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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Peka Atan

touchme

"Me too, save some bleaching."

Michael unwinds himself from his wife to have a better angle and then waves his wand at each of them.

"I'm not sure," says Tiko. "Can I change my mind later?"

" - I mean, I could change it back. What's yours natively."

"Kinda brick red."

"It might be hard to get it exactly to what it was without having seen it. Are all of you married to reds, Timothy said Zachariah too -"

too-early-and-too-late

"Aitim's not, unless their family doesn't match ours well at all."

"You could technically get sued for saying that about important blues, you know."

too-early-and-too-late

"I did not know and am not impressed."

"I was not expecting you to be impressed, just, like, you should know."

"I'm orange," says Tiko.

"There's not reds any more, there's ex-reds and Mioleens," says Katin.

" - okay. Mioleens?"

too-early-and-too-late

"Places that didn't want to integrate theirs sent them to the rainforest. They sound great, actually, I would have no objections to being conquered by Mioleens."

Theodore Thowegood Way

"Population controls?"

too-early-and-too-late

"Guess there'd still be that."

"This is absurdly expensive and very personnel-heavy, it was pretty much going to have to be someone big and rich. Cene or Tapa if we hadn't gone for it, probably."

"What's better about Mioleens?" wonders Katin. "Like, we're friends with Miolee and stuff but Anitam was being liberal about reds before they existed."

too-early-and-too-late

"No caste system! And they'd hold us in less contempt over not being clean, I think, and maybe less contempt in general - there'd be less of the 'well, I'm not blue' attitude everyone except the blues gives us when people try to explain to them the horrible pain they're causing, and there wouldn't be blues, who I think are trained into serious deficits of empathy or something."

"Aitim's great," says Tiko.

too-early-and-too-late

Wizards look skeptical.

Tiko doesn't elaborate without prompting.

Ana holds out her arms for Joanna and Katin passes her over.

Theodore Thowegood Way

"Aitim set the executions policy."

"I think they're gonna get more elaborate and have more room for other possible sentences soon," says Ana.

Theodore Thowegood Way

"Which is great but the minute you go 'so first we tell a billion people that they'll be executed for resisting the occupation' you stop being a great person. Or a good person."