Keltham ducks in and starts writing.  Translation spells are a thing, and he's not sure how that interacts with cracking the baby's substitution cipher he has memorized, for writing non-readable notes to himself in RPGs and so on.  Instead he's going to write down some cultural references from another world, and hope that there's no version of a translation spell that reads through those; Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, as 'twere.

He doesn't have time to think through very much, the first priority is just to write out all the things he hasn't been thinking, notes to himself to hang the thoughts upon, to be followed up later.

Blue and orange, is the first thing he scratches out.  There's a constant drumbeat of hints that the people around him operate on a very alien and possibly inhumane morality, and he's been saying things to himself like Carissa was probably making a joke he failed to get, when she talked about tossing the rats into a pit to cannibalize each other and selling tickets to that like people would pay to see it.  There's a whole history of little pings like that and his brain pushing back at the dissonance with 'Maybe it was a joke I didn't get?' and he can see that, now, while he's got Owl's Wisdom running.

Subverted True-man Show, he writes out next.  The girls all wore permanently cheerful expressions during class, Meritxell and Ione and everyone else didn't read as any less genuine to him than their usual selves read while they were acting out routines, like they were all experienced actresses, like they were all already acting.  But they're not running a well-designed full Immersive Reality TV Show trope on him either.  If they were really such good actresses, with smart people and smart scripts behind him, they wouldn't be giving that away by wearing permanently cheerful smiles during class, or by not acting awkward when they were called on to act out new weird scenarios.  They're not trying to prevent him realizing that they're being actors, which, if they were actually constructing a false reality around him, would be the first thing they'd try to avoid.

Keltham also makes a note in the back of his mind, not for the first time today, that if they don't get adequate Governance support and don't end up with more urgent priorities, inventing ballpoint pens sure seems like it should be a moneymaker.

Keltham ducks in and starts writing.  Translation spells are a thing, and he's not sure how that interacts with cracking the baby's substitution cipher he has memorized, for writing non-readable notes to himself in RPGs and so on.  Instead he's going to write down some cultural references from another world, and hope that there's no version of a translation spell that reads through those; Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, as 'twere.

He doesn't have time to think through very much, the first priority is just to write out all the things he hasn't been thinking, notes to himself to hang the thoughts upon, to be followed up later.

Blue and orange, is the first thing he scratches out.  There's a constant drumbeat of hints that the people around him operate on a very alien and possibly inhumane morality, and he's been saying things to himself like Carissa was probably making a joke he failed to get, when she talked about tossing the rats into a pit to cannibalize each other and selling tickets to that like people would pay to see it.  There's a whole history of little pings like that and his brain pushing back at the dissonance with 'Maybe it was a joke I didn't get?' and he can see that, now, while he's got Owl's Wisdom running.

Subverted True-man Show, he writes out next.  The girls all wore permanently cheerful expressions during class, Meritxell and Ione and everyone else didn't read as any less genuine to him than their usual selves read while they were acting out routines, like they were all experienced actresses, like they were all already acting.  But they're not running a well-designed full Immersive Reality TV Show trope on him either.  If they were really such good actresses, with smart people and smart scripts behind him, they wouldn't be giving that away by wearing permanently cheerful smiles during class, or by not acting awkward when they were called on to act out new weird scenarios.  They're not trying to prevent him from realizing that they all have and are using acting abilities like he got from his Charisma boost, which, if they were actually constructing a false reality around him, would be the first thing they'd try to avoid him knowing.

Keltham also makes a note in the back of his mind, not for the first time today, that if they don't get adequate Governance support and don't end up with more urgent priorities, inventing ballpoint pens sure seems like it should be a moneymaker.

Keltham ducks in and starts writing.  Translation spells are a thing, and he's not sure how that interacts with cracking the baby's substitution cipher he has memorized, for writing non-readable notes to himself in RPGs and so on.  Instead he's going to write down some cultural references from another world, and hope that there's no version of a translation spell that reads through those; Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, as 'twere.

He doesn't have time to think through very much, the first priority is just to write out all the things he hasn't been thinking, notes to himself to hang the thoughts upon, to be followed up later.

Blue and orange, is the first thing he scratches out.  There's a constant drumbeat of hints that the people around him operate on a very alien and possibly inhumane morality, and he's been saying things to himself like Carissa was probably making a joke he failed to get, when she talked about tossing the rats into a pit to cannibalize each other and selling tickets to that like people would pay to see it.  There's a whole history of little pings like that and his brain pushing back at the dissonance with 'Maybe it was a joke I didn't get?' and he can see that, now, while he's got Owl's Wisdom running.

Subverted True-man Show, he writes out next.  The girls all wore permanently cheerful expressions during class, Meritxell and Ione and everyone else didn't read as any less genuine to him than their usual selves read while they were acting out routines, like they were all experienced actresses, like they were all already acting.  But they're not running a well-designed full Immersive Reality TV Show trope on him either.  If they were really such good actresses, with smart people and smart scripts behind him, they wouldn't be giving that away by wearing permanently cheerful smiles during class, or by not acting awkward when they were called on to act out new weird scenarios.  They're not trying to prevent him from realizing that they all have and are using acting abilities like he got from his Charisma boost, which, if they were actually constructing a false reality around him, would be the first thing they'd try to avoid him knowing.

(Keltham also makes a note in the back of his mind, not for the first time today, that if they don't get adequate Governance support and don't end up with more urgent priorities, inventing ballpoint pens sure seems like it should be a moneymaker.)

Keltham ducks in and starts writing.  Translation spells are a thing, and he's not sure how that interacts with cracking the baby's substitution cipher he has memorized, for writing non-readable notes to himself in RPGs and so on.  Instead he's going to write down some cultural references from another world, and hope that there's no version of a translation spell that reads through those; Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, as it were.

He doesn't have time to think through very much, the first priority is just to write out all the things he hasn't been thinking, notes to himself to hang the thoughts upon, to be followed up later.

Blue and orange, is the first thing he scratches out.  There's a constant drumbeat of hints that the people around him operate on a very alien and possibly inhumane morality, and he's been saying things to himself like Carissa was probably making a joke he failed to get, when she talked about tossing the rats into a pit to cannibalize each other and selling tickets to that like people would pay to see it.  There's a whole history of little pings like that and his brain pushing back at the dissonance with 'Maybe it was a joke I didn't get?' and he can see that, now, while he's got Owl's Wisdom running.

Subverted True-man Show, he writes out next.  The girls all wore permanently cheerful expressions during class, Meritxell and Ione and everyone else didn't read as any less genuine to him than their usual selves read while they were acting out routines, like they were all experienced actresses, like they were all already acting.  But they're not running a well-designed full Immersive Reality TV Show trope on him either.  If they were really such good actresses, with smart people and smart scripts behind him, they wouldn't be giving that away by wearing permanently cheerful smiles during class, or by not acting awkward when they were called on to act out new weird scenarios.  They're not trying to prevent him from realizing that they all have and are using acting abilities like he got from his Charisma boost, which, if they were actually constructing a false reality around him, would be the first thing they'd try to avoid him knowing.

(Keltham also makes a note in the back of his mind, not for the first time today, that if they don't get adequate Governance support and don't end up with more urgent priorities, inventing ballpoint pens sure seems like it should be a moneymaker.)

Keltham ducks in and starts writing.  Translation spells are a thing, and he's not sure how that interacts with cracking the baby's substitution cipher he has memorized, for writing non-readable notes to himself in RPGs and so on.  Instead he's going to write down some cultural references from his homeworld, and hope that there's no version of a cultural translation spell that reads through those; Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, as it were.

He doesn't have time to think through very much, the first priority is just to write out all the things he hasn't been thinking, notes to himself to hang the thoughts upon, to be followed up later.

Blue and orange, is the first thing he scratches out.  There's a constant drumbeat of hints that the people around him operate on a very alien and possibly inhumane morality, and he's been saying things to himself like Carissa was probably making a joke he failed to get, when she talked about tossing the rats into a pit to cannibalize each other and selling tickets to that like people would pay to see it.  There's a whole history of little pings like that and his brain pushing back at the dissonance with 'Maybe it was a joke I didn't get?' and he can see that, now, while he's got Owl's Wisdom running.

Subverted True-man Show, he writes out next.  The girls all wore permanently cheerful expressions during class, Meritxell and Ione and everyone else didn't read as any less genuine to him than their usual selves read while they were acting out routines, like they were all experienced actresses, like they were all already acting.  But they're not running a well-designed full Immersive Reality TV Show trope on him either.  If they were really such good actresses, with smart people and smart scripts behind him, they wouldn't be giving that away by wearing permanently cheerful smiles during class, or by not acting awkward when they were called on to act out new weird scenarios.  They're not trying to prevent him from realizing that they all have and are using acting abilities like he got from his Charisma boost, which, if they were actually constructing a false reality around him, would be the first thing they'd try to avoid him knowing.

(Keltham also makes a note in the back of his mind, not for the first time today, that if they don't get adequate Governance support and don't end up with more urgent priorities, inventing ballpoint pens sure seems like it should be a moneymaker.)

Keltham ducks in and starts writing.  Translation spells are a thing, and he's not sure how that interacts with cracking the kiddie's substitution cipher he has memorized, for writing non-readable notes to himself in RPGs and so on.  Instead he's going to write down some cultural references from his homeworld, and hope that there's no version of a cultural translation spell that reads through those; Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, as it were.

He doesn't have time to think through very much, the first priority is just to write out all the things he hasn't been thinking, notes to himself to hang the thoughts upon, to be followed up later.

Blue and orange, is the first thing he scratches out.  There's a constant drumbeat of hints that the people around him operate on a very alien and possibly inhumane morality, and he's been saying things to himself like Carissa was probably making a joke he failed to get, when she talked about tossing the rats into a pit to cannibalize each other and selling tickets to that like people would pay to see it.  There's a whole history of little pings like that and his brain pushing back at the dissonance with 'Maybe it was a joke I didn't get?' and he can see that, now, while he's got Owl's Wisdom running.

Subverted True-man Show, he writes out next.  The girls all wore permanently cheerful expressions during class, Meritxell and Ione and everyone else didn't read as any less genuine to him than their usual selves read while they were acting out routines, like they were all experienced actresses, like they were all already acting.  But they're not running a well-designed full Immersive Reality TV Show trope on him either.  If they were really such good actresses, with smart people and smart scripts behind him, they wouldn't be giving that away by wearing permanently cheerful smiles during class, or by not acting awkward when they were called on to act out new weird scenarios.  They're not trying to prevent him from realizing that they all have and are using acting abilities like he got from his Charisma boost, which, if they were actually constructing a false reality around him, would be the first thing they'd try to avoid him knowing.

(Keltham also makes a note in the back of his mind, not for the first time today, that if they don't get adequate Governance support and don't end up with more urgent priorities, inventing ballpoint pens sure seems like it should be a moneymaker.)

Keltham ducks in and starts writing.  Translation spells are a thing, and he's not sure how that interacts with cracking the kiddie's substitution cipher he has memorized, for writing non-readable notes to himself in RPGs and so on.  Instead he's going to write down some cultural references from his homeworld, and hope that there's no version of a cultural translation spell that reads through those; Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, as it were.

He doesn't have time to think through very much, the first priority is just to write out all the things he hasn't been thinking, notes to himself to hang the thoughts upon, to be followed up later.

Blue and orange, is the first thing he scratches out.  There's a constant drumbeat of hints that the people around him operate on a very alien and possibly inhumane morality, and he's been saying things to himself like Carissa was probably making a joke he failed to get, when she talked about tossing the rats into a pit to cannibalize each other and selling tickets to that like people would pay to see it.  There's a whole history of little pings like that and his brain pushing back at the dissonance with 'Maybe it was a joke I didn't get?' and he can see that, now, while he's got Owl's Wisdom running.

Subverted True-man Show, he writes out next.  The girls all wore permanently cheerful expressions during class, Meritxell and Ione and everyone else didn't read as any less genuine to him than their usual selves read while they were acting out routines, like they were all experienced actresses, like they were all already acting.  But they're not running a well-designed full Immersive Reality TV Show trope on him either.  If they were really such good actresses, with smart people and smart scripts behind them, they wouldn't be giving that away by wearing permanently cheerful smiles during class, or by not acting awkward when they were called on to act out new weird scenarios.  They're not trying to prevent him from realizing that they all have and are using acting abilities like he got from his Charisma boost, which, if they were actually constructing a false reality around him, would be the first thing they'd try to avoid him knowing.

(Keltham also makes a note in the back of his mind, not for the first time today, that if they don't get adequate Governance support and don't end up with more urgent priorities, inventing ballpoint pens sure seems like it should be a moneymaker.)