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

"Thank god."

"And nobody's trying to make you switch to one, we want sewers everywhere but you can have wells."

too-early-and-too-late

"We didn't know enough about your technology to know if drugs in all the wells would be hard - or if the clinics were sneaking something else in with the vaccinations, the worry wasn't specific to the water supply -"

"Well, they're not doing that."

too-early-and-too-late

"Good for them."

Michael Cyrus Way

"You are going to cause all the religious people so much pain, you have no idea - if you take a Catholic family's baby away and give it to Amentans to be raised - Amentan - the parents are going to know their whole lives that their kid is going to go to Hell -"

touchme

"Go to what?"

waylaid

"Limbo if they're lucky. If that's a thing, it's sort of unclear."

Hug.

"It's not real. But neither is pollution and it'd still be fucked up to take babies away from Amentans and tell them you were giving the kid to undertakers to raise the kid to be a undertaker, right?"

"Wouldn't be popular," says Katin. "I bet a bunch of Tapai would take it over infanticide?"

Michael Cyrus Way

"Why have they not stopped that now that there are colony planets?"

"They don't have one," says Katin.

"They might not stop even then because it's an effective deterrent," says Ana.

Michael Cyrus Way

"Timothy -"

too-early-and-too-late

"One thing at a time."

"What are you gonna do?" asks Katin.

too-early-and-too-late

"I want Amentans stopped from bothering anyone else in the universe. And anyone who is conquering 'less civilized' societies clearly endorses the position that it's fair for societies to conquer and civilize them, if we happen to have the resources to do it properly."

Ebele Miranda Swan ༐

chanuphis

"So you're going to conquer Amenta?"

too-early-and-too-late

"I am going to make sure they can't do this to anyone else, in the least disruptive fashion available to us and without threatening anyone who isn't involved in conquering other societies, if there are such places."

Peka Atan

touchme

"Anitam's the only country that's found a habitable planet so far."

too-early-and-too-late

"Good, we're in no position to do anything now."

Makel Alasi

"I can't imagine you actually believe that people who think this was justified are all right with their countries getting conquered."

too-early-and-too-late

"No. But it changes how I feel about it. Same reason I was fine with taking over the Muggle European governments involved in overseas colonialism, they didn't really have a leg to stand on."

"What if the next aliens we find are really awful, worse than humans?" asks Ana.

too-early-and-too-late