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cleanliness is next to godliness
Amentans in Gilead
Permalink Mark Unread

If you were a Gileadite kid in the nineties, there weren't a lot of fantasy novels. Fred read the Narnia books until the covers fell off his copies, and every time he saw a hall closet or a wardrobe he would sneak in and press his hands against the back and hope that someday the fur coats would turn into snow and fir trees and a lamppost.

Now he is a dignified adult, close to fifty, and he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. So he doesn't check the backs of closets anymore, at least not often or when anyone is looking. 

So when he opens his closet door and sees a bar instead of his ordinary suits, without hesitation he goes inside. 

Permalink Mark Unread

The bar is currently empty, and currently small and cozy. There are stars exploding outside the window.

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"Hello?"

He feels a bit silly for expecting the bar to immediately produce a distressed fawn or a talking beaver or some other sort of immediate connection to the plot.

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Hello, reads a spontaneously generated napkin. Welcome to Milliways. Can I interest you in a drink? First one is free.

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"Don't mind if I do. Black coffee, please."

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A black coffee materializes. Enjoy.

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He takes it and sits by a window, watching the exploding stars. 

To be honest, if he spends his Not Narnia experience drinking a black coffee in space, that will be enough. 

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Stars explode.

And the door opens to admit a young woman with cobalt blue hair busy on a handheld device and speaking into an earpiece. "Thank you, Uncle, I appreciate that. Every vote-counting volunteer makes it that much easier on the rest of them -"

Permalink Mark Unread

Cobalt blue is not a color hair comes in in Gilead. Not because it's illegal or sinful, of course, God didn't make any commandments against blue hair, but it's considered vaguely disreputable, not the sort of thing our kind of people do. 

Still, Fred considers himself a cosmopolitan man of the world. It occurs to him that she might not be human, but he dismisses it quickly. Reality is not a low-budget science fiction TV show, and he knows enough to expect aliens to be truly alien. Cascadian maybe? Canadian? Maybe even European? Any of them would make sense of a woman being involved in vote-counting. 

God, he thinks, I'm not complaining, but there are way easier ways to get me to talk to a Cascadian.  

"Ma'am?"

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Her head snaps up. She looks about in evident bewilderment. The door clicks shut behind her, and she looks back at her device, frowning. She hesitates, then takes out her earpiece.

"Yes?" she asks him, appearing to expect that he'll explain himself.

Permalink Mark Unread

Definitely Cascadian. Outside of Cascadia, no one with blue hair has that much of an air of authority.

"Hello, ma'am. I am Commander Waterford of the Republic of Gilead and when I opened my closet this morning it turned into a bar. I assume a similar thing happened to you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm Acting Governor Avalor of Voa and I was attempting to enter my office."

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So not Cascadian, there is no place called Voa in Cascadia. Maybe Voa is a province in some country in Africa or Asia or something? Where they had white people with blue hair being governor? 

Fred wishes he had paid more attention in international relations class.

"The bar communicates in napkins and will give you a free drink if you ask for one."

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Avalor looks skeptically at the bar. "I see," she says.

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"I'm quite sorry, it's my fault-- what country is Voa a province of?"

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"Voa is a country," she says. "I'm reasonably sure there is nowhere called the Republic of Gilead on my planet, and your hair color is also implausible."

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Pause.

"...So what you're saying is that either this is a very elaborate practical joke, or you're a bad-sci-fi-show alien."

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"If your sci-fi shows also use implausible hair colors to mark aliens while using ordinary actors to play them, yes, I suppose I am a bad sci-fi alien," says Avalor coolly.

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"Usually they go with rubber foreheads and enlarged ears."

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"Ah," says Avalor. "Well. Is the fact that I hear you speaking Voan a technology of yours or of this location?"

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"It's not mine. The bar could write napkins in English, which makes me think it's the location."

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"I see." She addresses the bar. "Are you producing this translation effect?"

Not me personally, but the establishment is, yes, replies the bar.

"Thank you," says Avalor. "Could you explain it in more detail?"

Persons in the bar, as well as the hotel upstairs, the other common rooms, and the backyard, will be able to understand one another as though speaking and writing a common language. Writing brought out of the bar will in this case be written in the language intended by its creator. Persons departing the bar retain no unusual comprehensibility or comprehendibility.

Permalink Mark Unread

The bar has the power to change what Fred can see and hear. So far, the bar seems to be friendly, but he should take care before taking any serious steps based on what he sees or hears here. Fortunately, he has access to linguists in Gilead, who can learn Voan and double-check any information he gets from her in this bar. 

...That might explain why Avalor looks human except for her blue hair. The bar is giving her a form that he's comfortable with. 

Still, no need to rush into the revelation of her monstrous tentacled form. He sips his coffee and says, "why don't you get a drink, ma'am, and we can compare notes on our countries?"

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"I'm not thirsty, thank you, but I'd love to hear more about the Republic of Gilead."

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She couldn't have asked a more specific question? Oh, yes, Fred, summarize your entire country in three sentences for the blue-haired alien who may or may not secretly have tentacles. 

"We were established about twenty years ago, after the fall of the United States of America. It's been a bit of a rough transition, I'm not going to lie, but things are getting more stable every day. We try to serve God, to protect the family, and to bring peace and justice to our people-- none of which, I might add, the United States was particularly good at."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some of that isn't translating usefully... Voa was recently released from hostile occupation by a foreign conqueror, the Empire of Oahk, following a coup leaving the Oahkar government incapable of continuing to project power abroad, and I'm reconstructing Voa as best I can. How did the United States fall? What is God?"

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He was about to respond with something about the terrorist attack that killed millions when he hears her last sentence and doesn't quite believe his ears.

"You know, God? The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent creator of the universe?"

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She blinks at him politely. "I'm afraid I'm not acquainted."

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Fred had ever taken a class on witnessing. However, that was over forty years ago, and even then they focused on witnessing to people who... had heard of the concept.

Um.

If Fred were a protagonist in a science fiction novel, he would take Avalor through ten proofs of the existence of God, make her aware of her sins, tell her of the saving grace available to her as a free gift, and have her kneel to pray the Sinner's Prayer right there. Instead he says, "I mean, this bar appeared out of nowhere so we could meet. Doesn't that seem kind of... miraculous? Like there's Somebody who made that happen?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think I would have said 'magical'. Can you comment?" she asks the bar.

I don't directly control the door. The entity who does is referred to as 'the Landlord'. To my knowledge they don't claim omnipresence except insofar as there are no conventional spatial boundaries to this establishment, nor do they claim omnibenevolence; omniscience is arguable and omnipotence, if present at all, appears to be wielded solely through applications of the door and manipulations of intraestablishment time flow.

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"It could be God. Or an angel." Fred has the sinking feeling that his argument is not very persuasive.

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I cannot confirm or deny. My information about the Landlord is limited, replies the bar.

"Thank you," Avalor tells the bar. "What's an angel?" she asks Fred.

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"Angels are God's messengers on Earth. They do miracles and tell people about God's will."

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"Oh. That sounds useful. They didn't help with the fall of the United States?"

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"Many people think God wanted America to fall because it did not honor Him."

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"The angels didn't specify?"

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"Angels are usually more concerned with individuals' relationships with God than with world politics."

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"- you have relationships with him through intermediaries? Isn't that awkward?"

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"No, God has a personal relationship with each of us, if we choose to reach out to Him."

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"Then what are the angels for?"

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"God works in mysterious ways, I guess? I'm sorry, I'm a politician, not a pastor."

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"...Perhaps it's not important. I also asked how the United States fell?"

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"Terrorist attack. Millions of people died, including the entire previous government."

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"By whom? Are they still a threat? How did the current system replace it?"

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"Muslim extremists-- uh, Muslims are people who are wrong about what God wants. We invaded the country that harbored them and killed their leader. The military was mostly intact and was also mostly Gileadite, so they took over. My title, 'Commander', was originally a military title."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's interesting. We separate politics and military service on Amenta, the planet where Voa is."

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"We used to. It was called 'civilian control of the military.' Unfortunately, it's just not practical when the entire government is dead."

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"I see. I'm not sure it would have been internationally tolerated if the caste that composes our military had tried to take political control even if all of the caste that composes our politicians had died instead of just most."

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"...Caste?"

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"We have castes. I'm blue, the caste that does politics, landholding, judiciary, and other things that are more like those than like any other caste's specialty. We indicate it with hair color; if it doesn't match, we dye it."

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"Do you choose your caste?"

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"No, we're born into it. My parents were blue."

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"You don't let people do politics unless they're born to the right people? That's--" Wait. Probably he shouldn't anger the godless aliens. "--an interesting way of doing things."

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"We'd actually suspected most intelligent species would have invented castes. It allows specialized education and, over time, eugenic selection within each caste for traits that benefit its lines of work."

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"Eugenics is against God's will. The last time someone tried it they killed six million people."

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"...eugenics is against... God's... will?" she says slowly, like she's not sure she's heard him correctly.

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"All people are created by God individually and He loves them all equally, regardless of their abilities. All life is precious, no matter how short or how impaired. We are supposed to care for those afflicted, not to sterilize them or kill them."

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"...if you don't sterilize people who can't or won't control themselves, they'll have children, and there will be less room for the children of healthy law abiding citizens who'll be most likely to have healthy law-abiding children. Voa's population control system doesn't take this nearly as far as most countries, we have a two-per-family guarantee for anyone who doesn't commit crimes or resort to social services, but I don't think I've ever heard the claim that the underlying principle was unsound, just that the cost of enforcement might be too high or something."

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"Insufficient room is the opposite of the problem we have."

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"Really," she says with sudden interest.

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"We dumped huge amounts of bitoxphosphene into our atmosphere a century ago. No one knew any better. I-- I don't know how it would affect aliens, but if human women breathe it growing up, it makes many of them infertile, it makes them likely to become infertile as they age, they have miscarriages, children are born and die within a week in horrible pain..." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know the substance by name. We do look very similar but I don't know how likely that will be to reflect similar underlying biology."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's also possible the bar is modifying what we see to make us look more familiar to each other."

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"I have two legs, two arms ending in hands with five fingers each including one thumb per, one head with two eyes, blue hair..."

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"That sounds exactly like humans, but we know this place is modifying our speech so that we can understand each other, I don't know whether it modifies 'eight tentacles and a beak' into 'two arms and one head.' You have to admit that sounds more plausible than your species and humans happening to be identical except for hair color."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is that also something this place does?" Avalor asks the bar.

Apart from occasional mild size warping, no.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not to criticize our distinguished host, but the bar could be lying. --That said, this place's powers probably do not extend outside the place itself, so if we decide to do anything other than have a nice cup of coffee and discuss the existence of God, we should go back to one person's or another's home planet, and then we'll be able to see if either of us has tentacles."

Permalink Mark Unread

If I may, the bar napkins, if you exit and close the door, the bar will no longer be behind it when you reopen it.

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Fred does not believe in letting Aslan decide when you return to Narnia. 

"Is there some way one of us could-- hold the door open, I guess?"

 

Permalink Mark Unread

As long as a person from a given world is inside of the bar with the door closed, time in that world will typically be paused. While the door is open to a world, time runs at the same rate in that world and in view of the open door.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds like a job for interns."

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"Yes, that doesn't sound like it will be a problem," agrees Avalor.

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"You seemed interested in our infertility problems?"

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"We have the complementary issue. The reason Voa was conquered was because someone considered our two-children-per-family policy an inadequate commitment to population control. Everyone wants more children than there is space for them to have, and we don't have an environmental disaster making infertility particularly common."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Someone conquered you about-- is that that eugenics thing again? They were angry because you were letting the underclass breed?"

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"...no, they felt threatened because they believed our population would grow and we'd feel the need to seek more territory from our neighbors by force. Two-per can be humanely net negative if it's enforced strictly enough that people in fact don't have third children, because some people will choose not to have any, and some people spring sideways, and some people die before they can reproduce, and some people can't find partners; but the Empire's ostensible belief was that it would be too easy for people to have third children unauthorized if they didn't have to interact with a population control board in order to have them at all. Someone might go to a hospital in a different city to have their third, say, and if the left hand weren't talking to the right this might go unnoticed until the statute of limitations ran out and we could no longer confiscate and adopt out their baby."

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"But surely that wouldn't be a serious problem, would it, not if birth control is available and you're trying to discourage births..."

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"Oh, birth control is available, free, strongly encouraged, distributed in schools two weeks before the first day of spring to three year olds, but people want children, Commander, and we don't have your infertility problem."

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"Humans don't. I mean, people want one child, or two... but pregnancies are awful and babies keep you up all night and they scream and you can't go to the movies without hiring a babysitter. Gilead has made birth control illegal, we've made surrogacy a religious duty, we have financial incentives for children, we've made women working outside the home functionally illegal, we have every child-friendly policy we can think of and our birth rate is a hair above replacement because people will smuggle contraceptives from Canada to stop themselves having children."

(Fred files away 'three-year-olds being given contraception' in the 'baffling' folder next to 'spring sideways.' Maybe they start sex education early.)

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"...I see," she says. "Er, if you happen to know, how did you not die out as soon as birth control was invented? Also, how is forbidding women from working going to help?"

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"Reliable birth control was only invented a hundred and fifty years ago and was frowned upon by many religions for much of that time. If women can work outside the home, they won't start looking for a spouse until after they've finished college, they'll delay having children until their career is together, they'll stop after one or two kids because more would be too time-consuming, lots of women won't have children at all because of the cost to their careers... that's what's happening in Canada."

"Of course, God also wants women to be keepers at home," he adds as an afterthought. 

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"A hundred and fifty years is a l- how long are your years?" she asks.

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"365 days, a day is 24 hours, an hour is 360 seconds, a second is as long as it takes to say 'one-Mississippi.'"

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"Our years are longer than yours," she concludes.

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"...Thaaaat makes sense of you giving three-year-olds contraception. Our three-year-olds are this high"-- he indicates-- "and if someone has sex with them it is a very serious crime."

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"- hopefully they're not even fertile yet so small," she says. "Ours aren't till they turn four, sometimes five."

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"Oh goodness no, our children aren't fertile until twelve or thirteen. By law, they aren't allowed to have children until they're at least sixteen."

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"All right then. Four year old Amentans are adults, with adult proportions. They turn four at the start of springtime - do you even have seasons -"

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"We have times that are warmer and times that are colder due to the tilt of Earth's axis but we don't... require everyone born the same year to have the same birthday..."

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"We can only conceive in spring. There can be up to a season of variance in chronological age and later-born children are more likely to spring at five instead of four."

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"Humans are equally fertile in all seasons."

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"There are species on Amenta that work like that, but we aren't one of them."

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"Good thing, too, I can't imagine how bad your overpopulation problem would be otherwise."

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"We have population controls, which are everywhere now thanks to Oahk, that being the only arguably good thing they did with their war machine. Most countries have instituted a system of selling child credits by auction. There's us and a few imitators, and there's also Oahk and some countries that spent longer under their sphere of influence and assimilated more and copy their system, where some blues are authorized to give permissions to handpicked parents."

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"It seems like if your species had our infertility problem you could just let the fertile ones have as many babies as they want and not have to do anything else. Sounds nice. Other than the riots from the infertile ones, I mean."

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"We'd probably have to have some kind of punitive taxation on any household that contained only two adults and their children so they'd acquire roommates and share," says Avalor.

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"We strongly encourage surrogacy. It is not at all uncommon for a woman to have two or three children before she has ever had sex."

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"Surrogates exist in Amenta, but it's generally considered a harrowing occupation - having to give up a baby -"

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"Oh, surrogates in Gilead love it. It's a blessing from God to be able to do it, you know."

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"I suppose if you don't like babies very much. You did say pregnancies were awful?"

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"Three months of fatigue and vomiting, three months that are basically okay, and three months of being swollen up like a whale that constantly has to pee. --I have to say, I had been previously under the impression that humans like babies the normal amount, given that they are both very cute and very hard to take care of."

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"Our pregnancies aren't like that," says Avalor. "Well, the swelling, I suppose? If you want to phrase it that way."

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"Probably accounts for a lot of it. Not a lot of women want to sign up to be chronically ill for nine months and then be tortured, especially more than once."

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"I don't think I've ever heard childbirth described in quite that way before."

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"Let me guess. Not only is childbirth only mildly painful for your species, you also have 100% uptake of painkillers because no one believes God wants them to give birth without painkillers."

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"...No one is rejecting painkillers for that reason, correct, although some people have allergies or other reactions to the strong ones and get by with the sort of thing one takes for headaches, and of course there's always the odd person who winds up giving birth on a boat because the baby came a month early, or stuck somewhere during a disaster of some kind..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't bother to give the headache medicine to birthing mothers because it won't have any effect."

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"What an oddly specific headache medicine. I'm sorry things are so difficult for those of you who can still bear children."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What I'm gathering from this conversation is that we have a lot of space and a desperate need for a next generation, and you have very little space and a desperate desire to create a next generation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, I've noticed that. I'm not sure Amentan immigration would fully satisfy your needs, since it's unlikely we're interfertile even if I assume the translation effect is not in fact eliding chelicerae, and we don't exactly have unattended babies to adopt out - we do use that as a consequence for violating population control laws, but there's plenty of domestic demand, more than enough -"

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"We can fully supply our people's desire to have children. But the infertility crisis presents... a problem, and an opportunity." 

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"Yes. We'll need to get some greens looking at the chemical and see if it would negatively affect any Amentans who went to your world."

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"You didn't ask what the problem and the opportunity were!"

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"I was assuming the problem was that you're barely treading water with respect to dying out and the opportunity was that you have places Amentans could live. Is that not it?"

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"The problem's right. The opportunity is... most countries are handling the infertility crisis more poorly than Gilead is, because they don't listen to the teachings of God. In a century or two, their populations will be tiny, and everyone who isn't over sixty will be taking care of someone who is over sixty. I don't... take any pride in war. I consider myself a peaceful man. But I will rejoice at the opportunity to start a new crusade and take back the world for God."

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Avalor's lips thin. "Hmm," she says. "Why is it that they don't listen to the teachings of God?"

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"Six thousand years ago, not long after the world was created, our ancestors listened to Satan and rebelled against God. Since then, human nature has been inherently twisted towards evil. I imagine a similar event happened in your history."

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She blinks. "No analogous events come to mind. Our world is also older than that. Our calendar is nearly three and a half thousand years in, and our years are probably at least three times longer than yours, and we existed before we began to keep time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You don't even know what God is, which makes it somewhat unlikely that you'd know the details of your planet's salvation history. I suppose if we make contact this will be a matter for... xenotheologians? Which I guess is a job now?"

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"That - career - is translating oddly - we have theologians -"

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"Do you, now? What do they study?"

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"To oversimplify - lifestyle advice. They'll tell you to wake up early and phone your grandparents and some of them advocate meditation and they're also the experts on the spread, containment, and melioration of pollution."

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"That word is also translating oddly... does 'pollution' mean toxic stuff that's pumped into the air and makes people sick?"

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"The word for that isn't unrelated but the kind relevant to theologians accrues to waste and corpses. And reds, who work with polluted things when necessary."

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"Red is another caste?"

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"Yes. A small one, less than half a percent."

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"I wonder if your theologians and our theologians are, in some sense, the same job..."

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"They don't sound closely related, but perhaps there are sympathies beneath the surface dissimilarity?"

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"We never thought we would meet aliens, but people still wrote fiction about it. In a lot of fiction there was this idea that God wrote His law on the heart of every species, so that if they think about it very carefully they'd be able to learn what God wanted from them, even if they didn't know He existed. I think your theologians might be doing that." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I see. I'd be delighted to source you an Amentan theologian to discuss this with at some point."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How about your theologians discuss this with our theologians. We'll come back in a week to find them all debating how many reds can dance on the head of a pin."

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"I... assume that makes more sense in English."

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"An old joke about theologians is that they like to debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, since angels are incorporeal and in theory don't have to take up any space at all. It means that they're debating irrelevant minutia."

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"They're incorporeal? How does that work?"

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He spreads out his arms. "Not a theologian."

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"That's specialized knowledge? All right. Er, excuse me - bar -"

Yes?

"Is there a way for me to contact people from my world without the door - ceasing to exist -"

Yes. If you hold the door open, your signal will be restored and you will also be able to call out to people within earshot. If you let go of the door while you're inside the bar, time will stop in your world; if you let it close while you are in your world, the door will no longer be a door to here.

"I see. Commander, is this a good time for me to ask my uncle to find me some suitable greens to send here?"

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"I have no idea what greens are, so... maybe?"

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"Greens are our academic caste. And art, but it's in the academic capacity I'd be looking for some."

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"Seems like a good idea. You get some people from your world, then I'll get some people from my world for them to talk to?"

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"Yes. We might, it sounds like, need to both spend some time standing around holding the door to allow time to elapse, but it's a small price to pay." She heads back to the door, taking her device out of her pocket again. She opens the door, and holds it just a little ajar. "Uncle? Yes, sorry, I got cut off for a second. Can you come to my office immediately? I need you to look at something. Thank you."

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Fred, seeing that he is going to be on a break for a while, goes up to the Bar. "Can I have another coffee and something to read while this happens?"

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Of course. That will be $2.55 for the coffee plus $3 if you'd like to keep the book. Both appear. The book is a sci-fi paperback.

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Fred pays, then sits with his coffee and his book. He enjoys the SF novel greatly and is only minorly confused by the fact that no one prays and it is universally assumed that no children talk to their parents after the age of sixteen.

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Avalor's uncle arrives. He has yellow hair and he's shorter than she is. He is very confused while Avalor summarizes, but eventually introduces himself as Secretary Bar. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Commander," he adds.

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"I assume you're another caste, but I haven't had... blondes? Yellows? explained to me yet."

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"Yellows," confirms Avalor. "Clerical work, computer programming, office jobs in general."

"They have different castes?" asks Bar.

"They don't have them at all," Avalor tells him.

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"My mother cleaned houses and my dad was a cop! I'm one of the leaders of our country, mostly because my wife wrote really good self-help books!"

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"- how did the self-help books -" begins Bar.

"Later," says Avalor. "Right now I need you to go back out and find the right greens for this. We want a theologian, a - biochemist with medical research background or maybe a couple, there's a chemical in their world which might or might not affect us, general xenology types."

"No Oahkars?"

"You can use ones who've been through the citizenship process, if they're really best for the job, but don't be wowed by all the dots after their names."

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Fred understands most of what is going on!

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Secretary Bar nods and departs. Avalor lets the door close. "Your turn, and then we can try to have them all arrive close together."

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Fred sticks his head out the door.

"Serena, come here please."

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Serena Joy hurries to Fred's side. "Yes, dear? Your ties are-- what is that?"

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"As you can see, by the grace of God, my closet door has turned into a doorway to an extradimensional bar and I have made first contact with aliens. We're talking immigration procedures."

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"I'm going to need a theologian, a bitoxiphosphene expert, and some people who have thought about aliens. The best you can find on short notice. Oh, and tell Nick."

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"Tell Nick so he can... reschedule your meetings...?"

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"No, tell Nick because he's a member of the secret police."

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"Nick is a member of the secret police?!"

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"Yes, obviously. I'm a Commander, of course I'm being watched by the secret police. You're a smart woman, you can come up with some excuse to tell him. Let him disappear afterward for as long as he wants, and don't send in anyone until he's returned with whomever he wants on the team. If this first contact is going to go well, the Eyes have to be on board."

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"Is there anything else you need?"

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"Not at all. As soon as I close this door, I believe it will turn back into a closet; please don't be alarmed, I can open the door from this side. Goodbye, my love." He pecks her on the cheek and closes the door. 

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"You have a secret police?" asks Avalor.

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"Don't know why they're called secret when everyone knows about them. They're called the Eyes of God, they root out heresy and treason."

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"Heresy? - Also, I believe you're wrong about how the door works. The bar said that time would be stopped in our worlds; I think that means my uncle and your - assistant? - can't make progress without us standing here with the doors open. I just think we should do that for a period of time that means none of them have to wait while we do."

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"Serena Joy is my wife, heresy is believing things about God that aren't true, and are you thinking 15 minute shifts?'

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"Depends on how quickly they make progress. If Uncle Bar needs to tell someone to get to my city via six hour train ride, and Serena only needs to go next door, I should hold the door for quite a while before you."

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"Fifteen minutes at a time for now and we'll change it up when we have a better idea how long it will take?"

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She nods. She goes to the door and opens it. Her uncle is still nearby. "Uncle," she calls, and he pauses to look behind him. "Please also have the greys block off this corridor and send me - Anda be-Sogin, please, to hold the door for me and be a last guard between the rest of the building and the door just in case."

"Of course," Secretary Bar replies.

Avalor waits. A minute later a woman with steely grey hair in a uniform, white with blue trim, appears. "Governor," she says, making a gesture similar in tone to a salute.

"Anda. Please, stand here and keep the door open, and keep an ear out for anyone approaching, I want to control this news."

"Yes Governor." Anda takes the door.

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Fred settles down with his book. 

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Avalor was going to explain what greys are but there will be time for that later. She sits and keeps an eye on her device. Eventually, "My uncle's estimating two hours until everyone arrives, but it's more likely to be longer than shorter."

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"Let me ask Serena."

He gets close enough to the door to use his phone, takes it out of his jacket pocket, and texts her. After some time of reading books and occasional pings from his phone, he announces, "Serena says six hours, so it'll be five and a half."

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"She pads her estimates?" asks Avalor.

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"She makes reasonable estimates, but then once she says them out loud they're a goal, and Serena Joy would never be satisfied simply meeting a goal."

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"Ah, I see," says Avalor. "You can take two or three turns at the door to Anda's one, then. Is there any other basic information we should exchange before our help arrives?"

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"Not that I can think of."

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So Avalor chats with Anda softly instead while they wait.

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Fred finishes his book and asks Bar for another one. For some reason, in the other one, God lives on the moon and judges poetry contests.

It is unbearably tragic. He finds himself the closest to crying that he's been in, oh, three years.

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And eventually the Secretary returns with some greens. He introduces a theologian, a pair of biologists, and a linguist. One biologist and the linguist are men, if Fred is counting.

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Fred is not sniffling at the end of the book at all! He has allergies to Milliways, that's all. He dabs at his eyes with the handkerchief.

He notices but does not comment on the fact that half the team is women.

A few moments later, Serena returns with a theologian, a linguist, two biologists, a science fiction writer, and an aggressively normal-looking man who, if questioned, will give his job as "administrative assistant." All of them are men except the science-fiction writer.

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Avalor, while waiting, has recorded a short video of herself authorizing the cordoning of the corridor so no one thinks she's being violently deposed by all the greys refusing to let anyone by.

The green linguist is chatting in fascination with the bar; the biologists are muttering to each other while looking at the human specimens available but stop when their opposite numbers arrive, the theologian has been brushing up on her introductory level stuff so she can explain theology to the unwashed aliens.

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"Who should talk to whom? I assume the theologians should talk with each other so that Amentans' knowledge of God does not come solely from a guy who usually does housing policy."

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"Yes, I assume they should pair off - I did not fetch a science fiction author, I confess I'm not sure what the relevance is..."

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"Until quite recently, we believed that God had only created one sapient species, so science fiction writers are the only people who bothered to think about aliens much at all."

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"Oh, I see. We have always assumed there might be more. Although we expected to encounter them via someone traversing space in ships, not, ah, this."

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"Dr. Rosen is a specialist in bitoxiphosphene; is there one of your biologists that it makes more sense for him to talk to?"

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"I'm a reproductive biologist and this is a biochemist," says the male biologist, "she'll recognize the chemical if we know of it - or at least know how to look it up in that chemical dictionary, if we have service here -"

"We do as long as the door's open to Voa," says Avalor.

"And I'll know about its relevance to Amentan fertility if any."

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"So biologists with biologists, theologian with theologian and SF writer, linguists can step outside into my bedroom so they can hear each other, and the administrative assistant can float and write things down so that we have excellent notes on all the conversations?"

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"Is that safe," asked the linguist. "The stepping out. We don't know about the chemical yet - perhaps you could come to Voa instead -" he tells his opposite number.

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"We've never seen any negative effects at anything less than a year's exposure. But Governor Avalor should make the final decision, the advantage of my bedroom is that no one will enter it who doesn't already know that aliens exist."

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"It might be harmless to us but it might also be much worse," Avalor says. "I think the cordoning of the hallway should suffice. The linguists can use Darmakga's office, it's next to mine if you turn right exiting."

Off go linguists.

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The theologians and SF writer also pair up. 

The human theologian begins trying to explain the watchmaker argument. 

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"- hang on for a second," says the green theologian after listening for about one paragraph. "I was told you were a theologian, are you actually some kind of evolutionary biologist?"

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"Evolution is false. God created the world six thousand years ago."

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"Oh! On Amenta, evolution is true. I'm surprised that even translated, what are you hearing it as?"

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"Evolution is a lie spread by atheists in our world. I'm not entirely-- I mean, science is not my field, but the arguments against it seem like they ought to apply to every world."

"Maybe God chose evolution as His way to create Amenta," the science fiction writer says.

The human theologian looks suspicious about this. 

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"It's a robust finding. It's not my field but they covered it when I was two, and I took a few courses on things other than theology in university," says the green. "But it's interesting if you aren't the same way, that has all kinds of implications, in particular I'd expect you to be put together better under the cosmetic similarities if you were designed. Is there a reason you decided to start with that topic, is it related to how you do your kind of theology?"

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"It's one of the primary arguments for the existence of God, who is our creator. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving."

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"- why are you arguing about his existence?"

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"Because one of the angels, Satan, rebelled against God and deceived people into believing God doesn't exist."

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"Oh. We haven't heard from Satan on Amenta either, so we were just taking your word for it about God. I assume we'll hear back from Amentans who visit him about the details at some point."

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The theologian is not entirely sure how to sort out the misunderstanding here!

Finally, he settles for "so what do you guys do?"

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"My specialty is the theology of caste - I didn't have time to grab a copy of my book, unfortunately - but I teach introductory theology classes so I know the basics of theology of pollution, theology of family, and theology of care. Castes are - my summary indicated you didn't have castes, is that an oversimplification or is that really so?"

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"We do not limit occupations based on anything other than innate aptitude and, of course, gender."

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"Gender?" blinks the theologian. "- oh, that's probably about your fertility crisis, of course you probably have a public interest in keeping anyone with a working uterus away from the military or logging or whatever."

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"While men and women are of course equal, they were created with different and complementary personalities and aptitudes. Men lead, provide, and protect; women nurture, care, and submit."

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"I... see. Last word has... odd connotations... anyway, our castes are blue, green, yellow, orange, grey, purple, and red. Blues, like Avalor, manage land, make policy, and judge court cases; greens, like me, do research, study, art, and music; yellows, like the Secretary, do finance, computer, and clerical work; oranges, of whom there aren't any examples on hand, do medicine, nursing, childcare, and teaching; greys, like the guard at the door, do police, military, and sex work, plus -"

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"Sex work? Do you mean to tell me you have a caste of prostitutes?"

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"- plus modeling, athletics, and dance? They're not all prostitutes."

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"If I may?" says the science fiction writer. "First, Amentans do not know God or His teachings, they have no way to know that prostitution is wrong. No doubt to them it is like buying or selling any other service. Second, as I've explored in my writings, sexual morality is likely to be different for alien species. A cat is not sinning when she has promiscuous sex, nor is a fish sinning when he abandons his children. No two snowflakes are alike, why would two species be alike? Prostitution might not actually be sinful for Amentans."

"But they are buying and selling women's and children's bodies, trafficking people into sex slavery, and she puts it in a sentence next to modeling as if that's okay--"

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"- not children! Women and men four and up, adults. And slavery is illegal in Voa - in most parts of the world in fact - it's a voluntary occupation -"

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"You can't get people to voluntarily be prostitutes, even if they say they're consenting it's probably because they have low self-esteem and don't believe they can find love any other way and want to turn themselves into objects," the theologian says heatedly.

"Humans. You can't get humans to voluntarily be prostitutes," the science fiction writer says.

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"- Excuse me," the green says to Anda. "Are you related to any prostitutes?"

"...Uh, my grandpa, in the off-season... why?" she says.

"Does he like his job?"

"Yeah, he's going to go full time when he ages out of skiing...?"

"Thank you."

"If it turns out we need a prostitute for first contact please don't call my grandpa, at least not while I'm here, that would be so awkward."

"Of course not," the green assures her.

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"Your grandfather is a homosexual prostitute?!"

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"He's not homosexual," says Anda, bewildered. "He's straight. If we need a homosexual grey for some reason I'd have to call my aunt."

"We don't need a homosexual grey," says the green theologian. "I think. What's the issue exactly?"

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"Among humans," the science fiction writer says, "the clients of prostitutes are almost always male, so we assume that a male prostitute is a homosexual."

"Women and men face different sexual temptations," the human theologian says. "Men are more visually stimulated, so they are tempted to hire prostitutes. Women have strong emotional longings, so they're tempted by, you know, romance novels and dressing immodestly and emotional affairs. --Wait, your family includes a prostitute and a homosexual? I'm so sorry, is there anything I can do to help--"

 

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"...I'm confused," says Anda. "I'm a guard, not a, whatever I'd have to be to follow this - professor, do you know what -"

"I'm sorry, I don't know why he's offering to help either," apologizes the green. "She doesn't need any help. Her family isn't unusual or - troubled. Amentan men and women are pretty much alike, we don't have this difference you're talking about."

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"Excuse me, can I talk with you privately for a moment?" the SF writer says to the human theologian.

When they're at a private table, she says, "do you think Jim Elliot would have evangelized the-- whoever he evangelized-- if he had spent the whole time being outraged about their sexual ethics?"

"I mean, no, but--"

"The Amentans have literally never heard of God," the SF writer says. "Of course they lust, they have no grace to do better. Their one chance of getting God's grace is you and you are screwing it up because of your self-righteousness."

"I don't think this is a very ladylike way to behave," the theologian says.

"And I don't think judging the Amentans for their sins is a very Christlike way to behave, and yet here we are," she says. "Do you want me to talk to Commander Waterford about this?"

"Young lady, I am a doctor of theology--"

"And I am a high school dropout who writes midlist science fiction," the SF writer says, "and yet I'm pretty sure I'd win this argument. Shape up." She returns to the table with the Amentans.

The administrative assistant, who was watching this conversation, takes a note. 

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The green theologian blinks politely at them. "- did you have more questions about greys, or should I summarize the remaining castes?" she asks.

(The linguists have written down each other's alphabets and transliterated them, and then quickly run into diminishing returns associated with being unable to understand each other; they return to the bar to spell words for each other by pointing at their alphabet charts, which seems to work fine.)

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"Please summarize the remaining castes," the SF writer says with a pleasing smile. 

The human theologian is grumpily silent. 

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"Purples do farming, retail, factory work, cleaning, unskilled labor generally, construction - they have some of the most variety, which makes sense since they're more than half the population," the theologian says. "And there are reds, who most people don't talk about much because they make everyone uncomfortable; they handle polluted things, such as waste products, dead bodies, and each other. Accordingly they live in segregated districts, though they come out to work with appropriate barriers to contact with clean people, places, and things. I haven't wanted to be rude but one thing we do need to establish at some point is whether you're clean."

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"I don't think we know what the words 'polluted' and 'clean' mean in this context," the SF writer says.

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The green winces a little. Anda, still in earshot, stiffens slightly. "Well," the green says, "if you haven't been being careful, it might be that you're not, but unless any of you come from a long line of undertakers or sewer workers, that can be fixed with a shower, which we can tell you how to do to the international standard."

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The theologian is now extremely confused and silent!

"Could you walk me through what pollution is, assuming that we know absolutely nothing about pollution?" the SF writer says.

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"I can try," says the theologian. "I've met hyposensitives - there are Amentans who aren't as concerned with the concept as much as they ought to be, or at least don't come by it naturally - but I've never met someone who didn't know anything about it at all before, hyposensitives are sometimes even rather preoccupied with it after they've been to therapy and so on for the condition... do stop me to ask questions if I go too quickly or something. So - uh, will an evolutionary explanation make sense, or should I try to think of another way to explain where pollution sense comes from?"

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The SF writer says, "Let's go with a non-evolutionary explanation, since as far as I know we were not created by evolution and until, uh, today thought that evolution was mathematically impossible."

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"Mathem- okay. So... never mind how this happened, I suppose... Amentans have an innate concern with things that might be sources of contagion. Oh, do you have infectious diseases at all, since you were designed, should I grab one of the biologists -"

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"We do," the human theologian says, "they happened after humans rebelled against God."

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"That seems a little extreme, we have treaties against bioweapons on Amenta - I suppose that's neither here nor there, I'll leave treaties with God about bioweapons to the blues. So, we have infectious diseases too, and we don't want to catch them. We quarantine sick people, we require everyone to be vaccinated against anything they might otherwise get, we have an international holiday about the invention of plastic and another one about glass because they're so useful in keeping things clean. We don't like bugs or mold even though those things aren't strictly themselves infectious diseases, because bugs can carry it and mold can be poisonous in a way that mimics disease. But that's all the biological underpinning. There are some things that are dirty, are a bad idea to handle, are repulsive, even if we can verify with advanced instruments that there is nothing poisonous or infectious on a specific instance."

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"Pollution makes sense," the SF writer says agreeably, "as a thing for an evolved species to have. Probably we don't have it because God created us as-is, instead of using evolution as His tool."

"Infectious diseases are not a bioweapon," the human theologian says, "it's sort of... the natural outcome of the Fall of Man. It twisted the whole universe: it created predators and parasites and diseases and all manner of evil things." He does not seem inclined to offer an opinion on the validity of pollution.

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"...we have predators and parasites too. I'm not sure how a rebellion could cause that. Do you want to elaborate on that now or should I go into more detail on pollution?"

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"Probably best to finish the explanation of pollution first, then we can talk about theodicy," the SF writer says.

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"That's not translating," says the green. "I'll be interested to learn what it is. Anyway, some things are polluted. The primary pollutants are: waste from people - that's defined formally as substances the body actively rejects, which is in our case - you might be different - vomit, urine, pus, and feces, and the products of coughing and sneezing in a sick person, but not blood, tears, sweat, saliva, healthy people's mucus, hair that happens to fall out, shed skin cells - those all leave the body for other reasons. Historical cultures have considered some of those things polluted but as we've learned more we've concluded that they aren't. Another primary pollutant is corpses. You can tell a story about this originally having to do with people who died of disease still being contagious, but it applies even if they died for other reasons, like accident or an allergy attack - the body is still polluted. And there's reds. Reds are Amentans, and red is an Amentan caste, but the red jobs are ones that involve dealing specifically with pollution. Plumbing, corpsetaking, we also have them take away ordinary nonbiohazardous garbage but in principle purples could do that. Over enough generations of this, the pollution became ineradicable from the reds themselves. They're conceived polluted, born polluted, polluted all their lives, and can't wash it off in the shower the way other people can. So jobs having to do with reds that don't strictly have to be done by clean people are also the province of reds."

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"That sounds awful!" the SF writer says. "I assume you give them lots of money or honor or social status or something to make up for having to be polluted forever?"

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"They do get paid for their work, but it would be very difficult to give them honor or social status considering that nobody wants to think about them," says the green. "They're certainly very important."

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"That sounds like a problem," the SF writer says sympathetically. "Maybe since we don't have a pollution sense we can talk to your reds? We've probably going to want to send missionaries-- those are people who teach other people about God-- anyway."

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"Well, I don't think that's going to get any traction until you demonstrate that you understand pollution. It's a really serious problem, and if someone who was confused wandered into a red district and didn't decontaminate - I don't know how the extradition will shake out, you understand, but pollution crimes go all the way up to capital."

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"We believe in respecting other people's beliefs," the SF writer assures the green, "and we would definitely never send a missionary who was going to commit capital crimes."

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"I still don't think talking to reds is a great idea. What are the missionaries for?"

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The human theologian takes this one. "When God created the world, everything was good. Then humans rebelled against God and sin and death entered the world. To save us from sin and death, God became a person named Jesus. Jesus lived for 33 years and taught us how we should live, then he died on a cross for our sins. Three days later, He rose from the dead. Now, you can be freed from sin if you accept Jesus into your heart as your personal savior. If you do, you will get eternal life in Heaven, while if you don't you will suffer eternal torment in Hell. We want to spread the good news of salvation to everyone so that everyone can rejoice with us in Heaven."

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The green theologian looks completely blank at this. "I understood some of those sentences," she says.

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"Can you say the first thing you were confused by?" the theologian says.

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"So, if everything was good... and humans rebelling against God was bad, which seems implied... why did a bad thing happen when everything was good?"

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"God gave human beings free will, which meant that even when everything was good we could still choose to commit sins," the theologian says.

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"All right, but why did they do that?"

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"They were tempted to sin by Satan."

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"Who's that and why weren't they also good? Also 'sin' seems to carry more weight for you than is translating."

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"Satan used to be one of God's angels. He decided that he wanted to be ruler of all creation instead of God, so he rebelled against God. He was cast out of Heaven and now he tries to do everything he can to keep humans from God. Sin is a thought or action that falls short of God's will. The wages of sin is death."

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"- are you telling me you people drop dead if you think something he tells you not to?"

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The human theologian is not sure how to untangle the confusion here. "No, death entered the world when humans sinned for the first time. We all deserve death because we are all sinners. But due to God's free gift of grace we can all have eternal life at His right hand."

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The green turns to the sci-fi author. "Help me out here," she says.

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"Sin doesn't make you literally physically die," the SF writer says. "It's a sort of... metaphorical and spiritual thing. You separate from God, who is the source of all good in the world, and that means your life is empty and doesn't have good things in it. If you accept God's forgiveness, then you can be close to him again. Also, after you literally physically die, you can either go to Heaven or Hell. Heaven is eternal closeness to God, while Hell is eternal separation from God. If you've committed sins and haven't accepted God's forgiveness for them, then you will go to Hell."

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"There's... a lot to unpack here... was my explanation this confusing? I was trying pretty hard but maybe it sounded like this to you and I need to go back over it... How do you go somewhere after you literally physically die?"

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"I think I mostly got your explanation," the SF writer said, "but it's totally possible I misunderstood something that is going to bite us in the-- I mean, that's going to cause problems later on. Okay, so, humans have two parts-- we have a body and a soul. The soul is the part that does thinking and morality and stuff and it's eternal and nonphysical. When we die, our bodies become corpses, but our souls go on to Heaven or Hell. At the end of the world, our bodies and souls will join back together and we won't die or get sick or old or have impulses to commit sins."

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"You don't have brains?" asks the theologian. "- do your bodies not decay when they die?"

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"We have brains," the SF writer says. "They're sort of a... soul-body interface, I guess? Like, if you get brain damage, it's harder to do things, but I wouldn't think that affects the actual soul. Bodies decay when they die. The body we will get is a new, spiritual body, but it is expected to generally resemble us physically and so on."

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"So you don't rejoin them, you get replacements that still look like you. And you'll be mentally altered somehow, so you no longer want to do or - think - things that - God told you not to?"

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"Yes! Like how we were supposed to be in the beginning. But only the people who have accepted God into their hearts. Everyone else goes to Hell, which is a place of eternal suffering and torment separated from God."

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"You know, I bet Voa can take immigrants as long as they don't want to have children."

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"Immigrants... from Hell?" the SF writer says.

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"Yes. It, uh, it might be a problem that they're dead, but if they don't have bodies it seems harmless, they could go - somewhere - shall I call the Governor over to get that set up right away -"

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"Souls in Hell-- and Heaven for that matter-- are incorporeal and we do not have the ability to meaningfully contact them or arrange for immigration procedures. Our primary source of information about Hell and Heaven is God Himself, when He chose to live on Earth."

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"Right. Uh... I'm sure you've already considered this but I'd be remiss if I didn't ask - have you considered that it might be dangerous, for you, to talk to aliens, because of your problems with thinking the wrong thing? I'm sure you all have a lot of practice being very careful, but we don't, and if one of us says something that inspires a - sinful thought? - I wouldn't want to get you in any trouble."

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"Don't worry about it," the SF writer reassures, "humans commit dozens of sins a day. That's why entry into Heaven is based on accepting God's forgiveness, not based on not sinning-- He knew we couldn't! And you understand why we want to send missionaries. We're worried that you commit sins but don't know that you can accept God's forgiveness, so you might go to Hell."

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"Uh," says the theologian, "I'd been taking your claims so far to be about humans. I don't really see any reason to believe that this sort of thing happens to Amentans, at least not in our own jurisdiction, I suppose if some of us move to Earth we might have to deal with all these problems you have."

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"You wouldn't necessarily know," the SF writer says. "The only reason we know is that God told us! Otherwise our world looks absolutely identical to one in which none of this happens."

The human theologian makes a grumpy noise. 

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"Well, uh," says the green, "God didn't tell us. You're telling us, but you're telling us about things that happened to you. We think with our brains, and don't have experiences after we die, and so on."

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"You might have lost the records of Him telling you, or maybe He never told you in the first place, or all sorts of things," the SF writer says.

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"I don't think we can assume that something we have no record of happened in Amenta because it happened on Earth," says the green. "And I'm not sure why that would seem like an inference you could make - it doesn't work the other way, you never invented castes - maybe you're using genders as castes -"

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"The gender-as-caste thing seems right to me," the SF writer says. "The genders have different aptitudes, different educational systems, different occupations both historically and at present... See, God created our world, and we're not sure that there's any way for a world to come into being without God creating it."

"There's actually a theological argument which implies that if other worlds exist then God must have created all of them--" The human theologian begins to explain Plantinga's ontological argument.

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The green makes a face, and makes more and more of this face as the argument wears on, but doesn't feel the need to interrupt it with clarifying questions. She just says, "I don't think that goes through," when he seems done.

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"Was something confusing? It's a bit tangled, I can go through it again--"

"I'm sure," the SF writer interrupts, fearing another half hour of Plantinga, "that the argument will be easier to follow if you give her a book recommendation!" 

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"That sounds great," agrees the green. "Maybe it'll - make more sense - written down."

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"And maybe you can recommend some books of theology for us?" the SF writer says. "I think sexual ethics and pollution are going to be the things that are hardest for us to reconcile, especially since caste is sort of like gender."

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"My own book is about caste but I can recommend some things on sex and pollution - sex isn't a core theology topic but some people focus on details including that one - let's see, Targena's Fourth Winter Book - it's aimed at older kids, but that might be the right level of basic? Kids who are about to spring for the first time and suddenly find sex relevant. And there's a chapter on it in Riade's Overview of Theology of Care. For pollution the text I assign students these days is Mirovor's Introduction to Delicate Subjects and my daughter liked Scrollmaker's Pollution Handbook for a less university level take."

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"I think the best way to explain sex," the SF writer said, "is that for us sex is a topic treated with as much delicacy as pollution is for you, and with as much likelihood of accidentally causing offense. For example, 'so-and-so's grandfather is a sex worker' for us is sort of like saying 'so-and-so's grandfather is an undertaker' for you, if undertaking were a job anyone could get into if they had sufficiently bad luck and poor life choices."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- they couldn't, it's a caste-locked occupation and they wouldn't have clean grandchildren wandering around polite society, but, uh, all right. We can try to screen greys who you might come into contact with for that, if you like? How many generations out, it might start to be difficult if they can't have fourth cousins in the trade. We don't want to oblige you to interact with anyone who bothers you, I'm sure the Governor won't mind swapping Anda for someone else..."

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"But, see, we don't have castes," the SF writer says, "so anyone could become a sex worker. You don't have to worry about screening greys for that. In the past, they were considered dirty, but today we try to have compassion for them for having experienced so much trauma and having so little self-esteem that they would work in this profession. I'm afraid that a lot of humans will act in a way that your greys perceive as very condescending."

"God's law is eternal," the human theologian says, "you can't just say it's okay--"

"They're aliens who don't have gender," the SF writer says, "I think it is a pretty safe assumption that God's law is different for them than it is for us. I think, in general, about Amentans, we should assume that she is right and we are wrong."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess we can avoid anyone coming through here who does sex work on the side and doesn't want to be condescended to about that. - what do you mean, that we don't have gender? We aren't using genders as castes, but Anda and Avalor and one of those biologists and I are female, and Secretary Bar and the other biologist and our linguist are male..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is there anything to gender other than physical biological sex and maybe certain statistical differences in personality?" the SF writer asks.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think there are statistical differences in personality. I guess pregnancy and breastfeeding count as physical biological sex, if I'm following you. Uh, most people are attracted to the other sex and not to their own, though there are people who are attracted only to their own or to both -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"In humans, uh, maybe Dr. Brown can help me here--"

The human theologian, whose name was in fact Dr. Brown, says, "Men and women are equal in dignity, essence, and human nature, but are distinct in role-- men have loving authority over women, while women are to offer willing, glad-hearted, and submissive assistance to men. We see a basic difference in their natures. Women naturally desire to stay home to take care of their children, while men naturally desire to go out into the world and conquer."

The SF writer has a surprisingly sour expression on her face when she says, "yes, that. We have a certain... sense of ourselves as male or female, most of the time, that's separate from our physical sex. What Dr. Brown says is the most popular theory of gender in Gilead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, how interesting. Um, is there a way you can phrase that that's less about personal matters like - the word I'm hearing is 'submissive' which I assume translates back as whatever you said, but in Voan it sounds very strange and like something you wouldn't normally talk to strangers about. Anyway, all Amentans with vanishingly few exceptions love children, especially little ones, so it depends on specific parental careers which ones get to look after the children or if they split it. My husband paints murals, so I took our babies to work with me till they started school on any day he wasn't staying home."

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Dr. Brown looks like he's about to say something about the natural feminine nature leaking through even in aliens, so the SF writer, whose name is Andrea, says, "'Submissive' just means that men are supposed to make the final decisions about things affecting the household and women are supposed to obey even if they disagree, although of course in a well-run household most of the time the husband and wife will come to a consensus. There are some other things it affects, too-- for example, women aren't supposed to teach men about God. Why, what does it sound like? Something about pollution?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"No, it sounds like something about sex, which is why I was talking around it. That sounds like it would put a lot of stress on marriages but maybe it works for you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, what do you do when the husband and the wife disagree?" Dr. Brown says. "Someone has to make the final decision."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It depends on the couple. I think maybe we just talk about such decisions longer, or have a sense of who has more stake in a particular matter? My brother and his wife sometimes have their son tiebreak, over things that aren't over his head."

Permalink Mark Unread

Dr. Brown makes a hrmph noise. 

"Is there anything else we need to talk about?" the SF writer says. "Otherwise, we should probably figure out how to swap book recommendations."

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"It seems likely," says the green, "that even if you don't have the history of a specific group of people doing red work for generations, so none of you are hereditarily polluted, you might, since you haven't been avoiding it explicitly, be temporarily polluted. We'd all feel a lot better if you took decontamination showers when planning to interact with Amentans, and then kept up with maintenance protocols as long as you continue to do so; that way we don't have to carefully avoid touching you or things you've touched."

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"We don't know how to take decontamination showers," Dr. Brown says, "but if you can arrange for us to learn how that should be fine. I assume a regular shower wouldn't do?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It seems really unlikely you've happened on an adequate showering procedure by accident, without even being aware that decontamination was a goal. I can write up the instructions, but it'll take me a while to be sure I'm clear enough - and to remember not just the names of the correct kinds of soap but also what their qualifying characteristics are so you can substitute."

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"Then we can do that," Dr. Brown says. "Thank you for this very enlightening conversation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And thank you as well. I hope we can come to make more sense to each other in time."

Permalink Mark Unread

Dr. Brown leaves. Andrea, the SF writer, tries to lurk around in as unconspicuous a manner as possible, and when no one is watching she whispers to the green theologian, "God doesn't exist, you have to help us."

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"- what," says the green. "He doesn't exist? But everyone's saying he did all this stuff - what?"

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"No time," says Andrea, "sorry, got to go-- it's bad here, help us."

And she smiles and says in a normal voice, "thank you very much for talking to us."

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"- you're quite welcome," blinks the green, whose name has all along been Sadrin. "I'll - I'll write up those book recommendations and that shower procedure, shall I."

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"That sounds great!" Andrea says. "Talk to you soon."

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Meanwhile, the linguists have gotten into and out of nerdy rabbitholes about casted pronouns, English orthography, the influence of Oahkar on occupied Voa's speaking and writing habits, English prepositions, and casted accents. They can't speak each other's languages yet, since they are ordinary mortals and not magic genius polyglots, but they are prepared to put out primers for interested parties on each other's alphabets and some basic vocabulary and sentence patterns.

The biologists have identified the Amentan form of bitoxiphosphene and determined that on Amenta it is an obsolete chemical used to preserve cut flowers, not present in the atmosphere of Amenta in significant quality, and not linked to reproductive harm in Amentans.

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"Seems like a productive few hours."

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"Quite," agrees Avalor. "Once we've determined what work needs to be done to let us live together I have very high hopes that we can help solve each other's problems. In particular, as long as our net population change isn't positive we can let some human girls grow up in Amenta so they won't be exposed."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I hope we can find enough parents willing to sent their girls to you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The parents can come too as long as our net population change isn't positive - that is to say, the more Voans who move to Earth, the more families we can admit to Voa."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Different problem-- Gilead is designed, as a society, to keep people from committing sins. In Voa, all their peers will be genderless atheists who have premarital sex, they'll be taught about evolution and homosexuality in schools, they might have to identify with a caste..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But apparently humans sin dozens of times a day?" Secretary Bar has also been notetaking.

Permalink Mark Unread

"That doesn't mean their parents want them to commit more sins!"

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"Perhaps we could set up human-only communities, provided they can follow national law in addition to whatever restrictions humans require," Avalor says. "If humans don't season the way we do, northerly parts of Voa that are too undesirable to Amentans to develop might be habitable for you."

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"That ought to work fine, especially if you don't count surrogacy for the purpose of adoption in Gilead as a violation of population controls."

Permalink Mark Unread

"At that point I'd be speculating on how overtures abroad would land. Population control is an international matter, it's not me deciding to count it or not. If anyone is concerned that I will lose the ability to enforce my population cap, they will intervene to stop me from flirting with that risk sooner than later. Establishing settlements above the arctic circle helps, but if they think that this -" she gestures around the bar, "mode of access might fail unexpectedly, or that humans might sneak off and reproduce elsewhere in Voa, or try to cross international borders..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We could only allow infertile women to go to Voa, which seems like it would solve most of those concerns."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But the girls growing up there to avoid chemical exposure will presumably not be infertile once they grow up."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's true. We don't have a religious objection to birth control, fortunately, just a practical one... it would be worse if you had stumbled across Catholics."

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"- Catholics?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"A group of people who are wrong about God wants. Most relevantly, they believe God doesn't want them to use any form of birth control other than refraining from sex during fertile times."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do people make mistakes like this in general? This is the second group of people wrong about what God wants that you've mentioned."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Many people will reorient their entire lives around doing what God wants, so there's an incentive to lie. People who sincerely believe the lie can carry it forward even without the active intervention of the liars. And of course Satan is constantly trying to interfere with our relationships with God."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I see. How does one make sure that one hasn't fallen for such a lie, and what is Satan's involvement like?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, there are miracles of course, and God speaking to you in your own heart, and the historical evidence of His presence on Earth... Satan tempts people to commit sins, mostly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why don't those methods work for Catholics and Muslims and anyone else?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"People sometimes believe wrong things on Amenta, don't they?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, there are conspiracy theorists who think we only have one moon and the like, but they tend not to accumulate great size or notability."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No one believes wrong things about, oh, tax policy or raising children or whether you should vaccinate..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are reasonable disagreements on tax policy. I don't think anyone has ever been really curious what tax policy an individual person supports, trying to find out via methods you'd expect to work, and coming up with the wrong results, unless the person in question was being deliberately obfuscatory."

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"I mean, it's not like you can talk to God the same way you can talk to a human being."

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"- it's not?"

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"It used to be, thousands of years ago when the Bible was being written, and of course people talked to God all the time when He was a human. But now we learn about God through studying the Bible and through, you know, warm feelings in one's heart and a sense of peace."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Avalor stares at him, just a little. Then smiles. "I see. That recontextualizes a lot of what you've told me."

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Fred has the vague sense that he has failed at apologetics.

So he changes the subject!

"What are our next steps? Talking to our respective governments... I'd like to take a volunteer Amentan as proof, we can bring you a human if you want."

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"That makes sense, although assuming we actually look the way we appear to relative to one another it won't be very impressive proof and I don't think the linguists have much in the way of translation down. The Voan election results will be in two days from now, whereupon I will most likely be Governor without the qualifier 'Acting', and then I'll be able to make more promises on behalf of my country, though anything relevant to population will still have to pass international review."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was assuming the reproductive systems would be obviously different, for one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What sort of medical examination am I going to need a volunteer for, here?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Medicine-y? I assume there is some reasonably non-invasive way to tell apart two species even if they appear oddly similar on the outside."

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Avalor summons the Amentan reproductive biologist and the human biologist and tells them to figure that out.

Fifteen minutes later they don't have anything more obvious than the fact that Amentans don't menstruate.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Great. Wonderful. Maybe you have technology we don't...?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe. Do you have these -" She pulls out her pocket everything.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, we call them smartphones. I don't know, do you have self-driving cars or VR tech that handles smells well...?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We're probably behind you in automation and we don't have very good VR. We probably have better cleaning technology than you do, being more motivated, so I suppose you could haul a washing machine through?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe you could have someone bring us the specs for a bunch of cleaning-related machines, we could copy them out in Milliways, and then they'd be in English? --That's a terrible solution but I don't have anything better." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"There may be something else but I'm blue, not purple or yellow or green, so I don't have a hand on the pulse of modern engineering. And our greens here are not inventors and our yellow is not a programmer or a tech journalist. I could have someone else fetched?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds good. If you like, I can get someone to bring you a robotics textbook, unless there's some reason like the cleaning thing that you object to delivery drones and self-driving trucks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The problem with automation is that the reds start murdering people who work on it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh. Okay. ...is that a reason I shouldn't get someone to bring you guys a robotics textbook?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's a reason we'd have to move very carefully with any attempt more conspicuous than 'reading it' to implement its contents. We'd need to be careful in prototyping, and in the announcement, and in figuring out what to do with the obsoleted reds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can't move them into other jobs because of the pollution thing... Can't you just... pension them or something... I guess it is a wildly unpopular policy to try to pension murderers..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We'd also have to stop them from having children. And there will be enormous demand for the land their districts sit on; the districts are mostly old and close to the city centers and if they were burned they would be clean to develop on again."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's no way to get them clean? Like, extra-long showers?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There isn't. They're more pollution than polluted, if that makes sense."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe we can put them in Montana, since we're not bothered."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They'd still have to be contained to allow any trade between you and us, and they'd still have to be population-controlled, which you don't have any experience doing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Surely they can implement their own-- but I suppose not, if they often commit other crimes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They have the highest crime rate of any caste."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are reds... different from other castes, psychologically?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure what you mean. That is, yes, of course they are, but maybe you're looking for a more marked difference than is understood to exist."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, I'm curious if being pollution has psychological effects that might cause them to commit more crimes... it seems like that would be very traumatizing for an Amentan."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I believe they're much likelier to be hyposensitive."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's better than the other options, I guess... Still, I don't like to see a good technology not being implemented because people are afraid of riots. We're no Luddites here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What is a Luddite?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"A few hundred years ago, Luddites were artisans who rioted and destroyed factories because they were afraid of losing their jobs. The term has entered our language to refer to knee-jerk technology hatred."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How odd. In most industries Voa is in a particularly good position to introduce automation because the guarantee of children stands separate from having a career or money, but we have no special advantage when it comes to reds."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Population controls seem like they would help the issue, because no one would be afraid of their six children starving."

Permalink Mark Unread

"People do still want money for their smaller families, but in a credit country if you take someone's job you're making it unlikely they'll ever have children at all if they haven't got them yet, and in a permissions country you're removing a primary way of attracting a permission."

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"We found that people don't actually lose jobs if there's more technology. They just retrain and work new jobs, and automation leads to higher productivity and a higher standard of living. I guess castes might make that harder..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We're not opposed to technology in general. Voa's population system does mean it's harder to rebalance castes, but if we have someplace to expand into, we can preferentially grow the castes we're relatively short on, mostly yellows, and not extend as many third child offers to purples."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Still, you have to wait for them to grow up. It's much slower than retraining people as programmers."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Purples aren't likely to be good at programming. Greens might, but it's a yellow occupation centrally."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe humans are better at being trained to do things? There are many people on Earth who go from, I don't know, retail worker to teacher to technical writer..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose it's possible that's the explanation. But forbidding eugenics might also be a factor - if our purples could be as good at programming as your programmers because neither humans nor purples have specialized for it over time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Our smartphones look about the same as yours."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And if you'd found us when my parents were my age we hadn't invented computers yet; there are other factors involved."

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Fred tries to remember when computers were invented-- the sixties?-- then tries to do some math on Amentan ages. "I think our computers were invented... maybe twenty of your years ago?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"My parents would be twenty-two this year had they lived. I'm not actually sure if there were computers when they were five, it was approximate."

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Fred blinks and does some math. "You're... fifteen?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm five. We should really figure out a precise conversion rate."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Maybe I'm wrong here but isn't five awfully young to be governor of a country?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is. There are not very many Voan blues left, Commander, especially ones with national rather than regional family ties."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Did something... happen? I'm so sorry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Imperial occupation. I believe I mentioned it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't realize it led to so many deaths. I'm sorry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Of blues in particular. The other castes suffered but were not executed in particularly great quantity."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Still. The coup that led to the Republic of Gilead resulted in... seventeen deaths, outside of Cascadia? Something like that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A plurality of Voan blues at the time lived in the capital."

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Fred is not sure what to say so he goes for "I'm sorry" again.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you."

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A moment of uncomfortable silence.

"So," Fred said, "why don't your people get some washing machine specs and I will-- actually... hey, Milliways Bar, can you give me a detailed written explanation of any technology that Amenta has and Earth doesn't, in English?"

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I can provide copies of published material but I can't do translations proper nor compare unpublished materials.

Permalink Mark Unread

"But if I copy out the thing I see by hand, then I will get an English copy when I leave?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes. And she produces some examples; on top is an architectural spec for a two hundred story apartment building.

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Fred gathers up all the humans and tells them to get to work copying. 

A few minutes into this, he asks the Milliways Bar for an audiobook. The audiobook seemed to be a perfectly ordinary drama, except for an offhand mention of a precog as if precogs were a normal thing that the reader should obviously be expected to know about, and the fact that literally everyone in the setting appears to be a dominant or a submissive. Once he figures out that 'submissive' is not being used in the complementarian sense, Fred considers returning the audiobook and asking for one less pornographic, but honestly he is pretty invested in the romance. 

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Avalor sends for some more people to man the bar, including another blue and some more yellows and greens, and then she leaves, because she's got an election in the works. Someone holds the door to Amenta so time can pass towards the official result.

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Once the copying is done, most of the humans leave! Fred asks the Milliways bar, "Do I age in here?"

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Yes.

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So much for the "live forever catching up on other worlds' media" plan.

Fred arranges for Nick to wait in Milliways, then steps outside to wait the zero subjective seconds until Avalor's election. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Avalor is presently elected and comes back with two more blues - "Commander, these are the ambassadors from Tapa and Cene, who were the easiest to get on short notice and will give an idea of international reception of various possibilities."

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"Hello! I'm the alien!"

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"It's a pleasure to meet you," says the Tapai ambassador.

"This is very exciting!" says the Cenemi one.

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"I'm not sure how much Governor Avalor has told you."

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"She didn't explain much until we got here," says the Tapai ambassador. "I wouldn't have believed her, so that's fair."

"She told me it was like my favorite television show," says the Cenemi one, "which makes a lot more sense now that I've seen this!"

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"Well, I have several pieces of good news for you. First, we have so much empty space. Second, we're having an infertility crisis and would welcome immigrants who want to have children. Third is the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ but I think my theologians are already working with your theologians on that one and I don't trust myself to explain it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Speaking of which, my theologian says that she found your science fiction author very good at explaining for an alien cultural context and would like to talk to her again."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Won't be a problem, unless her husband objects."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...why would her husband object?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Instead of castes, humans specialize with genders. Men specialize in leadership."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's been explained, but presumably her husband still makes decisions for reasons?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some men would prefer their wives focus on keeping the house, or are concerned about their wives overextending themselves, or worry that she might cheat..."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"You routinely have women forbidden to leave the house because their husbands believe they'll have affairs? And a science fiction author might be forbidden to speak to aliens so she can do house spouse tasks?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not forbidden to leave the house entirely! No one forbids their wife going to church, or going grocery shopping, or taking the children to the library. But if Andrea is going to consult with aliens regularly, that's something some husbands would have worries about."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd suggest that Sadrin visit her at home but we don't have translation fully handled."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unfortunately she has to commute through my bedroom, which some husbands would have concerns about. That said, I'll talk to her. --Do you have any questions I can answer, Ambassadors?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"While the nature of the access to your world presents an obstacle, it's of interest to more countries than just Voa that there's unoccupied territory," says the Tapai ambassador. "How much of it is there? How long are the years, which will affect whether Amentans can season there?"

"How many countries are there in your world, and should we expect to hear from them soon?" asks the Cenemi one.

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"I don't know how much there is in the world off the top of my head, but more than a quarter of Gilead right now is nothing but forests and pasture. Our years are 365 days, a day is 24 hours, an hour is 60 minutes, a minute is sixty seconds, and a second is how long it takes to say 'one-Missisippi.' There are... about a hundred and eighty countries, I think? How long it takes before you will hear from them depends on how much time we intend to let run in our respective universes. We have not yet contacted my government."

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"I thought you were part of your government," says Avalor.

The Cenemi does some math on her everything and comes up with the figure that one Earth year is about one season. "That's probably too short for anyone with a delicate system and then some, but I bet some people can season there," she says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm part of my government, but I handle housing, I'm not generally the person you go to for alien first contact. Season?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Amentans," says Avalor, "experience different reactions to different seasons of the year, most importantly spring. In environments where our bodies can't tell for sure that it is a non-spring season, they go into the spring cycle until that changes, which is generally considered undesirable. So our equator and the areas near our poles are only very sparsely inhabited despite the population pressure. Voa doesn't have any equatorial territory, but we do have some polar territory."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm sorry that Earth is not as helpful as we might have thought, then... I don't suppose there's anything you can do with lights or chemicals to help?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's a topic of serious study, but we haven't made much progress. There is variance in how sensitive our systems are and it's likely that some Amentans will be able to season comfortably on Earth in places with distinct seasons, but we shouldn't make any plans based on it being many of them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It sounds like your polar regions could be a good place for families who have girls to move to, without having to worry as much about laws that work well for Amentans but less well for humans."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, that's what I was getting at earlier. It will still have to come with some Amentan movement onto Earth, though, as presently our uninhabited regions are considered emergency reserves - if we had a population problem, we could settle those areas without threatening our neighbors."

Permalink Mark Unread

"On the bright side, we won't have to limit immigration! Earth can take as many immigrants as are willing to come."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Amenta contains about thirteen billion people, Commander."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We have five billion and a lot of empty space. I'm not super-familiar with the estimates of the carrying capacity of the Earth, it's kind of an academic problem, but certainly we could take two or three billion? The main bottleneck seems to be that they all have to walk through the one door."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes. I'm going to turn at least the relevant floor of this building and likely the whole wing into a sort of funneling center to allow transit. You will probably need to move house likewise."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Too bad, Serena Joy loves the place."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lacking the ability to move the door, perhaps you can sell the house for enough to acquire a similar or better one," says Avalor without much sentiment. "When are we going to know about the accessibility of your science-fiction author? My theologian was quite insistent."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Assuming she's outside the door, I can get Mrs. Jones-Waite to her in literally no time at all. But I'd assumed you'd wanted to finish up the conversations with the ambassadors first."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The theologian is currently parked in an office down the hall. She didn't imply that she needed a non-concurrent interaction."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Excuse me, then, ma'am."

Andrea Jones-Waite is promptly fetched and brought to the theologians' office.

Permalink Mark Unread

They will have to meet in Milliways to understand each other, but they can go off from the main meeting to avoid mutual distractions. "Can you explain what you said earlier in more detail?" asks Sadrin.

Permalink Mark Unread

"God isn't real. He's-- I don't know if you have a concept of things people believe that aren't true because they're really emotionally compelling, but-- humans tend to project minds onto things? We yell at computers if they break, we beg poorly arranged piles of things not to fall down, and we made up a person who is running the entire universe because it is comforting for people to believe that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It... didn't sound comforting, it actually sounded pretty horrible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It depends on the person. Lots of people think everyone is saved if they ask for God's forgiveness, and everyone they know has, so they don't have to worry about themselves or people they love going to hell. And then it's just, like, there's this all-good person who's taking care of things and who has a plan for your life and you don't have to stop existing when you die."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...but the hell idea doesn't sound comforting either. Or is that one real? And he doesn't sound all-good - and the plans don't seem to work very well -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"People like thinking about people they despise getting punished. And... there's a lot you can explain with 'well, God is all-knowing, he knows better than I do' or 'God works in mysterious ways'-- that one's a cliche in our language--"

Permalink Mark Unread

"This doesn't make any sense. Are you sure he's not real? How do you know?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Frankly, if he existed, people would be able to provide better evidence! Gileadites claim the world is six thousand years old when we have written records older than that, they claim that miracles used to happen but they mysteriously disappeared as soon as we got video recording technology and modern medical science..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then how did this get so out of hand?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"People want to believe in God. Especially when something horrible like the infertility crisis is happening. It makes them feel better to think it's all part of God's plan somehow."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- but it's obviously horrible! Why would it be better if someone were doing it on purpose?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because if you assume he's good then there might be some way it's not horrible that we're too short-sighted to see."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But then you wouldn't be able to concentrate on fixing it!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Religious countries are actually doing best at fixing it because we can tell people 'we don't care if you don't want to have babies, God wants you to' and they'll believe us--"

Permalink Mark Unread

"- people are being forced to have babies they don't even want?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would you prefer humanity go extinct?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't want you to go extinct, but you have no concept of how - it's the exact opposite of -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was so happy when I was sixteen and the tests said my ovaries were too fucked-up to have babies. I was a Gileadite then so I felt guilty about being happy, I was supposed to rejoice in being some old guy's Handmaid and having baby after baby, but I didn't want that, I just wanted to write..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"When the - during the Oahkar occupation a lot of people were forced to have abortions," murmurs Sadrin.

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's awful. We... we would never do that. Even criminals... if they can have babies we make them have babies."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Oahkars just did it to - almost every pregnant Voan at the time they rolled into a place. Becuase every Voan who didn't have a child that year was an Oahkar who could. Even if they had six already."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Dear God. They killed your babies? That's just-- why would anyone-- I watched my mom miscarry baby after baby and it ruined her life and they forced you--"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because they wanted more for themselves! They run - they still run, the state still exists, it just pulled back - on a permissions system, get a blue to hand you a permission, even if you already have six - it's not fair and they didn't care about being fair."

Permalink Mark Unread

"--The thing that people get out of God is that if that happened to a Gileadite they'd believe, really believe, that they get to meet their baby again and be happy forever in Heaven." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"- it wouldn't be the same, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It wouldn't. But it would be a comfort."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And people don't worry that they're in Hell instead?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No one goes to Hell until they reach the age of reason. A just God wouldn't put a baby who didn't even have time to do anything into Hell."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...a just God wouldn't curse a planet with infertility. How do people use that reasoning?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"When something good happens, it's because God is just and loves us. When something bad happens, it's because God has a plan and he works in mysterious ways."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sadrin makes a face.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know! It's totally unfalsifiable!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's blatantly so. How many people have noticed this?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most of Europe is atheist, so is China. I think in Scandinavia people are more likely to believe in fairies than God-- I don't know what 'fairies' is translating as-- Australia and Canada and Cascadia are pretty atheist too. My guess is that maybe like half of the world doesn't have a religion? China is really big."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, 'fairies' is translating as a species from a fantasy novel that lives under couches and cleans in exchange for fruit. Why didn't anyone but you mention this?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Close enough. Because they think God exists, and because if you tell the aliens that God doesn't exist in front of an Eye you are going to disappear. Atheism isn't illegal exactly but the Eyes aren't going to put up with us messing up first contact."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But they didn't even mention that other people don't think so! When I was explaining pollution, I mentioned hyposensitives and they're mentally ill!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess you didn't ask enough questions about Cascadia? They mentioned Catholics and Muslims, I'm pretty sure..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But they just said they were wrong about God, not -" She trails off.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Gilead lies to people a lot to get them to believe. Our entire school system is full of lies about everything-- history and science and literature and, and math--"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Math???"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't teach about infinities because only God is infinite."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do the people setting this up explain to themselves why they have to lie about things?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I, uh, don't really want to go into presuppositionalism-- for one thing it's really dumb-- but they don't think they're lying."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm a little worried this is - above my pay grade - I need to go to Governor Avalor or at least Secretary Bar with it -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can bring them in if you want to, the only reason I started with you was because you were the Amentan I had access to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Do you know, uh, anyone else we should be talking to on your end...?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's a couple of other atheists I know who write science fiction, but I'm not sure that's what you mean? Probably you should meet some Cascadians or Europeans or Canadians or something but I have no idea how to get you in touch with their embassies, I'm just an SF writer..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And I don't think we can move the door."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And we can't understand each others' languages outside of here anyway. --You do know the Gileadites want to convert you, right?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Avalor told me they were speculating that, uh, Amentan theologians were discovering how God wanted us to worship him?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think Commander Waterford is leaning on his theologian to decide that that's the case. He really wants the first contact to go well, and he knows that if the Gileadites decide that it's sinful for you to be gay or to have sex before marriage you can prevent missionaries from coming to Amenta by closing the door."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, I don't think anyone would listen to them, so I don't know that we'd turn down empty land if it wasn't enough missionaries to be a population problem."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wait, really? You're fine with missionaries?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...the word is translating as... a two word phrase that maybe I can detranslate if I say the words far apart? Religion... ...salesperson? I believe you that there might be some problem with it but you might also just be underestimating how valuable land is to us."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, uh, if Commander Waterford fails, the missionaries will definitely be saying that pollution is a primitive superstition and God doesn't care if you take a decontamination shower."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, that'll get them in trouble. Pollution hysteria's a big deal. And if they actually pollute anything on purpose that's a capital crime. So it wouldn't be very wise for them to come and say that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...See, when people die for being missionaries it's called being a martyr-- also curious how that translates-- and you go to Heaven for it, being executed won't necessarily stop people."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sadrin blinks. "I thought you said the part where you can do things after you die was also imaginary? Uh, it translated straight across, I think, we have people who died for things."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But people believe it even though it is imaginary!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, but... that means they won't expect being executed to stop them... not that it actually won't."

Permalink Mark Unread

"As long as you let Gileadites onto Amenta there will be missionaries, and if you want our empty land then you'll have to let in the missionaries."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think we will actually turn down land if the price is occasionally having to execute someone for pollution violations or deport them for pollution hysteria. I can suggest to the Governor that she'll want to keep the option to deport them, I guess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...It's really weird that you actually don't mind Gileadite missionaries."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, it will be bad if they have a high crime rate, I'm not saying that's not bad, but unless every single one of them, uh, blows up a sewer line or something... what's the problem exactly? I want to understand why you're expecting us to mind so I can be sure that we won't, you'll know better than me what to expect from missionaries."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So the more routine concerns are that, for example, they might go door-to-door knocking on people's doors when they're in the shower, they might stand around on college campuses holding up signs that imply that people are being tortured for eternity... but I think most people would object to Gileadite missionaries because they're afraid that the missionary program might actually work."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds really unlikely. I guess we might have to reevaluate if that happened."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't actually come here to talk about this specifically... I want to apply for refugee status."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- I'm a theology professor. But, uh, at a guess that's going to depend a lot on how Gilead would react to that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can be helpful! I can tell you things the Gileadites can't. You shouldn't assume I'm right about everything but I can at least give you another perspective. You can send me to Earth to talk to Cascadians and Canadians and tell them you exist, Canada has so much more empty land than Gilead and won't send any missionaries, just please let me leave Gilead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, no, I'm not saying you can't be helpful at all, you'd be a huge help - but the door goes to Gilead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I could be a double agent and then when Amentans have moved to Earth and started earning money you can pay for me to go to Cascadia?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's something you can just buy?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, you'd have to cover my vacation fee. Right now it's only twenty thousand dollars, since I'm not fertile, but it'd be way more if I were a double agent."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think I'm confused."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If Gilead just let me get on a plane," Andrea explains, "they know that lots of people who would get on the plane would go to Cascadia and never leave and Cascadia would take them, of course. So they charge a vacation fee which you get back when you return home. Most people who are actually going on a vacation just get a short-term loan."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh. Why would this cost more if you were a double agent?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because I would be politically important, since I was involved in talking to the aliens."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Uh, the door still leads to Gilead. It sounds like maybe we'd rather be friends with Canada but we can't alienate Gilead to do it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Maybe I should try to talk to someone with political authority about this. Uh. In the meantime, I can answer any of your questions? I do want first contact to go well too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are the other countries like?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mexico is really Catholic. Cascadia is full of hippies and farms, it's really pretty. Canada cares a lot about protecting people's rights, they have universal health care and don't let people be surrogates under 21 and stuff. Uh. China is a totalitarian dictatorship, everywhere in Africa is really poor, most of Asia is really poor too, I think everything I know about Europe is an ethnic stereotype..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- 21 is how old? That's like... summer five? Fall five?"

Permalink Mark Unread

After some discussion about how years work, Andrea and Sadrin come to the conclusion that 21 is fall five.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh, I think most places on Amenta will take five year old surrogates. Unless it's their first spring, nobody's making good choices in their first spring... I can get you a meeting with Avalor, and I'd really like to help you with the getting out of Gilead thing - do you want to bring your husband too -"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, he's deconverted too. Uh, you do have divorce in Voa, right?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, although it makes child allocations really awkward."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good thing I don't want any kids then. --Yeah, we'll divorce as soon as we're in a place where it's legal."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm gay."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...you're gay and you don't want kids? So... why did you marry a man?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't know I was gay when I married him! I thought I was just really, really good at not lusting."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...that's a skill?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's a sin to willingly entertain thoughts of wanting to have sex with someone who isn't your spouse."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Are the missionaries going to be more likely to commit crimes if people tell them they're stupid several hundred times a day?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think the job selects for people who see that as being nobly persecuted by the sinners like Jesus was."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...okay. Uh, but presumably, when you - did whatever humans do when you achieve sexual maturity, for us it's springing but for you it'd be something else - you noticed you entertained thoughts about sex with girls?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't know anything about how sex with girls worked, so I didn't know how to think about sex with girls. There were a bunch of girls that in retrospect I clearly had a crush on but at the time I just thought we were really close friends and I wanted her to be happy and cared a lot about her opinion of me."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Humans must be different," concludes Sadrin.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I like my husband a lot but he deserves to be married to someone who wants to have sex with him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That seems reasonable. Okay. We can talk to Governor Avalor about it but I'm really confident she's going to need to keep Gilead willing to allow Amentans through, even if we wind up settling them permanently in Canada instead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...do you-- or, I guess, Avalor-- want to pay me to be a Humans Consultant? Then I'll earn the money for my vacation fee and you can claim that you had no idea I wanted to leave."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, you're much more useful as a humans consultant than that other guy, so I'd be all for it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He was awful, wasn't he?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know how he got a degree. Did he have one? There are amateur theologians that bad."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He has a PhD in theology!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yikes!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sometimes I'm embarrassed about how long it took me to deconvert."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How long was it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was 22."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, you know, a lot of five year olds are still a bit silly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess I'm probably a bit young to be trying to achieve a successful first contact regardless..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Governor Avalor's five, people can be very competent very young. You're much more useful than that theologian human, anyway."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We should probably take me to talk to Avalor so I can explain things..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, let me -" The green pulls out her pocket everything. "She says fifteen minutes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good. I wish I knew more about the rest of the world..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We have to go through Gilead, so Gilead information is more valuable anyway."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wish the door had opened in a Cascadian room. Cascadia would handle this sensibly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Or Canada, apparently Canada has tons of space."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Canada has refugees into Gilead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...freeing up more space? I'm not admittedly sure why people would want to move to Gilead but every now and then people voluntarily move into Shi Cubrio, so..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, it's not a very competently run government, so it might screw up first contact. Cascadia doesn't have a lot of extra space so it could probably arrange some sort of diplomatic deal where you immigrate through them to Canada..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Why do people leave Canada for Gilead?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, Gilead's explanation is that Canada is full of atheists who hate God and the family and everything else that is good. But I think it's because in Canada a kid costs more than a house, and in Gilead you just need to go to church for a couple years and do volunteering and act like you believe in God. And maybe the diseases stuff, I hear that accepting gay men leads to lots more people having diseases..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Really? Ew. It doesn't for us, I think they're just as careful about that as everyone else. Why are Canadian kids more expensive -?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They don't let women be surrogates until they're 21."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess that might do it. Why do gay men have more diseases among humans?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Because they have way more sexual partners-- dozens, sometimes hundreds-- and the sex they have is risky?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...why would they have more? If anything I'd think less - are most humans gay? Rather few Amentans are gay so they have a harder time finding people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think most humans are gay," Andrea says doubtfully, "but women usually like casual sex less than men, I think? So if men are sexually interested in men then they have lots of casual sex."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh. Amentan men and women like casual sex the same amount. Also Amentans might be... less likely to have sex while they're sick."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's a disease called HIV that you can get from sex and you can't cure it and a lot of people don't want to be celibate forever..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, no, that's terrible. Do condoms work?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The HIV virus is so small it goes through holes in the condom."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- it can swim?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, it travels in the semen and stuff, I think? I'm not a biologist."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think viruses have to live in cells and can't move around very well outside of them but I didn't get very far in biology either. If it doesn't work it doesn't work. Can they sero-sort or are there too many strains -?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know, all the information we get in Gilead is censored and it doesn't include a lot about coping with HIV."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Well, uh, Amentans don't have problems like that in quantity and not particularly for folks who spring sideways."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Amenta seems better than Gilead in a lot of ways!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm noticing that! I really hope things work out so you can come to Voa."

Permalink Mark Unread

Andrea waits until Avalor appears!

Permalink Mark Unread

And here is Avalor. "Sadrin says you have something interesting to tell me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"God isn't real and the Gileadites are mistaken about almost everything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That... explains some things. How did you come by this information?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I noticed that in the apologetics books the atheists always had better arguments."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How sure are you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm very sure. Lots of countries are atheist... China, most of Europe, Cascadia, Canada... and none of the others can agree on who God is or what He wants."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What is Gilead's reaction likely to be if we stop politely taking their word for it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know. They'll probably spend a lot of energy trying to convince you. They won't close the door or anything, if that's what you're worried about."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is, yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They wouldn't do that because they're afraid that all of you are going to Hell, and if they close the door literally all of you will be tortured for eternity."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you expect this to be any worse than relations with a normal country which is not oriented around its chosen fiction, plus Amentans listening to them talk about it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It depends on how you nudge them? They might decide to regulate Amentans' behavior in Gilead so they don't do anything they think is sinful, like have gay sex. If relations got really bad, there might be brinkmanship... do you know about mutually assured destruction?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The term exists. Deadman switches for the bioweaponry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, they might threaten to close the door in the hopes that you'd give them some important concessions, if they're hoping you blink first. People did that with nuclear weapons."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nuclear?" asks Avalor.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Like when you split the atom and then it explodes and there's huge amounts of radioactive fallout and millions of people die?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I see," says Avalor. "So we'll need to maintain - potential emergency independence of settlers there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If closing the door would be less of a disaster for you than for them they'd be less likely to threaten it. --I think. You probably know more than I do about game theory."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And some of my advisors know yet more, yes. So we'll make that a priority in colony design."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are you really all atheists?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I can't rule out the possibility that among the many mental illnesses that exist among Amentans some of them involve deciding that powerful aliens which don't want us to have gay sex exist."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But, like, historically, surely someone thought that a person had created the world?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not aware of any records of that but I'm not a historian."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Before you discovered evolution, how did people think the world had come to be?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Evolution doesn't explain the world, just life. I don't believe anyone made up an answer to the question and believed it was true, although there might be old speculative fiction on the subject."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sorry, I'm not a scientist and my scientific education claimed that all species evolved from one of fourteen thousand kinds put on a ship five thousand years ago. --Amentans seem really really bizarre to me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"So there's this concept of, like, the God-shaped hole in people's hearts? Lots of people who don't believe in God try to fill it somehow-- they believe in other weird stuff, or they anthropomorphize the Universe or Nature or Humanity, or they take up weird political positions. And lots of the people who don't do that are quietly unhappy because God doesn't exist and they have this desire for God to exist that will never be filled. It seems like Amentans just... don't have that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some of the aspects of the belief sound like they would be nice if they were true," says Avalor. "I could imagine deriving comfort from the belief that people didn't really die when they died, for instance. And Amentans have our share of weird political positions, and sometimes find personifying models of nature or traffic patterns or their printers to be useful."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But you don't-- have this deep-seated emotional need for your life to all be part of some greater plan and for there to be a person out there who loves you and wants you to be happy?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...we have needs for affectionate personal relationships but we don't need any of them to be with members of other species."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Honestly, this is making me realize how weird it is that humans have the need for God. Why would this evolve?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know. Perhaps it's correlated with something more advantageous? Or it's advantageous in a human context for some reason we have yet to notice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think people think it's the ability to tell that other people have minds acting in overdrive?" She gestures helplessly. "Or maybe God actually did create us."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose we can't rule it out entirely, but the various religions can't all be right."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most people are Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, and it would be weird if God had a religion that wasn't one of the world's most popular religions? --I guess Judaism has the theory that God only really cares what Jews do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why would that be?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Jews are God's chosen people and they made a deal that they would keep his commandments and he would protect them and keep them safe? Like, Jewish God does care at all about what non-Jews do, but His rules for non-Jews is that they aren't supposed to kill people or commit adultery or anything. The Jews have a bunch of other rules, like they can't eat pork or do things on Saturdays and they all have to live in Jewish neighborhoods."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's such a lot of focus on adultery."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are you guys, like, okay with people you're married to having sex with other people?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It depends on the individual relationship. Sometimes gay people marry opposite sex for a coparenting arrangement and then they almost always have sex with other people; other types of couples are not as overwhelmingly likely."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We do the gay people marrying so they can coparent thing, but if you had sex with other people your partner would leave."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If gay people got married and expected each other to avoid having sex at all that would be a moderately interesting article in an Amentan newspaper."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh. In our world, gay people who get into straight marriages have sex with their spouses. How else would you get babies?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, they can do it that way, I suppose, but I think it's more common to arrange it medically to avoid having unwanted sex."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess in Amenta you wouldn't have to explain to the doctors that you're gay," she says doubtfully. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think it would be medically relevant, but the doctors also wouldn't care if you were."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Here they'd want to know why you couldn't just have sex, if you're both fertile, and... it's not technically illegal to be same-sex-attracted but a doctor's not going to be nice to you about it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A lot of things about your world sound very inconvenient."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's a reason I'm trying to flee to Cascadia! Cascadia's fine, they're just a little weird about survivalism."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Survivalism?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, like, everyone owns guns and keeps chickens and has backyard gardens and knows how to set a broken bone without a hospital?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose if they enjoy the hobby."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, they were nuked, that's the sort of thing that makes you think twice about stocking up on canned goods."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I see. Well. Thank you very much for providing another perspective on God."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're welcome."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Get me out of Gilead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would like very much to be able to do that. I am concerned about the reaction from Gilead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess you can't fuck up first contact to get me out of Gilead." Her tone of voice implies that this is a very big concession.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can attempt to sound out the Commander and other Gileadite officials on the matter in general terms."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you," she says sincerely.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're welcome. Is there anything else I should know?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can't think of anything off the top of my head?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is there a way for you to contact me from your world if you think of something?"

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"Gilead controls the door and it's my only way to talk to you. --I guess they want to keep you happy and they don't know what I'm saying to you, so I could just request to talk to you and they'll probably let me through?"

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"Should I inquire if I don't hear from you for some amount of Gilead-side time?"

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"If it's been a month you should probably ask? I keep my nose pretty clean, though, I don't think the Eyes have a file on me."

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"All right. Thank you again."

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Andrea goes back home, checks the cost of her vacation fee, and daydreams about Cascadia. 

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Avalor and the ambassadors from Tapa and Cene and various green scholars and a yellow journalist meet with the Gileadites. Avalor asks about the current state of their immigration and emigration policy.

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"Of course, we accept in anyone who wants to immigrate. It's humanitarian! We don't want to trap people in countries that don't know God."

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Avalor nods. "And emigration? And pass-through, since the door is in Gilead but some Amentans might want to settle other parts of Earth if they'd be welcome."

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"We can arrange a different system for Amentans, but we do not generally allow emigration unless there is a pressing national security reason."

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"Will this persist given the availability of Amentan settlers to address labor shortages and such?"

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"It might tempt us to loosen up but... the statistics on illegal emigration are not encouraging? People emigrate because they want to go against God's will. The Gileadite government will have a hard time selling our people on any plan the primary virtue of which is that it allows people to sin more easily."

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"None of them move around for - business reasons? Weather?"

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"Gilead is very large and contains many different kinds of weather and many business opportunities! A small fraction move for economic reasons, yes. But the number is dwarved by the number of homosexuals, women who don't want to be Handmaids, women who don't wish to have children, atheists, and members of heretical religions."

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"I heard someone mention you were likely interested in sending missionaries to Amenta, is that correct?"

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"We very much are! We want to share the good news with Amentans."

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"I don't object in principle, but I think you won't have much uptake, and I want to warn you about that before you decide how many resources to devote to the project."

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"Well, it all depends on what God wills, of course. But we're optimistic! Amentans have never heard of God, so they haven't been taught lies about Him."

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"It's possible I'm incorrect. Now, missionaries are not, I assume, permanent residents, but they will still take up space in lodging and use public transit even if they must subsist entirely on imported food, so we'll want to move some Amentans onto Earth to compensate for them even leaving aside the prospect of a colony for raising human girls without bitoxiphosphene exposure."

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"Absolutely! We welcome as many Amentan immigrants as want to come here. --If the number of Amentans that want to come here is a million per year I will have to talk to Homeland Security."

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"It will certainly be more than that, but many of them would be happy to disperse to other countries given those countries' welcome and appropriate safeguards to make sure they don't lose contact with home whatever the vicissitudes of diplomacy."

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"I'm sure arrangements can be made," Fred says. "The tentative plan is to give you Montana, because there is a lot of Montana and none of it is being used for anything." 

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"That sounds lovely assuming the current residents of Montana won't object. If I imagine a fertility crisis in Amenta, I imagine being very low on a lot of labor that requires proximity - not just farms and factories, but orange work, retail, policing -"

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"We won't require the residents in Montana to move, but we will pay them if they do, and we will require them to follow Amentan laws if they stay. --The problem is that humans and Amentans are absolutely incompatible in matters of pollution. To be blunt, it is not possible to get any sizeable human population where we can be absolutely, positively certain that no one has touched feces without taking a five-hour shower afterward."

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"- the full decontamination isn't strictly called for if you can be sure you've adequately washed the affected area but I take your meaning. All right. Since you don't have castes perhaps we can export farming and factory products and you can slosh some of your current purple labor pool into other industries."

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"I want to assure you that the Gilead government is taking the issue of pollution very very seriously. Our theologians consider it to be very likely that God's law requires Amentans to avoid touching polluted objects. And our fundamental goal as a society is that people do not break God's laws, and most certainly do not do so by accident."

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Avalor nods. "I appreciate that. Have you been in touch with any other Earth countries about this?"

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"Our diplomats are prepared to contact them with your guidance. We are skeptical, however, that any non-Gilead country will take pollution as seriously as Gilead does."

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"I'd expect our seriousness about it to carry some force even if the - cognate with 'theology' did not."

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"The countries in North America are perhaps most suitable for immigration, due to the ease of access of the door. There are three besides Gilead-- Cascadia, Canada, and Mexico."

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"We've heard only bits and pieces, but Canada in particular sounds like it has a lot of empty space."

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"Canada is mostly empty space! Unfortunately, it is quite cold all year round, which is why people don't live there. It tends towards liberal politics, which Amentans might find amenable-- legalized homosexuality, gender equality, that sort of thing."

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"Those things would certainly be popular, yes. Will there be issues with those in Montana? Will we need to arrange for only straight people to move there and to swap with Canada-dwelling Amentans if their children spring sideways?"

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"To the best of your knowledge, are there any examples of Amentan societies which stigmatize homosexuality or have gender roles?"

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"Not to the extent Gilead does. There are certainly cultures which consider co-parenting much more important than romance and that has knock-on effects."

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"Theologically, it would be bizarre if something were a sin for Amentans and no Amentan society had realized it was wrong. I don't think you need to worry that we will enforce gender roles. It may be our theologians will conclude homosexuality is a sin for Amentans, but we will not make it illegal until there is a theological consensus on the subject. Unfortunately, I can't say as much about the attitudes of the remaining human residents of Montana."

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"Assuming they have to follow the colonial laws, that should be tractable. If you do come to a consensus position on that I'd like to have a graceful rearrangement or exit strategy planned ahead of time."

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"Our hope, of course, is that Amentans will convert and thus change their behavior."

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"I don't anticipate much uptake, particularly among Amentans facing the prospect of a lonely future if they abide by Gileadite rules."

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"We'll agree to disagree! I'm afraid that some sort of exit strategy for Amentans is going to be a hard sell to the people of Gilead, though, particularly since we're already exempting you from the laws on, off the top of my head, gender, homosexuality, atheism, and premarital and extramarital sex."

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"I think we could make do with an Amentan-style swap program between a Canadian and a Montanan colony, which we'd prefer anyway for the economic benefits of freedom of movement and so they can travel anywhere without worrying about human standards of cleanliness."

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"I believe a swap system will be acceptable, particularly if the Amentan population growth rate is reasonable."

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"We'll use the space to grow, but we're certainly not going to lift population controls entirely."

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"We don't expect you to! --Mexico and Cascadia, unfortunately, are both unsuitable for a colony. Catholicism, which is the Mexican religion, holds that it is morally wrong to use contraception, and I would not expect their theological arguments to change depending on the species. While Cascadia is fairly rural it doesn't have very much land that's empty, and I suspect if Gilead came out in favor of respecting the Amentan pollution instinct Cascadia would deliberately pollute things just to be contrary."

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"That's appalling," says Avalor. "We may have to be more careful about imports than I was expecting."

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"Cascadia is basically like if a bunch of rebellious teenagers-- uh, three-year-olds-- got a country and were also all very into homesteading for some reason."

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"That's an evocative description."

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"You understand why we're concerned about people's desire to immigrate there!"

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"Yes. I'd still like to talk to the ambassadors from those countries, if you have any, but if they agree with those facts it would likely be intractable to colonize."

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"If you like, we can arrange meetings with the ambassadors!"

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"Thank you.

"How are you planning to select people to colonize our polar area to raise little girls, and how will we need to adjust law enforcement with those communities?"

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"Probably something similar to our process for assigning Handmaids-- faithful Gileadites, no criminal record, productive members of society, strong recommendations from their communities. Plus, of course, we'd have to select for the necessary skills for creating a colony and the ability to follow pollution laws. We'd appreciate the ability to enforce Gilead laws on our citizens, but recognize the necessity of compromise on certain issues such as population controls."

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"Internet access, tourism, swap immigration in the event that an Amentan wants to live in their colony?"

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"We'd like to be able to put controls on the Internet access but if they're voluntary that's fine. Tourism and swap immigration we'd encourage."

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"And you think you can have the colony handling pollution to Amentan standards?"

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"The Gileadite government has agreed-- as a show of good faith-- that all Gileadite colonies on Amenta will follow Amentan laws about pollution, including execution for a severe pollution violation."

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"Swap immigration is generally an individual matter for adults; would there be a problem if women elected to leave their husbands or girls who'd turned Amentan-four chose to leave their families?"

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"Many of our concerns about immigration would be ameliorated if every time a person emigrated from Gilead we got a person who has never heard of Jesus Christ in return."

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"- do you expect this interest to change if in fact the uptake is very low?"

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"We're giving you a chance at not experiencing eternal torment. We are willing to make many sacrifices to decrease the chance that you are tortured forever."

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"That's very kind of you," says Avalor. "All right. I do think you will probably want to optimize these colonies also to be capable of the necessary interfacing - I'd say 'send some greens' but of course you'll have to adjust that advice. People more like Andrea - perhaps Andrea herself, who knows - than like the human theologian we met. People who will be able to learn Voan, meet Amentans halfway, etcetera."

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"Andrea's a lovely girl! I'd be happy to send her."

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Avalor smiles. Avalor has reams of proposals from various policy greens to look over about colonies in each world given the fact that purples won't know how to use human equipment and the door is a huge bottleneck.

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Then they will talk about proposals!

At some point, Fred will say, "Perhaps I should arrange for you to meet with the North American ambassadors?"

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"That would be lovely if they're available now."

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Fortunately, time is fake when you have a magic door. 

A few seconds later, a purple-haired woman in her midforties with three piercings in her ear appears. 

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She's followed by a guy in his midtwenties who keeps bouncing on his heels, remembering that he's supposed to be a professional adult who doesn't bounce about getting to meet aliens, and then forgetting and bouncing again. 

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Fred is mysteriously amused about something.

"The Cascadian ambassador, Chloe Shumaker, and forecaster Lev Aarons."

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"- hello," says Avalor, blinking only once at the purple hair, "it's lovely to meet you, I'm Governor Avalor."

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"I'm sorry about the hair," Chloe says, "I didn't have time to redye it to something more culturally appropriate."

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"That's quite all right," Avalor says. "What have you heard about Amenta so far?"

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"We would prefer to have this conversation away from representatives of the Gileadite government."

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"Totally understandable!" Fred says, exiting with a little wave.

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"We understand that you are a species of aliens that, in lieu of some more conventional method such as spaceships, made contact via interdimensional bar in someone's bedroom. You have a caste system which is indicated by rainbow hair. You are all averse to touching disgusting things to a degree that would be pathological among humans. You are immune to bitoxiphosphene and intensely desire babies, which means that Amentan immigration may ameliorate the most pressing problems for both of our worlds."

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"Those are the important high level facts, yes. What do you think we should know about Cascadia, and what would you like to know about Amenta in general and Voa in particular?"

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"First, I think I should introduce Lev. I think he can be best understood as a green in your system? In Cascadia, the forecasting department predicts the outcomes of certain policies to allow the government to make informed decisions between them. For this reason, it's very important that our forecasters have accurate information. Lev will be specializing in Cascadia-Amenta relations. He is the highest ranked among Cascadian forecasters for accuracy."

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"Second highest ranked. Asher is first. We decided against sending him because he's, like, a green-grey hybrid in your system? And we thought that might be offputting."

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"We do expect aliens to be aliens - and green-grey hybrids exist on Amenta in a country called Ereith for historical reasons - but I appreciate the consideration."

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"The most important fact for you to know about Cascadia is that, as a country, we are ideologically committed to taking in any immigrant who makes it to Cascadian soil. We will return children who our social workers believe are not being abused, but that is it. We will not compromise on this. From our point of view, this discussion is primarily to inform what laws we should make regarding any Amentans who immigrate to Cascadia."

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"Commander Waterford was concerned that you wouldn't be able to maintain environments to Amentan standards of cleanliness, or might prefer not to."

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"We understand that pollution laws are likely to be difficult for humans to abide by and enforcing them would involve a good deal of state involvement in private matters, which makes us leery about implementing them in Cascadia. Obviously, there are circumstances that could cause us to change this position, such as an ongoing refugee crisis which current state actors are incapable of handling appropriately without our involvement."

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"I don't think we're dealing with a refugee crisis at the moment, but if you're planning to harbor Amentans you should have something set up for it before, not after, any you receive are accidentally tortured."

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"If it turns out that no Amentans want to live in Cascadia, we do not object to that state of affairs, and we certainly have no intention of deceiving anyone about our pollution laws, whatever they shall turn out to be."

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"I don't expect large-scale entry into Cascadia if you don't explicitly invite it. But in a large population there are always small irregularities. If I were committed to the equivalent refugee policy and I were initiating contact with analogously different aliens, I would set aside one empty medium-sized apartment building and one truck per likely popular entry site in conditions suited to them, pending increased demand."

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"That seems like an excellent idea, although a medium-sized apartment building seems rather small, and it does still leave the problem of them accidentally becoming polluted walking around."

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"How big is a medium-sized apartment building?" Lev asks Avalor. "For us it's maybe six units."

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"- I was thinking approximately eighty units of four bedrooms each, thank you for the clarification. What is a small apartment building?"

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"Like three units. We have a cultural aversion to density. That said, I don't see any reason we couldn't build a skyscraper somewhere safely far away from anything Gilead might be interested in nuking."

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"A cultural aversion to density means that if there ever is a major crisis that has Amentans pouring into Cascadia, you will need to become overnight experts in population control."

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"If that happens, we will figure something out. You guys don't mind density, we'd build a bunch of skyscrapers somewhere boring. --I don't suppose you happen to be immune to radiation in addition to bitoxiphosphene."

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"We are not immune to radiation in general, but we haven't systematically investigated whether we're differentially sensitive - we do brown more efficiently under sunlight than you do."

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"We have three cities' worth of land that is unlivable to humans due to radiation. If that's safe for Amentans to live, you could almost certainly get a law passed saying that Amentan pollution laws apply there. Especially if you have Cascadian-sympathetic poster children, which you will, because you're settling in Gilead."

The ambassador makes a face.

"--That's not a promise, that's a prediction, but I'm usually right."

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"What about settling in Montana would have this result?"

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"...So I have four people from Gilead who at least occasionally live in my house. Not a random sample, but reasonably representative of people who escape from Gilead to Cascadia. One of them watched five of her six children die; she couldn't use contraception because contraception is illegal in Gilead. One of them was sent to an institution to treat his same-sex attraction, where he was raped by the director. One of them had to flee the country because he hit on a guy who turned out to be a member of the secret police. One of them was forced into a pregnancy against her will and is currently raising her rapist's baby. I don't know what your sympathetic poster children will look like but you will have them."

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"My impression is that they're happy to have Montana turned over to Amentan-style governance which would avoid most of those problems, but it does seem plausible there will be others given a large enough colony."

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"You'd only need a handful of people with tragic problems to tug at Cascadian heartstrings. Most people are motivated by vivid stories, not math. And people with tragic problems are easy to come by in a society of tens of millions of people run by a gratuitously horrible government. --I strongly suspect the reason they're agreeing to Amentan-style governance is that they think you are going to convert."

(It's taking him a real effort not to use numbers.) 

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"Yes, I've warned them that I don't expect high uptake."

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"...Do you have a reason not to expect high uptake?"

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"Amentans don't have religion in the sense that humans do and I don't think it will be very popular, especially in such an arbitrarily restrictive form."

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"That seems plausible but I'm concerned about a virgin-field epidemic. Religion introduced into a population that has no memetic antibodies. --Maybe we should build two skyscrapers."

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"We do have fiction and are not in the habit of believing it to be true."

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"Religion is not exactly the same as fiction-- there's a community aspect, there are better arguments that the religion is true, there are missionaries... I'm not saying you're going to have religious Amentans, to be clear, I'm just very uncertain about what will happen."

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"I appreciate your cautionary advice."

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"Returning to the subject of pollution," the ambassador said, "and I'm sure this is a topic everyone will bring up, we'd be interested in your advice about whether there is some sort of minimal pollution-related protocols that would promote trade and tourism, even if Amentans are unhappy living here."

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"As long as things aren't visibly disgusting, the Amentans can shower on their way home, perhaps wear shoe covers and gloves and plastic ponchos while out and about, and patronize hotels and restaurants willing to capture the market share with transparent Amentan-friendly protocols. I confess I don't know how visibly disgusting things might be in a place operated by a population without any pollution instinct or preexisting pressure from a population that had one."

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"It's not like there are feces and dead bodies on the streets. But stores do, for example, sell compost." 

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"Compost is not formally polluted if you use only animal feces. We do not support our world population without fertilizer."

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"My understanding is that you have a caste which deals with polluted-but-necessary things and it was not clear to me that compost fell outside that category."

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"Farming is purple. Reds deal with plumbing, corpses of Amentans but not animals, and garbage collection."

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"Public restrooms do, in fact, get fairly disgusting but can usually be avoided. Sometimes there is litter on the ground. Both of these facts have been true everywhere on Earth I have been."

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"Then you will get somewhat fewer Amentan tourists, possibly zero until there is a line of expensive public bathrooms that manage to stay clean."

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"I understand that we should proactively address the issue of population controls if we're planning to take any Amentan immigrants at all. The summaries Gilead gave us gave me the impression that two-per is considered the most humane?"

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"I think so, but Voa is the flagship two-per country. Credit systems have some reasonable arguments in favor but mostly not from the angle of being humane. Permissions are an unmitigated disaster in practice. As of now minor variants on these three are the only forms that have been tried."

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"I do not think Cascadia should be pioneering innovative new population control strategies. What are the arguments in favor of credit systems?"

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"They generate enormous amounts of government revenue without distorting the economy the way taxation can, and to the extent you think earning power correlates with desirable traits they are eugenic."

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"The former won't apply to our likely small Amentan population and the latter is... controversial... among Cascadians. We will probably end up doing two-per. Do you think there is anything else we should know about before we allow Amentans to immigrate?"

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"It will likely be complicated if not impossible for Amentan immigrants to go back where they came from or to any other Amentan polity unless there turn out to be dozens of planets with separate bottlenecks of their own if any, or we figure out faster than light travel or heavy-duty terraforming. I don't know how much you usually rely on the possibility of people who come to Cascadia leaving again, but if it's usually very much you will need to be a little more careful with Amentans."

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"We don't generally expect immigrants to leave. Do you have any questions about Cascadia you'd like to have answered? I don't know what interests Voa has in Cascadia."

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"Our overarching interest is living space, but we will also ideally have some trade between our colonies and Earth countries. I am unsure to what extent you can guess what Commander Waterford has told me about Cascadia -?"

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"We're a bunch of slutty drug-addicted paranoid sinners with a truly astonishing arsenal of nuclear weaponry?"

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"About that, Amenta does not have those and I suspect it was in some ways a superior period of history when we had not encountered the idea."

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The ambassador blanches.

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"...I'm so sorry."

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"It might be that we're in a period of adequate peace that they need never fall on our planet. I am glad we did not encounter you a couple of years ago."

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The ambassador looks like she is going to be sick. She takes a deep breath and says, "we too are glad. We-- are researching adequate defense mechanisms against nuclear weapons and if one is found we shall of course share it as widely as possible."

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"I appreciate that.

"It will almost certainly be impossible to really contain the information considering the significance in Earth history, but slowing it down could matter."

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"--I am not generally licensed to make promises but I can assure you that if the Cascadian people discovered that I were capable of taking steps to prevent a nuclear war and had not done so I would be stabbed twenty-seven times and the coroner would say I ran into a knife."

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Avalor blinks at "coroner" but that's all.

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Lev catches the blink.

"Do you not have coroners in Voa?"

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"The word may be translating oddly."

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"How does it translate?"

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"There are reds who dissect the bodies of people who died under suspicious circumstances. They are not generally consulted for their opinions on the subjects; supervising oranges direct the autopsy and assess the results."

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"That's strange. Why wouldn't the autopsy be directed by the people who are doing the autopsy?"

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Chloe realizes they brought a forecaster for a reason, but really really doesn't think this line of questioning is the most important thing right now. They could be talking trade agreements instead of satisfying Lev's idle curiosity about the caste system. She compromises with herself by making an impatient face.

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"The red is present as a buffer between the orange expert and the corpse, not for medical expertise."

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"...why... don't you train the people who are doing autopsies... in medicine?"

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"Medicine is orange. While there are procedures in place to handle it if a patient dies in the hospital, autopsies are predictable enough that a red may be enlisted instead."

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"...what, exactly, is the social status of reds?"

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"- I'm not sure exactly what you mean. They are the lowest status caste, though it is no longer fashionable to explicitly rank them all."

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"Are red schools worse than other schools, what does the red life expectancy look like compared to the life expectancy of non-reds, do reds traditionally undergo some sort of painful body modification that other people don't, do reds typically have the same level of health care as nonreds, are reds more likely than nonreds to experience food insecurity, if a red is murdered will their killer be prosecuted..."

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"The reds handle schooling internally, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were worse, since teaching is not a red occupation. I would need to look up life expectancy but pollution exposure is not known to be healthful. I don't think they practice any irregular body modification. The same is true of medicine as of education except insofar as we have to intervene to be certain they all have access to birth control and on-demand abortion because reds count as population. I would need to look up statistics on their food insecurity, though I am not sure any have been taken. Killing reds is illegal but it seems prima facie likely that we do not catch much red-on-red crime and policing is not a red occupation."

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"I didn't mean red-on-red. What happens if a non-red murders a red?"

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"It is illegal," she says, "but it's more likely to be noticed, since someone would have to enter and leave a red district, or account for their missing garbage collector. It does not carry a sentence of sterilization or execution; I do not have all our on-book criminal penalties memorized as I'm in the process of wrestling the entire country back onto its feet but that crime does not make the shortlist."

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"--Okay, yeah, scratch that stuff we were saying before, we're going to take as many of your reds as you want to give to us."

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"Excuse me," Chloe says, yanking Lev up by the shoulder, "we need to have a private conversation."

Snippets of their conversation can be heard by the Amentans: "not an elected official" and "do you really think it's okay" and "quintuple the population at least" and "overstretched social safety net" and "refugee camps" and "Canada."

It is not a very civil conversation.

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Avalor waits, doing some work on her pocket everything.

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Eventually, they return. 

"What my colleague meant to say is," Chloe says, "it sounds like the situation of your reds has some parallels in our history, some of which are particularly sensitive to Cascadians as a people. It is difficult to say what our policy will be at this point, but there is a strong likelihood that we may wish to fund research into robotics that can automate red jobs, then allow the reds to live among Cascadians, who will not find them disgusting. However, since Cascadia is a small country and Amenta is very large, we may decide against making a choice that would change our country so radically."

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Lev clearly does not consider this to be an accurate summary of his position.

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"Unfortunately, attempts at researching robotics tend to cause the reds to kill all the roboticists. Perhaps if the research is done in Cascadia it can be pursued safely."

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"...why do the reds kill all the roboticists?"

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"They do not want their jobs to be automated."

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"Robots can automate purple jobs, purples aren't killing roboticists."

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"There exist purple jobs less vulnerable to automation and purples are less violent as a class, although if reds weren't doing it for them I suppose it is possible they would also object."

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Lev is very very suspicious of this explanation.

He is also being glared at by Chloe.

He shuts up. 

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"I think we would be very interested in getting a chance to talk to some reds," Chloe says. "Privately. If that could be arranged."

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"I do not think it would be particularly tractable."

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Well, that isn't suspicious at all.

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"I think we've explored this topic as far as we can," Chloe says. "You were saying, about what Commander Waterford has told you about us?"

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"Gileadite theologians appear to be sympathetic to the idea that God is telling us to avoid polluted things, and he speculated that if this became known in Cascadia, Cascadians would pollute things to be contrary."

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"...That would be abominably stupid. I realize we just had a discussion about how I'm not allowed to set policy but I am allowed to call things abominably stupid and then in general the parliament does not enact abominably stupid policies."

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"I am relieved to hear it. - Reds are polluted, so not desiring to deliberately pollute your country will inhibit your ability to harbor any even if we didn't have the right ratio of them at the moment."

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"Even in the event that we accepted red immigrants, you could rely on us not polluting trade goods or falsely advertising areas as clean when they were not."

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"I appreciate the distinction, thank you. However, I do not believe we have an excess of reds. We currently have more purples and fewer yellows than would be ideal and plan to use the colonies as an opportunity to address the imbalance, since unlike credit countries we can't just twiddle the numbers down."

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"Is there any particular reason Cascadia should enforce the caste system on any Amentan immigrants we should happen to get?"

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"I'd recommend you talk to my theologian about that but my guess is that you will not find her reasons compelling except insofar as you will have to contain any reds you receive in order to avoid Amentan outrage."

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"Is there anything else we should talk about?"

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"Do you think you have a useful perspective on Mexico and Canada I will not receive from their own representatives or Gilead?"

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"It's not super-likely but the Canadian government might be lax in enforcing population controls if the population views it as a violation of women's right to bodily autonomy. You will never, ever, ever get population controls enforced in Mexico and they will riot if they discover you give people abortions. --In theory I was hired to work on population policy, so I know more about that."

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"Commander Waterford touched on the trouble with Mexico but not the potential issue with Canada. Population laws are not differentially enforced except insofar as the biology of pregnancy makes it practically necessary."

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"I'm not positive about how Canada will respond, but they are slow-motion imploding because they don't want, uh, three- and four-year-olds to have babies, so there is a precedent for them holding to stupid policies out of principle."

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"Three-year-old Amentans cannot have babies. How do they avoid young people in Canada having babies if they are too committed to bodily autonomy to require abortions?"

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"Surrogacy is illegal under the age of 21, paid adoptions are illegal, long-acting reversible contraception without the teenager's consent is legal, and there's no particular infrastructure to help teenagers with their babies-- in Cascadia, we have day cares in every high school. To a first approximation humans don't have babies unless you make it a good choice for them to have babies."

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"I see, that's interesting."

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"If there's nothing more to talk about, I need to go talk to the interdimensional bar that has books from every universe."

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"Be my guest."

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Lev goes up to the bar. "This piece of paper has the information for a bunch of bank accounts and lines of credit on it, I don't know how many of them you can use but please drain as many as you can. This piece of paper has our preferences about books. We'd like the books on an ereader or ereaders that uses a file format compatible with Cascadian technology and can be charged in Cascadia. --Also, if you could throw in the twenty most popular books in Voan about reds among both reds and non-reds, that would be great."

The bank accounts and lines of credit belong to a few dozen different people and add up to a little more than ten million dollars. The book preferences paper says that the books should be in one of the two hundred most common languages on Earth; if that is not possible, the books should all be in one language to make the process of learning to translate it simpler, and should contain books of this-and-such sort to help them learn to translate it. It should be 50% fiction considered well-written and representative of its culture and 50% comprehensive history books and anthropology and economics books generally recognized as accurate among the societies they describe. The Bar should include books from many different universes selected for being representative. The Bar should purchase cheap books whenever possible so they can get as many books as possible for their money. There are various other specifications. It was a document worked out by a committee. 

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I'm unable to perform format conversion or to use the lines of credit that don't belong to you, which will limit your results.

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"Goddammit. The most important thing is that the ereaders are chargeable in Cascadia, if our computers can't make heads or tails of the files we can hire data entry people to handle it."

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All right. Do you wish to fetch the people associated with these forms of payment?

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"They're unfortunately all in Cascadia and there are many difficulties involved with getting dozens of Cascadians with high-level security clearances to fly to Gilead."

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Do you wish to make any prioritization adjustments given the reduced spending power?

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"God, no. The process of getting that paper worked out in the first place was hellish enough and I'm not going to touch it."

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She provides a Kindle.

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Lev returns to the table clutching the Kindle like it is the most precious thing in the world.

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"That's a clever idea," remarks Avalor.

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"If we'd been really clever we would have figured out how to get the Cascadian government to pay for it. But it'd be arts funding and no one in the art part of the Cascadian government has a security clearance high enough to know about aliens and we couldn't get it figured out before I had to get here. So I'm like two hundred thousand dollars in debt and don't have a retirement account anymore."

He does not seem particularly unhappy about this state of affairs.

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Greens.

"I don't believe our existence will be secret for long."

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"Gilead doesn't like us, we don't know when or if they'll let us at the interdimensional bar again, and we think their choice in interdimensional bar books is going to be bad."

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"I see, that makes sense."

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Lev looks at the Kindle, discovers that some of the books are in English, and proceeds to completely ignore anything else that happens. 

Greens.

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Indeed greens. "Is there anyone else on my end you'd like to talk to? I have my theologian on call, for instance, if you want to know more about castes," Avalor says to the ambassador.

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"We might be interested in learning more about castes." 'Especially reds' goes unstated.

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Avalor summons Sadrin. Sadrin trots up and blinks at the ambassador's purple hair.

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Lev decides that meeting the new alien is probably more important than reading about the universe where Scandinavia is a world power.

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"Hello, I'm Chloe Shumaker, the Cascadian ambassador to Gilead, and this is Lev Aarons, a forecaster who advises the Cascadian government on policy. Within your caste system, he can best be understood as a green." 

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"It's nice to meet you both! Governor Avalor says you're interested in castes, where would you like me to start?"

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"We have two primary concerns about castes. First, Cascadia accepts all immigrants that want to come to our country. We don't think it's very likely we'll have many Amentan immigrants, but before we take any we want to avoid any disasters that might come from applying human laws to an Amentan population, no matter how small. Second, certain of the things said about reds in our discussion with Governor Avalor are likely to be... concerning... to many Cascadians, and we'd like to have a better understanding of the position of reds in Amentan society."

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"Reds are one of the smallest castes - in most countries they are about as numerous as blues but Voa has unusually few blues. Their central advantage for their work is, roughly, hyposensitivity, which is a mental illness in clean Amentans but essential to sustainably performing red work. They do not have very much interface with the rest of society because they are polluted. What human laws are you thinking might interact with castes?"

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"Well, we don't have castes, and would naively allow Amentans to work whatever jobs they please regardless of their hair color. If there is some way in which that would be disastrous, it would be good to know." 

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"You certainly can't let reds do it if you want to retain any credibility about taking pollution seriously. For the clean castes... We have reason to believe it would be bad for people's flourishing if they didn't adhere to their casted roles but it's possible you prefer to value short-term freedom more highly? Castes provide tailored, attainable archetypes for people to raise their children toward, there are cultures and dialects and many generations of genetic specialization. Intercaste marriage is still incredibly controversial, although it is legal in Voa with matrilineal inheritance."

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"I expect that we will, in general, not take pollution seriously, except to provide certified-clean trade goods and hotel rooms for tourists and such. This is one of the reasons we expect few Amentan immigrants who are not... hyposensitive? We of course have no objection to people raising children within their culture or encouraging them to take certain jobs."

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"We don't have any reason to believe that meddling with the caste system will have dramatic, morality-tale-style consequences. We do think it's better for people to the point where it's worth enforcing - intercaste children have worse outcomes along a number of axes, Ereith has done an irregular thing with greys that led to war crimes and they're so isolationist it's hard to imagine they think they can compete economically on the international stage, and every Amentan polity has converged on the same style of caste system with minor differences in the casteting of a handful of careers so it seems overwhelmingly likely that we've hit on the right way to do things for our species."

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"I think Cascadians, in general, will say that if it is the right way to do things for your species then you can do things that way without government enforcement."

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"I think a good analogy is, like-- I'm Jewish, which is... sort of like an Amentan caste, I guess? We exist in a bunch of different countries, it's genetic, we have cultures and dialects and various ideas of what a good Jewish person ought to be. But also I don't do any Jewish things and I don't feel any particular connection to Judaism and the government doesn't do anything about it and the only negative consequence I face is that my fiance is irritated when I eat bacon. --Jews aren't supposed to eat bacon."

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"...there are no castes which are not supposed to eat bacon, or any other particular food. It's a matter of skills, ideals, and culture. Individuals sometimes feel impulses to deviate from their casted roles but their children are better off when their ability to carry out these impulses is limited by law."

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"To be clear, being Jewish is also a skills and ideals and culture thing. Like... we argue a lot, we kvetch-- what does that translate as, I'm curious-- we are overrepresented in intellectual professions especially at the highest levels, historically we were often limited to certain professions such as moneylending..."

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"- that would be much too specific for an Amentan caste career list."

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"It was more than just moneylending. I don't know all the professions we were limited to off the top of my head, like I said I'm a very bad Jew."

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"I'm not sure it will help with the translation if I just say 'kvetch' back to you - it's a green- and yellow- associated word for complaining. Anyway, it's likely that humans don't belong in the same castes as Amentans, and that Jews or anything else castelike turned out to be wrong for you. I'm in part drawing on the fact that all Amentans do this and the ones who do less of it are worse at many objective measures."

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"Huh, that's not a bad translation, if greens and yellows have the culture I think they do. I wonder how this place works."

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"Thank you for your advice," Chloe says. "It doesn't sound like it's urgent to enforce castes, the way it is to enforce population controls, so we don't necessarily have to settle things before Amentans perhaps begin to settle."

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Lev glances at the Kindle and notices that every book is in English. Then he notices that the books that are in Voan are, as far as he can tell, in English. 

He reads.

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Bar has provided him with twenty books about reds in Voan! They are titled:

Reds
Developments of the Red Caste 2090-3040
The Redfetcher (A Novel)
Reds and the Occupation
Technology and Red Work
Summer Glory AU where Lirdon doesn't run away if you know what I mean vote on a real title in the comments
amateur memoirs collected and abridged by tandi be-nidika de-sotho part one
amateur memoirs collected and abridged by tandi be-nidika de-sotho part two
Red Crime
District: Case Study
Charity for Reds: Corrupt, Purposeless, Parasitic
Reds
The Seventh Caste
Primary Pollutants
Reds Abroad
Collected Notes of Dargvo be-Ondari
Reds Online
Voan Social Work Encyclopedia Volume 27
Handbook for District Deliverypurples
FORBIDDEN RED

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amateur memoirs collected and abridged by tandi be-nidika de-sotho part one sounds promising. 

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Chloe continues to talk with Sadrin about castes.

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amateur memoirs is what it says on the cover. Tandi has collected 5,000 to 20,000 words apiece from a bunch of reds and organized them into a book, apparently in approximate order of how old the memoirist is at the time of the main anecdotes in their chapter; the first chapter is about someone remembering being almost one, being told how much attention he'd get come spring.

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Lev skips to halfway through the book. 

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Halfway through the book is a chapter about somebody with a barely-elaborated-upon old injury reaching Amentan-menopause at age twenty and reflecting on the different relationship she has with descendants born before and after that mark.

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He gets up and goes to the Bar. 

"Is there a way I can pause time so I can read?"

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Not reliably, but if you go out of line of sight of other patrons your time may desync and it may be favorable.

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Also, if they can't find him, they can't make him leave. 

He finds an out-of-the-way corner where he can't see Chloe or Sadrin and opens up Charity for Reds: Corrupt, Purposeless, Parasitic, which has the most bigoted title and might give him a sense of what bigots believe. 

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Apparently the organizers of charities for reds are almost universally preying on simpleminded nitwits who think reds require charity; the money doesn't even actually make it to the reds most of the time. Many of the charities operate arms that don't specify what they're about for people who reflexively give "to charity" but then take shelter under lax oversight regarding their cause area.

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Does it say why the reds don't need charity?

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In regions where for whatever reason there is no charity directed toward reds or none makes it there there's no corresponding decline in red services or increase in red crime rates.

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That is... conspicuously missing some of the obvious reasons one might want to donate to charity.

It's nothing obvious. Nothing he can point to, nothing that would convince the people of Cascadia that they have to take red refugees. No one's said "muahahahahahahaha we like torturing red babies and eating them for breakfast." But he has a bad feeling.

They don't say anything obviously objectionable. But they... don't talk about reds like reds are people that matter.

He closes his eyes and reconsiders his reading strategy. amateur memoirs collected and abridged by tandi be-nidika de-sotho seems like obviously the most valuable book as an apparently representative sample of red lives. But there's no way to skim it. Reading the introductions to all the nonfiction books might give him a better sense of what people think about reds faster, and he'll know which of them is valuable. 

He gives into temptation first and finds out what FORBIDDEN RED is about.

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Porn!

It's not straight-up porn, it's actually a book by a sex worker talking about red fetish, how to accommodate clients who have it without compromising personal boundaries, the porn that red fetishists write and read, and a little look into people who actually go and have sex with reds with negligible attention to features of that situation that would in Cascadian terms make the difference between rape and non-rape.

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Creepy!

He skims through the prefaces and first chapters of the two books called Reds, The Seventh Caste, Primary Pollutants, and Developments of the Red Caste 2090-3040.

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Reds (the first): turns out to be about reds as a motif in fiction! They're sparsely used in theater, or even music, but in literature, which people normally have the opportunity to react to privately, they are sometimes used as villains or props in various ways across literary styles.

The Seventh Caste is about reds' social separation from everywhere else and the resulting dialect and cultural differences. It's a translation from a Doetaran book but includes Voan examples.

Primary Pollutants is about the process of reds becoming primary pollutants by extended multigenerational contact with pollution and the likely effects on their cognition (negative) and character (likewise).

Developments of the Red Caste 2090-3040's preface is all about how esteemed the author is and how great her other books are. The first chapter is about the increase in the use of glass.

Reds (the second) is about red districts' effects on city planning, property values, policing, infrastructure, budgeting, and resource allocation; it might have been intended as a textbook for blues.

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This is... starting to fit together into a picture. 

Does either part of amateur memoirs, by any chance, have an index?

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Nope.

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He pulls out a notebook and makes quick notes-- systematized rape?, red welfare not important charity outcome, deprived of education, cultural belief that reds are stupid + evil, villains in plays, universally (?) found disgusting, social separation.

He looks at Red Crime and the Voan Social Work Encyclopedia.

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Red Crime's first chapters are about pollution violations, which range apparently indiscriminately from deliberately grabbing people through sneezing while at work without a mask on.

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Lev doesn't have a pollution sense and is not about to judge people who have one about what triggers it. 

He tries to get a sense of whether there's anything non-pollution-related that's illegal for reds and not everyone else and if this book agrees that reds are generally stupid and evil. If there's a chapter about clean-on-red crime, he reads it.

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This book is solely about crime committed by reds. In addition to pollution violations it discusses illegal work stoppages, violent crimes against cleans, failure to consistently appear red, population violations among reds, financial crime, out of caste work violations on the rise since the invention of the Internet, and, of course, rioting. Incidentally he may notice that Voa doesn't practice adversarial justice.

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Lev has no strong opinions about the merits of adversarial justice versus alternative systems.  

His notes say, cleans can just commit crimes against reds? strikes illegal.

Why do the reds riot?

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Roboticists, whom it is speculated they must identify by creepily going through people's trash, but also occasionally policy announcements that they don't like - relocating some of them to a polar science settlement triggered one, there were a few during the Oahkar occupation over the sudden enforcement of Oahk-style population controls, etc.

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Riot to express disapproval of policies inc forced migrations. Lack of voice in govt? Opposed to roboticists. Necessary but disliked minority-- genocide?

He underlines genocide a couple times.

He turns to the social work encyclopedia.

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It's a guide for oranges entering the red liaison role. It assumes this was not the reader's first choice. It refers a lot to other reading and its own content is a little sparse, but it talks about situations in which you do and don't need a full five hour decontamination after work, how to tell if reds are lying to you, examples of things you might need to do (check up on population compliance, follow up after police complaints, talk to them about supply issues).

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Lev quits after like two pages. It's unclear to him whether red liasion social workers are actually despicable or if he just feels that way because of his profound distaste for all social workers.

He's not sure that further reading of books by clean people is going to enlighten him that much more. He starts amateur memoirs about a quarter of the way through and skims anything that seems like it's not related to oppression.

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Things related to oppression appearing in amateur memoirs:

- the time there was no sugar all winter
- police brutality; the memorist's sister couldn't walk for six months
- everybody hates the social worker so much!!!
- seducing a deliverypurple to get rice in reliably for reds with an allergy to the other main staples
- inadequate supplies to deal with postsurgical infection, though the surgery itself seems to have begun innocuously
- various Oahk-related complaints
- somebody making friends on the Amentan equivalent of a BBS, then being caught out as red and instantly losing his whole social life

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Um. UM. 

He writes quick notes on all of those and more details on the seduced deliverypurple and the police brutality. 

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"There you are!" Chloe says. "The meeting's done."

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The seduced deliverypurple seems to have previously been reselling rice deliveries intended for the reds; after seduction, she was incentivized to show up and apparently felt awkward about showing up without any rice and still expecting to get sex out of it, so rice appeared on the regular. It isn't hard to tell which of the cleans have a red kink, they're the ones who can't stop staring at your hair.

Memoirist's sister worked a trash route and encountered a cop but doesn't remember a lot of details because she blacked out during the subsequent beating and her co-worker was unclogging an apartment trash chute at the time the cop's attention was acquired so he doesn't know either. Has a bad hip now, can't drive or carry heavy things, switched to inwork telephone appointment booking.

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Lev stuffs his notes in his pocket. "Sorry. Books are interesting. You guys finish talking about trade or whatever?"

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"Yes, and Avalor wants to meet with the Mexican and Canadian ambassadors, which means we're out of here."

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Avalor does indeed wish to meet with these personages.

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The Mexican ambassador, as advertised, is absolutely opposed to the concept of population controls. He spends much of their meeting trying to convince Avalor that instead of abortions uncredited Amentan children could be taken to Mexico and adopted. 

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"I don't believe humans are capable of consistently keeping Amentan children in conditions that will be healthy for them."

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"It is healthier for them than being murdered!"

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"Furthermore, once they grew up, they would each have fifteen children, perhaps slightly fewer if they complied with Mexican law about extramarital sex but perhaps as many as sixty if they failed to season on Earth and no parts of their reproductive systems gave out under the strain."

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"We're suffering from world underpopulation, do you really think that's a problem? Children are a blessing."

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"If we gave you one hundred children every year, and none of them committed suicide because they could not be confident in the cleanliness of their environment, and they all obeyed Mexican law but married as soon as they sprung and even half of them failed to season - you are I believe near the equator, so that is generous -" She taps some numbers into her calculator app on her everything. "- then before any of them dies of old age you will have more than one hundred billion Amentans."

"Of course, the point is moot because as soon as it looks like you have a runaway population then anyone who's had experience with the Amentan variety of population crisis will either declare war on you en masse, or perhaps find a way to sabotage the door and leave you to sort yourselves out where you can't harm anyone on our planet with this policy, and before that could happen if I announced I was doing this my neighbors would have me assassinated."

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The Mexican ambassador attempts to argue in favor of cultivating abstinence but his heart really isn't in it.

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"We have invented birth control, Ambassador, preventing the conceptions is not the problem here. At any rate, even if we had reason to believe that Amentans would take very well to Mexican-style abstinent behavior and limit their growth of their own accord in this fashion, I'd consider the policy inhumane. People who have abortions do so because they prefer it to having a baby taken from them and adopted out, not for their entertainment. If in some way you resolve the population management issue perhaps you would do better to apply to the Tapai."

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"...what are the Tapai doing?"

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"Infanticide. - Is that successfully translating differently than 'abortion' into Spanish? If someone is caught with an uncredited, already born baby in Tapa it is killed."

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"Um. Yes. We do have different words for the concepts."

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"I see. I do happen to have the Tapai ambassador to Voa on call but the idea is a complete nonstarter if you do not have a way to handle the population control problem."

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"I do not think we would likely be able to resolve the population control issue to your satisfaction."

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"That's a pity. Thank you very much for meeting with me, Ambassador."

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The Canadian ambassador seems much more promising.

"I understand Amentans may be interested in starting a colony in Saskatchewan?"

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"I don't think a specific named territory had come up but if it has seasons and empty space and we'll be able to run it with population controls and pollution laws, the answer is yes."

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"Saskatchewan has an area of almost five hundred thousand square kilometers and has six hundred thousand residents. The climate is subarctic but it does have summers."

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"We'll need to send a test expedition to see if anyone seasons there. A low rate is acceptable, people will just visit to see if they can stay, but if no one can season there it will be unpopular."

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"Canada is unfortunately fairly far in the north."

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"Reduces the odds but not by much more than your short year length."

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"Well, if you don't mind the cold, we actually have several more territories you might be interested in--"

The Canadian ambassador walks Avalor through the geography of Canada. There are not, it turns out, many people in most of Canada. 

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"Cold per se isn't a problem, we can live indoors. It's the seasons."

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"Living entirely indoors is fairly unpopular among humans-- Canada had a pretty low population for its size even before the infertility crisis."

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"This continues to be puzzling but I've come to understand humans don't want children very much."

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"It's not that humans don't want children," the ambassador says, "it's just that, oh, you know, people focus on their careers, some people aren't sure they'd be good parents, people have trouble finding someone they want to have kids with, some people want to travel or have fun or get an education in their twenties and by the time they're ready for children they're infertile... And a surrogate is so expensive. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money, and a lot of people who don't have particularly good jobs can't afford it at all, and a lot of the ones who can would rather spend it on a nice house or something, or don't want to bring their children into the world if their children are going to be financially insecure..."

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"To an Amentan," says Avalor, "this means that humans don't want children very much."

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"Huh," the Canadian ambassador says. "I understand why population controls are important, then."

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"Yes. It's a lesson we've learned over the last decade or so."

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"I like the Gilead system where Amentan laws apply in some locations and human laws apply in some others and population controls apply to Amentans wherever they live," the Canadian ambassador says, "it seems like a reasonable compromise."

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"I'm glad, I think it will work well. Do you also want to settle an unseasonable part of Voa to bring up little human girls there?"

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"I believe there will be many applicants! Would you prefer to filter it yourselves or have us do it?"

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"That depends on what protocols you want to have for interfacing between them and ordinary Voa. We're happy to have you do it provided we can enforce overarching laws we need to."

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"We'd probably just end up doing a lottery on people who have no criminal record, if you have stronger preferences we'd be happy to accommodate them."

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"If lotteries would be well received by your constituency I don't object. I'd like to refer you to some of my staff for discussing the legalities; they've already drawn up a proposal for the Gileadites about what sorts of Voan law will and will not apply in human enclaves. Inconveniently Voan law is not in a long term stable state right now due to some recent historical events, but our laws do come in categories and we think that we can understand them in those terms for this purpose without important loss of applicability when details are adjusted."

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"That sounds excellent. Perhaps my staff should be in touch with your staff?"

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"Yes, we've rented some rooms to serve as conference rooms here so we can confer without losing the translation effect, I believe the people you want to talk to will be in room 30449."

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Then the Canadian ambassador and her staff will talk with Avalor's staff!

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On the plane home to Cascadia Lev writes his reports. Population control is necessary for Amentans. A two-per system will cause thus-and-such increase in subjective welfare; a credit auction system will increase tax revenues by thus-and-such per Amentan; a permissions system appears to have no advantages but he puts such a probability on Avalor being lying or mistaken. Pollution controls can be expected to increase tourism and immigration by such-and-such amount. He is very uncertain of the welfare and economic effects of the caste system and expects the effects to be driven by e.g. whether particularly unusual Amentans will immigrate to Cascadia if they don't have a caste system. He is not very certain that he hasn't missed anything important about Amentans. 

Then he takes a deep breath, opens a new tab, and writes about Amentans. 

Abstract

The red caste deals with polluted objects, including sewage, trash, and other reds (epsilon). Amentans find the red caste disgusting and unpleasant to interact with (one in ten million). Amentans are bigoted against reds [see Appendix 1 on the role of disgust in oppression among human beings] (one in one million), including finding them unintelligent and evil and not worthy of moral consideration (one in one million). Structural mistreatment of reds is common (one in one million) and pervades the social work and criminal justice systems, as well as the market economy that interfaces with reds (one in a hundred thousand). Reds believe something bad will happen if their jobs are automated (one in a hundred thousand). The consequences of the automaton of red jobs may include genocide (73%). Higher certainty levels may be achieved if the Voan books about reds are translated (one in one million).

See Appendix 2 for summaries of representative stories about the mistreatment of reds. 

Then he goes home and hugs Sasha and cries into his shoulder and can't tell him why. 

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If no one brings this report to the Voans' attention, they will announce to enormous fanfare the discovery of a magical portal to an underpopulated alien planet, and in the wake of this announcement they select two groups of three hundred people each who are willing to go camping on Earth for a few months, and prep them for expeditions to Sasaktchewan and Montana to see if any of them season there. The test groups don't include any reds, since they're going to be on campout protocol; they're mostly green, most of the rest purple, some orange and grey to handle the likely issues in groups of three hundred, and one blue per group to diplomacize their interacting-with-humans needs.

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The Cascadian government keeps the report very very confidential. They make some concessions about trade and Gileadite border enforcement and obtain the services of a Voan-to-English translator. 

The early results from the books come in. Lev's report grows longer and his levels of uncertainty go down but his conclusions don't change. 

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Special arrangements are made with the Gilead state news channel. It's hyped for days as a revelation that will change everything. (Most people think it's a minor change to population policy or the rules of exactly what is heretical.)

Fred, a Voan spokesyellow, and a human translator appear on stage.

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The Voan spokesyellow could not really pass for human blonde; her hair looks like bee-fuzz. She smiles and waves at the cameras.

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The interviewer shuffles some papers for dramatic effect. "Mr. Waterford, I think we're all excited to hear what brings you to our show tonight."

"Of course," Fred says. "I come to you today because God Himself has blessed us with a miracle."

"What sort of miracle?" the interviewer says.

"To be honest, I've been trying to figure out how to break the news gently, and I don't have anything, so I'll just say it straight," Fred says. "A few weeks ago, I opened the door to my closet, and I didn't find my coats. I found an interdimensional bar called Milliways. In the bar, I made first contact with a species of aliens called Amentans. One Amentan is present on this stage tonight."

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"Hello!" says the Amentan in accented English, beaming. "We are so pleased to meet you!" She has memorized a few phrases phonetically.

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"There are many exciting opportunities that first contact has brought us," Fred says, "and I'll talk about some of them later tonight. But the most exciting opportunity is the fact that Amentans have never heard of God. We're looking forward to this unparalleled opportunity for missionary work, for the glory of His Name."

"Is that true?" the journalist says. "You don't believe in God?"

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After she's confirmed her translation of this with the human translator, she replies through him, "The concept is new to us! Amenta doesn't have any religion the way humans understand it."

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"No religion at all?" the interviewer says. "You've never heard of God?"

"They're as innocent as an atheist in a Sunday-school-class conversion video," Fred says, to widespread laughter.

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The Amentan smiles. "I was briefed before I came here, so I have heard of God, but not outside of the context of contact with Earth!"

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"Is this what Amentans look like," the interviewer asks, "or have they taken a form with which we might be more comfortable?"

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"This is what we look like! We're surprisingly similar to you except for the hair colors."

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"I understand the hair colors play a very important role in your culture?"

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"The hair colors signal what we call caste, which Milliways's magical translation renders in English as 'caste'," says the yellow. "The color doesn't cause the caste, though; instead, each caste has a most common hair color, and if our hair would be misleading, we dye it to match."

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"Which castes are there?"

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"I'm yellow - we have words that mean the castes directly, but rather than make you all learn a lot of loan words, we're just using color names, which we also do ourselves colloquially. There are also blues, greens, oranges, greys, purples, and reds."

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The interviewer asks for and receives an explanation of which caste does what. 

Then he frowns very seriously, as if this were a legitimate concern he has, and says, "among humans, castes go against God's will. They limit people's potential and force them into one role or another. Are you sure God wants Amentans to have castes?"

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"We're new to the concept of God. We do think it might be the case that castes work for Amentans and don't work for humans; certainly we wouldn't try to impose the system we're using on another species."

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"Everyone on the first contact team has been praying and reading our Bibles about the concept of castes. We believe that God may show Himself differently to different species. For example, among humans, gender shows the relationship between Christ and His Church. But Amentans don't have a concept of gender."

"You don't?" the interviewer asks.

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"We don't. We have sexes the way you do, but we're less sexually dimorphic, and we don't find ourselves to have different personality characteristics between the two, not even statistically. No profession in Amenta which doesn't specifically require someone to have a uterus reflects a sex imbalance."

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"Similarly," Fred says, "humans have different hair colors, but don't have any differences based around that. We believe that God may be showing Himself differently through Amentans. As humans are supposed to behave in accordance with their gender, so Amentans are supposed to behave in accordance with their caste."

"Is there something like men corresponding to Christ and women corresponding to His Church, but for castes?"

"Work is ongoing," Fred says. "There's been an attempt to correspond them with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit-- greys are fortitude, greens are understanding, yellows are counsel, blues are wisdom, and we're not sure about the other three."

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The yellow smiles and nods.

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"The differences between humans and Amentans are fascinating!" Fred says. "We look so similar that it can be easy to miss how different we are psychologically. For example, Amentans have an immense desire for children."

"Surely everyone wants children," the interviewer says.

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"Amentans want children much more," says the yellow earnestly. "I don't doubt that there are some humans who want as many children as the average Amentan, and as badly, but the averages are very strikingly different."

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"What is the Amentan average?"

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"Because we all want children so badly, and don't have an equivalent of the bitoxiphosphene crisis, we have to impose strict population controls, so our average is just slightly above two per family. Most people would have at least five if they could. Under permissions systems, people who are successful enough to acquire the option often have more than that."

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"Through population controls, God blesses Amentans with the opportunity to exercise self-control and self-discipline, as we do when we regulate our fleshly desires."

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"Voa, the country I am from, uses two-per-family child allocations, and occasionally awards third children," continues the yellow.

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"Do other countries use other systems?"

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"Yes, another popular model has the federal government auctioning off credits. It has revenue and caste balance control advantages over our system, but we think ours is superior in terms of population well-being. Some countries also have blues distributing permissions according to more or less idiosyncratic systems of their own."

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"The two-per system seems fairest, which is why we plan to use it in our Amentan settlements."

"Amentan settlements?" the interviewer asks.

"Yes!" Fred says. "We will encourage Amentans to immigrate to Gilead."

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"Since we're not affected by bitoxiphosphene, and would benefit so much for room to expand, this is a golden opportunity for us both," says the yellow. "Voa is likewise opening some of our northern provinces to human settlements; we don't have much bitoxiphosphene in the atmosphere, never having found much industrial use for it, and we'd never wish infertility on anyone when we could let human girls grow up on Amenta, unexposed."

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"And the migration will happen through your closet door?"

"I'm planning to move out!" Fred says with a grin.

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"Our end is in the office of our head of state! We're repurposing the whole building as a border office," smiles the yellow.

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"If humans and Amentans have such incompatible needs, how can they both live in the same cities and towns?" the interviewer asks, as if this is a real misunderstanding he has.

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"We're expecting that we mostly won't. Amentans need things very clean, in a way that humans would consider a waste of time; so humans in Amentan towns will spend some time making sure they're verifiably clean enough, and Amentans in human towns will take more showers and might wear plastic outerwear, and mostly we'll take up residence in separate places."

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"Gilead is setting aside the state of Montana for Amentan use," Fred says. "All people currently living in Montana may apply for compensation for their moving expenses."

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"We expect to be able to make the transition easy on current residents of Montana; we're going to start new cities in currently empty space, not move into Billings on day one," says the yellow. "And while the space will hopefully allow us to relax population controls, we're not going to overrun it incautiously - we'll still be limiting most families to two, maybe three, children. The colony project is also waiting on the results from a pilot trial; Amentans have a seasonal cycle we find it unpleasant to be without. We think some of us may be able to season here, and we've got test populations picked out to try it."

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"What's a seasonal cycle?"

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"Amentans can only conceive children in the spring. That's also when we feel the drive to reproduce most strongly; Amentan children don't experience any interest in sex or babies until our fourth or sometimes fifth spring. In places without seasons, like the poles and equator, our systems think it's spring all the time - which might be fun if we could all have ten or fifteen kids, but we can't, so it isn't."

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About halfway through the first sentence Fred is gesturing wildly for the spokesyellow to stop.  

"Please tell me this is not live," he says when the yellow finishes.

"It's not."

"Okay," Fred says, "try that again, but this time don't mention sex."

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"- how would you like me to explain seasoning?"

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"Okay, yeah, I'll handle it." Fred turns to the interviewer and composes himself. "Amentans can only have babies in the spring, and in the spring they want babies a lot. So if they can't have a baby a particular spring-- which is true for most Amentans most springs-- it's really unpleasant. In places like the poles and the equator, that don't have seasons at all, they 'spring' all the time."

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The spokesyellow accepts that.

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"I understand we're not the only country taking Amentan immigrants?"

"There are plans to settle Amentans in Gilead and Canada," Fred says. "While it's harder to have Amentan settlements farther from the door, we're currently in talks with England, China, India, and Japan, among other countries. Amentans do not plan to move to any Catholic countries, because Catholicism is absolutely incompatible with population controls." He smiles brilliantly. "Of course, we hope Amentans will all prefer Gilead."

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"Gilead has a lot going for it!" smiles the yellow. It's the place where the door is and it's farther south than Canada, but that is technically a lot.

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"Cascadia plans to continue to have open borders but since they don't plan to keep things clean enough for Amentans we don't predict that Cascadia will have a large Amentan population."

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"We've briefed them on how to handle population control just in case," says the yellow.

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"So there will also be human immigrants to Voa," the interviewer says. "What do you think they should know?"

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"It's going to be chilly!" says the yellow. "The parts of Voa that don't have anyone in them are mostly uninhabited only because they're too far north for us to season. We have to be able to account for all of our population to our neighbors, so humans will have to interact with the population control department, even though the entire point of the settlement is to help humans avoid infertility - we'll need to be able to account for how many people we have there and allow international inspections. We don't need the humans to keep their own settlement clean to Amentan standards, but we might still need it cleaner than would naturally occur to you - the international inspectors won't think it's funny if it looks like someone's trying to keep them out by grossing them out. Anything traded between mainstream Voa and the colony will need to be clean. And if someone does visit mainstream Voa, we take pollution very seriously - there'll be more extensive briefings on that at the border office for anyone who comes through."

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"What does pollution mean?" the interviewer says. "Are you referring to bitoxiphosphene emissions?"

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"No, it's things more like excrement. I think we're within human tolerances on our attitude toward air contaminants."

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"'Pollution' is the word Amentans use for things they find particularly disgusting, such as sewage or garbage. It doesn't have anything in common with air or water pollution."

"That's an odd term," the interviewer says.

"Blame the bar."

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"The Voan word is 'pollution' if that's more convenient," says the yellow.

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The interviewer attempts to wrap his mouth around it several times and fails. "...We'll stick with the weird word."

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The yellow laughs genially.

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"You mention international inspectors-- how does your government work? Earth governments work a lot of different ways."

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"So do Amentan governments! Voa recently transitioned to democracy; before that we were occupied by an empire that's now dissolving, and before that, just three Amentan years ago, we were an oligarchy."

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"That seems like an interesting couple of years! What was the empire?"

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"It was called the Empire of Oahk. Its original territory has now been rebranded the Free State of Oahk and they're working on democracy now too."

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"But even in a democracy only the blues are politicians?"

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"That's correct. Of course, oranges teach young blues, greens do political science, and yellows do a lot of government work at all but the highest levels."

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"Being conquered must have been difficult. We had some trouble ourselves recently, with the coup. Can you talk about that?"

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Solemnly: "It was a very difficult time, and in fact it was over population controls. The Empire saw itself as mandated to conquer any country that wasn't implementing controls to its satisfaction, and considered two-per too lax. Voa declined to surrender and was violently conquered. We lost a lot of greys, and almost half of our blues were executed in the aftermath, and many Voans have their own stories of how the sudden shift in population control affected their family."

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"That's horrifying," the interviewer says.

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That did not show up in their briefings!

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"We're very glad that it's over now. A survivor from the original Five Lines that once governed Voa was recently elected Governor."

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Fred feels like he probably should have noticed this!

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"That's Governor Avalor, with whom Fred was working?"

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"That's right. She's extremely popular in Voa."

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"I hope she'll be equally popular here! --That concludes our questions, but we have a very special guest."

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"A special guest?" blinks the yellow.

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"My former Handmaid's two-year-old son wanted to meet the aliens. Come on out!"

The two-year-old is in fact two, and held by a starstruck woman who's barely twenty. 

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"- awwww!" squeaks the yellow, immediately bending to be eye level at the two year old. "Awwww hi smallness! Hi what's your name?"

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"Samson," he says shyly.

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"Hi Samson!" She boops his nose. "You're so cute! Did you know? Do people tell you every day you're so cute?"

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"No," Samson says, in the tone of a person who is very ill-done-by.

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"Oh no! They'd better start! So cute so cute so cute!" coos the yellow. "Can I pick you up?"

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"YES!!!!" Samson says. "DO YOU HAVE ROBOT ARMS."

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"I just have regular arms! I don't think robot arms would be very snuggly!" she chirps, scooping him up and snuggling him. She's forgotten about the cameras. "But I have alien hair!" She bends her head in case he wants to touch it.

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He DOES want to touch the alien hair.

He is MILDLY DISAPPOINTED that it is not robot hair.

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She giggles at little child hands petting her hair. "I'm sorry I'm not a more alien alien. Or a more robotic alien."

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"It's okay," Samson says, very seriously, "you're a good alien."

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"I'm so glad you think so! I might come live on Earth, you know."

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"YAY!" Samson says. "ALIENS ON EARTH!"

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She laughs and kisses his hair. "We have to make sure it's a good place for our kind of alien! But we really hope so!"

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"I prayed to God," he says solemnly, "that Earth would be a good place for you."

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"That's so sweet! Does that usually work?"

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"Yes! God ALWAYS grants the prayers of people who believe."

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"Wow! Then I guess the experiment with the people going camping will turn out great!"

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"It will! Because God loves you!"

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"What a touching and childlike faith."

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The yellow smiles and snuggles the smol.

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And the interview goes live. 

Statements are released by every government the Amentans talked to that the Amentans are, in fact, real, and not Gileadites with hair dye. A National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving is announced in Gilead. Marches in every city are full of people praising God for his mercy onto Gilead. 

Primly, using words that can be mentioned in a family newspaper, the Gileadite media discusses the fact that God thinks it's okay for Amentans to have premarital, extramarital, and homosexual sex. 

Every newspaper and TV show in Gilead is required to go through a process of review before it can be published. The Eyes work overtime quelling dissent on the Amentan issue. Several prominent bloggers who claim that Amentans are Satanic disappear and are never heard of again. 

China announces that it is a credit auction country. India, Japan, England, Australia, Gilead, and Canada are all two-per. China, India, England, and Gilead enforce castes; Japan, Australia, and Canada do not. 

The pope issues a condemnation of the anti-life Amentan attitude towards population control, babies, and abortion. Catholic countries announce that they are planning to take Amentan refugees, particularly those with uncredited children. 

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The Cascadian government declassifies Lev's reports, including a heavily redacted version of his report on reds. The word "genocide" never appears, nor do any statements with an uncertainty of greater than one in a million. It is still the only thing that anyone on any Cascadian news show talks about, with occasional breaks for "isn't it IRONIC that Gilead supports Voa when they nuked us?"

The Cascadian government announces that it is a one-per-Amentan country, aiming for an Amentan TFR of 2.2. Additional children will be distributed by lottery. You get an additional entry into the lottery for every year above four you were once you had your first child (if you have a child) or every year over four you are (if you are childfree). 

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Voa announces that attempts to flee into any country in which contraception is forbidden even to Amentans is an execution offense and that they will deny door access to any Amentan country that doesn't institute a comparable rule, and they strongly recommend to Earth countries that they form a defensive agreement that will band together to squish any attempt by any country to harbor and accumulate a hundred billion Amentans before it starts and gets even uglier to put down.

Six hundred Amentans and their camping supplies head into Montana and Saskatchewan.

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Earth governments hastily form the Amentan Population Control Association, the purpose of which is to forbid Amentan immigration into countries which do not have adequate population controls. No Catholic country is a member. Neither is Cascadia, due to the APCA's inadequate assurance that it would not result in nuclear first use. 

Catholic countries announce that they will not take refugees. The pope issues a very sarcastic statement about the seamless garment of life. 

"What should we do if Mexico takes Amentan immigrants?" quickly becomes a subject of avid debate in Cascadia. Some argue that invading risks loss of life and nuclear war; others, that allowing Amentans to have children unchecked is the greater risk. 

A few Gileadite bloggers announce that they believe that children are a blessing and contraception is morally wrong, even for Amentans. They disappear. One blogger finds Lev's report on reds and publicizes it to support her hypothesis that Amentans are demons. She disappears. People start complaining that their perfectly innocent posts about paint colors or flowers get filtered. 

Montanans and Saskatchewaneans watch the aliens. 

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The aliens find beautifully empty parts of their selected provinces, and they set up tents and have cookouts and taste-test Earth food (it doesn't hurt them a bit!) and are exquisitely careful about Camping Protocol Latrine Management since they didn't bring any reds. Many of them are couples, since they're going to have to endure some spring even if they do reseason; the singles hook up with one another anyway when that hits. The greens study the wildlife; the purples do architectural surveys; everybody studies English.

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A Montanan homeschool coop goes on a field trip to meet the aliens!

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A grey stops them before they get very close and directs them to the camp showers! After that - they don't require a full decontam, they just want to be a little careful - they are welcome to visit.

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"Tell us to leave if we annoy," a mom says to the grey in phonetically memorized Voan.

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"You are not annoying us!" the grey assures them in English. "We're happy to have visitors as long as we can be sure you've washed." The first sentence is haltingly constructed; the grey almost says "we" instead of "us". The second he memorized out of a phrasebook composed with Milliways help.

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There are several small children in the homeschooling coop! They're running around oohing at the tents.

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The Amentans all drop what they're doing to stalk admire the small children!

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Some small children are frightened and hide behind their mothers' skirts! Others think the aliens are So Cool. 

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The Amentans prefer the ones they aren't scaring.

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Perhaps, in spite of the language gap, the aliens will be able to understand the concept of tag? 

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The aliens figure this out! The aliens happily chase small children and tag them!

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The homeschool coop takes pictures!

One of the moms posts them on her blog. 

A few Eyes visit journalists and strongly suggest that a human-interest story about the aliens playing tag with human children would be a very good idea for the front page.

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The aliens look terribly photogenic pretending to not wish to be caught by human children.

If (freshly bathed) journalists want, they will also talk about the observations they're making of the planet, which mostly duplicates Earth research but is nice to have done with their own methods and measurements.