[ The fact that Alex isn't the only prisoner here has been something that's been keeping him strangely calm about the arrival process. That and the scientific curiosity of dimensional travel via some sort of at least quasi-biological process.

The papers he could write if trying to get them published wouldn't get him committed. ]

Hey. From what a couple of the local kids tell me, they're in no position to object to any population boom, no matter how strangely it came about. And they're letting their kids talk to us. So either they don't see us as enough of a threat to keep us from interacting with them, or they just don't like their children terribly much."

[ As his fiancée had so wisely once told him, kids are kids and the rest is just details, and he's always been pretty good at talking to the school tour groups and the lost children who, no matter how upset they are to be lost in the reptile house, are never as panicked as their parents when he and the security staff reunite them. ]