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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The local wizard storms out in disgust.

Alicorn

The human warder does the wards as best he can.

The witch writes home. Her letter is published in the paper.

too-early-and-too-late

"I think they wanted things to hold up for longer than that -"

"Yes. At the rate people were moving, a year would be long enough -"

too-early-and-too-late

"Year is a long time for a lie that big."

"Do you think you could fix anything if you went there with - a lot of Polyjuice -"

too-early-and-too-late

"I hate Polyjuice. Yes. Maybe. I don't know."

"I think it's worth it."

too-early-and-too-late

Aitim does too. Off he goes.

Ebele Miranda Swan ༐

chanuphis

Alicorn

Meanwhile, Miranda continues to bring Kan to meetings with the infuriating blues to have infuriating conversations with them.

Sometimes they make progress! They all agree that if humans are showing low heritability of any traits, then it'd be silly for them to have castes. However, assert the infuriating blues, wizardry is heritable, isn't it, so that's indicative.

"The color of their skin is heritable too," says Kan, "I don't think that gets you anywhere."

"The default assumption should be that nearly all traits are heritable, because it wouldn't otherwise make any sense that -"

"I don't think that's at all necessary, and if they weren't otherwise very like us I'd think it absurd. Learned abilities might produce effect sizes far in excess of anything you get from innate ability, or aptitudes might be very tightly correlated, or heritable on a scale that makes them hard to alter - and looking at them, I don't notice any signs of particularly strong heritability of the traits we care about -"

"If you think that anything you've witnessed is remotely informative you're deluded. You're a hostage. It'd be a favor to Amenta if we shot you."

"If I thought that," said Kan, "I would have managed on my own."

"Oh, will they let you leave?"

Ebele Miranda Swan ༐

chanuphis

Alicorn

"We're not keeping him prisoner, we're hosting him after some credible threats were issued at his home."

"Mmmhmm. He can leave with us if he likes?"

"I don't care to, actually."

"There's been a lot of question of whether Aitim is the right person to be handling this for our people. If you showed up it might settle some doubts."

"Showed up where?"