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

"I want to abolish the death penalty. I want to lean on the Catholic and Anglican churches to modernize about sexual ethics but in a less heavyhanded way that doesn't either crush it or create a bunch of martyrs. I want local rule but an overarching authority with enough power to stop wars and stuff. I want your trains and sewers and hospitals and schools if the schools can exclusively teach science and languages. I want everyone who likes roaming the plains as a lifestyle to get to keep roaming the plains - have you moved them yet -"

"No. We're trying to at least only move them once, means you have to be sure of what the plan is before you bother anyone."

too-early-and-too-late

"So I want them left alone forever. I want industry, I want starships of our very own. Does that give you enough of an idea?"

"It will probably be useful to know how you trade these things off against one another but it's definitely a better thing to be compelled to optimize for than 'shoo Amentans once we have their stuff'."

too-early-and-too-late

"So now what I have. I am a member of a secret society of humans called wizards. We can do magic. We thought you could do magic too, at first, the things you were doing were the sort possible with magic, but as far as we know you're all Muggles - non-magic users. Do you have any reason to believe that's not the case?"

" - no."

too-early-and-too-late

"There are around twenty million wizards in the world. It's hereditary, mostly, sometimes turns up in the random human population and sometimes a wizard population turns a squib - someone who can't do magic. You have it or you don't, though people can vary in intelligence, reflexes, study habits, working memory, attention to detail, and therefore in ability to use it. Things we can do with magic include duplicating objects, finding people anywhere in the world - that's how I found you - building things that are bigger on the inside than the outside, teleportation, transportation networks, turning most objects into other objects, healing people, doing household chores with a wave of a wand, making cursed objects that adversely affect anyone who touches them, causing a vast array of effects on another person by waving a wand at them, including turning them into an animal, killing them, stunning them, paralyzing them, altering their memories -"

Sudden understanding.

too-early-and-too-late

"Yes, that's the plan, no I haven't done it to you specifically before - lasting absolute mind control of up to a couple of people at a time, depending how complicated the instructions you want them following, assuming the appearance of another person, love potions -" he goes on a while. "Should I let you write this down?"

"It would probably make me more useful to you."

too-early-and-too-late

He waves his wand. The paralysis evaporates. He hands him quill and parchment.

"I don't know how to use this."

too-early-and-too-late

"It's not hard."

Aitim is maybe-deliberately getting flecks of ink all over everything.

too-early-and-too-late

Timothy flicks his wand irritably and cleans them all up.

And he copies everything down. "Okay. The executions - can you think of a way to fake them? There aren't many, if I were sending the locations in advance -"

too-early-and-too-late

"Can't you tell your people to fake them?"

"It would be bizarre and put lots of other things under lots more scrutiny and the grays might start doing the court's job for them and say they resisted arrest."

too-early-and-too-late

"People who answer to you through secret channels instead of through your government?"

" - I could probably ask some people to do that but it'd be adding a lot of points of failure."

too-early-and-too-late

"How many executions are happening every day?"