"Anything else I should see while I'm here, I burned some favors getting in."

"It was just about new me existing, sorry, should I complain less about your having been squirreled away?"

"Depends, why are you doing it?"

"It's annoying and I don't have another war handy by which to evaluate the reliability of other personnel."

"I can make it work. They just make Kan stay home and it's annoying."

"Sorry. I can try to get used to the other people they have around."

Headshake. "I'd hate to miss out on all this. And it's helpful when you're insistent about it, it's probably part of why they didn't kill us. I just - look forward to having more space to maneuver in, you know? And whenever we do things that my model of a Federation human makes a face at I just mentally push contact back six weeks - we don't have to be perfect but we can be, and with these resources we should be -"

"Can I help in ways other than occasionally being irritated that you aren't around?"

"The blues we sent to Revelation liberalized fast. I picked people who'd do well, and I expected them to figure out how to make it work, but it honestly exceeded my expectations - the leap from learning what your new neighbors will expect you to espouse to actually acting on it apparently isn't that significant - I've been trying to think how to replicate the experience of being thrust into contact with lots of friendly advanced aliens who don't judge you exactly they just nicely explain that that's not how it's done here..."

"How'd the fast liberalization manifest?"

"They recently added animal cruelty laws! Animal cruelty laws! We have factory farming here and I've barely ever heard anyone even say 'it would be better, other things equal, if we didn't' and I don't think the humans even lobbied them they just went 'that should be in place' and now it is. The courts are getting lenient - inconsistently so, but still - they're donating to human charities and bringing our prisons in line with Solar law about that..."

"Awww."

"I can't send everyone on rotations through Revelation, they're not all supposed to know about summoning."

"And the Federation is too judgmental?"

"The point of this is to get ready for the Federation but I think part of it is - too judgmental, judgmental about the wrong thing - the caste system really does work for us, we'll flex it eventually but if we got rid of it it'd be like - outlawing religion, you'd destroy a great deal of social capital and community and things of tremendous importance to people -"

"...huh, that comparison had not occurred to me."

"I think it's a pretty decent analogy - it's not true but that doesn't mean it's not where people get their - feeling like they're part of something and their safety net and their professional network and plenty of their ideals, some of which are even good ideals..."

"And some people raised in either will be miserable and coerced but trying to make their parents not pass it on is difficult to impossible so you have to let it fade more horizontally, sure."

"And ideally have something to replace it with."

"Like what, in this case?"

"I'm not sure. Depending how castes get extended to aliens they might be better than having people identify strongly as Amentans, even though that's a natural place for the impulse to go - if we could make castes flexible enough people can switch and then had lots of Amentans who considered the interests of retail workers everywhere their interest as a community -"

"Well, how are people inclined to extend castes to daeva and Revelation humans so far?"

"You are silly and don't have them. In artwork people do demons purple, fairies grey, angels orange."

"Well, yes, we're silly and don't have them, but to predict how they apply to aliens more broadly..."

"Could maybe go a few different ways with some nudging. I don't think by default you would get a lot of Amentans deeply conserved with pan-galaxy farmer solidarity but I think if you did it right you'd get some."