« Back
Generated:
Post last updated:
I've seen worlds that don't belong
The Krissan meet some aliens
Permalink Mark Unread

The world hovers on the brink of eternity, a thrum of excitement through every news cast, every teleprinter serial or radio drama, every movie and short, on the handful of television sets -

The International Science Association announced a global push three months ago, a period of unprecedented scientific collaboration towards one end - a greater understanding of the cosmos and, surely, within our lifetimes - space travel. The creative minds of the krissan ran off with this idea, of course, and space fiction is quickly becoming one of the most popular genres.

Life's good, if you ask the krissan. They have unprecedented communications - an era of peace seems on the horizon, and people speculate excitedly about the ideal of a global alliance, outstripping the limited mandate of the International Science Association. Robots aren't yet able to take over in factories and release the world's workers into a post-toil paradise, but that, too, is a popular fiction trope. People listen to the public service campaigns encouraging them to have fewer children per adult in a household - most young adults considering family matters decide they're going to solve this by having more adults in the household for the same kids - because surely, surely, no one wants to put too much population pressure on the world, we're going to go to space and we need to clean up our own act before that -

(People speculate excitedly about space colonies, of course, and terraforming planets, and having an infinite vista - no one's sure if finding a planet ready for terraforming or a planet with aliens would be more exciting - )

People listen to the educational campaigns, too. Those countries which offer student stipends adjust which higher educational degrees they favor. In a few years, there'll be a bumper crop of scientists and engineers and would-be astronauts, or at least secretaries and factory workers getting scientific, engineering, and mathematical problems on their home teleprinters and sending in crowd-sourced solutions to every problem imaginable.

Life hums along, a touch more hopeful.

Permalink Mark Unread

A scout ship, looking for new worlds, flies through the sky.  There is one, ahead- teeming with life, something they haven't seen before.  The idea of aliens, even just alien flora and fauna, is exciting enough that they need to view it closer- it doesn't occur to them that there might be actual intelligent aliens on this planet until they start picking up on something on their radio scanner- something that sounds intentional.  Something that sounds like words.  They record as much as they can, trying to find distinct languages and then trying to get some semblance of a computer translation.  They stay far from the planet for several days, and then they approach, sending a radio signal on as many frequencies as they can, first in interplanetary common and then in each of the languages they have clumsily translated.

"Hello.  We are from another planet.  We would like to be friends."

Permalink Mark Unread

This gets picked up everywhere and then rapidly transcribed and from there rapidly translated into the languages not widely spoken enough to merit radio programs, distributed over teleprinter networks along with a rash of opinions on how everyone should respond.

Ham radio enthusiasts try to answer back first, mostly excited calls without much meaning. The governments are a bit slower, ones with more centralized, smaller bureaucracies in the lead answering first.

"Hello! We would like to be friends, too!" seems to be the near-universal message.

Permalink Mark Unread

They settle in to orbit, and then send another message to each of the governments they have heard from so far, adjusting their translations based on the responses.

"We would like to come down to visit you.  Where should we land? Is there anything we should do first? Is there any international body we should contact?"

Permalink Mark Unread

The agreement seems to be that they should definitely talk to the International Science Association, except for these few nations which aren't signatories to the Association and don't really like it.

The International Science Association is very concerned about microbes and thinks they absolutely should not land until they've traded enough biology information to be sure pathogens won't jump across species barriers, or until the Association is sure of the aliens' sterilization procedures.

Most of the small nations who aren't part of the Association think the aliens should land in a specific place in their country.

Permalink Mark Unread

They are happy to talk to the International Science Association! Here is a bunch of information about their biology, and about diseases common in humans, and descriptions of all the diseases that they routinely vaccinate for (all of the people on board are, of course, fully vaccinated).  Here is a description of their very in depth sterilization procedures for things that they might bring on board, which can be adjusted to be used on them as well. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Here's some of the same data in return!

The Association believes that full-body self-contained suits and helmets, the exteriors of which are sterilized, will be enough to zero out risk in both directions. And then once they've established what cross-infection risks are - and possibly gotten vaccines for anything that could potentially jump the species barrier in the pipeline - they can start restrictions to various levels of protective equipment.

Permalink Mark Unread

The crew of the ISS Flora can do sterilized space suits! Where should they land? Who will they be meeting with?  The ships doctor would like to work with their scientists on establishing what the risks are, but the rest don't have the biology knowledge necessary to be of use on that, are there some people interested in talking about cultural differences, giving them a chance to get to know each other?

Permalink Mark Unread

Fortunately, the time they've spent talking biology has given the international community time to agree on a landing site and diplomatic center - the Eireeya Airfield has room for their ship, and is near the World Sanctuary, where they're hoping to host talks. The World Sanctuary is fully accessible for most of their own people, but they're unsure about the aliens - here are the building requirements, does this work for you?

(The Krissan seem to favor wide hallways and tall ceilings and smooth floors; you could get three large wheelchairs abreast in most of the main hallways, and two in nearly all of the rest.)

Permalink Mark Unread

It is completely accessible to them! The crew appreciate the concern.  They will land in the Eireeya Airfield, and come out to meet the Krissan.  The ship contains 8 people, who look rather more similar to the Krissan than either group was likely expecting.

Permalink Mark Unread

That's surprising! Some of the scientists and such in the meeting group mutter excitedly to themselves.

There's ten people present on the Krissan's side, who'll read to the crew of the ISS Flora as half men and half women of a mixture of races and cultures, with no particularly clear indication of a certain uniform among them, though they seem to favor loose, flowing clothes in bright colors, and are mostly wearing skirts and dresses.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Greetings!" the woman in front calls out. "Welcome to Krisses!"

Permalink Mark Unread

The crews faces are hard to make out through the space suits, but each suit does have a name tag attached.  

One of the crew members steps forwards.  In direct conversation, his attempt at the local language is much rougher than it was over the radio, where the crew could translate each sentence and get the help of the computer.

"Greetings.  I am Captain Hallos.  This is the ISS Flora and her crew, we are an exploratory vessel seeking new planets."

Permalink Mark Unread

Another crew member steps forward to stand next to him.

"I am Doctor Ilina, the doctor for the ISS Flora"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is my pleasure to meet you." She gestures to one of the men. "This is Marchen, the Director of Medical Research for the International Science Association."

Permalink Mark Unread

He steps forward, touching his left fist to his right shoulder briefly, mostly turned towards Ilina. "Greetings."

Permalink Mark Unread

Ilina copies the motion. "Greetings.  Is there anything else you want to get out of the way before we get to work on the biology question? It seems rather more likely that there will be cross-contamination issues now that I see how similar we are, and I would rather be able to get out of this space suit sooner rather than later."

One of the people behind her kicks her leg gently, and says in interplanetary common "Don't complain about space suits to the nice aliens"

"Sorry, I've been on a ship for nearly five years and seem to have forgotten my manners" Ilina says in the language they were using before.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is there anything else you want to do before we head to this World Sanctuary? I am curious to see it, it does not sound like the sort of place aliens coming to our worlds would have been taken to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, it's alright," Marchen says to Ilina. "And I'd like to work on the biology question right away."

Permalink Mark Unread

To Hallos: "The World Sanctuary is the sort of place we usually conduct diplomacy. A bit larger scale than we can fill, but it's usually what we use to host large international conventions - so it's the only place people could agree to as a truly representative meeting space for all our peoples."

Permalink Mark Unread

Ilina will begin asking questions about what they've done so far, and will follow Marchen if he would like to lead her to wherever they will be doing the research.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well then, it certainly sounds like a good place to teach us about your worlds cultures.  Shall we head there now, then?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes. If everyone could follow me - "

Sadly getting into the cars disrupts Marchen and Ilina's conversation a bit. Still, the local team takes care to organize people together by common interests.

The World Sanctuary is massive, it seems, or at least in the middle of a park - their road takes them past a colorful wall,light concrete with stones and glass and shells embedded in it in abstract murals, behind which spread gardens and greenhouses and other buildings. The wall flows smoothly into the entrance itself, a colorful affair, and they park in a covered lot outside of it.

"This is only one of many entrances," she explains. "We try to keep the lots from getting too large. Still, the space has been reserved for our use today. This section covers local history, art, flora, and fauna - I'm unsure of diplomatic customs among your people, but here we try to keep talks from involving too many people at once, and find it's best to spread out serious discussions over the course of a day spent in admiration of nature and art. Traditionally, diplomacy was hosted while hiking, but that's not always accessible, so in the modern day we turned to Sanctuaries."

Permalink Mark Unread

"This is beautiful.  Our diplomacy tends to take place in government buildings, in conference rooms or offices, not outdoors at all, though I think one of the Venusian countries does huge windows so that you can at least see out into the gardens."  All of the crew look around in wonder, and some wander away slightly too take a closer look at the gardens.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you. I'd feel awfully cooped up, standing in one place for a talk - still, it's a very reasonable difference for two peoples to have."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Typically it's done sitting, not standing." He smiles as he says this. "Our oldest settlement, on mars, doesn't actually have any outdoor areas that are livable, it's not naturally habitable by humans and was settled before the development of good terraforming technology.  All of us our descended from the mars settlers, so many of our traditions come from that environment"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I could see that having a selection effect, yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So, we know that you have radio and cars, but could you tell us a little more about recent technology innovations, so we have an idea of where you are technologically? And feel free to ask us any questions about our own society."

Permalink Mark Unread

The rest of the crew have returned from looking around and are now standing behind Captain Hallos.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hm... The teletype printers aren't new, but we've been developing networks for them, and by now most people have one in their home. Computers are a domain for governments and the International Science Association, currently, but there's hopes we'll be able to miniaturize them or incorporate some of their features into teletype printers." She turns to one of her people, who confirmed they invented transistors for computers about a decade ago, and suspect they may be another decade out on even very expensive home computers.

"We also have airplanes up to commercial size, though convincing people to use them for anything other than cargo or very short passenger hops has been difficult. We're trying to figure out how to design planes to be less unpleasant."

"We have stable liquid fuel rockets, and have for a few decades, and have launched unmanned satellites, though we've yet to actually put anyone in space due to safety questions."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It sounds like technologically you're at about where we were in the year 50 BF, though I am noticing some divergences in tech trees.  I'd love to see a teletype printer sometime." A different one of the crew speaks up at this point.

"This is Darjo, he is our technology expert." says Captain Hallos.

"We've gotten computers well beyond the point of getting them in to peoples home, this is our current state of the art" Says Darjo, pressing something on his wrist that causes a holographic display to appear in front of him.  "Every housing unit on Mars comes with a larger computer, though I admit I know less about the prevalence on other planets, but most adults have a personal holo-comp.  That's this", he adds, pointing to the holographic display.

Permalink Mark Unread

Their technology expert seems to think this is incredibly fascinating! "What's your current year by your calendar?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"543 AF.  AF stands for after founding, in reference to the founding of the Martian Confederation, and BF stands for Before Founding.  The founding happened about 5 years after the first colonists got to Mars." Darjo explains.

Permalink Mark Unread

He whistles. "We're quite behind you, then, technologically."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not terribly surprised, interstellar travel requires pretty advanced technology.  I'm interested to find out if there are other things like the teletype printers that you developed and we didn't!"

Permalink Mark Unread

Another crew member speaks up. 

"How are you guys handling housing? I know that your tech level was well before we had universal housing figured out, and I imagine your societal progress is where the greatest divergence is.  I'm Isbella, by the way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello Isbella," says another of the gathered Krissan, before introducing himself. "Honestly, housing varies country to country, but most nations consider the lack of housing for non-nomadic populations to be an important government issue. The best systems in the world generally manage to house everyone, even if not always in the ideal amount of comfort, and most places have some kind of subsidized housing. People also usually go in on housing in groups, which reduces costs compared to singular housing, and we think reduces the overall risk of homelessness."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm really glad you're working on it! We don't have universal housing everywhere, I know that Venus's system doesn't guarantee it, but we have it universal most places, and even where it isn't there's not many people involuntarily homeless.  And no people who sleep on the streets, just people sleeping on friends couches or a car or something.  It's interesting that you live in groups like that! Even at about your tech level people mostly only lived with their significant other and their children, and even living with a significant other has become less common, though people do prefer to live with their significant other once they have kids.  Most people tend to live alone these days." Isbella replies.  "What major social changes are recent?  Anything that was socially unacceptable fairly recently that isn't now? Or that used to be acceptable that isn't now?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Darjo resumes speaking to the Krissan who was interested in the holo-comp.  "This is the most common model, but we also have a purely audio interface, most commonly used by blind people but some sighted people prefer it, and a visor interface that goes over your eyes, which can be helpful for people with hearing issues or people in dealing with unfamiliar languages because it can do real-time subtitles, but is rather inconvenient if you don't need that feature."

Permalink Mark Unread

The one Isbella's talking to replies with: "Living alone sounds kind of miserable! The general historic roots of going in on housing together is generally accepted to have been bargaining power with hiring property managers and representatives, and increased efficiency in things like making meals and recycling materials. We also use the same words for workers' unions as housing unions here, though not all languages do that. Recent social changes... We're becoming less violent over time, has been one notable thing. We've never tended towards large scale conflicts, but small scale ones used to be way more common. We're also running programs to encourage people to have fewer children per parent in a household, due to general worry about populations growing too quickly, and those are having a strong effect - I'm not sure what a 'significant other' is, that seems unidiomatic? Do you mean a co-parent? - Oh, and also social tension over parasitism scrupulosity is something we've always had, but right now we're trying to keep people's scrupulosity high despite advances in medicine currently making it less necessary."

The one Darjo's talking to replies with: "Interesting! I'd expect subtitle use to be nearly universal, here, for people without other issues with the visor. An audio interface would probably be rude to use, here, though I could see the culture on that shifting if there's no good touch interface and it's an important accessibility issue."

Notably, the representatives are spreading out as conversational groups form, often getting as many sound barriers as they can between the different groups. This place is quiet, almost eerily so, optimized for sound muffling in a way human spaces rarely are.

Permalink Mark Unread

"We've also become less violent over time! A significant other is the person you're in a romantic relationship with, most people only raise kids with a significant other.  Could you expand on parasitism scrupulosity? I'm pretty sure it isn't a thing for humans, unless it's translating wrong."

She notices the quiet, but decides not to bring it up right now.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do most people have hearing issues?  The visual overlay is annoying, that's why the visors aren't popular unless you need visual overlay.  Only the user can hear the audio interface, it goes in a little earbud that you put in your ear, though you do have to talk out loud to use it.  It's not quite as convenient, so mostly people who can use a visual interface prefer that, except for people who worry about spending to much time using computers and want theirs to be inconvenient."

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "Why would there only be one? That seems strange. And parasitism scrupulosity is worry about and fear of parasites, and the steps people take to reduce parasites in their environment - people with high parasitism scrupulosity keep their areas and bodies clean and are less prone to disease, but more prone to phobias and anxiety."

To Darjo: "I wouldn't call it a hearing issue, just that when there's a lot of potential sound inputs it's hard to pay attention to only one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most people only have romantic relationships with one person at a time, lots of places it's actually illegal to marry more than one person, though if it's just a relationship and you're not married that's fine legally, but does make you seem a bit weird, socially.  Parasitism scrupulosity isn't very common with humans, and I think we'd consider it a phobia on it's own."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Like auditory processing problems? That was part of what I was talking about as hearing issues, really.  I feel like a touch-based interface would be much harder to make than an audio one, but it might be an interesting challenge, and if we end up setting up trade and selling you guys our advanced tech that would be a really interesting thing to see developed!"

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "That's really strange! Most parenting groups are four people, usually but not always with romantic links between them, and we're trying to encourage parenting groups to get larger for the same number of kids, lately. And if you don't have parasitism scrupulosity, how do you avoid disease?"

To Darjo: "I mean, we also can't fly unaided? So hearing working a certain way isn't a problem for us. Your species might process auditory signals differently, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"See, to me, that's really strange, it's even weirder to have kids with multiple people than to have relationships with multiple people.  We...have medicine and vaccines, we spent a really long time trying to figure out what worked and why, we went through a lot of really bad theories about what caused disease before we figured it out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, it sounds like we do.  Do you have any questions about our computers or other technology you want to know about? Or a teletype printer I can see, that's not something we developed and I'm really curious about them."

 

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "Your children might be more self sufficient? And we've started developing medicine and vaccines, yes, but before those, disease could end up rather terrible in areas with low scrupulosity."

To Darjo: The representative has both questions and the ability to have a teleprinter brought over!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe.  We haven't really done many studies on how having more adults in a family affects child development, if your way were better we probably wouldn't have stumbled on it.  Some people, mostly religious ones, think that kids need one mom and one dad and any other arrangement is bad for them.  And yeah, diseases ended up pretty terrible a lot of the time before we had good medicine, I'll see if I can find some historical information, possibly including concrete numbers which I don't have memorized if you're curious about more details."

Permalink Mark Unread

Darjo will answer questions.  The teletype printer is really neat.  
"Say, do you have telephones?"
 

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "There's also how it affects the adults! Children are really a lot of work, and it'd be very hard to have a job and a young child, I'd think, if you only had two parents."

To Darjo: "Technically yes, but not a lot of places have the right infrastructure, and they're not really convenient to use."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most parents send their kids to a babysitter, and usually at least one of the parents takes some leave when the kid is really little.  Usually the mother, so she can breastfeed.  Some countries have a system set up so that both parents can get a good amount of time off work without having to worry about money."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What makes them inconvenient to use? Just the infrastructure thing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "Having a babysitter seems like it might not be really accessible to poorer parents, though? If you're hiring them?"

To Darjo: "Well, the sound often runs together - it's really hard to hear or parse what people are saying - and you can't record them very easily, and you can't re-access old conversations."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, poorer parents are stuck with whatever free childcare they can find.  It's more common for the government to fund than time off work, but it's not universal, lots of people have to leave their kids with their parents, or with friends, or go with whatever babysitter is cheapest even if they aren't actually very good."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh.  Well, I'm glad you have the teletype printers then, it seems like they serve a similar function to the one that telephones served for humans when we were at your tech level."

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "Yeah, our system might have less problems in marginal areas like that? But it's also plausibly a psychological difference between our species."

To Darjo: "What did telephones do?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suspect that there are actually two psychological differences between species that are not directly about the ideal way to parent but result in major differences- I think humans are more monogamous then Krissan and less willing to co-parent with people we aren't romantically involved with."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They really made quick long-distance communication possible! Before telephones you had letters and telegrams, and while telegrams were quicker than letters, they were limited in how long they could be, and not as quick as talking on the phone.  And they were kind of the framework on which a lot of later technological developments rested.  Like the internet."

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "That does make sense, yes."

To Darjo: "That's neat! How does the internet work?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Since you have larger parenting groups, is homeschooling common here? That is, educating your children yourself instead of sending them to school."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The internet is a big network of wires and radio signals that is used to transmit information to different devices! The information is stored on various servers, and the collection of all the information that can be accessed through this network is referred to as the internet.  The internet has pretty much all information known to humans, though not all of it is easy to access, and tons of peoples personal opinions and thoughts and crazy theories and stories about things that happened and so on.  It would be impossible to ever read everything the internet contains in a human lifetime, or even 10 human lifetimes."

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "Most people prefer having their children learn at least half of their lessons with other children outside the parenting group; it's considered a bit odd, to try to control all the information a child receives, and education is really a specialty, anyways. A minority go to large formalized schools, though, if that's what you're asking?"

To Darjo: "Wow! Some writers have theorized the teleprinter archives might ever get that big, but it's really something to hear about somewhere it actually happened, more or less."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We would consider educating with other parents to be homeschooling, yes.  Most human children go to school from when they're about 2 and a half Martian years old to when they're about 9 martian years, and are in school most of the time that their parents work.  Most humans consider it better to have children educated by professionals, though there are several different educational styles and philosophies that schools might follow, and different ones are most common on different planets.  10 Martian years old is considered adulthood on Mars."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's really cool that you were working towards something similar, and the fact that it's teleprinter based makes my theory that they're filling a similar cultural role to the role telephones filled for humans more likely!"

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "There's something of a continuum, really? A collection of neighborhood kids being taught by someone with a teaching certificate is a school, like how the big universities are schools. Big schools are more common in urban areas, though, and there they do make an effort to have a variety of styles available. School children usually spend more time on lessons or group recreational activities than their parents do on work, lately, but we've also been doing a big push to get the work day down to something more reasonable."

To Darjo: "It'd be really interesting to compare books on histories of technology!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"With the neighborhood schools, what's the average student-teacher ratio? And about how much of the day is, on average, spent working, how much sleeping, how much doing other things?  And please feel free to ask me questions about how we do things."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think we have any with us, but I'd love to look at yours, and we're gonna send a message back to our organization so we can hopefully set up a more in-depth and long-term form of contact, and I bet we could get them to bring books with the diplomatic envoy."

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "That really varies between regions, and 'the average' is a bit of a misleading number, and I'm not sure how you'd define a teacher - the range is usually five to twenty students in a classroom, with one to three instructors, usually working out to around seven students per instructor. We try to keep to that even in the bigger urban schools. About a third of the day is spent sleeping, and most jobs have you spending about a sixth to a third working on work days - we're trying to get labor down to working half the week, a sixth of the day on work days, but that's been mostly as we ramp up automation. We also try to plan our spaces so no one's spending more than a twentieth of the day just on commuting, though that's a harder problem than reducing work hours. Most of the rest of the day is generally spent in leisure. How do your people structure schools and work?"

To Darjo: "We can have some of our own gathered, too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, school especially varies so much by planet, so I'll just explain how it works on Mars.  Mars has 3 school periods per day, and every child is put in the one with the most overlap with their parents work.  We have larger class sizes than you- past about 5 martian years you very rarely have more than one adult to a classroom, and classrooms are usually about 15-25 students.  Keeping the class sizes more reasonable is another benefit of the rotating schedule, honestly.  Kids between 3 and 5 often have a second teacher, and the 2 and a half to 3 year olds have 3 teachers per classroom.  The students are in school for about a third of the day 7 days out of 10, except for on holidays.  We have 4 major holidays every year, and the kids get the whole month off for those, plus several minor holidays that they get a few days to a week for.  Adults work for about a third of the day 7 or 8 days out of 10, and never get more than a week off work for holidays, and people in some jobs can't even get that, though you do get paid double for working the week of a major holiday, and everyone is guaranteed at least for weeks of paid vacation a year, even if they can't have it on the major holidays.  A lot of this only applies to the Martian Confederation, the laws are different in different places, and then you've got the miners and freighter pilots and people with weird views who live out in the asteroid belt.  Which is the unarguable worst for children's education, honestly.  No state, so no state funded schools, and there's not enough population for a privately owned school to make any money, so there's none of those, the only options are distance education and homeschooling, which work sometimes but definitely not for every kid raised out there.  Most places educational systems have upsides and downsides, so where is best really depends on what kind of education you want your kids to get- the Jovian state schools will get you the best science education in the system, for example."

Permalink Mark Unread

Darjo would love to read some books!

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "That sounds tough. Things aren't at all standardized here, though, and our society's still simple enough people can effectively home school."

To Darjo: Books might take a little bit!

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think that homeschooling mostly works fine if you have a minimum standard, and any child protection laws, the really bad cases are mostly parents who actively prevent their kids from learning.  Even the total educational neglect cases mostly learn some things by asking a computer questions, though they fall far behind their peers.  In places with a government most homeschooled kids turn out alright. There's no standardization at all? Not even on the level of a town requiring that all kids need to know how to read by a certain age or something?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

Do Krissan want to be shown things one can do on a holocomp?

Permalink Mark Unread

Captain Hallos is going to seek out someone who looks like a diplomatic official.

Permalink Mark Unread

To Isbella: "Not on a global level, is what I meant. Each polity has its own concepts of standardization and its own ways it makes exceptions to that."

To Darjo: Sure!

Permalink Mark Unread

And, for Hallos, the main diplomatic official seems to be the leader of the group, Jirinet Clarel.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Given that you don't have multiple planets, I'm really not at all surprised that you don't have global standardization."

Permalink Mark Unread

Then he will walk over to her.  

"I can't actually make any commitments on behalf of any human organizations, but we should begin talking about what we want long-term relations between humans and Krissan to look like.  I assume you would be interested in trade, and potentially in joining the interplanetary colonization coalition?"

Permalink Mark Unread

(To Isbella: Yes, that does make sense.)

To Hallos: "Actual commitments on our behalf would require far more time spent negotiating - but, yes, I suspect a good portion of us will be interested in trade and interplanetary travel."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you think any of your polities would want to send a delegation to visit human planets? Should I be preparing to argue for or against presenting your countries with various multinational treaties to consider signing? The colonization coalition doesn't actually do travel, it handles colonizing, instead of various planets going out and colonizing planets."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think some will want to send delegations, and we'll be interested in at least looking at multinational treaties - though we'll need to have a serious debate about our own political future, especially if the usual political system is on a planetary scale. Colonization efforts would likely be joint, for one..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The colonization system we have in place is set up specifically to keep any existing polities from having control over newly colonized planets.  There's a provisional government that gets set up on the new planet that is intended to handle governance until they figure out how they want to rule themselves going forward, but even that is managed entirely by citizens of the new colony."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That seems like a reasonable system."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It has worked well for us.  It will be interesting to see how your world handles joining interstellar society."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I expect there'll be some bumps, or at least an adjustment period..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I hope that interstellar society will do our own adjusting as well.  It will certainly be interesting, we'll have to rewrite a lot of laws that specify that something only applies to humans so that they can include Krissan as well"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can you give me examples of some of the applicable ones?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hmm.  Murder is defined as the intentional and avoidable killing of a human being by a human being, for example."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, that'd be one that'd really need patching... Our legal codes are a bit different, I think, though we'll also want to prompt countries to look theirs over to make sure they doesn't have any similar loopholes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We also have a tendency to refer to universal rights as human rights, and that is, I think, actually the language used in several documents."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We might also have a different idea of sapient rights than humans - I'd be surprised if we lined up everywhere, actually."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd expect there are rather a lot of differences.  What sorts of things do you consider to be sapient rights?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right to food, clean water, shelter, clean air, access to nature, education, access to art, to be free of pain, to not be subjected to psychological torture, to be free from discrimination based on unchangeable characteristics, to preserve your culture and religion and language, privacy, access to information, leisure..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We lean more into freedoms.  Right to immigration, right to express your beliefs, right to practice your religion, that sort of thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd be surprised if we approached things the same, even if the end goals are similar."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We also tend away from overly restricting what different planets and countries do, a lot of individual places have things like the right to food or the right to housing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There is a lot of individual variation - most sapient rights aren't strongly enforced internationally, just agreed upon as ideals, even if individual countries don't live up to those. And they're... We have a difference between 'productive rights' and 'status rights.' You have the right to be informed, but that is a status right - states are not obligated to provide information, just to not restrict it, though in discussing a state internationally they are often judged on their results, whether individuals have information - no matter how they get it. Most rights are status rights, and the main productive rights are the negative rights - the right to not be in a certain state, which sometimes requires state action."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It seems like we phrase things differently- we would say a right to access to information, not the right to be informed, for example, and we do have a codified document of human rights that countries are strongly encouraged to sign on to, and which does require you to insure those rights- it's bundled with an agreement that bans what are called beneficial invasions, so while signed on and compliant other countries can't invade you or attack you to make you change your system of governance or treatment of your citizens."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ours functions similarly - generally it's more understood that the main reason a state should guarantee rights is so its population doesn't call for foreign intervention."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suspect that it was issues in our early history that led to a need to have these things formally stated.  We do almost everything through large-scale inter-government agreements like those, that's why I wanted to know if you would want to sign on to documents like that.  It lets us co-operate without having to all be part of a pan-governmental organization, and any country can write up a treaty and ask others to sign on to it, so it's balanced."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can't speak for what our final decision will be - especially since it's still unclear whether we'll form a global government - but I do suspect there'd be at least interest."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Of course, I don't expect you to be able to make commitments at this time, but you know more about what your people are likely to want then I do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We're likely to want treaties, yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What concerns or questions do you have about human wants and expectations for this meeting?"

Permalink Mark Unread

A small list...