"I'm in for observation. There's a competency hearing at the end of the week."
Linda snorted and Fatima giggled.
The doctor ignored them. "But tell us *why* you think you ended up here."
"You want the whole story?"
"Whatever parts you think are important."
"It's a Tribal thing."
"I see," the doctor said.
"It's like this," I said. "It used to be that the way you chose your friends was by finding the most like-minded people you could out of the pool of people who lived near to you. If you were lucky, you lived near a bunch of people you could get along with. This was a lot more likely in the olden days, back before, you know, printing and radio and such. Chances were that you'd grow up so immersed in the local doctrine that you'd never even think to question it. If you were a genius or a psycho, you might come up with a whole new way of thinking, and if you could pull it off, you'd either gather up a bunch of people who liked your new idea or you'd go somewhere else, like America, where you could set up a little colony of people who agreed with you. Most of the time, though, people who didn't get along with their neighbors just moped around until they died."
"Very interesting," the doctor said, interrupting smoothly, "but you were going to tell us how you ended up here."
"Yeah," Lucy said, "this isn't a history lesson, it's Group. Get to the point."