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 playhouse is not a Miranda thing but any of them could be human things."

"I said they should go to Miolee but apparently they are short-range-teleporting wizards."

planetarium

"We can go farther but we still have to be sort of familiar with the location."

"Does looking it up on the internet work? You'd like Miolee, they're casteless."

planetarium

"Might work but if we do it wrong then only part of us goes. It's messy."

"Yikes, yeah."

chanuphis

"I do know how to fix that but it's, yeah, messy."

"Are we using the magic healing for disabled people and stuff, or no because secrecy?"

chanuphis

"Secrecy. It also doesn't work on everything, I have some kind of neurological thing where I can't balance well."

"Still, that sounds like it'll be great once it's not secret."

chanuphis

"Yeah, before aliens invaded we were working on weakening the Statute so we could do things about water quality and medicine and stuff."

"I bet we wouldn't have invaded Earth if we'd known about wizards."

chanuphis

"I bet."

"Would that have been better?"

chanuphis

"Depends what you did instead."

"Uh, steered completely away and gone somewhere safe."

chanuphis

"That would be worse."

Nod. "Then I'm glad it stayed secret."

planetarium

"...I really don't think you would have actually just left? Maybe waited but you still haven't found any other habitable planets."

"We could have a bunch of people on Mars with the resources we're spending on Earth. Wizards are a really serious threat - maybe they'd have tried diplomatic contact with wizarding governments but if it went poorly... almost no one would've signed up to go to Earth if they'd known they could be kicked out at any time, no one would want to risk their kids' lives...and it doesn't seem like 'credibly promise no wizards will make coming here have been a terrible mistake' is the kind of thing wizard governments are set up to do."

chanuphis

"It would have been fairly safe to quietly settle empty spaces."

"Now. Safe for our grandkids? A population you can't support long-term is the worst kind of risk, because when it goes south you have a refugee crisis on the kind of scale that starts wars."

chanuphis

"Yeah, I guess."

"They'd have tried to figure out how to do it. Maybe some place less risk-averse than Anitam would've gone for it, sort of 'settle at your own risk' thing. Maybe even if no country did it there'd've been desperate individual settlers who figured that as long as between wizarding shenanigans they kept a memory or two of their baby's childhood it'd be worth it."

planetarium