Well, a projection would let people safely handle polluted or otherwise dangerous things, even if it didn't technically save any labor.

That makes more sense than them just agreeing to quietly die out!

He does have an email address and here it is.

He read on Summary Bank that robotics work causes terrorist attacks, doesn't that imply that people don't want robots really?

Here's some photos of towering spires of softly glowing blue fungus snaking all over dead animals and various other things, trailing connecting lines of fiber that move globs of fluid around on them. It's very creepy, but also from the right angle sort of eerily almost-pretty.

He didn't let the captive colonies he studied infect anything alive, but he tried a bunch of things on already-infected areas and throwing them vegetables or whatever. Fire is the best bet for destroying Blueblight, as well as these kinds of toxins, a Draak infected with blueblight and pumped full of this cocktail of poisons survived after a really unpleasant few weeks... You know what, here, have some chemical formulae just in case, Blueblight's nasty.

Only some Amentans don't want robots, they're just very terrorism-inclined ones. A project that could skip enough steps could roll out the final stage without being vulnerable to terrorism in early development.

Itamime will diligently take all that down!

Maybe after the Draak figure out their own politics and what to do about Amenta. It'd be much more of a project than his exoplanet data format conversions, anyway, those are a one-off with gear that he knows really well, but turning his one-off shiny tech (that he is actually really proud of and wants to profit from!) into something mass producible seems a lot harder.

How is Kanteko played, Kanteko? Draak don't do strategy games much, riddles seem to take that niche. A round of that might be fun. He expects to lose, having heard of it just now.

He starts giving Hehata a somewhat confusing philosophical ramble about 'hidden worlds' (mostly because 'invisible' reminds him of some philosophical concepts), but catches himself and stops if she expresses any confusion or hesitation.

Do Ahumu or Aktem or Kimahk have any questions for him?

Kanteko didn't bring a board but can show him the mobile version, which he can if he likes download onto his own everything to play a heavily handicapped game! The mobile version has procedurally generated terrain (in board Kanteko one places terrain tiles in advance according to a slightly randomized algorithm). Unit morale plays heavily into the gameplay - units are promoted or demoted based on various factors, and sometimes the true morale of a unit is hidden from the players till it gets into a fight.

Hehata tries to follow the hidden worlds ramble but isn't sure what the heck he's talking about.

Ahumu would like to know about his spaceship! Aktem wants to know if he thinks Blueblight - or any other Draak diseases - could spread to Amentans, or for that matter vice-versa; Amentans have speculated that even harmless microbes from one planet could be harmful on another. Kimahk effectively wants the story of his life in the hope of publishing highlights as an interest piece.

The wargame theme feels weird, but it's still a really interesting game. He loses four times, trying four wildly different strategies, then gets better pretty quick.

He's sorry to confuse Hehata. The topic is more green than yellow, her name simply made him think of it - the idea is, how can you tell things you can't physically detect are real? Philosophy. He'll stop.

Unfortunately, many things about his spaceship are secret. He can talk about some of the materials and the general layout without going into any specifics about how it does this or that, though.

Blueblight could almost certainly spread to Amentans and Amentan animals and plants but he's not about to suggest a test, Onesong forbid! He doesn't expect more mundane microbes to cause issues but can't rule it out. It's weird that all three planets he's seen use DNA, as do the Miniscs. He hasn't seen local microbes causing him any problems so far and his foreign microbes probably aren't spreading far in the vicious desert/battlefield that is the ocean microbiome, anyway.

His creators were Darktooth the Wise and Soaring Shadow Over Cold Forests. He grew up in his first few years almost entirely alone. He spends most of his time engineering or reverse-engineering. He studied under Darktooth after the journey to Newhome and discovered many interesting things. He had twenty-seven kids over the last four hundred years, two of which decided to stay on Oldhome and fight the humans and therefore are dead. Too bad, they were promising. He invented FTL, or was the first Draak to figure it out anyway. 

Kanteko's impressed with his uptake of the game and is happy to play and commentate indefinitely.

Materials and layout are interesting, though not the most interesting.

Aktem certainly wasn't suggesting a test, just wondering if there are precautions they should be taking.

Twenty-seven is a lot! Are most of them alive? What inspired the invention of FTL?

It's hard to say what precautions might help, but it's unlikely to come up. Blueblight is rare even back home, because when outbreaks get big they burn the entire area to the ground. Symptoms of Blueblight include feeling cold all the time, tiredness and increased appetite, and parts of the body turning blue or seeing blue motes drift across one's vision. It's contagious by fluids early on, but not by air until colonies actually break through the skin.

Twenty one are still alive! Most of them have a kid or two of their own! He's an unusually child-inclined Draak, concerned about the future and all, and he's pretty old. Most are happy with one or two so they aren't the end of their bloodline. He invented FTL because he was bored and wanted to be able to get everyone out if aliens invaded again.

Are they sure they see the same blue? They suppose they must since he's telepathic.

What makes Draak who aren't that into kids interested in not being the end of their bloodline?

Yes, it would be Yellowblight if they had a different name for that wavelength of light.

Theology and culture. It is good to create new life, and life in your own image is best, and you don't want your song to end so you make someone to keep singing if you die.

Do children carry on some kind of legacy-maintenance responsibility?

Usually not. Some teach their young in particular ways, but we do not expect them to do anything for us, their parents, except exist and be a reflection of us. Of course, I thought Darktooth was great and followed his path of my own accord. That happens sometimes.

So the "keep singing" thing is sort of abstract.

Yep. Existing is singing. Most of their cultural and theological concepts connect back to song, and rarely is the song the kind you can hear.

That makes sense!

He can produce lots of detail about the particular way each kid was impressive or smart and what they accomplished and how their other parent seemed to shine through in them too.

Now that he's thought of it, he asks Amseli about sending music or pictures to everyone. One to many communication. It'd be valuable experience for explaining the merits of the tech to the other elders. (And he wants to show off some of his favorite shinies!)

Everyone would be delighted to see pictures of his stuff and listen to his music!

I would appreciate help in choosing a website to do this on. Pictures, perhaps with short messages. Later, music and short videos. Also, I will be ready to start sending part of the exoplanet survey data soon but may need something faster than the pocket everything to do it in a reasonable time. The conversion strains its processer and there is a lot of data.

Amseli suggests a site called ourPlatform which has multimedia posting options and is commonly used enough not to have weird subcultural connotations. She can also have him brought a more computery computer.

Good, good. Exoplanet pictures will come soon enough after the computer does. He sort of wants to be at that terraforming conference Tapa is throwing, but that seems logistically challenging and not really his speed anyway. Though, even if he can't go into any buildings, having a look around a city or two in-person would be nice, just for the perspective.

He decided he wants to go visit other countries instead of getting Tapa to bring people from other countries here, but has no idea how to handle figuring out who is actually a government and who is somebody with a governmental-looking account or a radio transmitter if he does a 'why should the alien meet your country next' contest himself. He trusts Tapa enough at this point to take that headache away from him and collect the responses, if they don't mind. His tentative thought was to spend another few days in Tapa while he mostly reads a lot of stuff on the internet, then a day or two each meeting as many other countries as seems reasonable, then back to Tapa for another little while, and then home to start the process of a Grand Moot.

Tapa would be happy to collect pitches from other countries inviting him to visit on his behalf! What does he imagine he'll be doing on these visits, so the other governments can tailor their suggestions?

I'll want to talk to their blues with telepathy, and perhaps some members of other castes as well. I want to gather a wider variety of perspectives so that I have a fuller view of the situation on Amenta. The fox and the rabbit tell very different tales.

I also want to assure other countries that I am not particularly beholden to Tapa beyond being grateful you were able to explain Amenta to me calmly and well. -Less relevantly, I also still want to talk to a red at some point. It seems incomplete not to.

That's going to be very difficult to set up. It might be easiest in, hm, Doet, where they participate in a lot of experiments and there are greens on speaking terms with them?

I don't have to touch them... But I know little about them, and little about Tapa, in absolute terms. It seems Doet will ascend in my list, then.

I'm not really clear on what you're hoping to learn from them. Would talking to them on the internet do some of what you have in mind?