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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"Yes, I'm clear on that. You can still have trustworthy people, they just have to really work at it."

chanuphis

"Yeah. The tradeoff doesn't feel straightforward to most people now. I'm not personally in danger and I have a decent look at the big picture and the ear of Alien My Brother In Law but I can definitely imagine people unalloyedly resentful especially if a loved one was executed for throwing a tomato or not being able to read to flyers saying assault of aliens would be punishable by death or mistaking an orange for a ginger."

Nod.

Karen Dwimmer

planetarium

"It'll probably get better."

"Sure, I'm just thinking how to make that happen faster."

chanuphis

"It's hard. It would have been easier if there'd been more political latitude to handle things differently from the start."

"I mean, we could've taken things slower, but then the kids keep dying and slavery keeps existing and people keep getting executed for stars-know-what."

chanuphis

"Not necessarily slower but with less of an - attitude problem."

"I think you should have some people there who people can trust but I don't know how to find them, it seems like believing your religions might be important."

chanuphis

"They're actually interfacing surprisingly well with the churches but yeah."

"The religions don't happen to actually be true or anything, do they?"

chanuphis

"No."

"Bother, that'd make it easier. Is there, like, an underlying thing to them which it makes sense to want even knowing they're not true?"

chanuphis

"I'm mostly familiar with a few variants on Christianity, which isn't globally a majority or anything, but some people are very attached to the idea that they can be forgiven for whatever they have done wrong and get an afterlife when they die."

"I am thinking maybe 'find humans who other humans trust, make sure they have enough authority to fix things' is going to work better than 'find Amentans with authority to fix things, situate them to build trust'."

chanuphis

"Sounds plausible."

"Trickier, though."

chanuphis

"Yes. And human authorities aren't perfect either."

"That's mostly what makes it tricky. If I were recruiting Amentans I wouldn't worry that people might cover up child abuse because they don't want the children taken away, or discourage someone who wants an abortion from getting one because she'll be punished in the afterlife, or tell someone what to say so he doesn't get in trouble for beating his wife. With humans it sounds like all those things would come up."

chanuphis

"Yeah. I can recommend, like, individual humans that I personally know, I don't have good advice for finding them at scale."

"Aitim might be working on it already."

chanuphis

"He hasn't mentioned, except insofar as he's doing some distribution of information and resources through churches and I have yet to hear horror stories out of that."