oh it's totally crazy. hang on, ( rolling up her sleeve; it doesn't go high enough so she pulls down her shirt from her shoulder to show her. ) look! i got *a ton* of them. they all, like, snake out from this big patch on my back.

hey girl wanna come over and see my cocoon scars?

difficulties? you, uh . . . wanna talk about it?

ahhh, fuhgeddaboudit.

education in the entire universe. i travelled, a lot. but that was alright, ( laughing. ) 'cos i was screwing his kid. anyway, all of it was pretty scientific. nothing like quintain classes at all.

i picked up a lot crukking around in the army. then, uh, the other half of my education, i was the apprentice of a very senior politician. he was a skilled diplomat, but he could see my skill with machinery, and my whole . . . naivety, so he took me under his wing and got me some of the best

from the *male* perspective. we never learned the stuff *around* sex. it was very cold and rigid. we didn't learn about female bodies. i remember as a young man thinking of chicks as these mysteries, everything about them, their bodies, their characters . . . but that's another story.

average *my* education was, because it was kind of two different worlds. i went to our main, um, elite, like, school and all, but it was all supplemented with the . . . how do i describe it? spiritualist, religious bend of my home. so stuff like . . . sex ed, puberty, well, i mean that was all

it was all pretty specialized. we were assessed at a young age and our whole lives *basically* decided from there, so that affected, like, everything else. but i was lucky, because i was raised by some pretty influential people on strulia . . .

i guess it's difficult to say, like, *how*

what do you mean by 'how bodies work'? biology? sex ed?

( a shrug. ) fertility wasn't something strulia talked about.

they never warned me about mating cycles in class, it was too religious! is it like this, like, *forever*?

you are sooooo unsubtle. i love it.

my eyes are up here and on the other side!

mmmmm . . . axis . . .

um . . . i dream about things which might have happened on thursdays?

( a shrug. ) i don't see anything. wanna . . . ( waggling her eyebrows. ) take my hand and lead me there?

oh that's-- yeah, no, that's-- i mean that's a much better idea. i was just gonna say i wanted to cruk the concept of thursday.

you *don't* wanna cruk a concept? coward.

( taking off her helmet. ) geez, that thing's so stuffy, i gotta work on that.

this place is really something, huh? ( the lancer squats down and begins to sift through the pebbles on the ground, picking them up and holding them in the light, squinting. ) wish i knew geology right now.

that *does* sound kinda hot.

( putting her helmet on. in the full kit, she almost looks as she used to. this could almost be the same person that you loved. nothing has changed. stepping out into the atmosphere, doing a big dramatic spacewalk. )

hmmmm . . . ( turning back to the sidrat and giving blue a thumbs up. )

pretty sweet anyway!

as in, in this body?

finnnnne. *but*! you have to *wait for me to check the air with my suit first*. it takes like five seconds.

oh yeah???

eugh, is that when the worms burst out?

could do, could do. but then you might die, and i'd get in a *bunch* of trouble with junobot, and all the *space paperwork* i gotta fill out . . . ( a dramatic exhale. ) i mean, dying ain't cheap!

only to rizz the huzz.

urf lady, i don't want to alarm you, but your face is covered in boogers right now.