I've got a list of names | Glowfic Constellation

Afen is disappointed in the universe. He bounds back and forth across his room explaining why to his wife, his infant granddaughter, the end table, and a reporter flabbergasted by her good luck and cringing silently against the wall in the hopes he won't remember she's there.

"There is no reason to suppose that a species evolving independently of Amentans, with their own evolutionary history and living mammalian species likely related to theirs, would end up looking like us. None. Every explanation every scientist has ventured to the press has been unimaginative and unconvincing retroactive refitting of bad models to baffling data. Aliens shouldn't look like us but with different hair colors. Aliens that are not made out of carbon at all would be unsurprising; aliens with only as much physiological dissimilarity as exists between us and animal species on our planet would be mildly surprising; aliens with opposable thumbs would be truly remarkable. This is not remarkable and biologically enlightening; this is just inconsistent with everything we understand about the universe. It doesn't teach us new things about evolution; it should make us rethink evolution. - don't quote that part, they'll take it out of context."

Reporter nods rapidly.

"All of that said, I've picked up three of the languages and I'm working on building a good machine translator, it's a challenge with as little as they've produced in the way of electronic records. I'm absolutely going there to meet them as soon as the politicians figure out what to do with themselves."

"Do you have any predictions about that?"

"About politics? Why would I have predictions about politics? They deliberately obscure relevant information, for one thing, and for another it's deathly boring."

"- I mean, sir, surely you hear from your son about -"

"I have seven children and some of them are very dense indeed but not quite dense enough to try to interest me in politics."

"I was referring to -"

"I know who you were referring to. If you want a statement from Aitim go bother Aitim."

"Thank you for your time."

"I did not alter my activities in response to your presence and therefore you can't yet be said to have wasted any of my time though you should go before you do."

...out skitters the reporter.

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Nobody comes out to meet him.

He sits out front and watches people go by.

The one pediatrician leaves the building for her lunch break. She glares at him as she goes by.

"All I want is for you all to admit it, you know, and stop."

Glare of death.

"I know you know. You all talk to each other. But you'd rather lie to protect your friends than admit it and try to earn our trust instead of demanding it."

Hate hate hate hate.

She enters another skyperson building across the way for lunch.

Theodore hangs out by the clinic all day. If anyone asks him about the aliens he will explain that some of them sterilized his sister-in-law but some of them have said that was horrible and should be illegal and the ones who say that are probably trustworthy, it's the ones who won't admit it who are definitely trouble.

The pediatrician hates him on her way back from lunch too.

"I'm not really sure why you're mad at me instead of at the people who sterilized someone for no reason."

"I have no idea how many children you've gotten killed or disabled for the rest of their lives but I don't think it's zero," she hisses.

"All you had to do was say 'they did that, and it's evil, and they belong in prison, and I am opposed to involuntarily sterilizing patients who come to the doctor for help'. Your inability to say that does not make the fact people don't trust you my fault."

"My job is to help sick children. You are not entitled to assign me slogans to parrot back by holding sick children hostage to fearmongering disproportionate propaganda and you are vile for even trying." She marches into her clinic.

"Part of the job of a doctor is understanding medical ethics," he calls after her. "If people cannot trust that you understand any medical ethics you are a shitty doctor."

She is too far inside to hear him.

Well he wanted to say that so he goes inside to tell her.

Then he stands out front and redirects sick kids to a different pediatrician.

"What's wrong with this one?" somebody asks.

Amentan doctors sterilized his sister-in-law when she went to the dentist! It was horrifying! Some Amentan doctors think this was unacceptable but this one doesn't, so he wouldn't want to trust her with his kids, personally.

Many people are redirected to a different orange.

Eventually one of her colleagues comes out. "Look, can you leave us alone, please? We heard about Kitty Carver and it was awful and illegal and they're gonna get what's coming to them but that wasn't anyone at this practice."

"Would you all be willing to take a class on medical ethics? I think you would really benefit from it and then maybe people would trust you."

"We have documentation of all our credentials available to patients. We've taken them. You don't know anything about us."

"Yeah. We don't. And you're not trying to earn our trust, you're not trying to learn from us, you don't even understand that there's anything you could learn from us. You don't go to church, you don't go to funerals when your patients don't make it, you can't stand it when we touch you, they dragged her off and sterilized her and you are offended that people might not trust you."

"We're providing medical care and learning things from humans but the way to teach us isn't to picket uninvolved clinics. When you first showed up we didn't know anything about Kitty, you could have made her up, and when we did hear we were sorry to hear about it, but it wasn't us. We're not those same oranges. If people won't go to us for help because you scare them, they'll be sick."

"Did the people who did it take the same medical ethics classes as you?"