Chapter Sixteen: The Green Letters.

It was the 127th Year since A-Day, and the First Resurrection had ended. It had become known as the Rewarding; as all those who had risen were those that had known of the great Reward promised to them.

For twenty-five years, there were no new people being returned from the Grave. It had marked a time when every follower of Jehovah God had been raised, designed and built their own homes, been fed an abundance of literal, and spiritual food, and found their place in the present day.

It had been a Golden Age, of sorts. A time when the entire spectrum of the human race had been given plenty of food and resources, plenty of education and freedom to choose. The whole human race considered their merits and their deficiencies, and created a place where everyone could bring the best of their cultures and upbringings together in harmony. It took some work to sort out what was easiest, and most enjoyable for everyone; but after twenty years, a new kind of culture had evolved organically.

The small holdings had grown into towns. The days of skyscrapers and megacities were over, but most imagined that cities could come again. The old cities had been wiped clean, and replaced with gardens and open areas; fields and orchards and vineyards. Work was about following passions and interests instead of edging out a survival. As expected, money was no longer a driving force.

Time passed, and everyone was finding their place in a world that they had always heard about, but never seen.

But at the 125th Anniversary, the tone of the Conventions changed. They started talking a lot about the experiences of the Field Ministry. The Modern Day Christians had taken part in a global preaching campaign. Something that even the first Century Christians had never done, at least not at that scale. The 125th Convention brought it up to everyone's mind, reminding everyone that it had been done before… and was now needed again.

The International Conventions that marked each Quarter-Century had bookended the start and heralded the end of the pause between The Rewarding, and The Greater Returning.

~~/*\~~

"Stop looking at my belly like that." Beckah told her husband crisply. "And tell me again."

"You've never been more beautiful." Alec replied dutifully. "It's true, you know. The days of morning sickness are long over."

"I'm huge, and you need to humor the pregnant lady." Beckah told him. "We've been through this before, you should remember the procedure." She put her hand in his. "Now, tell me why you're smashing holes in my house again."

"Okay! We merge the dining room and the kitchen into one room, with a kitchen island as the border. The bay windows then open onto the kitchen, which means we can use them to serve food out to the sun deck. Next time we have guests, we won't have to keep running back and forth from the kitchen to the guests."

"Yeah, but when I burn something, the entire dinner party knows it."

"You've been cooking for over a century. When was the last time you burned something?"

"Dinner's ready!" Sydney called. "Salted Caramel dessert for mom."

"Mm." Beckah smiled. "I've been craving salt and sugar all day." She told her husband as they walked back through the house. "That, and a double bacon cheeseburger."

"Ugh." Sydney sneered slightly at that as they sat down at the dinner table. "Really?"

"You had to be there." His mother told him. It wasn't the first time during her pregnancy that she craved foods that hadn't been eaten in over a century.

They sat at the table and Alec prayed for them. They ate for a few minutes, before Sydney spoke. "Heard the latest? There's been a Returning Notice."

Alec looked at his son in surprise. "Is that confirmed?"

"Three Letters delivered. One in Australia, one in Europe, one in South Africa."

The old national names had been kept, for the most part, with a few exceptions. Mostly as names for the Regions. Borders and passports didn't exist, but travel plans and mail still needed reference points.

"Another Resurrection." Beckah breathed. "First Gold Letter in over a quarter century."

"Not Gold Letters." Sydney put in. "Two Blue ones and a Green one."

The three of them turned that thought over in their heads. "Gold Letters for returning believers." Beckah thought out loud. "Green and Blue…"

"We'll find out soon enough." Alec commented. "First newcomer in a while; and the first one that wasn't expecting God to be a part of the future. There's a reason why we're only getting three newcomers, in totally different parts of the world. This is our training. They've been preparing us to begin the teaching work again over for two years."

"It's been over a century since I went door-to-door." Beckah commented to her husband.

"That won't be what it is." Alec told her. "New Arrivals land in the Dorms until they find a place. We're the ones behind all the doors now. This is something else; but invoking the Preaching Campaign is the place to start."

"How so?"

Alec reached over and pulled volume one of his Bible from the shelf. "1 Peter 3:15. ‘But sanctify the Christ as Lord in your hearts, always ready to make a defense before everyone who demands of you a reason for the hope you have, but doing so with a mild temper and deep respect'."

"Ah. And now that we're living in the New World, that ‘defense' is no longer needed, so the rules are changing?"

"Or not changing at all. That's the question. It may be harder to argue against our position now, but some people will anyway."

"Mm." Beckah agreed. "One of the Elders in my old Cong, Back Before? He told us once that the way we treat people is usually the only Bible that anyone would read."

"Exactly." Alec nodded. "A lot of the people who come back are going to be suspicious, judgmental, and looking for the secret dark side of this world. Some of them will need a while to realize that there isn't one."

"And some of them will realize it, and decide that's worse." Beckah pointed out.

"Why would they think that?" Sydney asked. Their first child, Sydney was a little less than twenty years old; a generation that barely remembered the Rewarding, and had yet to meet anyone who was not a Believer.

"Syd, you weren't there; but take my word for it." Beckah told him. "A lot of people didn't come into the Truth, simply because they didn't like the idea of making changes in their lives. The things they did for fun were more important to them than an offer for Eternal Life that they didn't really consider long enough to decide if it was true."

"So… when these people get the fact that the Eternal Life thing was real…" Sydney was trying to process this idea.

"How many of them will focus less on Paradise, and more on the fact that they were wrong, and won't want to admit it. Or on the fact that none of the people here have the same idea of ‘fun' as they had Back Before?" Beckah said grimly.

"Things like double bacon cheeseburgers?" Her son needled with a smile.

"Don't tease the pregnant lady. I will eat you, if you're not careful."

~~/*\~~

As a rule, Returnings were done privately. It was an emotional moment, not always an easy one; and most people shied away when under the eyes of strangers. But this wasn't just for the person coming back. It was something new, and it was going to happen again, billions of times. The general population needed as much information as possible.

The location was in the open, so someone put a camera on the moment from a discreet distance. The determination was made that the different categories in the Color Coded Letters were important. If things went well, or if the Returnee asked for privacy, the recording would be deleted. If things went badly, others needed to know it, because there were plenty more people on the way; and the human race needed to be prepared. Either way, faces and names would be obscured to protect privacy.

The Green Letter was in Europe.

~~/*\~~

Rachel waved Kevin over to the larger screen in his workshop. The image was going live to the area, being recorded for the rest of the world.

"I still don't feel right watching this." Kevin said to Rachel quietly as they watched. "We don't film these moments. It's just not done."

"We argued it ad nauseum, KB." Rachel told him. "For whatever reason, we haven't been told why the Letters are color coded, and this is going to be our first clue what they mean. Personally, I'd like to know."

Kevin growled, low in his throat. "I know. I even agree. It just doesn't feel like what we do." He tapped the console. "Anyway, we're recording."

The picture was taken from far enough away that they didn't see his face. But they had audio. They saw Benedict, making his way over slowly. The camera followed him until the scheduled time, and then focused on the suddenly arrived newcomer.

"He looks… clean." Rachel commented. "The first Returnee that has never served Jehovah in any capacity." The man was young, with hair trimmed short. Like any other Returnee, he was clothed in simple, featureless clothes. The color scheme and shape was reminiscent of a uniform; and the man checked his hip first; which was something Rachel noticed right away. "See that? He's looking for a sidearm. If we're right about the clothing being something familiar to the wearer…"

Kevin nodded. "Maybe. If so, that might be the reasoning for the color coding. Thousands of millions died on battlefields over the centuries. I don't know if victims get the memory of the violence wiped away, but…"

The Returnee stood up. He looked around, seeming surprised; though there was no way to tell what he was expecting. Benedict gave him a moment to get his bearings, and then made himself more visible. "Hello." He said warmly. "My name is Benedict Levinsen."

The man turned to face him instantly, eyes flashing… And he saluted in a horrifically familiar way. "Heil..." He said with biting darkness in his voice. "...Levinsen."

Before anyone could react, the newcomer lunged for Benedict. Rachel and Kevin leaned closer, trying to see as whoever was aiming the camera gasped and suddenly twitched. But when the camera stopped moving about, they had a clear view of Benedict, right where he had been, the newcomer frozen still… and the radiant figure with wings, holding his fist short of Benedict's face.

Dead silence. A moment later, Benedict turned towards the camera and shook his head slightly. The feed turned off immediately.

"Well." Rachel said finally. "I guess we have an idea what Green Letters mean."

~~/*\~~

Within three days, the whole world saw it.

"Of all the ways to get a quick lesson in what comes next, that's a heck of a way to start." Alec commented to Roland. "We weren't told what to expect with the Green Letters; and I wonder what the lesson we're meant to learn from it is."

"It may not even be a lesson for us." Roland commented. "Of all the people to get that letter, you think it was random that it went to a Brother from a Jewish background? The new guy got a very fast clue of how the rules have changed."

"Granted, but it's for us too." Alec pointed out. "There are going to be a lot of people who respond to the unknown with violence. We just got a very clear example of who has our back during this whole thing."

"‘This whole thing', is going to be the defining characteristic of the next eight hundred years, Alec." Roland pointed out, bringing up the scripture. "Revelation 20:13 ‘And the sea gave up those dead in it, and death and Hades gave up those dead in them, and they were judged individually according to their deeds'. Until the graveyards of the world are empty, this is going to be what the human race does, before anything else. We've had every human who worshiped Jah brought back and updated on what they need to know. That's a workforce of millions, waiting to turn all people into brothers and sisters." He gestured at the blank screen. "But if that's what we've got to work with…"

"Remember, most of us came from outside the faith." Alec reminded him. "We've spent twenty years just… living with wish fulfillment. And a hundred years before that meeting the people who already agreed with us. A lot of the old instincts can go to sleep in a place where they aren't needed."

"Well, nobody's coasting anymore." Roland snorted. "Not after that. I'm just glad that the Blue Letters were far less… difficult cases."

"Lots of people went through life handling the big philosophical issues by not thinking about them. At all. They won't be able to do that once they get here, but most of them won't get violent about it. I'm glad we get some warning to expect a harder road when the Green Letters show up." Alec chewed his lip. "Add it to the Local Needs part. We have to get people ready for things they forgot were coming."

~~/*\~~

"Remember how hard it was?" Alec told the congregation that night. "Every year, we kept getting reminded to hold on to the hope. Hold on to your faith. Hold on to each other. Just hold on. Endurance. We were told this, over and over again. Well, for a hundred and twenty years, we haven't needed endurance. Why would we? We lived in Paradise. The only newcomers were people already like us, who were just missing the latest literature release; or hadn't been to the new convention yet."

Everyone chuckled. It was a surprisingly accurate description of how it had felt.

"Back there and back then, we had to be on our guard, because the world was not an easy place to have faith. Certainly not an easy place to walk by it." Alec told them. "Now the reverse is true. We're living in a world where faith is the lifeblood of the world. We don't have to fight for it, because there is an abundance. That has not changed. This event has reminded us that not everyone lived so lucky. In fact a lot of people survived by being harder, colder, and meaner than the world around them. Our survival meant holding onto God. To some, survival meant holding onto a weapon. Given that they have spent a minimum of a hundred and twenty years waiting for a resurrection, we know which one works better. But they don't. Not yet."

Beckah, in the audience, cast a subtle look around. He was reaching them, but not all the way. Over a century of never having to so much as examine their core beliefs meant that nobody was wild about it happening again.

"Remember, this is a joyful time." Alec continued. "We're all the ones who stood up to the majority and gave a witness for the name of God. We can certainly do it again, with the majority on our side. We never did it based on our own strength." He made a point of raising his voice a little. "Remember, the ones that are going to be violent are a very small minority, and we've proven that we have nothing to fear from them. All the people that we knew, but not as brothers? They're getting their chance at last. All the graveyards we have visited are going to be undone. Back in OS, when we talked about the Resurrection, we weren't just looking forward to seeing our own; were we?"

That worked. There was a light smattering of applause.

"In the hundred years since this started, we've built databases that can find any family line, any name in the record. We've prepared millions of modular and quick-build homes, and we've put orchards and fields in every place that can carry them. The world is abundant with home and plenty. The storehouses are full to bursting. Now it's time for those resources to be put to work. After all, that's what we collected them for!"

~~/*\~~

"I don't think the problem is fear." Beckah remarked to her husband that night. "We know there's nothing to be scared of; even if there hasn't been anything scary for decades. The problem is… We found the balance. A pretty good one, in fact."

"I know." Alec yawned. "I'm not proud of this, but when I found out it was starting, my first thought was: Oh, they're going to make a mess."

Beckah laughed. "It'll be a wild ride, as these things go. But we know they won't be able to make anything bad happen to the world." She shifted over, making room for him in the bed. "Besides, I've been looking forward to meeting your father."

Alec smiled a bit. "I don't even remember him. By the time he gets here, he'll have two grandkids from a son he mainly saw in baby pictures. I admit, I'm nervous. I haven't been nervous in a long time. I wasn't even nervous when you told me we were going to be parents. That's how perfect the world has been all this time."

"I know, love. I know." She shushed him. "Back in OS, when the Yearbooks came out each year, I would pounce on the statistics page. Finding out how many people were in my family, how many had been baptised during the year, how many studies had started… We still get those numbers, but…"

"Those numbers will be in the billions at some point." Alec nodded. "I can't imagine it."

"You don't have to imagine it. Just be patient." Beckah kissed him sweetly. "As always." She arranged herself as comfortably as she could, one hand on her belly. "You know what does worry me, though?"

"What?"

"Rachel." Beckah said softly. "I think she's going to get her heart broken."

"I thought she and Kevin were doing well."

"They are, given that they're still in that insufferable ‘will they or won't they' holding pattern. That's the problem."

~~/*\~~

Kevin shared Lab Space with Rachel. They used to share it with four or five other people, but they had left The Conference. Kevin had been away for a while, setting up a weather station. When he came back, he found that a large fishtank had been set up on Rachel's side of the laboratory. "New project?"

"Starting to be." Rachel told him, meeting him with a smile. "Welcome back. The weather station?"

"Transmitting now. You were right. The Water Canopy is being restored. UV levels are falling all over the planet. It's going to be downright impossible to get a sunburn." He went over to the tank. "Only you would set up a fishtank with a dozen different sensors, and no fish. What are you doing?"

"Growing coral. Getting the water right is very very tricky. Salinity, Temperature, pH balance..." Rachel sighed. "More than half the Reefs in the charted ocean vanished between 1770 and 2017. Coral grows about an inch per year, so if we're going to restore the oceans, we need to start early."

"How do we restore the oceans? We can't even get to them."

"Not yet." Rachel sighed. "But I have a few ideas."

Kevin smiled. "You always do." He held up a banded stack of letters. "Mail call. I picked them up for you at the Plaza; I hope you don't mind."

Rachel took them eagerly. Mailed letters were having something of a Renaissance, as most older methods of doing things were. Rachel had spent her life on the edge of what was newest and fastest, but the ratio of people who had lived that way had shifted dramatically toward far slower times. Some embraced the new, others kept to the familiar. Rachel had to admit, as her age had passed the century mark, she was finally starting to relax into a new kind of rhythm.

And in this case, she had no doubts about what she was calling her friends, acquaintances, even a few total strangers to do, and she wasn't about to ambush them. Sending the request by mail allowed for people to measure their responses, and think through the options. There was no rush.

Kevin watched as she tore each letter open and read them, and said nothing as her shoulders started to droop, a little more with each letter she set down. "Bad?"

Rachel sighed. "Nothing I didn't expect." She admitted. "I can't really blame them. It's not like there's any great rush. They all have their own lives since the Conference. Especially now, with the Returning gearing up."

Kevin tried to smile for her. She was already putting on a brave face, but she looked like she'd just watched her home demolished. "I hate that look."

"No, really. I'm okay." Rachel insisted. She smiled at him, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "After all, it's another beautiful day in Paradise."

~~/*\~~

Ingaret was almost dancing along the street from the Plaza to her Quick-Build as Rachel came up beside her. "Hey, Stranger. Good news?"

Ingaret saw her and immediately schooled her expression. "No, not really. No more than any other day. Why do you ask?"

"You have a terrible poker face." Rachel drawled. "Come on. Cough it up."

Ingaret sighed and handed Rachel the Blue Letter. "My mother. Next week."

"Why were you hiding this from me?" Rachel asked, knowing the answer.

Ingaret said nothing. To say it was worse than to think it.

Rachel sighed. She'd been doing that a lot lately. "It's strange, you know. Sometimes, I just forget that I'll… never see her again. Or my dad." She rubbed her eyes. "Thing is… I read the story of Job. When his trial was over, God blessed him with another half-basketball team full of kids, and I just remember thinking: It's not like they're interchangeable."

"No, they aren't." Ingaret nodded. "But when you lose a loved one, it's like a big piece of yourself goes empty. Even if you can't replace the person you lost, you can fill that empty place back up again. It's not a sin to do that."

"No, it isn't." Rachel agreed.

Ingaret put the letter away. "I had three siblings. I lost one to the Pox, another to fever, and the third watched me get burned at the stake in disgrace." She tried to smile for Rachel. "Your company, your friendship, and your tutelage has filled up a hole that has been there for longer than I can remember. As long as I have a family, you will; sister."

Rachel found herself choking up again, even after a hundred years. "...Thank you."

"Which is why this is hard for me to say." Ingaret said seriously. "You don't want to be here. You still live more or less out of your suitcases, you haven't done anything with your Pre-Fab, you spend more time collaborating on projects with people in different parts of the world than you do in local activities... I know for a fact that there's one place in the world you very much wish to be, and you left it for more than twenty years to take care of me. That's a wonderful act of kindness, but I think it's time that I repay you for it. Go! Go back to The Conference, and when it ends, start it up again!"

Rachel held out the rejection letters. "I've been trying. The Conference is basically an empty building now. Starting it up will take more than me and nobody else is willing-"

"Do it yourself, if you have to. I see that look when you talk about it. It's the same look I had when I thought about The Pages. You'll keep going, even if it means going alone." Ingaret hugged her. "But you won't have to."

"I wish I could be as certain of that as you are." Rachel admitted.

"Sister, if there's one thing I've learned about the New World, it's this: As long as two people share a passion for anything in common, no matter how obscure, no matter how difficult, no matter how unlikely; then those people will find each other; even if it takes a hundred years." Ingaret broke the hug. "That's what Paradise means to me."

~~/*\~~

"So, you plan to go back?" Kevin guessed.

"Worst kept secret in the Northern Hemisphere is that The Conference has one last Dance ahead of it." Rachel told him as she packed a bag. "All those rejection letters also talk about meeting up again. They all know it. If I can get the right people in a room? You remember how it was at the start. Even before we got our instructions, they were already sketching out ideas."

"True. Might be worth a shot." Kevin agreed.

Silence. Rachel looked at him critically. "I appreciate you humoring me for twenty years, but you're usually better at it than that."

Kevin chuckled. "I just don't see the need to do it the old way. All those people are still out there, still looking around and getting ideas… You, and I mean you personally, built a communication system for them to get together and share their work across the world. I wonder if there's more inspiration in being all over the globe than being in one place."

"Yeah, but that's not the reason you're hedging." She said, missing nothing.

Kevin sighed. "Okay. Straight up. Where do you see this going?"

"You know what I-"

"Not The Conference. Us." He cut in.

Rachel froze. "We had this conversation."

"Yeah, forty years ago, and only once." Kevin nodded. "Rachel, we've been… whatever it is that we are for longer than most married couples had been alive, at least before A-Day. At some point we have to at least consider that. You want me to commit the next hundred years of my life to something, but..."

"You telling me you'd be willing to work at The Conference if we were an item?" Rachel challenged. "Because I don't see how one affects the other."

"It's about the future. Our future, and what we do with it." Kevin said patiently. "I was there when we started this, and we both know it's less of a job, and more of a lifestyle."

"And you don't see the need to make it a lifestyle." She guessed.

"We can work on our projects, and so can everyone else. We can do that from everywhere. Anywhere. So can everyone else, and we can talk to them all, every day. They don't have to be here." Kevin countered. "I meant what I said. The only one that I really want to be with permanently is you. It's decades later, and that hasn't changed. But you want them all back."

Rachel winced. "It took me a while to realize what you meant by that, the first time we had this conversation." She admitted. "And yes, I had blinders on. You were talking about you and me; I was talking about The Conference. It's just… people like us work best when we stick together. We bounce ideas, get inspired… The more of us there are, the faster our brains work. Everything else on the planet is crowd-sourced now, why not pure research too?"

She had purposely avoided the point Kevin was making, and he was about to call her on it when there was a knock on the door. It was David. And he had a Blue Letter in his hand. Rachel felt her heart give a solid thud, eyes locked on it… when David came over and handed it to her. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. When she looked up, she saw that Kevin had noticed her reaction.

"My second notice. I'm… humbled." She put a smile on her face for him, when her phone rang. She checked the screen. "It's Benedict." She answered the phone. "Hey there. So, how did it go after the camera switched off?"

"About like you'd expect." Benedict said dryly. "But that's not why I'm calling."

"Good. I'd hate to think you had me in mind to study with the guy." Rachel drawled. "I just got a Blue Letter of my own."

"Yeah, they're going out fast. I don't have to ask where you're based, since you haven't stopped trying to rally The Conference in forty years." Benedict said, and she could hear him smiling. "Well, you're about to get your wish; even if only temporarily."

"I'm already packed."

"Of course you are."

~~/*\~~

"I don't know how a guy like that even gets a Resurrection." Alec commented to Roland while they prepared for the next meeting. "If his first act is going to be an attack-"

"You ever see a dog that had been beaten, Back Before? After a while, all they know how to do is cower, or bite." Roland told him. "The whole Old System was designed to beat people into submission and despair, every second. Ever see a beaten dog that's been rescued? They're so happy to be receiving affection that they'll give a lot of it too."

"You could say that about anyone in history." Alec argued.

"Well obviously not, or there would have been no need for A-Day." Roland shot back. "We always said that there was hope for everyone, but… Truth is, Jesus Christ himself couldn't convince everyone he spoke to. Nobody's born evil, everyone can change. But I worked on the Hospital Liaison Committee, Alec. I talked to a lot of patients, both our guys, and secular people. I've met way too many people who can't bring themselves to quit smoking, or leave an abusive spouse, even when their life depends on it. I've met too many people who chose to keep living the way they always had, even when it just wasn't working."

"Free will?"

"The only rule that all sides have to follow." Roland agreed. "Even today."

"I know that's the way things were back then, but I guess I just assumed it would be different here." Alec argued. "It's not even a question anymore. How can people deny what they see with their own eyes?"

"They've been denying uncomfortable truths for six thousand years, Alec." Roland said simply. "I don't understand it either, but some people will cling to a lie, no matter how obvious it is, or how high the stakes are. We're free of Demonic Influence now, but we're not perfect yet. In all of human history there have only been three perfect people, and The Enemy got two out of three on the first try… And they lived in Paradise too."

Alec hesitated. "And this isn't paradise, exactly. This is cleanup. We're still nine hundred years away from where it's meant to be… So, we've got a long way to go, haven't we?"

"And a lot of people to meet on the way." Roland agreed.

~~/*\~~

"Archibald Augustus the Third." Rachel read the name on the Blue Letter again. "Great name."

Kevin chuckled. "Interesting that we're meeting him here."

"I'm meeting him here." Rachel waved the Blue Letter. "You're here because… well, you can't be parted from my sunny personality, of course."

Kevin scoffed. "Yes, that's it exactly."

"KB, relax. It's a Blue Letter." She promised him. "Not Green. There's no risk, and if there was, we both know that I'm protected." She blinked. "In fact, you know that, so what's on your mind? You're too tense to just be keeping me company."

Kevin smiled a bit. "You're too observant, Rach. Fine. I was debating whether or not to ask, but… When David came in with that letter, I saw you turn to stone, until we knew it was going to you."

Rachel winced. "We're both too observant for our own good." She checked her watch. "We don't have time to get into it now, but… I think I know what's going to break us up, KB. I have for over a century. That's why we never really got together."

Kevin didn't know what to say to that, but then Rachel's watch beeped, and the conversation was tabled. "Who has a watch anymore, anyway?" She took a deep breath, and bowed her head. Almost everyone prayed before Welcoming someone. "Step back a bit." She told Kevin. "We don't want him to feel surrounded."

"You're not worried?"

"I know it can't go too badly. We're protected." She assured him. "Besides, the fact that we're meeting here outside the Education Centre means he's probably a student or a professor. If he's got Academic leanings at all, then it means we speak the same language." She gestured at the Blue Letter. "It's not random. This letter came to me specifically; so I think this will go fairly well."

It was a strange thing, that they so rarely watched it happen. But there was a gasp, like someone had inhaled and exhaled at the same time; and they both turned to see that they were no longer alone.

"Hello." Rachel said warmly.

~~/*\~~

"It did not go well." Kevin told Ingaret the next day in the Kitchens. "In fact, it went badly."

"Is she… alright?" Ingaret asked, concerned. She had been making lunches for temporarily reconvened Conference; though she planned to sit in on meetings.

"She's ready to strangle someone." Kevin sighed. "A very specific someone, but if anyone volunteered to take his place, I don't think she'd mind. She's in there now, trying to get back on the right foot and-"

At that moment, Rachel stalked into her lab with thunder on her face. Ingaret and Kevin went quiet, and found something fascinating to look at in the sandwiches they were assembling.

Rachel strode past them, picked up a cookie, ate it in two bites, and let out an epic sigh. "I hate him." She said simply.

Kevin smothered a laugh.

"It's not funny!" Rachel roared. "The guy is the most misogynistic, arrogant twit I've met in two hundred years!"

"He didn't take to the Truth?"

"Wouldn't take to common sense! I showed him the video? He wanted to know who I stole the Device from. I told him what century it was, and he… I swear, this is true, he said he'd be happy to teach me the ‘proper' way to count the passing of years. Says a woman shouldn't concern herself with things outside ‘her proper, domestic place'. Like, for instance, knowing what century it is?!"

Ingaret let out a breath. "Oh dear."

"My place?" Rachel repeated like it was a four-letter word. "My place?! Like having a conversation with his Holier-than-thou-ness?"

"That's what happened yesterday." Kevin put in placidly. "How did today go?"

Rachel waved a hand back and forth.

"Perhaps a little more detail?"

"He made a point of telling me how his family tree could be traced in Peerage and mine couldn't; which wasn't my fault, so he forgave me. I don't even know what that means!"

"It means he's an Aristocrat." Ingaret put in. "It means he's got a rank. He's a lord or something. One of those families that lives in a Castle."

"Oh, so he's forgiving me for being a civilian?" Rachel scorned. "I had three degrees, before his world ended. I have four more now. How nice of him to forgive me for being common!"

"I imagine he's having a hard time dealing with the Dormitory." Kevin noted. "To say nothing of a female Professor."

"Oh, turns out that's the fastest part of the conversation. He just won't believe it. I can't show him my credentials, because he hasn't heard of MIT or even Yale University. My Alma Mater was founded in 1701. He was busy being dead for a number of years before that." Rachel shook her head. "The worst part is… I knew it would be like this, and I told myself what to expect… But he just got on my nerves in less than three minutes. I can handle disbelief, but he's just so freaking smug about his own superiority..."

"After a century of everyone being humble as a basic fact." Kevin pointed out.

"I know. My thick skin has thinned, and I didn't even notice." She looked over. "KB, what do you do, when you don't like someone you study with?"

"Mm. Tricky question, as I recall. It never happened to me, luckily."

"I never got the chance." Rachel admitted. "I've been a believer for two hundred years, and Ingaret was my first ‘Return Visit'. I know that I'm not here to make friends with this guy; but as much as I want him to come into the fold, I just don't relish the idea of spending time with him." She let out a breath. "With the Conference so close, maybe I should just pass him off to someone he's actually going to liste- Where's Ingaret?" Rachel interrupted herself and looked around, confused. "She was right here, wasn't she?"

~~/*\~~

Augustus opened his door and found someone he didn't know.

"Hello." Ingaret smiled sweetly at him and held out a fruit basket. "I had heard there was a newcomer, and since the Dormitory isn't staffed, at least not in any capacity you'd recognize, I thought it best to bring you some food."

"Thank you." Augustus agreed, and looked around.

She divined what he was looking for quickly. "I'm afraid there's nobody to introduce us appropriately, milord. But if you'll forgive the impropriety of doing it myself, my name is Ingaret Godlefe." She moved on swiftly. "I also wanted to be sure you had a Screen. They're a rather constant tool now. You can ask this little device anything and it will give you an answer." She held out her Screen to him.

Augustus raised an eyebrow. "I… was issued just such a device yesterday. I've been trying to make sense of it. It's very poorly designed. Not at all intuitive."

"Really?" She smiled sweetly. "I was taught how to use it by a small boy in my Congregation, and then given a few extra points of interest by the original inventor."

Augustus went still. The implication that a child could learn how to use new technology when he couldn't was not lost on him, but the look on Ingaret's face was so carefully guileless that he couldn't call her on it. "The inventor? I should like to meet him."

Ingaret nodded innocently. "Maybe you've met her. Professor Rachel Bridger?" The look on his face was priceless, and Ingaret made a quick prayer of apology for the glee she felt at his stunned expression. Before she could be grilled on that topic, she moved on. "Are you going to The Conference?" She asked, as though making conversation. "It starts again tomorrow, and since all the most intelligent and well educated people in the world go there to share their expertise on various matters…"

"Really?" Augustus kept his face even. "Perhaps I should attend, then."