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

"That sounds really hard, I'll just use the mind-control curse."

He doesn't have to answer that one either.

too-early-and-too-late

"List more ways to cut down on executions."

"Tell everyone that the observers are in their area and we want everything to look really good so there'll be some security assigned to escorting potential problems away before they get to the point of attacking. Might not work, if escorting people away provokes more confrontations, and would have to be temporary."

too-early-and-too-late

"You could hire humans for it."

"Not on short notice but medium-term, yes."

too-early-and-too-late

"Tell me about the observers."

"Everyone is concerned that Anitam would have incentive to mistreat Earth's natives because we want to be allowed to settle here and they are not loyal to us, not as sympathetic on the evening news, and all unclean. So the observers are here to make sure we do right by them, because it'd be terrible if more powerful aliens showed up and saw Amentans mistreating humans."

too-early-and-too-late

"- but since the observers are also Amentans and Amentans are kind of selfish and myopic, they haven't proposed not executing tens of thousands of innocent people, or not making humans take five hour showers we don't care about, or respecting local religions, or letting nomadic cultures be, or not imposing population controls."

"Some of them were concerned about the last rites thing."

too-early-and-too-late

"That was an incredibly major screw-up, I hope you realize that."

too-early-and-too-late

"Don't give me that look, I guarantee this conversation would not be more fun for you if I didn't have Veritaserum."

"I believe you."

too-early-and-too-late

"Are the observers making things better?"

"Substantially, I can justify humanitarian things I wanted to do anyway by saying there's an observer paying that particular attention. By Amentan standards we're being really excellent, for whatever that's worth."

too-early-and-too-late

"I had already gathered that Amentans had really low standards but don't object to having more evidence to that effect."

"We object to mind-control curses."

too-early-and-too-late

"Wizards do too, I would never get out of prison. But you conquer a planet, you stop having the right to be left alone by people more powerful than you who've decided to do what they want. That's not a collective responsibility thing - it'd be wrong to imperius random Amentans, even random colonist Amentans - it's specifically a you thing."

"You are -" He stops.

too-early-and-too-late

"Go ahead and finish that sentence however you were intending to."