It isn't late at night, but it is late in the year, and the sun went about its business quickly ere it departed.
Jacqueline Somer walks beside a busy road, with her back to oncoming traffic, which she's read you aren't supposed to do but it makes the stupid LED headlights somewhat less unbearable.
She flinches every time a car passes her.
Cars are loud, and she has enhanced hearing.
She'd be much happier, she thinks, in a world without automobiles.
"The sun here is pretty dim, so I was excited at the prospect of having more light. But then, I remembered that things which glow are often quite deadly."
"I used them for a couple hours last night and I don't feel any ill effects.."
Have you ever heard the cautionary tale of Madam Curie?
"What does your planet know about radiation?"
"On my home planet some people a while ago used to blow up radioactive rocks to make power... and some people used to get sick when they... got too many sunburns I think? But nowadays there were solutions for all that, I didn't really spend a lot of time studying history."
Setting aside everything else for a moment -
"What did you spend a lot of time studying?"
"I.. not much of anything. I just read a lot of fiction. I guess I was wanting to become a writer but I never really got around to it."
"What did you read?"
Not science or history, apparently.
"A lot of.. drama, and.. romance"
She seems rather embarrassed about this fact.
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