to leave confused elementals alone till we get here? If some Amentan passed out drunk with his foot wedged in the fence would the gardener run him over with a tiller?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You take a lot longer to get here than mental health services."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's not her fault."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll tell him to steer around them with the pesticides if another one takes up residence."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The cops need to be clear on leaving elementals alone meaning that."

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"It wasn't a cop, it was the gardener."

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"They called the cops, right? Who are supposed to tell them to leave elementals alone?"

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"I don't know if that was before or after he called the cops. I'll let them know a complaint was registered."

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She nods.

Leaf is unrooted. She flies away.

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"Thanks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh-huh."

There are a few more like that - Water in a pool, Glass on a skyscraper, Lightning in a power plant.

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Amentans vary in tolerance but manage to wait for the elementals to handle it.

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Fire is very busy and so is the Stone she convinces to also do this job.

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Some elementals have red hair. This should not technically mean that they're unclean but it sure makes everyone uneasy.

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's interesting that they look Amentan."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh huh. Makes the theory that their rate of appearance is based on local flesh-people population more plausible."

Permalink Mark Unread

Snort. "Flesh people."

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"No one has yet suggested a better term for 'Amentans and humans' as a category. 'Mortals', I suppose, but maybe someday that'll change."

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Giggle. "Fires can make you stay young longer, Stones can make you stick around longer after you're old."

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"Tempting, once we have somewhere to go."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Working on it."

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"We appreciate it very much."

Permalink Mark Unread

Fire and Stone suggest to Airs and Waters they come into contact with that they could go to the moon and not encounter any private property there. Some of them accept. It will still take a while for a few halos to fill up the atmosphere.

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The prospect sends moon real estate prices skyrocketing. (Anitam secured a bunch of it before the project got underway.)

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When there is a very thin atmosphere, enough for people who don't constantly produce their own surroundings to be comfortable, a few Earths and Woods go and start tending plants on the moon.

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Everyone is really excited about this as proof-of-concept!

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They have to pretty actively maintain their plants for them to survive, but it's doable!

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And with how many of them are expected to eventually exist, maybe lots will want to maintain plants on colony planets!

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There just keep being more and more elementals. Rates of them running into people increase. There's just not that much wilderness.

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Someone thinks it's funny to check what will happen if they turn a hose on the Fire in their outdoor bonfire site! Someone else sees a Adamant leaving the red district and shoots it! People start making lists online of elemental types, how to recognize them, and what things work to drive them off!

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The Fire gets airborne and starts dropping fire on them! The Adamant is not harmed but wants to have a look at the gun and is very insistent about that.

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People scream and run away! Some of them are badly burned! The Adamant can't have the gun he could kill someone with it.

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The Fire stops when they scream. He thought they wanted to play with him.

"But I want to see how it did that!"

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"I can get you a toy one. Don't touch me, you were just in the red district."

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"Do toy ones work the same?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Pretty much. Would you step back."

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"Why did you point it at me if you didn't want my attention?"

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"I wanted you to go away, you were just in the red district!"

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"You already told me I was just in the red district. I heard you. Is that how you tell people to go away, you fling fast things at them?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh huh."

Permalink Mark Unread

"....but you were going to get me a toy gun."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If it gets you to go away, yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's another way you make people go away is give them presents? I'm not sure these customs make very much sense."

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"You don't usually make people go away by giving them presents but you're refusing to go away so I thought maybe if you got a present then you would want to be nice and you would go away."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The reds just asked me nicely."

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"Will you please go away."

Permalink Mark Unread

The Adamant turns and continues down the street.

Permalink Mark Unread

"From the city, not from me!"

Permalink Mark Unread

...the Adamant turns back. "That seems a little much."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're tracking pollution everywhere. You can stay if you shower, there's a public shower."

Permalink Mark Unread

The Adamant looks at his feet. "I don't think I'm tracking anything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, you're a moron."

Permalink Mark Unread

The Adamant frowns. "That isn't very nice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No kidding."

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The Adamant picks the bullet out of his halo and throws it at the guy.

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"Get the fuck out of town, you stupid rock spirit alien."

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"I'm an Adamant," says the Adamant, and he does not go anywhere.

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He starts looking on his pocket everything what the recommended way to drive an Adamant off is.

Permalink Mark Unread

If asking nicely doesn't work they - uh, Adamants in particular are really hard to scare.

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That's really annoying. He spits at it and stomps off.

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It examines a parked delivery van and does not further bother anyone.

Permalink Mark Unread

How many elementals are left on the human world, and how do people feel about trying to buy them?

Permalink Mark Unread

There are a few hundred left (in captivity; wild number unknown)! Trying to buy them might make sense! Especially if they're better behaved than wild ones!

Permalink Mark Unread

All the helpful ones so far have been freed captives, yeah.

Does Penumbra want to carry over a ton of salt.

Permalink Mark Unread

Can do.

Permalink Mark Unread

These people will trade salt for elementals!

Permalink Mark Unread

Where did they get all that salt? Are they bandits? They sound foreign.

Permalink Mark Unread

They got it from the ocean. They are foreign. They are not bandits.

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How did they get all the salt here from the ocean without it being stolen by bandits?

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A Shadow.

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Why do they need more?

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They sometimes want to make several trips in a short time instead of waiting for the Shadow to be back at capacity.

Permalink Mark Unread

So they just want Shadows?

Permalink Mark Unread

No, they also do other magic stuff and want other elementals.

Permalink Mark Unread

Any kinds? Do they know there have been elemental-stealing bandits about?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah, they have a plan to protect themselves from the elemental-stealing bandits.

Permalink Mark Unread

What is it? People who have elementals would like to know.

Permalink Mark Unread

It involves having lots of elementals, which is why they're buying them.

Permalink Mark Unread

People who have or hope to accumulate many would still like to know.

Permalink Mark Unread

They're gonna live on the moon.

Permalink Mark Unread

Couldn't the bandits follow them with their stolen elementals?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes but the bandits would have to suspect they were there, and who would suspect that? Most people don't even know it's possible. 

Permalink Mark Unread

If it's a secret why are they telling them?

Permalink Mark Unread

These people are clearly nice and upstanding and not bandits.

Permalink Mark Unread

That's very kind of them to say. They will tell their mage friends there is a buyer.

Permalink Mark Unread

Great.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Later that day someone comes by with a docilely following Glass and Stone and says she might want to trade the Stone for an Ice or a Water if they've got one.

Permalink Mark Unread

They've got salt. 

Permalink Mark Unread

She thought they also had elementals?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah but they're trying to collect more of them, they're not trading.

Permalink Mark Unread

Where are their elementals? They aren't mages.

Permalink Mark Unread

The mages and elementals are hidden because of the bandits.

Permalink Mark Unread

So they're just sort of hanging out with no visible defense of their ridiculous pile of salt.

Permalink Mark Unread

The means by which they're defending their salt are not visible, that's correct.

Permalink Mark Unread

Seems ill advised.

Permalink Mark Unread

Some people might get hurt trying to steal the salt but the smart ones will wonder how they got the salt in the first place unmolested and conclude there's probably something to be wary of. Even if (or maybe especially because) they can't see it.

Permalink Mark Unread

Fair enough. Are they sure they don't want to trade?

Permalink Mark Unread

Nope! Is there something other than an elemental she might want, they could perhaps arrange various spices and fabrics and dyes and fancy foreign glassware.

Permalink Mark Unread

She's a mage; those things sound nice but would not do magic for her.

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Then they wish her well.

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She leaves.

Most mages, it turns out, are not willing to straight-up sell their elementals, till a hunter comes by with a bunch recently caught. Do they want one? He's got a Lightning and two Air and a Shine and a Fire/Stone!

Permalink Mark Unread

How much for all of them?

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All of them? Wow. He's not sure they have that much but he counts it up and names a figure. They'll need to get the salt weighed at a formal scale.

Permalink Mark Unread

They can do that! They can get more stuff if he wants stuff other than salt, too.

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Salt's nice and generic but he'd like some diversity in case some hybrid turns out to be a salt elemental and the market craters, ha ha, will they still be here and have seashells next time he comes back from a hunting trip?

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Sure will!

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He and his Glass (she's not for sale, he uses her to hunt) go off.

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And they take the five necklaces. When he's gone - "uh, anything we can get you guys while we wait on the mage?"

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...they can't talk.

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...these people have popcorn, gummy candies, lollipops, and army meal bars. They set them down near the elementals in case the elementals would like any.

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The elementals can look at them but can't take them.

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"Oh, for fuck's sake - can you communicatively blink. Blink once for yes, blink twice for...fail to blink for no I guess."

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An Air blinks. ...The Lighting can withdraw her halo.

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"There we go, that's something! Okay. If you would like the lollipop," he says to the Air, "blink?"

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She doesn't blink. She looks at the lollipop.

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He goes through the other foods.

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She rolls her eyes.

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"Some elementals like food," he says defensively. "I don't know what Airs like in particular - uh, we're the bandits. Who've been stealing and freeing elementals. We decided to see if we could get any by buying we couldn't get by stealing. Maurabel'll be by to let you go. But she might be a while. Thus food."

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The Lightning's halo wobbles.

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Would the Lightning like any of the foods.

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Lightning doesn't want foods either.

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"Whatever suits you," he says with a shrug. "Want to listen to music?"

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That gets a bunch of flared halos.

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The lyrics aren't in a language they speak, which is weird, but it's good music! They must have invented a whole lot of new instruments and other innovative musical things.

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The Shine's halo pulses to the beat.

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The people smile at them and wait for Maurabel or more buyers.

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Since Maurabel didn't know how long to expect them to take to get more elementals she is not coming by as often as Penumbra could take her. More sellers of elementals come by first. This person has an extra Wood to sell. That one caught this Adamant but she stares at him creepily and won't pull in her halo so he can't punish her very effectively.

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Salt?

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Salt!

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Hi, Wood and Adamant, you have been purchased by the elemental-freeing bandits, hang out here until Maurabel can clear your amulets please, then a Shadow can take you to a place where people aren't terrible.

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They hang out.

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Eventually: Maurabel.

"We weren't allowed to eat, dumbass," says the Air to the soldiers.

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" - oh. Well, do you want some now?"

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"Sure."

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Popcorn! 

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Elementals like popcorn!

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Soldiers find it cheering to offer elementals all kinds of food extravagances and to explain that their planet is so crowded there's no wilderness anymore and that's why they're trying to find new ones.

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The lack of wilderness sounds very sad to the ones who were only recently caught.

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Well, maybe they will want to go to one of the new planets they're scouting for and help bring it to life! All wilderness there!

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Not all elementals are suited to that.

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They don't have to. Because slavery is evil.

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Maurabel goes back when Penumbra can take her and then Penumbra takes the rest across.

A few more people sell.

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The soldiers don't try offering them popcorn.

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Maurabel comes back as soon as Penumbra has seen that there are more. She clears amulets.

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Soldiers hang around. 

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Eventually they have exhausted the willingness of locals to sell their elementals.

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Anywhere else where this is worth trying?

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Sure, plenty of places, it's a big former empire.

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They will go elsewhere and try it!

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They get elementals!!!! And so there are more human-type elementals and some of them are willing to explain things to wayward Amenta-type ones.

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Which is good because Amentans are starting to regard elementals as eccentric pests. 

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And terraformers.

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And that. It's common now for people to be super friendly to intruding elementals and then try to explain to them how there'll be more wilderness once the terraforming gets going.

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Sometimes that helps!

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And sometimes the elementals will participate in MyStream prank videos and that's nearly as good.

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They will! Those are fun!

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"When are you thinking you'll let people settle the moon?"

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"You still think experimental no-reds casteless society?"

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"Depends what the end goal is but experimental no-reds casteless society beats most other social experiment sorts of things."

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"Goal is to pay back people who've helped me, if there's no way I can make progress on the reds problem."

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"You could give it to us or to Cene, for that, but I think we'll be patient for planets now that there's material progress underway."

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"Will the experiment work with people from multiple countries of origin?"

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"It'd be harder but not impossible."

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"It'll need Airs for a while longer to have a comfortable amount everywhere. I don't want to look more than strategically favoritist."

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"Then I'd give it to Cene, we've got the arcology on a candidate planet and helping Cene is more obviously tit-for-tat while helping us could be read as 'we have a monopoly on your time and attention'."

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"Cene it is."

Cene gets a moon. It is currently sort of like being really really high altitude everywhere on it but it is indefinitely survivable.

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Cene is thrilled! Other people keep asking if Maurabel wants things.

 

Someone is pretty sure her late-spring baby is. Uh. Doing magic.

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...Maurabel can come check.

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Baby is four months old and her mobile is glowing. "It's more obvious if you turn off the light," says her father, and does. "They're not glow-in-the-dark toys."

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"Well. Guess I'd better found a magic school or something."

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"She is magic?"

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"Yeah. Congratulations."

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"What will she be able to do -"

"Might she hurt herself -"

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"I can't tell what-all her affinities are except that she has some Shine, but it's like learning to walk - she might hurt herself a tiny bit but then she'll learn not to do whatever hurt. If she has any Fire that's the only one that could be really dangerous and even then it'd be fairly unlikely."

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"We can get hardwood instead of carpet -"

Nod.

 

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"And in a - couple - years I can teach her how to do more interesting stuff."

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Proud parents beam at their daughter.


Their daughter chews on her hand.

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Maurabel pats her and goes to make the announcement that Amentans are throwing mages, she will be trying to found a school in time to teach them, and she will be deeply annoyed with anyone who murders magical baby reds they can just send them to her rainforest.

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Uh, no.

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Well, they can incur her deep annoyance if they like.

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There can't be magic reds. If that annoys her, too bad. And everyone agrees on it so at least no one'll have an edge.

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Maurabel is deeply annoyed. (In the future they can figure out what the dietary thing is and just make sure reds don't have it. In the meantime... well. This world is very big and they already kill babies for other reasons. ...Is she legally allowed to have some in her rainforest if they manage to get there somehow?)

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"People probably won't go shoot them."

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"Oh good. Might annoy the elementals."

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"Yep. How likely are we to even find out if a red child has magic -"

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"Depends how hard you usually look at baby reds and whether they have obvious manifestations. If there's a kid who can only do wood and adamant and glass and stone they could just avoid having them around those things."

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"We wouldn't usually see baby reds at all. Some might slip by."

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"Can I admit them to my school?"

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"Do you want anyone else to attend?"

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"I'm wavering on how much."

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"I think if reds were being taught magic that people might show up to shoot at."

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"The elementals might teach them things."

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"Less blatant."

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"Even if I set it up so the reds were on the other side of the room, with a divider, didn't share dormitories - just listened to the same lectures -"

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"If no one else has to touch anything reds touched then I bet they'll go. Separately, someone might get nervous about reds knowing magic and try to kill them."

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"If I make sure they have Adamant bodyguards? How hard will they try?"

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"They will try with plausible deniability about any government being responsible for it. Adamant bodyguards might suffice."

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"All right then."

She asks Isel how to make this asylum known.

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Isel informs Anitami reds that reds everywhere should know that the aliens will take their mage kids.

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What about parents? And how would they get there? .......not that there are any, reds have notoriously poor diets.

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Course there aren't. The aliens can teleport, like how they got Biyan's children out, but 'tell us where to find your mage child' is obviously sketchy so Isel's not sure how they could get there.

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That would be a problem if there were any.

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Sigh. Here is the alien's contact info anyway. They could try just asking for teleport healing or something.

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Maurabel and an Ice who is working as a translator for her these days say that if there were any, it's pretty cheap for Shadows to look at dark places, so they could designate a dark place for Shadows to check for messages sometimes, if there were any messages, which of course there are not.

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"Works if they just don't trust me, doesn't help if they don't trust you. If you get a couple word'll spread, though."

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"If they don't trust me nothing'll help."

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"I suggested they could write to ask for healing because that they might do for someone who's going to die anyway. And then if you heal a couple there's more trust."

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Nod. "I can do that."

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"Getting the ones out of Biyan might be enough." Sigh.

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"I do worry about them, I haven't been able to funnel them as much as they're used to having, however it compares with my world."

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"Can magic change hair color?"

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"Shine could do it temporarily. Earth maybe could figure out how to do it permanently but you'd have to know a lot about how Amentan hair colors work."

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"I mean, we know the heredity patterns reasonably well, but we couldn't isolate the gene sequence or anything."

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"...I don't know what a gene sequence is, that's not the - right kind of knowing."

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Shrug. "It's not about the hair anyway. Just, if you got magic that did a dozen miscellaneous medical things and changed the hair people might buy it as a - hereditary uncleanliness scouring spell. That's always been Aitim's endgame."

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"Earth does very miscellaneous medical things but it's Water you want for - poison."

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"Where can someone get a comprehensive overview of magic, its theoretical limitations, etc etc..."

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"Well, I'm going to found a school. ...I might need somewhere to put it that is not my redful rainforest. Even though I will want to take reds if I can."

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"Sure, but people who can't do it and just need to know what it's capable of are a different case. A university here'll host you."

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"Even if I take reds? And even if - depoisoning them - doesn't fly?"

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"There are access tunnels, we can work something out."

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"I'll write up a summary."

She writes up a summary.

Elementals have 1-2 elements very strongly and mages have 3-12 at varying strengths, never as strong as an elemental. (12 is almost unheard of but we are pretty sure it has happened to at least one human.) What can be done, especially by human mages using elements in combination, is still being studied. General domains of the elements are known to be:

Adamant: Metal, warding/defense, magnet sense, artifact components.
Air: Air, weather, insubstantiality, scent, very specific respiratory healing.
Earth: Soil, living things (any work on living things with pure Earth requires a lot of detailed knowledge), life sense.
Fire: Fire, prolonged youth, infection-specific healing, warmth sense.
Glass: Glass, vision, breaking things, artifact components.
Ice: Ice, cold, stasis, state sense (solid/liquid/gas).
Lightning: Electricity, fast but not instantaneous travel, hearing, anaesthetic.
Shadow: Darkness, shadow-scrying and shadow-walking.
Shine: Light, invisibility, light-scrying, expensive total instant healing.
Stone: Rocks, weight, tremorsense, longevity, artifact components.
Water: Water, water-sense, poison and dehydration healing, weather.
Wood: Plants (more specifically and less knowledge-dependent than Earth), malnutrition-related healing, plant matter sense, artifact components.

All elements afford at least one special or improved sense. Human mage affinity is graded on a five point scale: none, enough to use the sense at all, enough to incorporate the element into an artifact without elemental help, enough to use other applications without elemental help, and a best affinity which seems to be consistent in strength across human mages (someone could have only three affinities but their best one would be as good as the best of someone with ten).
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Greens the world over are fascinated. People start eating more seaweed if expecting.

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Probably unlikely to be seaweed in particular for a different species.

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Can't hurt, though! 

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True.

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Places fuss over registering their mages. Anitam and several other countries pass a law that if red parents hand over red mage children they can be refunded their credit for next year.

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Maurabel does not say whether she or any elementals are healing reds of things or smuggling them to her rainforest.

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She doesn't ask Aitim for an answer.

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Maurabel works on school things! What will she need to know to operate a school here?

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Here's how the school system works here! It's caste-segregated, is hers going to be? 

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Seems like magic should be a thing you can do regardless of caste like being a house spouse or reading novels or something. She will have the segregation necessary to make sure that if somehow a red student turned up from somewhere - it's a big world - she would not break any laws by letting them attend lectures with an Adamant bodyguard.

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How's she going to handle some students being much faster and more able than others?

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There's only one of her, she can't teach that many separate classes.

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"There might be a lot of students."

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"I will make the fast ones tutor the slow ones. But there's still only one of me."

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He can hardly contest that. "How long before they start being able to do impressive stuff?"

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"What counts as impressive?"

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"Things we can't do at all without magic and would want to do - things people'd pay a lot for - things that might be dangerous -"

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"If you specialize in healing and have a good healing affinity you can get to the point where it's safe to work on people in a - season, more if you work in Earth. The senses don't take long to learn to use at all but they can take longer to use efficiently and accurately, especially shadow scrying."

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"Can people without a Shadow supplementing them do Shadow transit?"

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"Nope, not even if Shadow's their good one."

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"What specialties might let reds run around unnoticed -"

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"With elemental help they wouldn't have to be mages, even, just go with Shadows places. Without - Shine if they were really good, Earth if that turns out to do hair color, maybe Lightning if by 'unnoticed' you mean 'so they couldn't be caught', you'll notice somebody speeding along like that but won't know who it is."

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"Maybe we could make them wear ankle bracelets."

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"Magic would make it pretty trivial to get out of one, but I guess then you'd know who it was? I don't know very much about how Lightning could be used to fool electronics, for obvious reasons."

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"I think the ankle bracelets they use for green and blue prison sentences notify them if it's taken off, rather than being impossible to take off, but I'd have to ask."

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"And Lightning might fool it if they were good with it and it has the applications I'm vaguely speculating about because my world doesn't have electronics."

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"Yeah." Frown. "There'll probably only be the one crop of red mages - once they figure out where it's coming from it's all right -"

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"Unless they decide to risk it and get seaweed or whatever it is for you somehow."

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"If people think reds are sneaking mage nutrients because it'll mean you'll steal off their kids -"

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"I would steal more reds if I could but that might not even be the only reason to do it, it wouldn't be that hard to hide one and they seem to kind of get murdered a lot anyway and a mage has some chance of protecting themselves and others. I wouldn't gamble on it if I were red unless I was already very wedged but it would have made sense in Biyan on a long enough time horizon, say, if I'd been red in Orvara after they did their test city I'd do it -"

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"I'd do it. I'd also dye my hair and lie - it's not even that uncommon, I suspect -"

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"Then why are people like they are, shouldn't they all have keeled over from horror by now?"

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"They don't know it."

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"But probabilistically -"

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"People aren't great at following thoughts to their logical conclusion and also they think - and the reds help them think - the reds are cowed and not very smart. And there are a lot of safeguards, a red couldn't do it without outside help, and they can't imagine why anyone would help. It's like - sure, anyone could take a gun and go shoot up an elementary school, but no one ever does, even though there are so many of us, and helping a red disguise themself is - on that scale of horrible - to most people."

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"...even if it happened you can just take a long shower, that won't fix shooting up a school."

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" - if there were a red going around in disguise you would have to throw out most of your possessions, demolish some buildings - showers would get you clean but everything they had touched -"

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"...but if you shoot up a school children are dead. ...And in contact with things while being dead, if you must."

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"If you asked people 'why hasn't anyone shot up a school, there are after all an awful lot of people and some are terrible', people'd have about the same intuitions about it as 'why hasn't anyone dyed a red's hair and disguised them as a clean caste and helped them escape'. I am not making claims about which action actually causes more harm."

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Sigh.

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"They're out there, but you can't say so."

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"Well. I will have my school and it will probably have a handful of red mages in it who will go around with Adamants."

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"I hope that works."

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"Me too."

About how many students in the first class is she looking at probably? They should all be clear now.

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A hundred sixteen! Of late-spring conceptions it looks like it's about one in five thousand. Statisticians are trying really hard to figure out the dietary factor.

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Well by then she will have some kind of scheme where the earlier students can teach the later ones. Hundred sixteen is not too awful. She announces that it would be a good idea for those families to try to befriend and socialize native elementals to be translators and magic helpers, especially if it isn't convenient to teach them Anitami.

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The blue and green children will all be fluent in Anitami by the time they are of magic-school age, tutors having been hired, and they're seeking out elementals to be friends and magic assistants for their kids. Other people email asking how they befriend an elemental exactly.

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They could talk to the elemental response team about bringing them along next time they respond to an elemental in their area, or just go up to one if they find one, and they should be very gentle and patient about things the elementals don't understand and find out what they are interested in and offer to help with that.

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...this person works full-time in construction and then bartends in the evenings; her husband is gone for months at a time in the shipping industry. One set of grandparents runs a little bodega open sunrise-to-sunset and the other takes their grandbaby mage with them while they work as janitors. 

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Maurabel can try to send them an elemental she or her elemental friends cultivate but she can't do that for everyone.

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Then lots of baby mages will not have the resources to go elemental-befriending. 

 

The blue mage has six elemental friends already and wants to collect the whole set!

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That seems inefficient. Are the baby mage's parents aware that there is only one mage teacher and if she is slowed down catching up students without such advantages their baby mage will get a worse education? Perhaps the elemental friends could be shared.

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The baby blue mage's parents will pay Maurabel extra to teach their daughter at her own pace instead of sticking her in a crowded classroom full of purples. Lots extra.

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Maurabel is not in it for the money.

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It seems unfair to the capable students to teach the class at the pace of the slowest students. Maybe there could be two classes.

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"Your daughter might not even be good at magic."

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She might not! It's not really a blue occupation. If she's the worst in the class it'd be unfair for all the more capable students to be stuck waiting, right?

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"I'm probably going to split it up just because of sheer numbers but I won't know who's good at it until there's been more assessment."

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Has she considered that caste might be fairly predictive.

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"Intelligence has to do with some of it but isn't well-correlated with number of affinities or magic talent per se."

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What goes into magic talent?

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"It's its own thing. I've heard it compared to cooking and tapestry design and remembering your dreams and dancing."

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...it's probably green. That would make the most sense.

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A lot of its uses among humans are kinda purple or orange.

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Maybe spell development is green and spell stuff is purple or orange.

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Anyway she'd appreciate if they'd let some other little mages come play with their daughter and her elemental friends.

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Anybody who would like to fly their children and their children's staff out to this country estate in Cene is welcome.

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She finds a few dozen elementals and they help her find more and eventually all the kids have at least one.

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Statisticians think maybe it is something in freshwater clams. The population of the southern hemisphere, where spring is approaching, promptly starts eating tons of freshwater clams. Several governments pass laws that only pregnant people can buy freshwater clams. Charities spring up to help pregnant poor people afford freshwater clams. Everyone everywhere prohibits reds from possessing, ordering or eating any freshwater clams.

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If the reds in her rainforest want them Maurabel is not going to ask them not to ask Waters to bring them some.

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An amendment to international treaties about reds is added obliging everyone to take steps to reduce the risk of red mages, including denying them clams and killing them if you learn about them. There is some vague interest in action against the rainforest rogue reds but nothing concrete yet.

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Well, does the international community want the only trained mage on the planet to be working on a school, or do they want her trying to defend her rainforest?

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They want to be safe from red mages teleporting all around touching things.

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Mages. Cannot. Teleport. Only elementals can do that and they can take non-mage passengers too if they want.

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Yeah and they're scared of that too!!

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But it absolutely cannot be addressed by killing mages.

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And they are miserable about that.

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Too bad.

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They are so glad they'll have other mages soon.

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She works on a curriculum. Gets reports from the little mages' elemental friends.

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The little mages are all loved very much (except for this one, whose mother is an alcoholic and whose father is depressed; neither of them play with him and there's only sometimes food. Grandma's pursuing a custody case.) They are being taught Anitami as best their caretakers can manage it, which in some case is regular tutors and in some cases watching Anitami children's television shows. In some countries they are protected national assets with security teams assigned; some countries are ignoring them.

In Calado someone's private security shows up to take a purple mage baby away for a better upbringing. Then more security shows up to argue with the original security, and the baby's mother flees with the baby in the ensuing chaos. She is arrested for disobeying security directives and sterilized on arrest because the private prison in that district has a contract with a hospital that does sterilizations. She is released without charges but billed for the arrest and the sterilization; she can't afford it and is arrested again for unpaid fines.

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The first little mage's Fire friend, with some Maurabel coaching, sells youth boosts and buys the little mage food and brings him to playgrounds and talks to him in Anitami.

The second little mage's Lightning friend can't figure out how to get a valid Calador work permit, can Maurabel just pay her fines off miscellaneous bribe money she has sloshing around and import the family to Anitam by any chance?

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"It's hard to get anyone willing to swap to Calado because, uh. Calado."

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"Yes, it certainly seems that Calado, can I get an exception - I won't need it when there's mages everywhere because everyone's eating clams and nobody will be taking such an exceptional interest in them but this is one of a hundred and sixteen."

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"Some people might be bribeable to swap? Purples don't emigrate much at all but probably for enough money. There just isn't any such thing as non-swap immigration, the strings to pull aren't there at all."

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"I'm going to be able to have the students at my school at all, right?"

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"Yeah, study-abroad there are applicable strings for. They won't be Anitami citizens, they're just studying here."

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"Will they not be able to bring their parents? I'm going to start when they're two."

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"Little bit harder but I'm sure we can wrangle it."

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"Can I invite all the purple ones here early - maybe all the ones who aren't blue and green - to make sure they don't start at a terrible disadvantage from their home situations?"

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"Got anywhere on those air-making artifacts?"

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"Some. This wouldn't be for magical tutoring, just making sure they know Anitami and stuff."

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"Yes, I know, I'm trying to figure out how much leverage you can expect to have."

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"I think in six months with a dozen Airs to tap I can make an artifact that makes about as much air as an Air's halo."

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"Then maybe at that point give it to us and say something nice about examples of the things mages will be able to accomplish and then present them with your plan for when everyone gets visas and how long they'll be here and so forth."

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"There's a kid who's being tossed around by Calado right now. The Lightning is trying but finds it unnavigable there."

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"I will try to pitch 'wouldn't it be nice if one more of the mages were Anitami'."

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"Thanks."

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He makes the case for that. Just the little mage and her parents who can't have more children anyway, not that much of a strain on Anitam. It takes a while and some favor-trading but eventually they can have visas.


Calado refuses to let them leave. The mage is a valuable national asset. And can only be swapped for another mage.

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Is this the kind of refusal where if she waits an hour someone else will take charge and say otherwise?

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He looks at the name. " - yeah, probably."

 

An hour later they are cleared to leave! Twenty minutes after that they are not and Aitim looks at the name again and thinks this one will stick.

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"If I send Penumbra?"

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"They'll probably just grumble."

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"I can pretend I wasn't up to date." Penumbra goes.

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Terrified family gets relocated. Calado grumbles.

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Maurabel and her translator Ice go and apologize for the commotion and hope they will like it better in Anitam.

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Is Anitam going to take the baby?

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Assuming they are good parents, no. And the Lightning elemental friend she sent will be able to translate things for them till they have picked up the language and then kiddo can go to mage school in a year and a half.

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Okay. Does magic healing reverse sterilization by any chance.

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Earth might be able to do it. Maurabel doesn't personally know enough about how sterilizations are done and she isn't sure any Earths do but it does not seem impossible in principle.

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They appreciate her help.

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No problem.

She works on the air artifact. She winds up with a wind artifact that just moves around existing wind; her next try works. She can make those as often as she can assemble enough fresh Airs to help.

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People are excited about concrete progress towards colonization things and buy them up eagerly. Anitam sends a bunch out to the planet they are slowly terraforming.

It's spring in the southern hemisphere. Everyone breathlessly waits to see whether nearly all the babies are mages.

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It's not quite that good; eating enough clams increases the odds, but not to the point of guarantee. It's more like eighty percent.

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Still! The first babies are only a couple weeks old but being obsessively observed for signs of magic. Someone thinks their baby magically started a fire but it turns out the baby just pulled on a tablecloth and knocked a candle over.

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People who ate clams should make sure they have good smoke detectors.

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Everywhere already mandates really good fire protection measures, given the density fires could be disastrous. Even Calado mandates that. (Enforcement is maybe erratic, but.)

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Governments could befriend Fires and Waters and Adamants to help.

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Governments are varyingly well equipped to befriend their elementals.

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Then they will have varying fire suppression supplementation. Maurabel churns out airtifacts and works on curriculum. Does she get the early students thing?

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They can come a season early if she's paying for it.

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Well, it's not nothing. Can she afford it?

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If she sells more artifacts, yeah, sure!

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Air artifacts for all. She gives the elementals a cut but lets them give it back if they're confused and can't think of anything to do with it.

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Calado tries to make their mage come back by arresting extended family for treason for helping them escape, but then decides not to do that. The parents work overtime getting money to send back for the prison costs. The little blue collects all twelve elementals, assisted by the willingness of her parents to have their estate transformed so they all have lots of space to live. 

 

The southern continent's latest batch of children is in fact eighty percent mages!

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"Why is Calado like that?"

Does anyone in the southern hemisphere want to invest in any way in the future of mage education?

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(Everybody wants to invest in the future of mage education!)

"Historical and cultural reasons but a lot of it is their child credit allocation, it rewards - high-variance strategies."

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"It's very itself." While she expects a substantial fraction of the first batch of mages - all of whom will be welcome at her school - to go on to teach, she will continue teaching herself, and will award spots in her school thoughtfully.

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(So to people who have the most affinities? Or the most elemental friends?

A social worker notices a red baby leaving glowing spots on his mother's shirt and has him executed.)

"People who work there for long enough have a feel for which judgments are actually going to win out and it feels less chaotic. But it's not a good environment for anyone who lives there, not at all."

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(Maurabel makes sure the southern hemisphere has dark places for reds to leave messages for Shadows, if they want.)

She'll probably come up with an entrance exam based on what she finds from the first batch - neither elemental friends nor number of affinities would be decisive on their own - but she can also admit more students from some places than others.

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Based on the policies of their governments? None of the mages' families control that.

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They do not. She will probably reconsider if somebody has lots of exceptional candidates. For middle of the road ones she will want to consider whether she wants their country to have more mages.

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They'll have mages either way, just less trained ones. Will the classes be streamed online?

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Sure, she just thinks that's not going to help very much.

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Why not?

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A lot of magic is felt out and can be guided along by somebody else.

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It seems unfair to punish people for being born in Calado. Or similar.

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She can't take everybody. She will take the first-batch mage from Calado, who may elect to return to Calado as an adult if they want, and she will test students from Calado in batch three when the next northern spring's babies turn two.

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There is still complaining but it's not very substantive.

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Yeah-huh. (How is smol Calador expat doing?)

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Her Lightning finds Anitam more accessible and has been doing anaesthetic at a local hospital in order to help the family pay prison costs for the relatives back in Calado. She is happy and plays with the neighbors and does magic for them, to their fascination.

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Awwww.

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A skating rink in Yvalta gets visited by an Ice, after-hours; there's some kind of argument and then a group of drunk four-year-olds attack it with welding torches.

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They survive, after a fashion; Ices can do stasis.

Maurabel gets a shadow-walk ride there with her translator Ice to try to bring them out of it. She warns everyone beforehand that sometimes this does not work and patients just die instead and this is incompatible with Shine healing. Would anyone rather leave their stasised relative in stasis until the field of magic has maybe advanced or do they want her to undo it now as best she can, ~90% odds per?

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...how long until the state of magic is expected to advance?

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There's a lot of people here and they know more about medicine than humans do but her world's been studying magic intensively with a lot of collaboration for about six local years and still (she checked, she gets a news bulletin every time she goes to clear more purchased elementals and would have heard) hasn't improved on what Maurabel learned in school.

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All relevant relatives want their loved ones unstasised.

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She and Ice go through them and warm them all back up.

She loses one.

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His little sister is very sad. His family would like the Ice to get in trouble. 

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Do they even know where the offending Ice is now? Anyway, the policy is for someone better socialized to go introduce the Ice to concepts like "just fly away if you meet drunk four year olds who have welding torches for some reason".

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That's not good enough; the Ice should be in jail. (They don't know where it is.) She has an Ice with her, maybe it's that one.

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Her Ice translator has been accounted for in Anitam at the time of the incident and they are going to leave now. They Shadow-walk home.

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People are very angry that an Ice murdered a random innocent person!

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Attacking somebody with welding torches is not innocent. She is sorry he's dead too but let's be clear.

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The elemental was not in fear for its safety and could easily have left, it's nothing like attacking an Amentan or human.

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Elementals are immortal but that doesn't mean you can't hold one down and torture it. Is there by any chance a security camera at the rink?

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There is! 

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And could the Ice have left without fighting back?

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Probably. They had an argument and then someone punched the Ice and hurt her hand and then someone pulled out a welding torch and buzzed him with it and then he reacted dramatically and some of the other ones got welding torches too. 

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Well. Maybe they'll find the Ice and maybe they won't. At any rate she advises not attacking elementals.

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Uh huh.

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The free(ish) elementals on her home world find some more high-profile targets. They take all their elementals.

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Amentans continue to derive satisfaction from hearing about elementals freed from slavery. Aitim arranges for the stories to get lots of publicity so people have a harder time getting their own ideas about slavery.

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"Thanks."

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"Of course!" He's having a kid this spring; the mother is eating lots of clams even though it's still winter. "How's preparing your curriculum going?"

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"Pretty good. Might all fall apart when I have students, though. I'm probably going to want to hire some oranges for kid-wrangling parts that aren't directly about magic."

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"With that many students? Yeah, I bet."

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"I'm slightly worried about whether I will be able to find local oranges who can handle red students fairly. Or, uh, handle blue students fairly."

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"There are oranges who teach in blue schools and they are not intimidateable into not giving us homework or anything."

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"Sure. But this will be a mixed caste class."

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"I don't think you're going to find anyone who'll treat the reds fairly. 'no favoritism among clean castes' seems entirely reasonable and not hard to get."

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"Suppose. Well. The reds are my weird alien project, I can just give them extra attention if they need it."

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"They probably will - you do know there are marked IQ differences by caste -"

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"On the occasions I have talked to random purples they seem smarter than random humans, honestly, I think I'll cope."

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"We've been selecting for intelligence in almost every caste for generations. They'll be fine. But if you're expecting to get equal results from equal opportunity, it won't work that way."

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"I know."

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Anitam's colonization project is making exciting progress! Some Earths and Woods could maybe keep some plants alive if they wanted.

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Some of them will come do that.

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Other places want colonization projects too! If Maurabel won't help they will try to corrall Shadows themselves. Some of them are effective at this.

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Maurabel's usually willing to help but if they can get Shadows to assist on their own that's fine, she doesn't own them.

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Will Maurabel assist Calado.

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She will sell them air artifacts at the standard rate.

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Will she help them find Shadows.

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She will consult on Shadow-finding, she can't really be personnel manager for every country on the planet.

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Eventually Calado has a planet with four competing arcologies. Two of them attack each other with no survivors.

The northern hemisphere has a crop of mage babies. Chemists figure out what exactly the bioactive compound is and get it in pill form.

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Good for chemists. The first batch are one now! How are they doing?

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They are doing well, aided by their elemental caretaker/assistants! The one with neglectful parents now lives with Grandma, who won her custody case. The Calador expat has lots of friends and really likes Anitami food. Some families did muster the money to send their children to the blue one's estate, and she gets along splendidly with her new yellow and green friend and their accompanying elementals.

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Oh good.

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Some places are curious how set she is on having her magic school in Anitam.

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Uh, not totally committed but all the kids were told to learn Anitami and she's been pleased with her accommodations here. Why?

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Because having the magic school sounds advantageous and they could maybe offer even better accommodations?

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Does anybody want to offer her anything really fantastic or is it like, money and stuff.

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Does she have anything in mind?

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She'd be so impressed if some country managed to get all the way to not being horribly shitty to its reds! SO impressed.

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Several countries don't think they are horribly shitty to their reds.

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And are they?

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This place has red jails. This place lets reds report crimes. This place did the thing with replacing social workers with cameras. This place had a riot and didn't kill all the rioters.

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That is indeed less shitty. It isn't not shitty, and moving from Anitam would be hard (she'd have to learn the language to get along unaccompanied, she'd have to learn local regulations, she'd have to adjust her curriculum, it'd impose costs on all the kids who have studied Anitami and aren't language geniuses).

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What would count as not shitty.

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She asks Aitim what nice, easy to understand, concrete terms for "you know, NOT SHITTY" might look like.

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"Rates of extrajudicial violence comparable to those experienced in communities with a comparable crime rate, adequate prenatal nutrition and access to the resources to train their own doctors and provide their own medical care, reflected in childbirth and infant mortality rates comparable to impoverished clean people, enforcement of contract law so that people have to pay them for their work, answers to the questions 'what do our reds want from their government' and 'how are we responsibly incentivizing good behavior among our reds'."

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"How do people track the red crime rate?"

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"Any country which doesn't have a record of all police complaints and what resulted from them isn't going to impress you otherwise. Most places do. The crimes will include stuff like 'making noise' and 'touching things', of course."

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Maurabel publishes this list. She's not making any promises - after all, it is possible that multiple countries would suddenly do all these things at once, and there is only one of her! - but they would be So Impressive and would definitely at least get you lots of Shadow-finding help and free air artifacts even if she cannot put her school in you.

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Ugh. Some places try. 

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Can she hire a red auditor to look at the evidence they have to present?

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There aren't red auditors. Auditing is yellow.

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But this is red-themed auditing, doesn't that make it red? Reds do things having to do with reds.

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Reds do things that involve touching reds; this doesn't.

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The job could involve traveling to the audited countries' red districts and seeing how they are!

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How much is she paying?

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What does that have to do with anything?

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Well, the yellows are willing to do that for a lot of money.

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She'd rather hire reds.

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Reds can't feasibly travel between districts and don't know anything about auditing.

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Shadows. And it's not like a financial audit, it's just checking on red conditions. She doesn't think yellows will get good results.

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Everyone is absolutely horrified at the idea of reds travelling by Shadows. No.

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The Shadows won't take them anywhere reds aren't authorized to be.

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Elementals are kind of suggestible and they might. Or they might make a targeting mistake.

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Shadows can see where they're going. Red neighborhoods are the ones with reds in them. She will be doing the suggesting.

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One country says they'll permit a red auditor if the red auditor wears an ankle bracelet monitor.

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She can probably find one who's fine with that! All right who wants to go check out red conditions in that country while wearing an ankle thingy.

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Isel asks them.

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Sounds great. Lots of money. As long as the ankle thingy won't, like, explode on their foot?

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Probably not.

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Yeah some of 'em will risk it!

Maurabel finds a cooperative Shadow who will do transport in exchange for being read bedtime stories. Reds reading to her is fine. (...wild elementals are predictable in their hobbies; more flesh-people-acclimated ones fixate on the oddest things.)

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That country sends acceptable ankle bracelets.

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Reds don them and go by Shadow to that country's red neighborhoods.

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Things have in fact gotten better since word got around that the aliens cared! It'd be bad if there were any red mages but since there aren't. 

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Why would it be bad if there were red mages exactly, would it be more than just them being executed?

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No, just that.

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The red auditors take diligent notes and spend all of their visit in red districts and then go home and report to Maurabel. Maurabel gives the country in question a dozen air artifacts and offers to introduce the Shadow who likes bedtime stories to whoever is on their interplanetary exploration team; she will consider them for field trips and possible satellite campus.

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They are so pleased!

 

Someone else will agree to the ankle monitor setup.

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She finds a Shadow who accepts money. Red auditors go.

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This place has really low extrajudicial violence against reds! When they get in trouble for things they usually just get house arrest.

Also they don't have social workers. Because they have anthropologists who experiment on the reds. They've learned a lot from it!

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That's... different. That's definitely different. She is not sure she'll give them "not shitty".

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It meets her criteria!

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How are they responsibly incentivizing good behavior? What do their reds want from the government?

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Their reds would like more experiments that don't cripple them or kill them. They are incentivizing good behavior because their reds can safely report crimes and problems and so on. 

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They can have some air artifacts for, like, at least managing to not be terrible in the same way as everyone else.

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Awww.

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Like, points for nonconformity, but. Wow.

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What?

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Okay look she is an alien and she's not impressed with "they're reds" as an explanation for segregation, let alone beating them up (common) or blinding some to see what they do (this one place, points for originality).

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But it helped them improve their understanding of blindness, which helped them treat other blind people more effectively.

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And she's glad they're not doing it just for kicks, and they can have some air artifacts.

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Fine.

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They should let her know if they ever switch to entirely harmless experiments!

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Sure, they can do that!

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Great, she's sure her auditors will be happy to swing by again.

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Ugh.

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Anybody else?

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One more place! They don't have red districts, they have their reds living way underground with a tunnel network that lets them pop up where they're needed.

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...well, that makes it easy for Shadows to get there.

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Yep!

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Shadows bring auditors!

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These reds don't deal with much random violence but they really miss seasons.

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Oh right, those. Would this country like to hire some rainforest Shines who've learned the seasons trick to train some more Shines, and then pay or trade for that with those Shines, so their reds can have seasons?

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How much would that cost?

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Depends on the Shines, but she can come up with a ballpark.

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Ugh. Fine.

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Yay! She will help them source the Shines. Air artifacts, introductions to Shadows, extra seats in next class of mages.

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Is she planning to allocate seats with some accounting for relative size of countries?

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Yes.

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No one else wants to meet her standards with respect to reds.

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Oh well.

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"It's something."

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"It is."

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Someone makes a cute documentary about the Cene blue and her entourage of elementals. She is a charming little kid.

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Cute.

She hires someone to do first-pass interviews of orange child-wranglers to get it to a manageable number. They need to be able to work with elementals and with Maurabel and in the same room as reds.

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There are oranges who qualify!

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Great. She will interview those ones personally.

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This one teaches green kids and finds elementals really fascinating and is so upset about people mistreating them. This one runs grey after-school programs and has opinions about letting young children be young children and have play-focused learning. This one teaches orange kids and has a elemental friend who lives in her apartment's rooftop gardens.

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Cool. And they can handle the possibility of red students? Big world. Possible some managed to hide.

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They don't have to touch them or anything they touched, right?

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She is going to be set up to avoid the necessity but if something happened, two-year-olds being two-year-olds, they would have to cope and not lash out at the kids.

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They're oranges, they're not going to physically attack the children. They'd want the day off so they can go shower, though.

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That's fine.

Are there only those three applicants?

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No, there are lots more! 

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Great, she might need more than three.

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No shortage of candidates!

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She narrows it down by how much she and her more closely cooperating elementals get along with them, with a view toward diversity of previous castes of students.

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She can get teachers of every caste of students if she wants. The blue and green teachers are accustomed to higher pay.

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She thinks she will pay them all at the higher rates. The lower the typical teacher pay the more of the caste there will be running around to wrangle, after all. And she'd like them to really want to keep their jobs.

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Then will she give the blue and green teachers a bonus on top of that?

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...she is going to pay her child-wranglers the same amount. They can get bonuses if she likes their performance.

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Weird.

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Alien. Aaaaaaliiiiiiennnnnn.

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The students who are to arrive early start arriving.

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And Maurabel is very cheery at them! Hi students!

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They are so excited! And slightly intimidated! The place they are staying is nicer than they have seen, in some cases! Are they really going to all be learning in one classroom?

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She might divide lessons up into two groups depending on how they handle lecture formats!

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They have a varying command of Anitami; some lean on their elementals for translation. One of them heard that Anitam kills people a lot and is scared; another one thinks that's cool and wants to go watch.

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"They don't kill kids, except for red kids." She asked.

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Oh, then that's good.

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Sigh. Anyway, those of them who found their own elementals, she wants to meet those!

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They would be delighted to introduce their elementals!

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Yay! And how are the elementals all doing?

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Excited! Confused. Overwhelmed. One who overheard the executions conversation wants to know what's up with that.

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Flesh people can die. Sometimes other flesh people would rather they did that instead of whatever they were doing while alive. If they do that in a coordinated and relatively predictable fashion it is called execution.

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Uh. Yikes. (His attached kid wants to go watch can they go watch.)

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She's not sure if Anitam does public executions and is not planning to look it up.

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He'll ask his mom. A couple kids want their elementals to spar, will their elementals do that? It would be cool.

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Elemental sparring can have a lot of collateral damage and they should do it high in the air, over the ocean, if and only if they want to.

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Awwwww.

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She does not want her school to explode.

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These not-yet-two-year-olds do not really understand why that would be a big deal but okay.

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If her school explodes she can't teach them magic.

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Oh no! 


The kids have mostly clustered by caste. The yellows are sitting quietly and taking notes on things. The oranges are sitting quietly and whispering to each other. The greys are running around. The purples have additionally clustered by various other criteria. 

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That's a little disappointing but Maurabel doesn't try to break it up.

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Her teaching assistants suggest activities to help the kids get to know each other and practice their Anitami.

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Good teaching assistants.

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Kids can go to the zoo! (The greys and purples race around and climb on everything and beg for candy from the vendor carts; the yellows and oranges walk patiently and take pictures and ask questions, even a few of them who look longingly at their racing-around classmates.) 

Kids can go to the museum! (The greys and purples are bored.)

Kids can go to the amusement park! This gets all of them excitable and inclined to race around and plead for snacks.

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Castes are weird. She can get them some snacks.

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Grey kids get sticks and have swordfights! One of the orange kids shuts this down as irresponsible! One of the purple kids wants to know how to operate the cotton candy machine and gets a lesson from an amused vendor. Everyone goes on a roller coaster except a few kids who think that looks horrifying and no fun at all.

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Those ones can skip it, that's fine.

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Kids go to the movies! Kids go to the beach! Kids get pretty good with Anitami; many of them are translating for their parents.

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Awww.

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And eventually they are two and the blues and greens arrive and magic lessons can start!

(They sit ordered by caste; blue and green in the front and then yellow and then orange and then purple and grey).

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Did the child-wranglers do that or did the kids self-sort?

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Kids self-sorted.

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Huh.

There are separate seats by a side door for two red students and an Adamant and an Adamant/Shadow who come in with them. In they come.

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Kids stare. Some of them make faces. They collectively scoot farther away.

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Maurabel ignores them! The red kids cling to their Adamants' hands.

"There are two class sessions for every class session's worth of material I'm covering," Maurabel says, "after the first day, which is introductory stuff, and after we've checked all your affinities which will be over the next couple days one at a time. You can come to the morning one or the afternoon one - I might start asking people to pick one over the other if they're very differently popular - and if you're having trouble, you can attend both for the extra practice. Any questions?"

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Green kid wants to know if there are differences between the morning and afternoon sessions, like, will one of them move faster or go into more depth.

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"I'm going to keep them on the same schedule, because that way if you're not sure of yourself you can come in the morning and return after lunch if you need to. If a lot of people are doing that then it's pretty likely the second session will be more review- and depth- focused than the first, which will just go over my curriculum as I first had it in mind."

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Grey kid wants to know which session the garbage will be attending.

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"I'm sorry, I have no idea what you mean. Anitami is my second language."

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He repeats himself, slower.

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"Yeah I'm just not quite getting the - I get the 'which session will' part?"

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He stands on his desk and repeats the question even slower and louder, gesturing at the reds for emphasis. 

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"Are you asking something about your red classmates?" she asks, when he points. "Don't stand on your desk, please."

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"Yes, I want to know which session they're going to."

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"Your red classmates are welcome at either or both sessions just like you."

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He looks at the reds expectantly. "You could at least be decent enough to tell us -"

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The reds are silent. They cling to their Adamants.

"I'm sure if you make friends with them they will be happy to tell you about their plans so you don't wind up inviting them to things during their classes," Maurabel chirps.

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He rolls his eyes and sits back down.

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"Any more questions?"

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A yellow wants to know if the curriculum and course schedule is available online.

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They are! They can all get copies of the syllabus and academic calendar.

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Then they're ready to start learning magic!

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Okay! Do they all know all the elements? She has made up a little song in case they don't.

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They almost all do. Unless that includes all the hybrids.

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No, not those, they don't have to memorize those, although if there are hybrids in the room they should introduce themselves just so everybody knows their names. The Shadow/Adamant is Iron, she knows that purple girl's Air/Stone is Dust...

There is also a Glass/Ice (Crystal) and a Stone/Wood (Jet) and a Glass/Shine (Rainbow) and a Water/Fire (Steam) and an Earth/Water (Clay) and an Air/Ice (Snow) and an Air/Lightning (Storm).

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Have all possible hybrids come into existence yet?

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Probably, Amenta's producing so many elementals, but she hasn't met them all.

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They want to learn magic!

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First they are going to make nametags. Okay, now they can start. She pulls up her chart of what all the elements do. It's not filled in; would students like to provide examples of things they or their friends have done?

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Flying! Going invisible! Scrying! Freezing things! Lighting things on fire! Healing! Anaesthetic! Shadow-walking! The reds have to leave the room before they discuss shadow-walking, of course.

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Mages on their own cannot shadow-walk. Iron already knows how.

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Ewwwwwwww. A couple kids start crying.

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"Iron is not going to bring Tiya or Juin anywhere they aren't welcome."

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How does she know for sure though.

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Because she knows Iron. They could get to know Iron too if they like. She'll refresh her halo beforehand if they prefer.

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The blue kid reassures everyone else that she'll follow up on that. They relax slightly.

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Is everyone ready to move on? Are they out of things to fill the chart with?

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They can list dozens more!

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Great! Chart chart chart. She adds the handful of things they omitted. Does everybody in the room know at least one element they definitely have at least some of?

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Yep! One kid knows eight and wants to show them off.

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Instead that kid should pick one - everybody with several should pick one - they're going to divide into groups. (There are conveniently sections near but not threateningly adjacent to each of Tiya and Juin.)

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The kids in those sections scoot slightly farther away.

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Turns out everybody present has at least one of Water, Fire, Glass, Air, or Lightning! So they'll do those. (Tiya has Water and Juin has Glass. Juin also has Air but will be using the material-halo option for now.) They are going to learn to use those elemental senses. Maurabel borrows an elemental of each type as TAs and walks everybody through how to connect to the elemental's magic and watch while they use their special sense. Then they will be able to try on their own. (The Water and the Glass will have halos up while they touch the reds, and shed them after.)

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The kids ignore the reds uneasily and pay attention to the lesson.

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She doesn't expect anyone to be able to do any magic sensing on their own today but with luck they will all figure out how to tap elementals.

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They try it.

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It's tricky. She will go around and offer advice.

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Kids fidget waiting their turns and are corralled by the instructors. "If you touch me I'll kill you," a purple says to Tiya.

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"If you hurt me you'll be expelled," Tiya says. "I don't want to touch you."

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"I'll be expelled but you'll be dead."

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"No. Adamant will keep me safe. I'm safe. I don't want to touch you."

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Glare.

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Tiya holds her Adamant's hand and takes a turn touching the Water, all by herself. Water sheds his halo and puts up a new one for the next batch.

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Some of them make faces but they still try it.

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Good.

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Eventually everyone can tap into an elemental!

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Great. Questions?

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Can you tap into two at once? Do you have to be touching them? If you're tapping a hybrid, do you need to be focusing on one half in particular? Will it go faster now that they know how to do it?

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You can. Yes, or they can be touching each other in a chain. No. Yes.

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How many can you tap into at once? Does it take extra practice to do that?

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No known upper limit. Yes.

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Ooooooh.

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What things do they most want to learn to do?

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Shadow-walking! So they can go to planets! Flying! Artifacts!

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"It's actually a bad idea to try to steer a shadow walk if you don't absolutely have to. Shadows are miles better at it and can bring passengers. We will definitely cover flying - I don't have enough Air to do it without help myself but I have books and we can figure out the rest. And we're going to cover artifacts for sure, what artifacts do you want to make?"

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Artifacts they can sell for lots of money! Artifacts they can use for terraforming! And for self-defense! And for killing uppity reds!

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That last kid can leave the classroom now. They can try again tomorrow.

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That is a useful thing to have artifacts for, though.

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Anybody who remarks on the usefulness or desirability of extrajudicial death of any person can leave. They can come back tomorrow. This time.

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"Everyone knows they should die." Some of his classmates are nodding.

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She will continue expelling students and teach just the reds if she has to.

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She might have to.

 

Nah, like half of the kids are willing to volunteer no opinion about the reds. One of the greys looks like he couldn't care less but once he notices all the other greys have gotten kicked out he says 'they should die' and quickly leaves.

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She resumes the lesson! She would like them all to come to their individual appointments with guesses about their affinity strengths if they can. Magic you're better at is easier, feels more available - there's not a lot of strength difference when you don't know what you're doing yet but there's some - and if they manage to make a magic sense work and then try with others (their elementals are encouraged to student-hop) the ones they are better at will be sharper and easier to sustain and interpret and steer.

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That makes sense. They try it.

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They will need a while and should practice out of class. She makes little diagrams of what elements might be useful in all the non-murder artifact ideas presented.

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They will practice out of class!

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Great. She answers more questions and sets up a way for them to organize meets to share elementals and explains how the assessment system is tentatively going to work and reminds them to wear their nametags to the next class.

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And off they go, some already planning elemental swapping.

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And she has already found amenable elementals that cover the dozen for the reds. Sigh.

"I should concretize the thing where if they, for example, advocate murder, they will be asked to leave; 'for example' isn't good enough," says Maurabel to her orange TAs, "is there some standard I could copy?"

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"The school I worked at had a policy against disrupting the classroom environment - saying the reds should be dead wouldn't count but saying one of your classmates should would -"

"It is the policy of their governments to kill red mages, are you planning to enforce a ban on discussing laws currently in place -"

"We would have someone take a student to a separate room to talk if they were making inappropriate comments."

"Yes, I recommend that over sending them home, especially if their parents are at work and there's no one to make sure they get home safely - that's less of a concern here, obviously -"

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"In my country elementals are legally forces of nature and enslaving them is encouraged. If someone discussed that currently-in-place law in an approving or even a potentially threatening neutral way I would certainly send them away."

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"They should really be getting a non-magical education too - save that kind of discussion for civics class -"

"Oh, I agree there, it's very off-topic -"

"I think having someone take disruptive students aside for a talk should work fine -"

"- depending whether the point is to correct misbehavior or show off to the reds that it's taken seriously -"

"Ewwww. They're here, that's enough of a point made."

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"It clearly isn't," Maurabel says to that last orange.

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"I'm really not sure what you were expecting. You can't discipline students into liking each other."

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"They don't have to like them."

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"I'd bet money that the greys and purples at least will just go to whatever session the reds aren't going to, so it won't come up again."

 

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"Unless, as people keep telling me, the reds are slower, which would mean they'd need to go to both."

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Sigh.

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"They don't have to like them. They have to hold their tongues about reds if they can't be polite. Completely ignoring the reds' presence is fine. I didn't make shaking hands with them an admission requirement. I am not asking for miracles."

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"I think it's very reasonable to ask students who can't hold their tongue to leave and calm down, but if you kick them out for the day they outright will not get an education at all, some of them."

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"The lectures are online. If they want to use their education to invent red-killing weapons I am fine with that being difficult."

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No one has further comment.

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She has individual appointments with everyone to figure out and grade their affinities. Should take about ten minutes per.

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The kids are so excited!

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Oh good. She can test them for the ten affinities she has herself; her Ice translator and a Shadow are necessary for the two she lacks. The procedure does involve touching.

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She hasn't done the reds, right?

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"I have a group of elementals who jointly cover all the elements who are willing to touch the reds and stay out of places reds aren't allowed, so I don't have to spend five hours in the shower every time something like this comes up."

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"...so you have not touched any reds or things they touched."

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"Except elementals with material, refreshed halos."

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"Okay." Kids will get affinity-tested.

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The average is six zeroes, two just-barely, two decent, one good, and one best. She reassures those with fewer that their best is still going to be as good as anyone else's best and they can do anything if they befriend enough elementals.

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They are suitably reassured. Is she checking the ones who got sent home?

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It is the next day now, so yep, she will check them like everyone else.

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"When I told my parents why I got sent home they bought me ice cream and a new computer game," one tells her proudly.

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"No glass," she says. "We already know you have air, let's see how good it is..."

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And then the two identical sessions start?

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Yep. Morning session the reds are there.

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Most everyone leaves. Three greens and three yellows and an orange stay.

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Then they will get lots of individual attention when she teaches the class! And it happens that they all share a couple of affinities and that means they can all do the same exercises in those elements instead of having to divide up.

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They are eager students!

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Good.

Lunch elapses. Juin doesn't come back. Tiya does, clinging to her bodyguard.

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All the kids who skipped the morning come back and look at her disgustedly. "The least you could do," someone says, "is pay attention in your fucking special session so you don't have to stink up the room all afternoon, too, you disgusting shitrag."

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That kid is shooed. "In case it's not clear, all you have to do is ignore your red classmates to be welcome to stay," she says. "If you'd rather heckle them than learn magic you don't get to do either. Who else wants to leave?"

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"We want them to pick one session so other people get the chance to learn."

"Yeah."

"They can have the morning or the afternoon, just not both."

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"If Tiya does something disruptive I will send her away too. She hasn't. She's allowed to come to both if she wants, just like you."

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Most of them leave.

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Then Tiya and everyone else who stayed get plenty of individual attention while she walks through the day's concepts again!

And then she writes to everyone's parents. Ice translates appropriately per parent for her.

Everybody gets:

[Name of child] has the following affinity scores:

(Please note that affinity scores only reflect unassisted abilities and any mage can tap elementals where necessary to perform relevant feats of magic.)

But some of them also get:

I am afraid that there have been some disciplinary issues with [name of child]. While I can't force any two children to get along, outbursts of violent fantasies or name-calling aimed at other students are not conducive to the study of magic. If I have to continue to remove [pronoun] from the class for not meeting a minimum behavior standard with respect to their classmates they will have to learn by following along with video lectures instead, which I expect to be markedly less effective. This sort of behavior problem might also make befriending elementals for long-term arrangements more difficult. I hope you can help me convince [name of child] that learning magic is a better use of time than lashing out at other students.

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None of Salali's teachers have ever had disciplinary problems with her. Maybe it's you.

 

Errie tells me that there are red mages in the class, despite red mages being prohibited in every jurisdiction, and that one of them has a Shadow elemental companion and will be learning shadow-stepping. I think this reflects an appalling lack of judgment on the part of the magic school and I commend Errie for her refusal to participate in such nonsense.

 

Maybe you shouldn't put them in a classroom with reds.

 

That sounds like such a hard problem to fix. I'm sure you've given lots of solutions due consideration. I favor putting the garbage out.

 

The kid who called Tiya a disgusting shitrag is the one whose grandma has custody. She writes back:

He shouldn't have to deal with that. Maybe there could be an evening session with no reds?

 

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Maybe. If that seems likeliest to you you can withdraw Salali and reenroll her when some of the current students are able to teach; there will be more selection available then.


A withdrawal form is attached if that is how you and Errie would like to express your protest.


You're not the first to suggest this. You can withdraw Tobarak and reenroll him when some of the current students are able to teach; there will be more selection available then.


She pastes that one for the next parent too.

There's only one of me. There are two sessions a day to allow review for slower students (since I can't track them in the way conventional for Amentan school systems) and I'm using my evenings to produce air artifacts and work on other developments for terraforming so I'm reluctant to add a third, especially if specific students would be expressly and individually forbidden from attending through no fault of their own.
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Students are withdrawn from the magic class by their parents. Including five of the ones who haven't caused any disciplinary issues.

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She continues with a smaller class size.

 

A few of the withdrawn kids' elemental friends fly away.

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This is hard on families that were having trouble making ends meet and upsetting even for the kids who are fine. One parent writes to Maurabel asking if she encouraged that.

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I don't control the elementals, nor am I at liberty to publish their emails without their permission. I did not ask them to leave but provided my account of why those students were withdrawn when asked.
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My daughter is cripplingly shy and the only person she spoke to outside the family was her Shine. After she got home from class for the first two days she stayed up until well past midnight showering and crying and gagging, so I chose to withdraw her. She hasn't spoken to anyone since he left and she still spends all her time showering. I hope you're proud of yourself. 

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She was not asked to touch any reds, any things that reds had touched, or any other vectors of uncleanliness. I am not at liberty to disclose Shine's personal trauma without his permission.
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You could have suggested he talk with her about why she stopped going to school and how she felt about it, instead of feeding him some bullshit where you're heroically standing up for the rights of reds by forcing scared isolated two-year-olds into classrooms with them. I assure you that lots of kids who desperately wanted to quit will keep going to class now, no matter how miserable they are, because the thought of losing their closest friend is even worse. Congratulations. 

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I do not control the elementals. Shine has an email address. Take it up with him.
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Parent writes Shine letting him know that whatever Maurabel said their daughter didn't ask to be withdrawn from the class and has no anti-red prejudice, she just couldn't stop gagging and it was very alarming. And they thought it might get better if she withdraw and went back home but instead she hasn't spoken a word since Shine left and is still showering for eight hours at a time so they'll reenroll her if under those circumstances he'd choose to come back, it can hardly be /worse/.

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I just needed some space. I'll come back in a few days.
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Thank you.

Students whose parents haven't withdrawn them continue to optimistically skip the morning section if the reds are there but then attend with minor grumbling if they're still there in the afternoons. Some of them have apparently been told that they lose this nice house and the opportunity for mommy and daddy not to work all day if they get in trouble at school, so they should do whatever they're told if they like having three meals a day and their parents home in the evenings. An enterprising green manages to convince the other greens that greens attend all day because they love learning, and an enterprising yellow similarly to convince the yellows that yellows take advantage of extra practice time so that they can get unusually careful and precise. The blue girl asks her elementals which session they'd like to attend.

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Her elementals don't really care.

Maurabel does feel bad about the ones who are under financial pressure but if the reds look an iota less protected they will likely be outright murdered.

Some of the elementals come back, including that Shine.

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Then she'll attend afternoons. She has tutors in the mornings. One of her tutors is concerned for the other childrens' non-magical education and asks Maurabel if she has suggestions on that. 

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"Not especially. I'm already spread pretty thin between artifact development and teaching and I don't have any special advantages at nonmagically educating them. Ice, does their visitation visa cover -"

"- yeah, I think residence-to-study allows them to go to Anitami schools."

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In that case once schools are found that can work around magic class scheduling the greens will cut down to one session to spend the rest of their time on a proper green education and the yellows likewise and the oranges and greys and purples can be enrolled in local appropriate schools also.

 

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Good for them.

Tiya still goes to both sessions every day. She usually looks like she hasn't slept much. She always keeps up by the end of the second session.

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When her Shine comes back Isa stops with the excessive showering, though she still isn't as talkative as before magic school.

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He's not super talkative either. He does say, "Sorry."

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"Thought Maurabel said I was a bad person and we shouldn't be friends and you weren't coming back."

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"Maurabel said a bunch of students dropped out because they couldn't stand to be around reds and she linked me to a couple of red websites to read. It reminded me of some stuff that happened to me back in the other world. I needed to go be by myself for a while."

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"Maurabel is mean. That was a mean thing to do."

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Headtilt.

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"If she had just wanted elementals to know about reds why just tell the ones whose friends were leaving her school?"

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"She mentioned them before, so I'd know not to go into their neighborhoods or touch marked things. She just didn't go into a lot of detail."

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"But why go into detail just to the elementals who had friends who left her school?"

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"So we'd know why you left school."

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"You could have asked. I think she wanted to punish us for leaving by saying things in a way that'd make our friends hate us. Some didn't come back."

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"Maybe," he says doubtfully. "I don't know, if she really wanted me to do something she could make me."

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"I don't think she's that mean. I think she just -" shrug. "None of the other kids will quit no matter what, they don't want to lose their friend."

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"Maybe she thinks you'll get used to the reds. I think that's why she wanted you to all have elemental friends. You could have just shared a bunch of us, she found a complete set just for them, even, but she wanted you to be used to us. That and translating."

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"But it's mean to try to make people get used to something by telling their friends they're evil if they don't get used to it fast enough."

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"How should she do it instead?"

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"Dunno.

 

 

 

Maybe we could have all emailed before the classes started telling about ourselves so people would know the reds already. Instead of them being a surprise. They could have started out not going to both sessions so people felt like they had a little control over it. There could have been a glass wall.

 

She could have not sent an email that made you all want to leave. You could have asked me and we could have talked and even if after that you wanted to read about reds and then left then I wouldn't have thought you were gone forever because you hated me."

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"The emailing is a good idea," he says. "It's too late for that one, I think there aren't any more red mages because people killed them if they happened and aren't letting reds have clams.

I'm sorry. I was scared."

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Snuggle. 

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Invisible wings go around kid.

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"I don't want reds to be hurt I just feel so itchy around them, like when you know an ant crawled up your pant leg but you don't know if it's still there."

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He looks at his pants. "...if you can't feel it any more why does it matter if it's still there?"

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"...dunno."

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Snuggle. "The reds won't go near you."

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"I know. I stopped showering all the time, it made Dad so sad. Even though it's nice."

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"Is it? I learned how to use a shower but I don't think they're very fun."

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"I like it! Water feels nice. Maybe if you were a Water."

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"I'm not sure Waters would see the point. They go flying in clouds, or swimming in the sea, or just have their halos on."

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Shrug.

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Snuggle. "Are you okay?"

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"Yeah."

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"Good."

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"Are you?"

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"I'm okay."

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Sigh.

 

 

The remaining magic students learn magic and form study groups outside of class (by caste, of course).

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Their prerogative. Juin and Tiya are certainly doing it. She assigns extra credit for helping anyone who's lagging behind, which is a bit caste skewed, though not as much as a course in a foreign language or chemistry or something would be.

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Oranges jump at the tutoring chances. One asks if they'd get extra extra credit for tutoring Juin.

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If Juin says they're helpful, sure. Tiya needs it more.

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Is there a way to do that without anybody finding out.

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Their Adamant bodyguards are not negotiable, but she doesn't have to tell any of the other kids or their parents or anything.

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Elementals are okay elementals won't beat this orange up at lunch over it.

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They will not!

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Then this orange will tutor reds if they want!

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Tiya will tentatively accept help.

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Orange is helpful.

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Then he can get extra extra credit.

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"How's it going?"

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"A few kids are going to come back when there are more choices of teachers. Some of them alienated their elementals temporarily or permanently, who handled this with various amounts of grace - I helped but only a little. Rest of them are coping and the red students are keeping up."

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"Helped with the alienating or with avoiding that?"

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"More the first. Sent them an email that their kids were withdrawing because reds, background reading on reds, welcome at the school to help other kids if they prefer, can probably find younger mage kids if they want one, sorry for inconvenience."

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"Cold."

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"Kids that small should not be that vicious."

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"I am sure that they learned it at home."

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"Half of them would be nicer people now if they'd just been straight up raised by their elementals instead of getting supplemental income and occasional babysitting. And most of those elementals can't reliably distinguish fiction from non- if they turn on the TV."

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"The only bit I'm contesting is the arranging to remove those elementals from their lives."

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"I didn't ask them to go. Some of them did anyway and I'm no longer actively replacing them, like I did the one who left when their kid was two seasons old because they got a cat."

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"That email sounds like it would have been phrased differently with different goals in mind."

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"You caught me."

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"Do they learn about the same pace as humans?"

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"Close to."

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"Good to know, means we can have reasonable expectations about the spell development pace and so on. Of course, there are more of us."

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"Yep. You'll have artifacts with which to kill uppity reds any year now."

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"Lack of weaponry is not currently a constraint on that."

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"I know."

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"Maybe you'd get along with that fellow in Voa who tried to get them all to get the fuck over it."

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"Maybe."

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"Might have worked if Voa weren't such a major exporter. And if he'd been able to convince them not to countermand it for six months. And with a couple thousand casualties, but - I can see how that'd seen like a good tradeoff, facing down the apparent inevitability of a mass slaughter..."

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"I'm teaching these kids everything they need to know to... If they see an elemental with red hair, or a confused one who landed all birdlike in a red neighborhood and then walked out, they'll be able to turn them into their micromanaged perfect slave so they will cut it out because obviously it's so horrible and they mustn't be allowed -"

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Nod. "You should come to a family dinner sometime."

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"Should I?"

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"Yes."

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"Sure, why not. Just me?"

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"Anyone else who'd like to?"

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"I could invite the elementals I hang out with most, I don't know if they'd want to."

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"Well, they're welcome if they do."

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"When?"

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"I think there's one this weekend."

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"Sure."

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This weekend Afen's children and significant others and so on gather at his house.

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Maurabel comes. No elementals accompany her.

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He has one! He made friends with a Lightning and bought the adjoining lot to convert it into things more of interest to Lightnings and has learned So Many Languages. "Hi Maurabel!"

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"Hi there! Hi Lightning."

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"We should have invited you a long time ago! How's the magic school -"

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"It's all right, mostly."

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"I watched a couple of the videos, it's an interesting skill - a bit hard to categorize -"

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"I have been asked what caste magic is and nobody seems satisfied with 'it isn't'."

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"Not any more than, like, writing is."

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"I thought writing was green. Or do you mean literally -"

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"Yeah. Fiction writing is green, research writing is green, but every school will teach the skill because it's just fundamental that way, looks like magic will be the same."

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"Mm-hm."

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"Course, we don't stop the reds from writing. Hey Aitim, there's an idea. Can't complain about their treatment if you execute them for literacy!"

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"The guests can't tell if you're serious, Telkam."

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"Is that so. Who built a country so fucked up that could be ambiguous, because it wasn't me."

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"You caught me, I singlehandedly designed the planet. Before I was born."

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"I'm told it has very swimmable oceans, congratulations."

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"There's been lots of social justice progress. Just - unevenly."

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"...from what?"

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"Abolishing slavery, enacting population controls everywhere, wars are way down, universal access to birth control and abortion, universal vaccination. Or do you mean on reds in particular. We got rid of the social workers and got 'em cameras to stop police brutality and arrest people who take advantage of them. They have internet access and can lead the same online lives as anyone."

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"I did mean the reds." Sigh.

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"That one's hard."

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"I still like the idea of a magic that cleans them. I liked the idea even before we had magic, and you'd think magic would make it easier. - Maurabel's not credible on it, though -"

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"Got someone executing little red mages so they'll have the legitimacy when you need it?"

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"No. I don't."

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"I assume my red students aren't either. Some of their classmates are better than others."

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"It needs to come from someone who cares about pollution a lot, which isn't exactly the same thing as caring about reds or not. I'd be looking for someone with - benevolence at a distance and absolute scrupulousness about cleanliness - over someone who's friendly with them."

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Sigh.

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"Shapat'll see the benefits and has the connections, but I'm not sure it'd take in Cene, they're not a particularly socially innovative place."

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"Who's Shapat?" asks Isama.

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"There is one blue mage in the first batch. The green ones it's harder to guess their career trajectory and past that - some of the purple mages are incredibly talented but they cannot afford in any sense to stake out an eccentric stance on reds."

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"Shapat has not exhibited any inclination to be distantly benevolent, although she's not a discipline problem either, I'll give her that."

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"It's purple. And grey but only in the sense greys'll always be the bulk of your discipline problems. The farther removed you are from it the better you can cope when it comes up - it's hard to have a crippling phobia of people you only see through the windows of midnight garbage trucks..."

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"And an improvement in the status of reds isn't threatening to a blue's capacity to feel better than everyone else."

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"I like you," she tells Telkam.

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"You seem all right."

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"Are any of the greens being distantly benevolent?"

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"Eh, if convincing their castemates to show up to class counts."

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"I guess it's something. We'll be spoiled for choice if we just wait a little longer, maybe some of the next batch will be - and you can filter more heavily -"

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"I can! I'm going to have Juin sitting in the corner of my office working on stuff while I give interviews."

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"I'm not sure that filters for the right thing but it definitely filters."

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"It filters for a lower risk of my having to teach while enraged, I hate having to do that."

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"Fair enough."

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"How hard are we expecting magic cleaning to be on the technical side - forget getting it accepted, how hard is it to do magic gene therapy, how hard is to do magic with effects equivalent to  transfusion or transplants, how hard is a filter -"

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"Naively I'd think you'd just apply Water healing, it does poisons, pretty low on the detail work, bam. Since the thing you want to clean is in fact completely fictional it seems like whether that does the trick or not depends on how good your spiel is. Earth should be able to do genes and transfusions and transplants but it might be insanely difficult to learn how. A filter for what -"

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"Ideally for pollution but I take it this magic system does not interact with pollution. Would Water healing do anything about someone born with an extra chromosome, say, does that happen sometimes with humans..."

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"...writing was invented within my parents' lifetimes. We do not know how many chromosomes we have. Or if we operate on chromosomes. Or what cells are."

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She makes a face. "Water healing probably fixes uncleanliness, the question is whether it fixes hereditary uncleanliness - I suppose we could do a study of sorts, Water-heal some reds and have some consenting volunteers hang out around them and see how they feel about it..."

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"People'd be ill at ease around perfectly clean people if they had red hair."

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"If you want to quibble over experiment design wait until we have approval for the experiment in the first place. Is there documentation on what sort of things Water healing does work on -"

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"Mix in local Shines and Shadows with red hair, have their halos turned down," suggests Maurabel. "It'll do snake bites, heavy metal, ate the wrong mushroom, poison ivy, week-old fish, the works, I can get you a more complete list."

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"Please do."

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Maurabel writes that down.

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"And then what's the plan, magic 'em and let them integrate and do robots once it's not a mass death sentence?"

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"Yes. Before magic entered into the equation that was what I wanted - everyone, including them, will be so much better off with them gone if only there were a safe way to achieve it..."

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"What'll they do?"

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"There'll be a shortage of non-mages, they'll be able to find unskilled work."

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"You don't mean to just turn them all purple, do you?" asks Isama.

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" - if they're going to do unskilled work I think it's probably better to have them purple than some limbo caste -"

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"Bullshit," says Isama, "there's got to be some who mind red babies or write insipid poems or something, purple doesn't mean 'random idiot' -"

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"Could have an aptitude test. Pass the university entrance exams or an audition or something and you're green, make the team and you're grey -"

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"And if you fail everything you're purple? That misses the point."

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"They'd be safer green, honestly, greens won't murder them, but I don't expect many of them would ever find jobs."

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"Because you can't sell the cleaning thing even if somebody credible says oh yeah just Water them, or whatever, or because that won't be enough, or because you think they're morons? I know I have a sample size of two but Juin's really bright and Tiya's not stupid."

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"My estimate is that about one in two hundred purples would get into a green university given a green upbringing. There are incredibly smart purples but there are lots and lots and lots of purples. It'd be surprising if it were higher for reds. And they haven't gotten a green upbringing. Making the red doctors orange is obvious, though - and the red landlords blue -"

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"I could maybe make that happen."

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"Then there you go."

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"Where'd the estimate come from?"

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"Ran a pilot program! I asked a bunch of purple schools to recommend their most promising one-year-olds and got a hundred twenty recommendees and put them through a special gifted purple school that just followed a green curriculum, until they were three. Four of them obviously would have been great greens, another dozen could have gotten along.The schools I funnelled them from served about four thousand purples that cohort."

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"What happened when they were three?"

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"Picked the vocational program of choice, like all three-year-old purples. I published a paper. It's not like we don't need brilliance in purples, too."

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"Did the purple kids by any chance know they were not going to be allowed to keep the lifestyle you loaned them? I feel like that would affect motivation."

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"It wasn't a lifestyle change, it was just a school that taught them in more depth than traditional. Giving out cash prizes for performance doesn't affect it much. Look, I'd love to run off to a casteless planet, I think the whole thing is horrible to all the people it catches in the edges. But - expect one in two hundred. That's still fifteen thousand reds who could be green."

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Sigh.

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"It can work, we just shouldn't be too optimistic they'll integrate without any problems once they're clean."

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"If my world weren't just as bad and poorer to boot I'd suggest moving them there."

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"If there were a straightforward way to move sixty-five million people to another world we could set one up for them."

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"Too many." Sigh.

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"Uh huh. Even with an abundance of helpful Shadows."

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"Wild elementals are such sweeties when they have not been warned that everyone is out to enslave them though, it's great."

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"Yeah, they have a significantly lower crime rate than us or you despite, uh, incompetent instruction on how to stay out of trouble."

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"Such sweeties. I hope I am not making a horrible mistake teaching a bunch of kids how to be mages."

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"You don't think they'd figure it out eventually anyway?"

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"Eventually, they could figure it out just by experimenting on their own, sure. It'd slow them down and it'd be more likely that several of them would have to agree in order to amulet an elemental."

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"Whereas this way any one of them could figure it out?"

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"Yeah. Even if they don't have an artifact base affinity on their own they could just surprise an elemental who did -"

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"And some countries will not be great about enforcing the law when that requires killing them."

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"It's worse than that, if I died all the elementals I'm holding would still have amulets. You basically have to find a suicidal volunteer, or I guess give the amulet to someone trusted."

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"Can a spell that protects elementals from this be designed -"

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"Working on it. I think wards as a class have a lot of potential."

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"You've probably got a couple years before they're of elemental-enslaving age."

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Nod. "There might be too many elementals to ward them all."

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"Even once there are even more mages?"

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"Maybe. Depends how many want to help with that."

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"With the right PR campaign probably lots will."

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Nod.

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"How are your students doing at the magic?"

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"Pretty well. I'm less equipped to teach the elements I don't have but there's only two of those and some elementals can fill in bits."

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Parties with small children beam at the small children. 

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"If your magic is contagious that's a constraint on hopping worlds looking for things that can solve our problems - you may be springing elementals and mages everywhere - and it seems likely aliens in our universe also got elementals and mages recently..."

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"Crossed my mind. I think it only happened once there were a lot of elementals here but it's hard to be certain."

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"Timing matches the second batch of rescuees, yeah. But it could be that elemental-time-in-universe builds up some magic effect or something. Once the colony planets have more people we can find out if it's per-planet or per-universe, at least."

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Nod. "I mean, there aren't any coalescing on the inhabited moons at all, yet."

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"Uh huh - and that's with a substantial elemental population."

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"The appearances have seemed to be pretty randomly distributed across the planet's surface."

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"Could be a gravity requirement but why would there be a gravity requirement - we just need more data points."

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"Yeah."

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"How many elementals are still enslaved on the human world -"

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"Hard to get exact numbers. The team has personally observed dozens that were owned by people who sold them some which were held back."

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"We can't follow them home and go get 'em?"

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"Haven't come up with a good plan for that yet. I mean, I guess at a certain point we could just shoot people and then steal the amulets off 'em."

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"When're we at that point -"

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"I think once no one's selling anymore."

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Nod.

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"Some people are hunting elementals expressly to sell them - I suppose if there keep being new ones that might not happen -"

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"If the shops close up and the attacks on elemental-owners continue, hunting for pay stops looking like a good deal."

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"They're still worth money, people are just also trying to come up with working security measures."

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"Have they come up with anything?"

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"Occasionally they manage to pick off a soldier."

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"That's not going to do it."

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"I know, I've been very impressed with the soldiers."

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"Real good at their jobs."

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"He pretended to be grey for the war with Voa."

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"And a good thing, or I wouldn't've met Peka."

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"Is this a story?"

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"Kinda is, yeah."

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Snuggle. "Tapa kills kids born without a credit. Peka was leasing one - unexpected pregnancy - and behind on payments, so she joined the army. Telkam heard this and decided Peka and Katin - our oldest, she's over there -" He gestures. Katin is playing with her baby cousins. "- anyway he decided they should just run away to Anitam and we could make Aitim fudge the papers."

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"...wow. Congratulations."

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"I can't imagine life without her."

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"I love youuuu."

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He's watching Maurabel thoughtfully. When Aitim glares at him he stops.

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Maurabel doesn't notice. "I'm glad you made it."

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And after dinner she goes home - she has moved out of the hotel and has an apartment with Penumbra and Ice in a green neighborhood near the school instead - and goes back to churning out artifacts and artifact development research and prepping for the next day of class.