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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too-early-and-too-late

"Great."

He gets hair dye and an aging potion and finds a hex for boots that makes you several inches shorter.

No one grabs him the first few times they try it.

Back in Anitam, Tahike Lam gives birth to a yellowy-orange-haired baby boy.

He seems healthy. A number of people are quietly delighted. Some of them with a credit lined up for the spring write wizards asking about gamete donors.

Some wizards don't care super much! It is much easier to find male than female donors.

This satisfies some, if not all, of the Amentans looking! They would prefer intelligent conscientious healthy wizards insofar as there is variance in wizard quality.

Wizard interest in helping drops off as they require more elaborate tests.

Lots of people will make do with whatever wizards they can get.

Minor Finis Way

Minor figures out how to make wi-fi work in warded houses. He does not take credit for this invention in the Theoretical Journal of Wards, or anywhere else; he forwards it, grumpily, to the Amentan actors.

chanuphis

There, there.

"Next thing we're working on is hardware that tolerates Apparition. It'd be nice to get it before contact happens but, well, we'll see."

too-early-and-too-late

Timothy, when not pretending to be Aitim, is quietly getting in touch with Amentan-sympathetic Muggleborns in societies that are particularly unfriendly to them.

There are those! Elio can help if he is asked and Timothy is willing to go around Erica's glaring.

too-early-and-too-late

Timothy will totally ask Elio for help on that. In Erica's hearing he will be reticent about what he wants them for.

Erica is so annoyed at him interrupting Elio's vital lying-around-doing-nothing-not-being-imperiused time.

too-early-and-too-late

Timothy can weather glaring. And get names. And go find people and ask for their word with respect to secrecy and then explain that there are Anitami wizards, and the Anitami wizards are interested in immigrants to teach them the human style of magic and are offering titles whatever your blood was on Earth.

Wow, titles?

too-early-and-too-late

Yeah! He has a letter from the Anitami wizards. The Anitami wizards are imagining that talented and knowledgeable Earth wizards will be hard to persuade to leave Earth, so they want it known that anyone who does choose to immigrate can have a generous resettlement fee and a hereditary title and five children. "They think that's very generous, the children, skypeople are funny about children."

"I've noticed that," says a Muggleborn witch. (Anitami is becoming quite the lingua franca among people who travel at all.) "Is the title good for anything?"

too-early-and-too-late

"It's a vote in their governance system and your children would need it to get into the best school and you get in less trouble if you break the law, as I understand it."

"Huh. What's the law, does it have a lot of showering for five hours?"

too-early-and-too-late

"No. I think they use cleaning spells more often than we do but they don't have any laws about it, that's the Muggles. They're very serious about the Statute - they have to be, because their Muggles are so meticulous - people get in trouble for that. There's law about having more children than allowed, there's contract law, they frown a lot on hexing people at random."

"But hexing people at random is half the fun of having a wand."

too-early-and-too-late

"Well, if you think you'd be too tempted then maybe it won't suit."

"What do they do instead?"

too-early-and-too-late