If you're not doing polluting work I would expect you to stop being worryingly contagious within a few weeks or months; am I missing something?

-traveler

We aren't sick. We're polluted. We can't shower it off and we can't quarantine it away, we're just born that way and stay that way forever.

I've never heard of something like that before. It might be something genecrafting can fix, if it's inherited?

-traveler

If you can convince them of that.

Is there anything you can think of that might help me with that? Or anything I might do by accident that would hurt my chances?

-traveler

Well, if you act like you don't care if things are polluted, they might think you'd lie to them about whether your idea would work.

I care if things are gross or dangerous, but I don't understand how pollution is different from those; what do I need to know?

-traveler

We're really not the people to ask. Reds are mostly hyposensitive and even the meso ones aren't acculturated about it like cleans.

All right, I'll see if I can find a book or something.

Would you expect it to cause problems if I asked the researcher they have explaining things to us about pollution or reds, if I can't find a book? They were trying to keep you secret at first but they've already told us that you exist.

-traveler

You might freak them out but probably not in a way that hits us unless you say you want to come say hi or something.

All right. Thank you. I'll write again when I have news.

-traveler

So what does the internet have in the way of information about pollution.

Search results include:

- Summary Bank: Pollution. Pollution is the state of having had contact with any primary source of polluted material without sufficient cleansing...
- Top Tips For Pollution Hypersensitivity! 1. Don't be afraid to hire help. With a maid service, your home can go from...
- Lingering Effects of the Voan Pollution Crisis: A Longitudinal Analysis by be-Rarand, Naluantami, et al, ABSTRACT:
- Full Decontam or Spot Clean? How to assess pollution risk. A. The International Theology Association agrees that a full decontamination is needed in the following...
- Breaking News Everywhere - READER DISCRETION ADVISED, POLLUTION CONTENT WARNING! Sorast, Cene: Police apprehended a suspect in a case of murder exacerbated...

He spends some time reading. It looks - hopeful, overall? The Amentan understanding of pollution in reds is that it's something their bodies produce; fleshcrafting and genecrafting can stop bodies from producing things. Convincing them that this has been done seems harder - they have no way of directly detecting pollution themselves - but probably not impossible; crafter medicine involves all sorts of crafted biological sensors, and even if pollution isn't real - and he suspects it's not, at this point - there's likely to be one that detects something else unique to the red subspecies.

He sends his notes to the diplomat, and goes out to meet with Sun in the morning.

Here's Sun as usual! Her husband and baby have gone back home.

Good morning! He's been doing some reading and thinking, and he thinks he ought to talk to a theologian about some of it, can she help set that up?

Gosh. They didn't bring a lot of theologians to the colony, it didn't seem like a strong priority, but there are some and they can summon one out? Or get traveler an email.

He suspects email will be better but he'll defer to her if she thinks otherwise - it's about pollution, reds specifically, and he thinks it might be good news.

Email would be better for that, yeah. Okay, he can email this professor at New Landing U.

And so he does.

Hello,

This is traveler, a crafter. I've been reading about Amentans for the book I'm writing to explain you to other crafters, and recently I read some things about reds; their situation seems tragic for all involved, but I think our fleshcrafters and/or genecrafters might be able to find and remove the trait that makes them primary pollutants, as they can do with other biological traits. If so, we'd consider it a high priority to make that treatment available. I'd like to know whether you think this is an approach that might work and how it could be proved that it did - I understand that Amentans don't have a direct way of detecting pollution, but crafter medicine can detect most physical qualities; the difficulty might only be in proving that our sensors are detecting the right thing.

I appreciate any time you choose to spend on this question.

-traveler

Hi, traveler, thanks for writing!

It doesn't seem totally out of the question that a fleshcrafter could de-pollute a red. (The pollution is not genetic; see Toskuto's Fractional Red: A Thought Experiment and its citations for more on that.) I don't know that it would be worth the application of such scarce skilled labor, even just for the reds that happen to be on this planet where you understandably might object to having them around, but it's certainly an interesting question whether it would be possible. As an experiment, it would be possible to deliberately pollute some subset of a number of otherwise identical animals and see if they're distinct to a crafter who doesn't know which are which (obviously, this experiment would have to be performed under conditions that allowed the crafter to wash immediately afterward, since as I understand it crafting is very short range). I'm CCing my colleague Sasip re: the experiment.

- Prof Kenah

Thanks for the heads up! Yeah, I have enough standard violet mice for something like this. First pass at experimental design would be label say a hundred mice, borrow a red, and then out of sight of the crafter have the red touch an unspecified number of the hundred mice with random labels, and then combine all mice into a single enclosure and introduce them to the crafter. Rest of the mice get touched by an intern as a control just for completeness. Then we see if the crafter can tell them apart and they can decontam straight after. This would be a really amazing test to have available!

- Sasip

Thank you! I'll discuss this with my fleshcrafter friend and see what they think of it. I expect the first step, if they agree to come, to be examining a few reds (hopefully at a distance; crafting is short-range but many sensors can be put on poles) and other Amentans to see if they can find the trait in question.

-traveler

to: pillowsoft

Hey, love. Bad news about the aliens. I'm still safe, though, don't worry; I'm back to normal after being sick the other day and working on my book in between talking to them - I have a machine to connect to their network now, that's been a lot of fun and much safer than seeing them in person.

It turns out though that they have something they call 'pollution instinct', that's a bit like our territory instinct; it's about gross things, an they don't freeze up but they do react about that strongly otherwise. Unfortunately there's a rare subspecies of them that they see as permanently polluted because they've been assigned the gross jobs, and there have been hints that they'll want to kill them all once they've studied our machines and learned how to make machines of their own for that work. We can't just get them out of there, because they think pollution is contagious and they'd panic about it getting everywhere, but the aliens' experts do think it's something fleshcrafting might be able to fix about the subspecies.

I can find another fleshcrafter if I have to, but I'd like to have you out here anyway; does this convince you at all?

-farstrider

to: farstrider

Yikes!

All right, we're coming - I found someone else for leastwhistle to move in with, that was the main problem. We'll get there as fast as we can, but maybe you can start with someone more local? I don't know what kind of timeline you're expecting.

-pillowsoft

to: pillowsoft

I don't think it's a terrible hurry, they're interested in the machines but not too focused on them. It's not fair to the reds - the polluted subspecies - to leave them worrying about it longer than we have to, that seems like the main time-sensitive thing.

Looking forward to seeing you.

-farstrider

Is there a particular advantage to looking at reds in particular (as opposed to a less animate primary pollutant, or a secondary one?) It's just experiments with reds are a hassle and a half and the mouse-touching thing seems pretty easy but lots of them being sensored at seems like it might be a whole thing.

- Sasip

I'm not sure we'll be able to find the trait that makes them such a persistent primary pollutant without looking at them directly; do all primary pollutants work the same way in general?

We may be able to help with setting up and cleaning up after the experiment, depending on what problems you have; crafting-material in particular is very easy to sterilize since it can be crafted to become very hot, soaplike, etc on command.

-traveler