Girl, kid, lad, girl. His politically correct superego, cultivated during long years of service in academia, was trying to light up his shame neurons. Doob felt no shame—he was way past that—but he was struck by just how young the Arkies were, how different they were demographically from the General Population. It gave him a vaguely troubling sense of being out of touch. It had been decades since he had been young, but he had always been one of the cool kids anyway, with a big following on Facebook and Twitter. Now he was stuck on Izzy and Julia was stuck in an arklet. The two of them were hanging out with completely different populations. GPoppers saw each other all the time and talked face-to-face. Arkies were isolated in their arklets and had to use social media to reach out. Doob hadn’t looked at his Spacebook page since the White Sky, and this call with Julia had been delayed for fifteen minutes while he’d tried to figure out the user interface on Scape—something with which Julia was obviously familiar and comfortable. She used it all the time, and if it didn’t work, one of those kids in the background would help her with it.