okay by comparison Voa and Tapa look like thriving modern democracies
Next Post »
« Previous Post
+ Show First Post
Total: 2244
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

"You have to realize that dumping thousands of initially indistinguishable options on people all at once does not lead to fine discernment," says a grandson.

Permalink

"I can't imagine anyone could know who they want to talk to without several magic memory aids. But I can answer anything else you might have questions about, too."

Permalink

"Do we rely indefinitely on transit that answers to Vanda Nossëo?" wonders Soyok's daughter.

Permalink

"We'd be happy to start screening Valtaz teleporters, in which case you could have your own by the end of the month, though they would still be subject to fairly stringent oversight and standards of conduct - teleportation is dangerous - and to fairly unforgiving penalties for misconduct, we can't imprison them."

Permalink

"Can't unteleport them?" asks granddaughter-in-law.

Permalink

"Depends on what kind of teleporting they have. The thing Mereth has we can't take off. Some other things we can. A subtle artist can often do an action block, but not if someone happens to get or natively have magic that keeps them out."

Permalink

"Happens to?"

Permalink

"Teleportation gets wished on. Wishes are slightly unpredictable; we employ a precog to catch disastrous interactions but a wish that happened to grant people protection against external mental tampering in addition to whatever it was supposed to do wouldn't be considered a disastrous interaction."

Permalink

"Hm."

Permalink

"The materials on how to pick candidates for wished-on abilities go into more depth on procedures and accountability. They're allowed to teleport off the job, of course, and we've never sanctioned a planet by impeding their transit nor would teleporters be obliged to comply with that."

Permalink

"Purple, do you suppose?" murmurs granddaughter-in-law to her husband.

"Probably, yeah," he murmurs back.

Permalink

"I think that's how Tapa was leaning too. Some places do teleporting police, as well, so they can arrive at problems faster and take people to prison without wading into the middle of something."

Permalink

"And maybe paramedics," says the other grandson.

Permalink

"We have those at home, with healing too, they're great."

Permalink

"Sounds handy, yeah."

Permalink

"There's an anti-abortion advocacy group that's been trying to bother Amentans about switching to some kind of - preemptive system where there's something in the water or something and no one can become pregnant in the first place until they have permission. Is there someone's secretary or something to whom I should direct things in that vein..."

Permalink

"I don't know that I'd want to be the test site for that," says Soyok, "it's not like it hasn't been tried, we don't like abortions much ourselves, it's just that we have very delicate hormonal systems."

Permalink

Nod. "I don't blame you. Are you planning to keep to a permissions system, or..."

Permalink

"I'm not sure. Am I still obliged to comply with population control treaties, I'm not clear on how much preexisting diplomatic agreements disappear..."

Permalink

"Discussing that with the other new Amentan member states is probably a good idea but I can't imagine that anyone who just acquired a planet plans to keep their growth rate as low as when it was a necessity, and we would certainly protect you against retaliation for having a growth rate appropriate to your current resources - we actually don't care if you have population control at all, Mîr would always take people if you outgrew our ability to get you planets, but I understand that it seems like the height of irresponsibility to abandon them entirely without a plan to manage indefinitely."

Permalink

"A bit, yes. I'm considering - unlimited with disqualifications - it could be scaled down to the Voan system if it were ever necessary, just automatically disqualify anyone with two already."

Permalink

"I don't want to overwhelm our people with foreign - everything - at least not right away. Tourists, sure, we'll - see how that goes."

Permalink

"I think that's wise. Thank you very much for your time. I'll send introductions along over the next couple of days - when you submit people for teleportation you can say that I think that should get expedited review -"

Total: 2244
Posts Per Page: