Squidgie had enough data, after weeks of confirming. Days of testing and now waiting for the ideal opportunity to segue into it with Aleph.

She squirmed with excitement as she began to dive into the explanation she'd been waiting almost a week for an opportunity, one that she just now had found. It had been hard work to verify her theories. But this was finally the moment.

The first stab to explain to Miss Aleph a vital thing.

“But I have come to realize you simply don’t realize what you are ‘owed’ ”

Squidgie was so excited, finally she was going to be indispensable. To be useful, to find her niche and what she needed to do!

“Although in this specific type of social debt you'd normally lose it if you used that word, so it might not be a natural frame for thinking about it. It... I have really been suspecting this for a while now not knowing when to bring it up.”

She was no siren, she did not know the nuances of every language and idiom and how it was blooming in her most precious of people’s minds. But she was confident now she knew Aleph. And to a lesser extent Quarti and Omega.

The Terrans and the Shipmistress.

The polity in miniature and the Terrans.

There had been friction between all of them. She had prepared as best as she could to do this right but she would never be able to prepare as utterly as ▙◀. She could not grasp the entirety of a mind and let its nature be distilled like Pylo.

But in spite of both of her superior’s powers they still did not always succeed, and she had determined there were three places she had a chance to contribute. In this case it was arguably the least important of those three.

She would be the social stabilization and inter-crew communication lubricator agent!

The roles involved were well defined within the context of crews, both how it could be parceled into a series of departments or automated sub conscious systems or aggregated with other related tasks to suit a higher standard person density single crew member and what cultural, biological and ecological niches gave important boons or hazards to the role.

Clerics could theoretically serve in such, although if she was not going to hire a bunch of adults and other motile children there was a list of augments, tools and additions that would be needed to apply to Squidgie to perform at a proper crew member capacity.

Still before all of that there were things a simple un-upgraded clerk could do right now.

And in that was this conversation.

“In the Reef we live as part of civilization together. This has been so for thousands and thousands of generations. That’s not even a fact, it’s not something anyone needs to be taught. It’s not even an assumption for most of us Miss Aleph. It is beyond anything cultural I could even explain to you.”

Miss Aleph was watching, curious and listening and wonderful as always.

“I’ve checked some of the old records, ancient things. You remember the class when ▙◀ tried to explain to you how history works in the reef? I am pretty sure this was part of what they were trying to teach.”

Checking the eyes, facial posture, tracking gaze, interest, mouth, shoulders, brow, ears, rate of breathing in the throat and chest, subtle rhythm of blood flowing through the veins in thrumming pulses. Squidgies eye was still youthfully acute and open to many more patterns and sensitivities that even hatchmates had started winnowing down.

Looking for and catching details all the time kept the sensitivity alive.

“I am a clerk, or a cleric if you prefer I simply AM that, I and my mother and all mothers going back have taken to it more naturally than you do breathing. There are records in Miss Pylo’s archive that mention clerks not much different than me. Records that I’m pretty sure are from when she first departed her home and family.”

No comprehension, apparently Miss aleph did not fully comprehend the time frame that represents. A reminder will be needed later.

“We are all of us born prepared to be that in whatever civilization has had us. And this has been going on for a very long time miss Aleph. There have been clerks living in the reef since before your world was born. Of that at least I’m almost sure”

That got a slight reaction, the thought had caught.

“There are not a lot of stories told about us told by other people. To find out I have to look up and filter academic papers and the randomly curious. We don’t carry any culture coherently. Oftentimes we are abandoned orphans at our roots. Our society grows wherever our eggs find themselves and imitates those around it. My own parents have no stories like Quarti does, we don’t have much more records then from the first clerks to settle in Petalweft salts, not even the first clerks to settle in Red Weed! Just a small tiny nation marks the start of my entire culture’s recorded history! A few Centuries!”

Okay some emotion there, widened pupils, slight increase in tear duct activity, oh wait don’t go too far, calmer tone! Don’t need her to get too emotional here. Miss Aleph needed sharpness and clarity but not distracted blubbering!

“Some Genetic drift measurements show genes corresponding to entire cortical areas wholey specialized to the task of economic accounting for others are tens of millions of years old. At the best guess we probably evolved from some far ranging species. Likely some highly capable and technologically capable urban species. Maybe we built empires and ruled the stars in ways not even the Siren clans or Gods could now?”

Hum, not the right reaction on the term god, notes for later. Something to clarify but not important here. This was a different discussion. ▙◀ would probably have complained at the historically unfounded implication here, but they weren't present.

“We don’t know, no one knows. The records have not been found. Clerics just are simply here, we are everywhere and the reef is full of easily millions, maybe even billions of other species just as shaped and honed by the endless churn of civilization as we were.”

Aleph was listening, calmer now, not veering into overly emotional but she was starting to get confused, and from confused she could slip into boredom.

Squidgie needed to spark curiosity, maybe draw her into the conversation a bit?

“Do you know that in many ways you are extraordinary? Not just as a species but individually Miss Aleph.” Just repeating and rephrasing what ▙◀ had said last week, but according to her theory it would appear quite novel.

That got a laugh from her. A bit of an eye roll. Okay apparently not so novel but it engaged miss Aleph back to the conversation before she could realize she was going to get bored. So just as well!

“You’re always complimenting me so much Squidgie. It’s enough to make me blush. Are you sure it’s not just because I’m like... well... that I’m your mom or whatever the term is for you? First employer? That sounds kinda cold to me but Pylo said it would fit too. I’m sorry about that by the way. Elsie and Pylo didn't explain it to me very well when I first got you... but I understand better. It’s really serious. Um what was the word... like kinda imprinting?”

Squidgie huffed and answered, admonishing Aleph.

"Approximately a mix of all those things. But don’t worry I would have imprinted on anyone or thing that first took me in. So don't apologize, it's the most wonderful thing that could have happened to me. You taking me in and your attention and perspective are why I am who I am.”

She was flushing with blood flow to her cheeks but also smiling and getting overactive tear ducts. It was a very complex emotion. Squidgie supposed it must be something like an intense futures return on investment.

“Also it’s not like you don’t have the wealth to support me. I would not trade you as my... I would not wish anyone else to have replaced you in my life Miss Aleph. You are exceptional and wonderful. But also you are sometimes dumber than a sack of bricks!"

That got a startled laugh of surprise and helped refocus her back to the conversation and topic at hand.

“H-hey! That’s rude! Don’t call your adopted mother-boss-thing that!”

The tone was teasing, the seriousness was gone. Good lighthearted!

“I’m honestly just glad I got the idiom right! It makes almost no sense to me personally. But we're getting widely off track and I was actually telling you something really important!"

At least that metaphor made some sense, referring to a rail based transportation technology.

But then again Redweed had an old history of rail systems prior to the development of the acceleration loops. There was a saying much similar that had been in use in Petalweft Salts.

Although very little connection to the original infrastructure terms persisted.

“You and your species are exceptional in the Reef. You are practically feral by comparison to most civilization builders I’ve ever met. Yet you live in nothing resembling true wilderness. You are wild and soft at the same time. Free from the specializations both extremes of civilization and wilderness enforce. Not hardened by the real crucible of nature but not tamed by the niches present in mature polity of the reef. In many ways you resemble more ▙◀ 's descriptions of what the Dreamtime civilizations must have been like then modern reef culture.”

Aleph blinked but she was drawn in now, curious and intense in a way that meant telling her more would not dull her senses of spark

Which meant Squidge could finally get to the core of her presentation.

"Debt is a wider and more subtle and multifaceted concept than you realize. And your subconscious realization of it is far greater than your conscious one. In every conversation you form and resolve microscopic debts and trades in resources such as attention, information, status, motor activity, and willpower. These debts are to ephemeral to convert into liquid assets, but that does not mean they do not have an equivalent value that can be accounted in principle. These are the subjects I have been researching for the last four months"

Oh damn it, she started losing Aleph again! What did she do wrong? The terran was interested, excited and attentive!

But all of a sudden it all just rolled off her face and now she was frowning down at Squidgie with a perplexed look.

“Wait, what does that have to do with this dream time civilization thing you mentioned? Explain that! It sounded really cool and ominous!”

Right, Apparently more backtracking and fewer leaps of logic were going to be required. But that was okay, Squidgie knew she could do this and Miss Aleph was just as exceptional as she believed.

Just had to come at it from a slightly different angle.

“The Dreamtime was the period ▙◀ lectured on twelve shifts ago, with those ancient civilizations that made the first polities? The ones who created the first examples of Drexleria and Michakarya? Along with pretty much every macroscopic physical kingdom of life besides Eukaryota”

Slowly dawning realization.

“Wait, are you saying Terrans are more like some ancient all powerful creator aliens?! REALLY?! That’s so cool!”

Squidgie flinched a little, okay too much enthusiasm and rather inaccurate assessment.

"Uh... no. No you are more like a preserved record of a very ancient lineage. Or a convergent evolution onto traits that have been selected out of almost all other life in the reef. But even more so, it's about being RICH in certain ways that are rare, not individually but as a culture without exception.”

It stung to see the disappointment and confusion in Aleph’s face but that one had to be corrected quickly lest she get herself in trouble.

“The way you culturally compartmentalize your acountings into the sacred and taboo, formal and informal, and do not allow transfer of value from one to the other, and do this in multiple layers of hierarchy, is not a trait the Ship Mistress and Custodian share, and their individual wealth is such that those microscopic debts I mentioned, trade off into massive quantities of value at your level. "

Aleph blinked a bit and tilted her head.

“What uh, does that mean exactly? Is this like the standard person thing that Pylo got so tied in a knot over?”

Squidgie took a proverbial breath and fortified herself.

“That is technically a disagreement because the Ship Mistress and the Custodian don’t share comparable traits of culture with each other as you don’t with them. It makes for hazardous discussion territory in certain topics such as ethics.”

Aleph chewed on her lip and took out the notepad and pencil. That was probably a good sign although it suggested more diversions from the main point were on the horizon.

“How exactly do they differ from each other? Like they actually view things entirely differently?

Squidgie was growing very very glad that she had to read so many other treatises and archives unrelated to what she thought she had to tell Aleph about.

Her extraordinary mistress had a broad and insatiable curiosity.