"They do make a very pretty pattern. They're just... Hard to focus on. They aren't doing anything, so my mind flickers away from them very quickly, and I forget they're there."

"Huh. Is that a cultural thing, or an individual one?"

"Distractability, relative to what I've seen of you, seems to be universal. You can focus for so long on things that aren't related to a specific interest. It's quite strange."

"Aren't there some important things that no one has a special interest in? How do they ever get done?"

"Eh, I could shine shoes if I had to. It's possible to do uninteresting work that doesn't require much thought, and it's possible to do uninteresting work that does require thought poorly, but this is usually not a problem. Special interests are scattered far and wide across the fields of human endeavour, and pretty much anything that involves complex problems has several people interested in it. We often have people with interests in the wrong ratios, which influences labour costs, but we have it."

"How would you know if you didn't? If there was a whole field of human endeavor that would improve your lives and that no one was interested in?"

"There are people who are focussed on discovering and inventing new things and generally, when something new comes into existence, someone with a related interest says 'Wow, this is incredible!' and ends up interested in that instead."

"And I suppose there's probably someone interested in improving the human condition. All right."

"Definitely. I could probably look them up in the... you don't have these, do you? A book with a list of numbers that you can use to contact people, which has sections organised by name, location, and special interest."

"How would you contact people with a number?"

"We have machines that can carry your voice from one place to another, but carefully, so that only the other person can hear it. In order to tell the machines which people we want to speak to, we give them numbers. Each of these machines has a number, and most people have a machine, so almost any two people can speak to each other from great distances."

"Huh. No, we don't have books like that."

"How do people communicate over distances?"

"Write a letter, give it to the post horses or put it on a ship."

"Are the post horses part of a private company or controlled by the government?"

"I'm not sure. There are laws about them. You have to pay for the post. Is that distinction strong in your homeland?"

"Between things controlled by the government and things controlled by private buisnesses? Very strong. Our basic-law - which is like a set of laws that constrain all future actions by the government - bans the government from managing certain types of enterprises. Postage and printing are among them."

"Our laws don't ban the government from doing anything. How could they? The government writes and enforces them."

"The basic-laws are restrictions that were implemented the last time we had a revolution and overthrew the government. If they tried to violate it, we'd probably overthrow them again. Part of the basic-law is the fact that we get to keep the guns we used last time, after all. However, elected officials mostly stay within the bounds that have been set. It isn't perfect, and there are edge cases, and people can still do stupid things while adhering to all the proper limitations - but it helps. It turns out that members of government have a hard time pushing against long-term traditions and institutions that underpin their positions."

"You overthrew your government and made them adopt restrictions, including that you could keep the guns you used to overthrow them?"

"Yes. I mean, every three years, we get to choose the people who form the government, too. It's not like we impossed restrictions on a hostile nobility - the government is us! There are no kings or nobles to object - we killed them all a long time ago."

"Good for you," she says vehemently. "Maybe we'll try that, if people don't like having no government."

"So, you're plotting to execute all the royals and nobles - Autumn Revolution-style - in your Elrosian friend's house? Or are you going to spare a few? Or do you expect to depose them all but leave them alive? I've heard of the first and second approaches working - nooot so much the last one."

"No?" She looks determined. "I was open to it, but if it doesn't work, we'll do it the first way."

"Um, I mean, it's probably possible to not kill everybody. The fewer people who die the better. It's highly unlikely that no nobles would have to get killed for this to be successful, but minimising casualties is generally a good idea."