where you think you're going | Glowfic Constellation

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"...and it would offend everyone, yeah."

"I don't understand how your concept of purity works," says the first alien, "but making the purity-keepers grow wings would not make there be less war."

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"I was thinking it might make there be fewer purity-keepers. I am irritated by the concept of purity-keepers, whose job seems to consist entirely of murder. But it might well do more harm than good."

"If you want to kill all the purity-keepers, just kill them!" says the third alien. "Don't psychologically torture them into suicide!"

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"The idea was that it would discourage anyone else from attempting to purity-keep. But you do have a point."

"Panicking purity-keepers are the last thing we need more of, anyway," says the first alien.

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"Yes, you do seem to have too many."

"It's inconvenient. At this rate I'll never get my paper finished."

"Only you would think of academic publications at the end of the world."

"I'm making some really interesting discoveries about mineral formations!"

"It's a pity the planet isn't being attacked by talking rocks, then you'd be just the expert we needed!"

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"I'm not actually attacking you. I'm just sitting here," Cam points out. "I haven't directly killed anybody."

"You must have figured out by now that when you do things at people they panic and kill themselves," says the third alien.

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"Yes. But if I don't do things at people, then it seems pretty likely that eventually they'd come back to the weird physics place and kill humans. I'm trying to permanently solve that problem and it's really, really hard to do it when practically nobody will talk to me, let alone open treaty negotiations."

"I don't know if we can help you," says the first alien.

"I'm pretty sure we can't," says the third alien.

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"Okay. Would you like to be evacuated from the planet while it has its civil war?"

"...yes," says the first alien, hesitantly.

"Sure, why not," says the third alien.

There is a general consensus on this point from the six people having this conversation. Two of them also want to bring family members.

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"Are the family members going to try to kill me? I'm getting kind of tired of people trying to kill me."

"My children aren't idiots!" says one of the family-having aliens.

"Neither are my siblings!" says the other.

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"...So either you're calling basically the entire army idiots or you didn't answer my question."

"A whole lot of people have been acting like idiots today," says the third alien. "Nobody's relatives are going to try to kill you. They're not soldiers or purity-keepers."

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"Okay. Round 'em up and I'll make you a shuttle."

Everyone collects up their relatives and whatever sentimentally significant objects they can grab. The first alien has what appears to be a bag of rocks.

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Of course.

The ship autopilots up. Cam monitors it to keep it out of the smallish amount of orbital fighting going on.

The aliens on board argue with each other about the philosophical implications of Cam's existence.

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Of course they do.

"Is there somewhere out of the way you'd like to be stashed or should I make a bigger ship to hold all of us and bring you to the next planet?"

"It would be absolutely insane to go with you to the next planet!" exclaims the third alien.

"But I don't know where else we would be safe..." says the first alien. "I don't know that anywhere is safe."

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