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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"It sounds like maybe they will mysteriously run into the same person under implausible circumstances."

chanuphis

"It seems like it!"

There is dessert! Blues complain about the worker shortage - "it's practically impossible to get any construction done -"

chanuphis

"You could import humans. They're doing a lot of the construction on Earth, with Amentan supervisors."

"Not allowed until they have population controls. I bet people'll be delighted once it's possible, though."

chanuphis

"Why can't you have humans work here until population controls are imposed?"

"It is impossible to be here for more than a couple weeks and not realize that Amentans think it's really really important to have population controls and have them ourselves and are very serious about them. And once that gets out people are going to panic, probably marry sooner to have kids while they can..."

chanuphis

"If they want any."

"Or spiteful, apparently."

chanuphis

"Or that, I guess. Although Pelape thinks we have more difficult pregnancies - nonmagical humans do anyway - so some people might not have that much spite in them."

"Modern medicine might make it easier."

chanuphis

"It might but she thinks that's not the entire gap."

"Huh. Well, I think it'll be really good when humans can come here to help with the labor shortage, knowing people as reliable coworkers and so on helps with feeling like we're one people."

chanuphis

"To the extent that's the goal, yeah."

"What do you think would be a good aim?"

chanuphis

"I'm not really sure. There's a lot of competing considerations and what's politically realistic is an awful constraint on top of that. I have reservations about Amenta just sort of eating my entire species without fixing some foibles I really don't want us to pick up."

Nod. "Castes, killing people like we're short on space even now that we're not, are there other ones?"

chanuphis

"The obsession with being clean. We had to take decontamination showers when we got off the ship and even with a TV in there it was mind-numbing. I get that to the extent we want integrated populations we're the ones who have to bend on this one but like, if that's what it takes maybe we don't want integrated populations that bad. Sewers are good, five hour ritual cleansing no."

"I mean, people don't do a full decontamination frequently. I worry about having areas that don't maintain pollution standards because it's believed to sort of sink in with extended exposure. Maybe someone can approve a faster procedure but, I mean, it takes almost a week to get here from Earth, is it really so specifically terrible to spend five hours of that showering... is it something fixable about the shower..."

chanuphis

"The TV helped and might have helped more if your TV was better but there's definitely a limit to how tolerable it can be."

"What is objectionable about our TV?"

chanuphis

"Eh, might just be my taste."

Karen Dwimmer

planetarium

"My Anitami isn't as good as hers let alone Minor's but it might have been good if I'd been able to follow it."

"I can't say I avidly follow any daytime television but I'm curious if humans have, like, sufficiently different tastes that all our media is boring."

chanuphis