Lightning Dust stared down at something she had no words to describe. Such experiences had been a near-daily occurrence during her first days in Othar. Yet over time, she had felt as though she were getting to know its ponies. Their strange customs and constant clumsiness didn’t make them all that unusual, really.
Yet this—this was like something out of those stories of the changeling invasion, only in reverse. Hundreds, maybe thousands of drawers full of half-formed ponies, all just a few floors down from the places where Dust ate and slept.
Through the glass of an open drawer, Dust could see what was clearly a severed leg, or the start of one. There was the bone, distinct though thin in its still-growing section. Muscle wrapped around it, underdeveloped. No blood, only a clear gel, with channels of yellow and green running into and out of the severed limb. Dust had seen serious injury in her life before—otherwise, she might’ve puked right there.
“This is called a biofabricator,” Lucky said from beside her, watching Dust with wide, observant eyes. Judging her reaction, probably. “It takes culture proteins grown by algal vats…” She trailed off her string of almost meaningless alien words. “It does what a mare’s womb does, only without a mare. They’re critical for slower-than-light space travel, at least the way we did it. Nobody ever seriously talked about making an ark, which was about the only other way people knew of when I left.”
“You came from… this?” She shivered again, turning away from the limb. She didn’t want to look at it anymore. “I saw your x-rays. Doctors back in Stormshire thought maybe you’d been abused. Guess your machine isn’t perfect.”
Lucky looked like she might be about to say something, but then she shrugged and looked away. “Well, you already know I’m from another planet. Now you know… all the gross details.”
“This is how you… plan on doing things? Forever?” Lightning Dust spoke slowly, carefully. I’ve been helping these ponies all this time. Have they come to… turn the whole world upside-down? Is this really the invading changelings all along?
“No!” Lucky exclaimed. She didn’t sound sick, but she did sound sincere. Dust was sure of her ability to judge when the filly might not be telling her the truth, and she was certainly being honest now. “There are a limited number of people in the probe. Not that we couldn’t make the same people forever… but that was never the point! The point was to have enough people for one city—I think there are…”
Her daughter sat back on her haunches, thoughtful. “Forerunner, how many neuroimprints are you storing right now?”
The voice came from the walls. It always used Eoch around Lucky, which meant Dust could understand it. Of course, she couldn’t judge if the machine was telling the truth the same way she could with the filly. “Sixteen thousand, three hundred eighty-four.”
“Well, there’s that many,” Lucky said. “And most of them are people we won’t need. Assuming we don’t all get killed… the Forerunner will only make each of us once.”
“There are two of you,” Dust pointed out.
Lucky whined. “Yeah, sort of. It thought I died. So it replaced me. But if it had known… it wouldn’t have made the second one. The whole point of these machines is that it’s too hard to send ponies through space. But we can send a Forerunner, and it can build them, then it makes us. Once it makes us, we’ll make more ponies the normal way. The way…” She whined. “You know. The way ponies do it. Humans do it the same way.”
Lightning Dust laughed. “I figured that one out from Melody.”
“Mom!” Lucky squeaked, rising again. She walked past her, pressing a button on the edge of the “fabricator.” It pulled back into the wall, hiding the strangeness inside. “So yeah, that’s where I came from. I have no parents, I’m two years old, I’m also an alien who grew up on another planet with two legs instead of four where my parents died when I was little and I wasn’t very good at most things.” She laughed to herself, sounding bitter. “I honestly think I’m a better pony than I ever was as a human.”
Lightning Dust considered that a long time. She looked back at the drawer. Was this really all that different from the way ponies did magic? The human kind of magic was a little uglier, had some more wires and more machines. But it was also fairer, apparently. It didn’t care if you had a horn, you could still make it work.
“You aren’t going to make anypony else use these… fabricators?”
“No,” Lucky said. “Not unless they want to. Once our colony is safe, a Forerunner is supposed to make all the people it didn’t need for the mission exactly once. It’s… one of the perks we got for signing up. I’m already here, obviously, so it won’t make any more of me. Unless… we get caught tomorrow, and the dragons eat us.”
“None I ever knew ate ponies,” Lightning Dust said, shrugging one wing. She took one last look at the fabricator, then walked away. It might be the strangest thing she’d seen since coming to Othar, but it wasn’t as though Equestria didn’t have weird magic of its own. If there were magical pools that could make two ponies come out when only one went in, if there were magic-eating monsters and storms that raged across the whole country, then why not a machine that did something similar?
“You can stop saying you don’t have parents, Lucky,” she eventually said. “You have me. I hope that’s enough.”
The filly didn’t say anything at first, just touched herself to Dust’s side and held still there for a long time. “Thanks, Mom. I’m Lucky to have you.”
Dust lifted her wing off the pony’s back, glaring in mock disgust. “That was worse than the fabricator.”
The Cyclops submarine exploration craft had been designed largely for exploring the many hypothesized entirely waterbound planets out in the universe. Though eventually it was expected humans who lived there would probably be modified with gills and other useful features, the first generation would be housed in subs like the Cyclops. The Cyclops was by far the largest of the prospective designs, with a draft length of five hundred meters and a crew capacity of one hundred.
As Melody made her way through the spacious hallways, she got the feeling the major had probably ordered the thing built as a fallback base, in case something happened to Othar. It was probably a good idea, one of several Olivia apparently had since getting herself a cutie mark. Assuming the Forerunner hadn’t just built the thing and told her about it afterwards, which was also a possibility.
Melody was getting used to a new uniform, one apparently built for submarine life. The whole thing was stretchy and cool, and it apparently served some useful purpose in the event of an emergency. Even the constantly nude “natives” were wearing them.
Unfortunately, Deadlight wasn’t with her, but off in a meeting with the soldiers. Something about explaining the potential military power of Dragon’s Folly, and how they’d resisted past invasions. Melody would’ve liked to be there, but of course she wasn’t allowed. The major had talked a big talk about changes in Othar, but that didn’t mean she was a different pony.
Except Deadlight will just tell me anything I ask. I can ask him about it as soon as he’s done with the meeting.
Melody finally reached her destination: the observation deck of the Cyclops. It wasn’t as large as she had been suspecting—probably something to do with the dangers of pressure, or something similar. Still, it was an impressive sight.
A bowl of something like glass stretched five meters or so at the front of the observation deck, which happened to double as the sub’s cafeteria and common area. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see out there. The water was a deep, resonant blue. Which made sense, she supposed. Apparently the sea was only a hundred meters deep, which it stayed near-uniformly after dropping off of the simulated continental shelf.
There was nothing simulated down here—she could almost see the bottom, if she squinted. If she asked, the Forerunner would probably turn the spotlights on for her, but she suspected that the major wouldn’t have been happy with her if she did. Below them, perhaps ten meters below the Cyclops, she could just make out a perfectly flat surface.
It looked like the pictures Lucky had sent back from the “Transit Hub.” Unidentifiable metal, without marks of manufacturing or even of function. I wonder what keeps sediment from piling up down there.
Melody found herself twitching her wings uncomfortably, wishing she could fly. But like most of Othar’s population, she couldn’t get into the air without a running start, or somewhere high to jump from. To her knowledge, only the major and Lucky could take off without either advantage. Well, aside from the natives, obviously.
But neither of them were here. Only Martin was, resting on one of the couches with a laptop. She wasn’t wearing the cybernetic claws, but there was some sort of appliance in front of her, which seemed to be working like a keyboard, except without buttons. Instead there were two wheels, with a ring of colors around the outside. Martin rested one forehoof in each one, rotating and depressing them together in rapid combinations.
“That’s a weird keyboard,” Melody said, staring at it for several full seconds, without actually moving around to peek at the screen. “What are you doing with it?”
“Trying to crack the encoding on the storage device Lucky brought with her,” Martin said, without looking up from her screen. She paused in her “typing,” making a frustrated noise.
“Isn’t the Forerunner doing that?”
Melody pulled over a nearby chair, sitting down and watching, until eventually Martin looked up from her work.
“The Forerunner is confident it has recorded the unique pattern the cube stored. But just because we have all of it doesn’t mean we know how to read it. Whatever compression or encryption this is…” She shook her head. “I figured it was something to do, since the Forerunner won’t let me use the telescope anymore.”
“We have a telescope?”
“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “How do you think we’re supposed to find Earth? And no, we haven’t found Earth, if that’s what you’re asking. If we had, the Forerunner would probably have all kinds of news from back home. They were supposed to beam it all after us, along with any new orders from the Pioneering Society.”
Melody opened her mouth to protest, but she was too slow. “Yeah, it means exactly what you think that means. The Forerunner isn’t positive where we are. No familiar starmaps. Apparently there was some corruption with the part of its memory that stores navigational data. It can’t give us its origin point either.” She sounded a little skeptical about that, though Melody wasn’t sure what she was trying to imply.
They already knew the Forerunner could withhold information if it wanted to. But why not just say it wasn’t willing to tell them, as it had done when they asked about the previous generations? “Seems a little convenient. We land just fine on a ring… which you said is moving pretty fast. The probe figured out how to do that, but it doesn’t remember where it came from?”
Martin grunted shared frustration. “I don’t know who it thinks it’s fooling. Obviously it just wants to keep us from the depression and existential dread of knowing that everything we ever knew and loved is irrevocably lost in the distant histories of time. Or maybe it wants to keep us from thinking about the thousands or even millions of copies of us that have been spawned all over the galaxy, to do our little jobs and then break down. Exactly like any of the mechanical segments it makes.”
“You’re fun today,” Melody grunted, rising from her seat again. “I thought you were excited about getting to see a pony city for ourselves. Do we have to get all…” She gestured with one wing, though she couldn’t exactly find the words. “Like that?”
“I am excited,” Martin said. “I’m just being realistic. We’re so far into the future that this whole mission might be pointless anyway. For all we know, we already colonized the whole universe. The USS Enterprise might be cruising around up there, and the best we get is to be the monsters of the week when it stops by to examine the ring.”
“We don’t actually know though, do we? Could be just the opposite—this might be the most important mission ever, because we’re the last traces of humanity left anywhere. Everyone else is dead, but our probe got away. We get to be the first ones to start over.”
Martin shrugged. “I might need your help with this later, if I get anywhere. I’m not really a computer person, but… whatever’s in here is more likely to be in their language than ours. Forerunner is running pattern matching, but since the little you will be on the surface…” She rolled her eyes. “Assuming you can get away from your boyfriend for a few minutes to help with it.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Melody protested, though she couldn’t meet Martin’s eyes as she said it. “I’ve just been spending more time with him over the last few weeks. It makes sense that we’d become friends.”
Martin shrugged, her dark expression brightening a little. “Whatever, Melody, whatever. Just remember, my cabin is through the walls from yours. I can hear everything you do. And the Forerunner has cameras everywhere, so it can too.”
Melody left in a hurry after that, ears flat to her head and tail tucked in. How did they all figure it out so fast? Nobody cared how much time I spent with Deadlight before. He’s been trapped here for ages, and now suddenly it’s a big deal?
I really hope you were right about Dragon’s Folly, Deadlight. It’ll be nice to spend some time somewhere else for a change.
The last time she’d checked, the Forerunner had suggested they would be arriving by nightfall. With any luck that meant her clone could check it out overnight, and they’d have a full day to spend time in the city. Buying used clothes for Dorothy’s cure, but… mostly just not being stuck in tiny metal rooms for a while.
Lucky returned from the city feeling exhilarated. As they passed under the stone archway leading to the dock, her nose and ears were still assaulted—strange foods, strange creatures, dozens of languages she had never heard before.
“Guess I should’ve come here sooner,” Lightning Dust said, as they walked out onto the dock. There were a pair of guards here—both canine creatures with vastly oversized arms and dull-looking faces. They didn’t react to the two of them as they made their way back to the “boat.”
The boat was really a huge piece of vinyl facing, which looked like wood and rested on the upper deck of the Cyclops. It went deep enough into the water to make it look as though the suggestion of the true hull was really just the underside of a particularly large ship.
“You think it’s that friendly when they’re not having a festival?” Lucky asked, licking a little sweet syrup from her lips, left over from the snacks they’d bought. There had been so many people inside that a pair of ponies hadn’t even registered—there were lots of ponies living in Dragon’s Folly, though most of them looked rougher than the group she usually spent her time with.
“Probably not,” Dust agreed. “But that doesn’t matter. We could totally live here.” She looked up at the sky, eyes narrowing. “They have as much weather control as Othar, it looks like. What do all the pegasi who live here do, just sit around all day?” They stepped up the gangplank onto the boat, passing Perez where he lounged on the deck. He was painting something perched between his hooves, though she couldn’t get a good look at what. He had a rifle leaned up against the railing, though it wasn’t within reach.
“I hope you have good news,” he muttered in Spanish.
“Very good,” Lucky responded in kind, stopping to look at what he was doing. Perez didn’t seem to care if anyone saw, he didn’t try to pull the wood away or anything. It looked like he was painting a skull. “Is everyone waiting in the lounge?”
“Everyone except Major Fischer,” he answered, looking momentarily taken-aback by her response. “You spent time in Baja? I guess I thought you were American. My mistake, young lady.”
In reality, Lucky had spent about six days south of the border for spring break exactly one time. She hadn’t thought her Spanish was that good—like all the “non-universal,” languages, it was no longer spoken by as many as it once had been. The era Lucky had left behind had been one of linguistic genocide. “I guess I’ll go give them the news. You coming?”
He shook his head. “No, no. Someone has to make sure we don’t get any uninvited guests. Already had three come up here wanting to see the ship.” He tapped the side of his rifle with a hoof, though of course he must not have used it on them. Somehow she doubted killing anyone who wanted to visit would be taken well by the dock’s authorities.
“You should go into the city,” Lightning Dust said, in her shaking imitation of English. “It is nice there.”
“I’m sure we will,” he answered.
They left, passing him to the wooden facade that concealed the true entrance of the sub itself. Lucky scanned her hoof as usual, and soon enough they were on their way to the observation lounge. As Perez had suggested, it was full of waiting ponies.
They looked a little like tourists dressed for their first vacation, though the garment of choice were plain white robes made to match the local style. It was a passable imitation, though Lucky had learned from her brief trip into Dragon’s Folly that white robes were only worn by the least experienced. Citizens here marked their robes with their accomplishments—a group dressed all in white would be taken as children.
They all looked completely different now, at least so far as colors were concerned. Everypony had stepped into a brand-new machine, which could uniformly apply dye to one’s entire coat and keep it separate from the mane and tail. Apparently the Forerunner had designed the contraption all on its own, though Lucky hadn’t cared enough to get more details. It had made her a light blue only a few shades darker than Lightning Dust’s new color. There was no reason not to keep up the mother-daughter act given it was how they behaved on their own anyway.
“It’s exactly the way I told you, isn’t it?” Deadlight asked, as the airlock opened for them. “Because I know what I’m talking about and you already checked with your machines.”
Lucky nodded to him, walking to the front of the room, and turning around to face the group. Even Dorothy looked hopeful. “Lightning Dust and I have been in the city for the last twenty-four hours,” she announced. “Dragon’s Folly isn’t as safe as an Equestrian city—or even a 1st district city. Think of it like… 3rd district. There were scammers and thieves, that kind of thing. But the city seemed to be in good order.”
“Lots of soldiers,” Lightning Dust added, in Eoch instead of English. Of course, everyone here would be fitted with translators for their adventure into the city. “So don’t break the law.”
She sounded just slightly guilty as she said it—but she wasn’t sure anypony else would’ve caught it. Given they would be filtering everything they heard through machines…
To Lucky’s surprise, it was the Forerunner who spoke next, its voice as flat as ever from the wall. “Major Fischer’s standing orders allow you to proceed immediately into Dragon’s Folly, so long as you remain in your groups and return by nightfall. Remember your mission, and bring back as many samples as possible.”
“I can’t fucking believe it,” Dorothy said. “As paranoid as Olivia always acts, and she’s just gonna let us leave? She isn’t going to change the deal at the last minute to give us two soldiers to babysit with each group?”
“Major Fischer’s orders have not changed,” the Forerunner said. “If you wish me to query her again and suggest a change on your behalf, I would be happy to do so.”
“No!” said several voices at exactly the same time. “No, this is fine.”
Deadlight rose from his couch, gesturing for Melody to do the same. Dorothy followed close behind them, over to one of the two lightweight carts resting by the entrance.
They looked like wood, but were actually formed plastic, which meant even Lucky could’ve rolled them along with nearly zero effort. Even when they were full of old clothes and blankets, they would be easy to move. That was the idea, anyway.
“Guess I’m coming with you,” Martin said from beside her, looking down. Martin’s coat was now bright orange with a yellowish mane. “Smaller groups are better, right?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Plus, I think you two might know more of what you’re doing. I dunno if I trust Deadlight.”
“Fine with me,” Lucky said. “We might shop for other stuff too, though. You’d have to come with us. And there was this show we wanted to see… Lightning Dust says they’re way awesome in Equestria.”
“Sure,” Martin said. “Whatever you’re gonna do sounds like fun. Let’s just go before the major orders us to do something dumb instead.”
The other group was already on its way out, apparently thinking the same thing. “Well… I actually want to talk to her before we go,” Lucky admitted.
Lightning Dust closed the distance from the other end of the hall, stopping beside her. “You think she might be doing something bad?”
Lucky shrugged. “Let’s just say… I think we’re missing a piece. Olivia trusts us all of the sudden, just because the two of us and Deadlight agree the city is safe? I dunno why she couldn’t have just done this whole mission with her marines or whatever and not told us anything.”
Dust shrugged and sat down. Martin, on the other hand, looked genuinely disappointed. “We only get one day and we’re going to waste some of it down here, waiting for Olivia?”
“No, not down here.” She gestured to the cart. “We’re gonna wait on the deck, so she doesn’t slip away before talking to us. You can look out at the city while we’re up there. Maybe learn some stuff or whatever.”
“Fine,” Martin grunted. “Let’s go I guess.”
Melody was entranced. This was exactly her reason for being—the place she belonged, the purpose of her creation. If she had been doing this since the day she’d crawled out of the biofab drawer, she didn’t doubt her problems with depression would never have happened.
Dragon’s Folly was a city made mostly of black basalt, a city on the edge of the ocean that seemed to be bursting its own walls to contain everything. Teetering structures of wood had been erected anchored into foundations of black stone, obscuring the sun except for a thin shaft that shone down through waving flags and banners hung from high windows.
There were over a dozen different species visible on the streets around them, and most weren’t ponies. Melody’s pony-centric view of the world was shortly dashed—though it did still seem like most of the creatures here were quadrupeds of one sort or another. Many resembled creatures from back home—deer for instance, or yaks, or buffalo. Others looked more at home in mythology, like the towering hippogriffs that looked a little like ponies but also weren’t.
She even saw a few dragons, lean creatures of sharp talons and glittering scales. They towered above most of the other citizens of this place, passing through crowds that parted for them as they moved and occasionally scraping up against rocky buildings.
Stalls packed the streets on both sides, with merchants hawking wares Melody had no names for. She knew what they’d come for—about the most boring thing ever a pony could buy. Olivia wanted used, dirty clothes for their continued human-saving experiments. This was important, Melody knew, but she also had a very hard time caring about it. Getting a bunch of old hats would hardly be something to write about in her journal.
“How far do you think our gold will go?” she whispered to Deadlight, who strutted along beside her with his wings slightly open. He hadn’t worn a robe, and so neither had she, but both of them did have hats. “Will we have a little extra?”
Deadlight reached to one side with a wing, brushing it under her chin. “If I didn’t know where you came from, I’d wonder how you could be so old and so naive,” he said, in English. Deadlight had picked up the basics of the language almost as fast as she had learned Eoch. He didn’t wear a translator. “We have plenty, and that’s enough. More than enough, really.” He leaned in, whispering into her ear. “Ponies are listening. Let’s not say things we don’t want them to hear.”
She blushed, ears flattening to her head. “I was just wondering if we could find…” She pointed at a nearby stall, one with stringed instruments of all kinds on display. “Maybe something designed for ponies would be easier than the guitar I have back home.”
Lucky might’ve learned how to play, but Melody never had the time. There was too much to do, so many other important things competing for her attention.
“I think we can arrange that,” Deadlight said, though he twisted her head around with a wing, looking away from the stall. “Let’s see what’s for sale at the bazaar. These merchants out here are all the ones who couldn’t get in. That means what they have probably isn’t as interesting.”
“Oh.” Melody glanced back, not so much at the merchant as to see if Dorothy was still following. The geneticist hadn’t lost them in the crowd, despite having to roll along with her cart. She seemed content to remain at the back, though whenever Deadlight touched Melody it seemed she got a little more smug. “Is there anything you want to do while we’re here?”
“Seeds,” Dorothy answered. “I’d like to start a garden in Othar. Lucky talks about fruits and vegetables just like the ones from Earth, but all the seeds the Forerunner tries to print get killed the same as the humans. Bioengineering pumpkins or apples aren’t high on the priority list, but if we could just grow some with the hard work already done…” She shrugged. “Or whatever, it’s fine. Just make sure you order for me when we stop for lunch.”
Deadlight raised an eyebrow slowly. They passed out of the center of the fast-moving crowd and over to the periphery instead, where they wouldn’t be as much of a disruption. “Isn’t this your mission? You’re the doctor making the cure to that disease, right? It’s hard to tell you all apart now that everyone’s a different color.”
He said that, but he had guessed Melody’s dark purple with lighter around her belly and several different shades for her mane. It probably helped that Melody had known those were his favorite colors.
Dorothy shrugged, apparently disinterested. “That won’t take that much of our time. For what part we’re actually contributing. I’ll just take in the sights and enjoy a day off.” She lowered her voice just a little. “Some of these creatures look like predators. They won’t act on those instincts with us prey species, will they?”
Deadlight laughed, though he didn’t seem to completely understand. “No,” he said. “No predators here. Unless you’re a fish—lots of creatures out here eat fish. And some other things, but sensitive little ponies are better off not knowing about that.”
Melody almost broke down into hysterical giggling at that, wondering what Deadlight might’ve made of the human meat industry. Not that they had one now that they were here—luxury goods weren’t at the top of the list when they were still afraid they might be invaded at any moment.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, turning to watch her with concern.
“Nothing.” She waved a hoof dismissively. “It was nothing. Let’s just… enjoy the bazaar. We might not get another day like this for a long time.”
Deadlight shrugged. “That’s assuming you don’t just want to leave with me, Melody. You can fly well enough—we don’t have to go back to Othar if you don’t want to.” He spoke in Eoch now, apparently not caring that Dorothy was wearing a translator and would probably understand most of it.
“I want to finish my mission,” Melody responded, waving a wing dismissively. “When that’s done, I’ll be like Lucky—free citizen, free to do whatever I want. But until then, I stay in Othar. Were you thinking about leaving?”
“No.” Deadlight leaned a little closer to her. “There is much for me to learn about this strange home of yours, Earth. But you seem like you’re losing your mind. You would probably enjoy life more as my assistant. Going on adventures, seeing ancient ruins from the Crystal Empire all the way to Mount Aris. I could use a skilled linguist, and your fancy gadgets. We’d make discoveries Daring Do could only dream of.”
Melody didn’t answer. Surrounded by all this activity—by the culture she’d been created to study, it took all her willpower not to say yes. She could run off with Deadlight right now, and what could Olivia do about it? The native knew this world much better than she did. There were no tracking implants in her body or anything else like that—if she put her computation surface down on the ground here, that would be that.
Of course, Dorothy would see her do it. She might call the major right then. Or she might walk away and not care. The two of them might not get along that well, but compared to the major they might as well have been best friends. She didn’t think Dorothy would turn her in. With a day’s head start, they’d never catch her.
Then Dorothy spoke from behind them, apparently having heard the entire thing. “I won’t tattle, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She spoke in Mandarin, as fluent as any modern scholar had to be—much better than the pronunciation of any of Olivia’s soldiers. “The major can fuck herself. Plus, you’ll probably be safer out there. If Sanctuary’s defense system finds Othar… well, maybe splitting off to the winds is the smart thing.” She sighed. “I would go too, but I’m not gonna let this fucking disease beat me. If I get a cure, and the Forerunner sends it off to one of those interstellar node-things, then it doesn’t matter what happens to me after that. I’ll have a legacy—this me will, pony me. My horse immortality.”
“I’m not ready yet,” Melody insisted. “I want a little more time in Othar. I want to leave on good terms with the Forerunner, so I can come back later if I want.” And I want more time to learn Eoch, more time to learn flying, and more time with easy access to modern medicine. But she didn’t say any of that. Maybe Dorothy would guess that last part, maybe she wouldn’t. Their relationship was an open secret by now.
“Suit yourself.” Dorothy shrugged. “Let’s do our incredibly important, not-at-all-a-waste-of-time mission. There's no way at all we haven't been given this assignment to distract us while something more important is happening. Finding nasty used clothes, how exciting is this? If only my Harvard colleagues weren’t thousands of years dead so they could see me now.”