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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chanuphis

"The Imperius Curse requires separate training to defend against reliably, although Occlumency won't hurt."

Aitim Neli

"The training for that one is hard to arrange, because the spell can only be cast from a mindset mostly incompatible with wanting to teach someone self-defense."

"Hmmm."

"A lot of this is just an argument for very systemic decision-making that is very traceable to specific evidence and ideally to a previously recorded intent to react in a certain way to evidence."

Nod.

chanuphis

"Magic interacts poorly and usually destructively towards electronics, although it's possible we just need to study how to deal with them and then it'll be trivial."

Aitim Neli

"But it will probably continue to be very hard to edit the contents of an email stored on a server somewhere without knowing where the server is."

chanuphis

"Probably, yes. And we may have an outright range limit that technology doesn't seem to."

"All right," says Intal. "Thank you two very much for travelling all the way out here. Is there anything we can answer for you while you're here?"

chanuphis

"What are your desiderata for the magical Anitami government?"

" - well, it needs to ban doing mind-altering magic to our citizens, and assist us in bringing to justice wizards who commit any other crimes against our citizens, and cooperate in other respects with law enforcement, and enforce population controls. I think everything else will depend on what's helpful to make it convincing."

chanuphis

Miranda writes all this down. "Magical governments are often modeled as though they are a branch of the Muggle government but I don't know that anyone will expect this of an extraplanetary instance."

"That seems like a reasonable way to structure it, and makes the chain of command clearer."

chanuphis

"Well, in the Earth cases there isn't a chain of command between the two, but you could use the structure for that."

"I think it makes sense for them to answer directly to the council."

chanuphis

Miranda writes this down.

"Anything else?"

chanuphis

"How will this affect the citizenship status granted to humans in general?"

"We don't typically allow dual citizenships. I'd need more information about the wizarding governments to say anything more definitive than that."

chanuphis

"What would you need to know?"

"Under what circumstances would someone be in a position where fulfilling their obligations under Anitami law required breaking wizarding law, or vice versa? Do people to whom this is relevant want Anitami citizenship, and which things about it do they want, and is Anitami citizenship the best way to create a legal structure surrounding those persons that produces those things? How often and under what circumstances do wizarding societies go to war with each other, and what does that look like?"

chanuphis

"The Statute of Secrecy often requires memory charms even when no wizard has committed a crime, including a Statute violation - rampaging magical creatures, for example. I'm not fully familiarized with the rights and privileges associated with Anitami citizenship but anticipate that most humans will find having a caste annoying. Wizarding societies almost never go to war directly with one another but may back Muggle proxies quietly."

"So then a challenge associated with dual citizenship would be that persons might be obliged by their magical citizenship to commit what we'd regard as, and prosecute as, mass aggravated assault. You didn't mention any reason any of them might want Anitami citizenship, if they don't then I can't think of any reason to claim it exists."

chanuphis

"It's possible there are advantages to Anitami citizenship that outweigh the drawbacks; as I said I'm not fully familiarized."

"What is your faction hoping to achieve through assisting us?"

chanuphis

"Prosecution of the casual use of mind-affecting magic and crimes it enables, a greater voice for human values in the governance of Earth, general flourishing of all sapient beings. - There are more than just humans, there are some magical nonhuman sapients concealed under the Statute along with magical humans and animals and things."

Aitim Neli

"None of which have a substantial population growth rate," Aitim offers when someone looks about to ask that, "though in some cases we don't have enough information to assess whether it'd be higher under less constrained circumstances."