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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too-early-and-too-late

"Yeah, they are, but - if Aitim were going to die we'd get him, let alone kids, it's at scale that this is hard."

thesignalandthenoise

"Yeah, I get it."

"It is kind of unusual historically, though, to go 'you conquered my planet and I'm angry and have the means to take it back' and not consider 'and have a show trial' or 'and make the point clear by shooting you on national television' or at best 'and give you an opening to flee if there's anywhere that'll take you' kind of implicit."

Minor Finis Way

"Killing people who aren't dangerous just seems incredibly fucked up."

thesignalandthenoise

"We do not and have not in living memory had enough room."

too-early-and-too-late

"Anyway Aitim is worried his colleagues will be terrified, and not smart when terrified. And he thinks it's finagle-able to break the news in a way that gets 'chastised' and not 'panicked' but that it'll be hard and involves more than just avoiding explicitly threatening anyone."

thesignalandthenoise

"He said he'd want you to read from a script."

too-early-and-too-late

"It's not that I object to reading from a script if it gets us what we want, but I will admit that plans that are like 'read from a script when having a complicated conversation with four people who will probably interject and stuff' do not inspire confidence. We're not in a hurry, we can learn how to do diplomacy the Amentan way."

thesignalandthenoise

"You know it gets costlier to kick us out the longer we stay, right?"

too-early-and-too-late

"We don't have all the infrastructure yet, or anywhere near the resources to manage the power vacuum appropriately. And we don't have Mars done."

Afen Kisantami

greengreengreen

"We haven't actually even started on Mars."

Ebele Miranda Swan ༐

chanuphis

"Starting Mars will be obvious and has to wait for a clear game plan."

too-early-and-too-late

"There's no rush, they don't even have working reversible long-term birth control yet. In fact the trials have been riddled with problems."

Michael Cyrus Way

"What a shame."

too-early-and-too-late

"It actually is a shame, voluntary reliable long-term birth control is really good. But the controls would be awful."

thesignalandthenoise

"I think if we were less obsessed with babies than we are we'd think abortion was less of an awful outcome than we do and we'd be tempted to go forward even if some people would predictably have to rely on it to comply."

Michael Cyrus Way

"I'm glad you're not going ahead with that because when you start forcing people to kill their children we make you leave."

thesignalandthenoise

"I'm glad we're not doing that too but I'm not sure you appreciate the extent to which it looked like you were about to learn the population control lesson even more violently and miserably than we did and would benefit from a civilization that knew what to do."

too-early-and-too-late

"Yeah, Aitim thought he was being real humane about it. I - understand that if we were like you it'd be better than just letting it get settled with wars, and that you're in this respect dealing with us the way you'd want to be dealt with. But, still, it isn't needed and it is horrible and so we can't let it happen."

thesignalandthenoise

"Inconveniently you are secret and Hala can't publish."

too-early-and-too-late

"We are so secret. Aitim's trying to find evidence of this tendency among non-secret humans - I was optimistic that 'Muggle nobles often stick to a couple' would help but apparently Amentan nobles did that before controls too, sometimes, and made do with side babies."

Michael Cyrus Way

"Side babies."

too-early-and-too-late

Shrug. "Amentans!"

chanuphis

"Side babies?"

too-early-and-too-late