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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"When they drop out, what reasons do they have?"

"Can't live with their boyfriend until they get married, their mother would stop speaking to them. Got pregnant while using condoms, hadn't wanted to get pregnant but think that abortion's killing your child so they can't do that either. Needed on the family farm, not in vocational school learning alien things. Worried if they're old no one will marry them. - surprisingly little 'I wanted to have a baby now'."

"...their mother would stop speaking to them? For living with their boyfriend?"

"If the British ones aren't like that it's only because they'd never dream of it. Without birth control the only way to be sure of paternity is to watch women very closely, right?"

"Well, you could also watch men very closely, but I suppose that would have to be more of a cooperative effort."

"No one seems to have gone that way. I think it might also be the strength differential? We picked Mombasa because it was liberal but not so liberal as to believe premarital sex is permissible for women."

Shasali nods.

"But once there's good birth control, and the social structure's weakened? I think they might find waiting until they're twenty-eight or something much less distressing than we do. There are anthropologists poking around trying to make better guesses."

"Twenty-eight would be... seven. A lot of us wait till seven or later... I was twelve, when we had Imeles... but with the short window, yes."

"I don't know if they'll try to make up for lost time or be fine, from there, with one every four years or so."

Kan Neli

"But some of the anthropologists think they're going to end up averaging about two."

"What a prosocial sort of number."

"Isn't it. I wish I could ask for another decade to wait and see but no one's going to approve that."

"Perhaps it would have been better if we'd found them later. Although I don't know how long it would have taken for the religiosity to attenuate. I've been told I'm going to Hell sixteen times this week."

"It might not have gotten better until they modernized in general, it clearly serves a lot of social purposes when they're poor and dying all the time. I've been wishing they weren't, on average, stronger than us - well, the men - because greying a hundred million people on whom we haven't imposed population controls is incredibly threatening."

"Do we need more greys?"

"Right now we've got a desperate labor shortage that is most acute grey but it should get better as they assimilate and require more accountants and less policing."

"Since they aren't casted right now in any formal sense they could be employed as police without leaving open the option to add them to the military."

"I think that'll do a lot to assuage nerves. And eventually I think we will take immigrants, which will do even more."

"Just purchased visas, or something more complicated?"

Kan Neli

"I want to award some to people who are here now on work visas and from one hellhole or another but I can't imagine anyone else feeling that altruistic. Maybe if we terraform Mars."

"There are mildly realistic prospects of terraforming Mars."

"That's encouraging. It's probably likely there are more Marses than Earths."

"It looks it. And if we had both then people who grow up on Earth and permaspring here wouldn't have to be a long expensive trip away from their families to live somewhere tolerable."