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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"Your religions are not actually true and not giving people access to birth control to artificially boost their numbers seems dubious. Do you think that humans might have gone extinct once they invented reliable birth control even without alien intervention?"

chanuphis

"It's entirely possible that people would have considered it a problem that we were declining and come up with something to fix that. There are wizards who argue for more Muggle intermarriage for that reason but it's not a winning status move and there aren't good affordances to meet Muggles to marry, so it's not that popular."

Minor Finis Way

"It doesn't help that it's not completely obvious that intermarriage doesn't weaken the magical bloodline or something. It sure doesn't look like it, and at this point we have enough data that I'm willing to declare it very unlikely, but if, say, wizards are people with more than fifty of some genetic marker, and most wizards have two hundred, it just wouldn't have shown up yet. So even people who don't think Muggles are animals had some reservations about encouraging intermarriage."

"Huh. Well, I guess it'll be your problem soon enough."

chanuphis

"I'm sort of hoping it'll turn out there's some way we can all cooperate but it doesn't look like 'Amentans pretend humans are just an immature Amentan society'."

"I hope it turns out there's a way for that to work too. It'll be really rough if there isn't."

chanuphis

"We're working on putting air on Mars for you."

"I got the impression that'll take a long time but it'll be great once it works."

chanuphis

"I haven't looked at the math. It'd be easier to do it actually on Mars so we could just make the items there rather than ship continuously air-spewing objects through space, and I'm not sure if your structures there would have a problem with the change in air pressure."

"Haven't looked into it. I think it's also not clear whether Mars has enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere if it's given one, but we'll see."

chanuphis

"...probably soluble, not immediately sure how."

"Yeah. I think all of these problems are soluble with enough time and effort and resources, but inside two years, not so much."

chanuphis

"Maybe we can stall long enough."

"That'd be good."

chanuphis

"Anyway, now you know what I sound like, so if I have an alt after all and Felix just can't be used that way but you find her for mysterious reasons you know what she should sound like. Since she'd have to be really outdoorsy to match me."

"All right! I will be on the lookout for people who sound like you to run into mysteriously."

chanuphis

"This is so weird. Oh and my actual first name is Ebele I just go by Miranda."

"Our names don't match at all and Anitami wouldn't even allow 'Ebele' but I'll keep that in mind too."

chanuphis

"I think the going theory was that your names are etymologically similar somehow."

"What's Ebele mean?"

chanuphis

"Kindness."

"I'll be on the lookout. Take care."

chanuphis

"Will do."

They see more sights. They encounter no Mirandas. Minor idly contemplates schemes to free people who are being executed but can't come up with any that aren't obviously a terrible idea.

chanuphis