So, uh, I don't want to make your life more complicated, but there are a few places on Amenta that don't have reds anymore. Getting there was really messy in a lot of ways but they did it.

We would not want it to look like this should be one of those places.

Sigh.

I imagine we can make it clear that hurting you more isn't going to help their reputation.

-traveler

They can be really dense.

Can you tell me more about that?

-traveler

I don't know that much about how they make decisions, but if I'd stayed on Amenta, and then later heard that the aliens objected to how reds were treated and blackballed Amentan trade over it, and then the colonial cleans killed or maybe sterilized all their reds, or did something that didn't get explained online but wound up with the reds rioting and all getting killed that way, that wouldn't strike me as very weird.

It's occurred to a couple of greens that aliens might be judgy about how reds are treated and there's this short story called "Forgive Our Grandchildren" about it where they speculate that if everybody kills all the reds, their descendants will be innocent, and aliens might be more open to agreeing on a collective narrative where the Amentans they're talking to by then would never have done such a thing.

Well, you're here now, so killing you all won't help them. And I do think we can convince them of that - the worse they treat you the fewer of us will be willing to work with them, but it would take something dramatic for them to be cut off entirely; they'll always have something to lose.

Perhaps I should write them a book about it.

-traveler

We might want to vet the book.

Of course.

In the meantime I do need to figure out what to tell the genecrafters; it really isn't fair to them to knowingly let them come all this way for a project they're likely to change their minds about. I suppose I can just be vague about it, but then even fewer of them will come. And in any case they might mention that I said something.

-traveler

I don't really get why they wouldn't come given that we don't mind and explaining their objection might be bad for us. That doesn't help.

It's not about that, particularly. The way the cleans treat you is a sign of poor character on their part, and I expect the genecrafters not to be very interested in disrupting their lives and their studies for people who are kind of awful.

-traveler

I guess if that's how they think about it. I'm not sure what you should tell them.

All right. I'll just do the best I can, I guess.

-traveler

to: swiftsoft

It occurs to me that I should clarify, before anyone uproots themselves for an intercontinental move, that we're still learning about the aliens, and there may still be more unpleasant surprises - it's already obvious that they're more aggressive than crafters, and have different ideas of what constitutes good behavior. I don't expect it to be dangerous here for anyone who chooses to come - they've set strict rules for themselves to guard against that sort of problem - but they may be less flexible about some of the other differences and I don't want to see anyone base a major decision on an assumption that these issues don't exist.

-traveler

The dissatisfied genecrafting customers come back again to get their work undone.

Blue asks if one of them would be willing to let her spend a few minutes examining them to see if she can figure out how she could have made a better prediction about what the change would do - she can of course undo it first.

Sure, this one is up for that.

She saves that one for last, then, apologizing briefly to each of them before beginning; it goes a little faster this way and again doesn't feel like much of anything. She holds the last one's hand for an extra few minutes and eventually reports that she wouldn't've been able to figure it out without the feedback but should recognize that if it comes up again, and she'll leave notes for the other genecrafters about it.

"Thanks. It wasn't enough to make me outright diagnoseable hypo or anything but it's not what I'm used to, would have required new habits."

At least it wasn't too bad, then.

"Yep. And hey, it'll be great for hyper people, assuming they can be convinced to come by - does this work on kids, parents could bring their hyper kids and save a lot on soap -"

It does, yes. It's the sort of thing where she'd want the kid's permission in most cases, not just the parent's, but there's no technical limitation.

Some hypersensitives don't want to be treated because they freak out in advance about how once they're mesosensitive they'll only do a normal amount of cleaning. Not all of them are like that but some are.

And they have a right to that, not that she could force them anyway.

Huh.

They go home after that rather than get into a major debate about it or anything.

Lone sassafras clarifies to Sun that crafting someone counts as touching them, as far as the territory instinct is concerned, even in the relatively rare case where someone learns to do fleshcrafting or genecrafting at range, so yes, with a few specific sorts of exceptions (very young children, unconscious or delirious people who would obviously consent if they were able) it is true that crafters can't craft someone without their consent.

Traveler dithers over emailing his red contact to mention the possibility of giving them a crafter's instinct against touching people in the hopes that this would reduce the other subspecies' anxiety, but ultimately decides that the risk of some third party seeing the idea and trying to force it on them is too high to be worth the risk.

A reply comes from swiftsoft that afternoon: Three genecrafters are still interested, with a fourth considering it; the fourth wants more details about what the proposed working conditions will be like. He relays the question to Sun.

"What about the working conditions are they wondering? We can set up something more sophisticated than this but have wanted to keep the footprint pretty small outside the city."