"That's a little more than we had even where I'm from," he admits, trying to let the strangeness of it wash over him in a wave, then roll back out like a tide. It's weird. He can't change it. Move on. "We had sirens at least, but--someone set them off because they knew a cave had gone in, and that's about what it told us. People in mines makes sense, kids in caves--well that also makes sense, but you don't watch for it constantly."

None of it was perfect. None of it took them back in time and got the cave opened faster. They got unlucky, then they got lucky--that's how the place goes. "Here it's like, you need to aggressively get to know people, if you want to keep track of them all."