Could we just promise not to do that.

No, that sounds like the kind of thing that she really would mess up if she tried to negotiate on humanity's behalf.

"Ah. Hmm. And I guess you don't have black-boxing techniques that can really stand up to centuries of determined effort," she surmises. "That's a tricky one. Are there any other species with whom you've shared your teleportation technology?"

"Oh, we[ex] do sometimes provide blackboxed technology. Your grand archive project was already provided with some black boxed communications technology to speed up the process of making a full copy of it. The issue with that is just that we[ex] need to maintain and monitor each device we[ex] provide and it can get a little tedious if there's too many of them.

"As for full sharing, out of the million civilizations we[ex] have encountered, we[ex] have moved to full technology transfer with thirty-one of them. I think your civilization has a better chance than most though."

A thirty-one in a million chance, or slightly more. The barest sliver of a possibility, among the infinite futures, that their legacy won't be lost.

Sorgaþa tries to think through what properties of a civilization are likely important here, and what she can do to demonstrate them. Except ...

Whatever criterion the aliens are basing this on, it pretty much has to be a property of the civilization as a whole, right? And her actions as an individual are a part of that, but not a large part. So probably the best thing she can do here is to not make wild, grand changes to her behavior based on a five-minute conversation, since that is just going to add noise to the aliens' perception.

So she will ... sit here, and hold her grandfather's hand, and ask about things as her curiosity strikes her, without letting herself get too worked up about the answers.

And when she returns to the planet, if they let her, she is going to send such an email to Emergency Services.

While all this has been going on Lifeshaper and Envoy have collaborated on an announcement with respect to this new station.

We[ex] now have a research and medical treatment station in place and able to accept patients and healthy people willing to submit to non-invasive analysis in order to refine our[ex] model of your biology.

We[ex] will prioritize individuals likely to die within the next month even with the best medical care that's locally available to them. More precise details on this prioritization are available here.

Beyond that we[ex] will prioritize a broad cross-section of adverse conditions to build a broader understanding. A full list of known conditions from your archival records that we[ex] have not seen sufficient examples of will be kept updated here.

The list of criteria for healthy individuals desired for cross comparison can be found here.

Finally, we[ex] expect to offer positions for skilled medical professionals to help determine overall prioritization and the exact form of broader medical aid work. We[ex] will accept applications, and input on what criteria we should use in our selection process here.

Ah! An organized queue with clear criteria for distributing a limited resource! The þereminians totally know what to do with that.

Hospital systems across the world figure out how to produce dumps from their patient databases in compatible format (only those patients that agree to data sharing, of course) and set up a single collated list. If the people of the rings' criteria leaves any room for ties, those get resolved with auctions, with proceeds going to an account held in trust for the aliens to hire medical workers from. Since ties are rare, the account doesn't end up holding much, but it's the principle of the thing.

Healthy individuals who meet the selection criteria get picked by sortition and — depending on the city — are either paid for their time or told that this will satisfy their government-mandated science-participation quota for several hexades. Some still refuse, which is fine, but most þereminians are understandably excited about getting to see space and get a routine checkup from an alien.

(Governments have mostly stopped doing things 'for life', because that is no longer a well-defined number, given the aliens with unknown medical technology.)

Lifeshaper is happy to works through this backlog. The little metal robots become a common sight in þereminian hospitals facilitating patients being moved up or being returned.

The people with urgent medical needs are stabilized as needed. If a cure is within the current boundary that's applied as quickly as possible. Some people spend as little as minutes up on the station in the sky. This is mostly for cancers and other similar conditions with a straightforward fix that simply exceeds þereminian surgical abilities.

Other cures, like replacing or repairing organs that are failing take hours instead of minutes. An increasingly small portion of patients are retained for long-term care.

Most of the healthy points of comparison get to spend a couple days up in orbit to collect information on how processes like sleep function. While a few volunteers get longer stays of a month or two to record longer hormonal cycles. A couple families are invited to live there on an ongoing basis to monitor their children's development from infancy to maturity.

Individuals wishing to have children are also invited to be monitored through the entire process of conception and pregnancy.

Sure, makes sense!

Obviously they don't want to do this for the first couples — you don't mess with the control group, even in an observational study — but what are the aliens' opinions on helping people who would not normally be biologically compatible have children? If cost of living goes down much more (which everyone is hopeful that it will, given that the future looks bright) there's going to be an orphan shortage, and some couples are going to want children that are biologically related to both of them.

... also, what are their opinions on providing genetic screening for embryos, that being beyond the reach of current þereminian science? Some pretty bad diseases are heritable. And then there's non-disease conditions. Right now, the standard advice is that if you don't expect to be able to find it within your heart to love all statistically likely children you could have, you should probably not have children. But some people would be willing to have children if they could guarantee that they wouldn't be face-recognizers, or that they would be verbal before age six, or that they would have gentle teething.

(þereminia doesn't have a population crisis, exactly, but their birthrate is only hovering above replacement because of various cultural institutions and tax-breaks for parents.)

If they just want a black boxed machine that produces embryos from provided blood samples, the aliens would be willing to provide a small number of those until the ability to do it themselves is transferred.

Developing retroviruses and chemical stimulants which can prompt cells to undergo either meiosis cycle is something the aliens would be happy to collaborate on to that end. Obviously, the ability to manufacture retroviruses is something þereminia should exercise caution around. Biological warfare is so much easier once you have that capability.

Developing working external incubation systems is another project they're willing to collaborate on. In theory it should be possible to design an engineered organism or, with more effort, some sort of mechanically device and a nutrient solution.

Genetic sequencing is a capability that will most likely become more reliable and cheaper as their collaboration continues and that should allow them to do whatever screening they wish assuming those traits are reliably predicted by genetics.

Overuse of such capabilities does carry risks, especially if you take it to outright genetic engineering, but that's ultimately a choice they will allow þereminians to make for themselves.

... fair.

There is a lot of debate on the topic. Children's rights were already a bit of a divisive political issue, and the possibility of increased ability to screen and shape future generations just inflames that. On one side, the people who think that if (if) civilization can find a way to make children healthier and happier they should do that. On the other side, the people who think that things are changing too fast already, and that they really shouldn't mess around with something as fundamental to the evolved design of their species as reproduction, in case something snaps. On the (much less relatively popular) third side, the people who believe that now that life-extension is an option, people should have fewer children, which makes the whole thing sort of irrelevant; an unexpected population boom is going to put strain on all of their support systems, and also having children is kind of inherently cruel.

There are emails. There are blog posts. There are debates on the floor of the diplomatic clearinghouses. There are proposals in city government, counter-proposals, bad-faith readings of existing laws, judicial ruling, popular debates, dramatic hysterics, and all the other things that signal social change.

Eventually, the cities of the world come down in two new general alliances. The pro-trying-it faction, lead by No Tariffs Technically Not a City, and the pro-leaving-the-issue-alone faction, lead by Largest Waterfall City. This being þereminia, the alliances end up settling down in a way that is slightly askew from all of the existing planetary divisions, adding another complication to the great and terrible Venn diagram that is modern þereminian politics.

No Tarrifs Technically Not a City starts offering a number of grants for better DNA sequencing, and better experimental design to figure out what genes are actually involved in all these things that people care about. They agree to restrict any actual use of genetic screening to conditions that have a more than one-in-six impact on childhood mortality statistics for the next 200 years, as a temporary measure, in response for a 430,0000 kroner/year commitment from the cities that wanted to take things more slowly, to be used to benefit child welfare in the cities that wanted to charge ahead.

The Space City Planning Group has questions about whether the aliens think it's worth investing in biological radiation hardening in the relatively near-term, or if external technological shielding solutions are more efficient for now. Also, how do they feel about sharing the technology to do blood tests for cancer screening? They're thinking of making those a requirement for coverage under the joint healthcare optimization agreement of the city, if they're feasible, given the higher background radiation in space.

Well shielded habitats should have similar radiation dosing to living on a planet for people who don't work outside the habitat or in smaller craft that need to worry more about mass trade-offs associated with shielding.

They would be happy to collaborate on ensuring any habitats they design meet this criteria.

There are ways to optimize shielding for smaller craft but they can't really equal the simple solution of just using more mass.

Engineered radiation resistance is a fascinating project and one they would be happy to collaborate on but it's not likely to be one that has no trade-offs or be ready for mass application in the short term.

There are also substantial limits to how resistant multi-cellular organisms can be to acute radiation damage especially over sustained periods. As such, a focus on external shielding is advisable.

Work to improve the availability of screening tests for cancers is also something they would be happy to assist with. It's likely to be more successful in the short-term.

Based on their research so far, here's the chemical markers which seem most common among the cancer patients they've treated. And these ones specifically seem to indicate cancer as opposed to being an indicator of stress on the body's systems. Obviously, more research will still need to be done before that can be refined into a test that the þereminians can manufacture and some particularly unusual cancers won't be detected with this sort of test.

Preparations continue apace. With an entire world to work with, many of whom are excited about space, a lot happens simultaneously.

Still, one of the big concerns people have about a push for space-based infrastructure is the extraterrestrial availability of materials for expansion and repairs. What are the aliens opinions on helping to develop asteroid-mining craft? Or just putting a bunch of resource-rich asteroids at some convenient Lagrange points so that ships don't have to go all the way to the asteroid belt? Even a few big asteroids would take centuries to mine out, by which point they'll have had time to figure out better spacecraft propulsion.

They would be happy to move some asteroids do they have particular opinions about what size and material composition they want? Also what specific orbital dynamics they should be placed with? They would slightly prefer to put them in lunar orbit to be extra safe about things.

As for designing asteroid mining ships here's some considerations about size and structure and ways to use the engines they already have the technology to manufacture. Also here's some information about typical material characteristics of different kinds of asteroids and what the implications are there for conventional mining (mining without teleporters). If they want to use automated systems here are some standard guidelines for biphasic replication systems where two or more separate systems are responsible for building more of each other. Typically for both safety and practicality reasons you want some of the manufacturing for precision components to be separate and not part of the cycle.

Oh, they were thinking the planet-sun Lagrange points one-sixth tau radians ahead of and behind the planetary orbit. But putting them in Lunar orbit should be fine too, if they can be placed sufficiently precisely. As for materials, they're currently expecting to want minerals in roughly these ratios, but those might not be present in the asteroid belt so anything in this set of tolerances would be great!

They were not really intending to design complex manufacturing systems that don't have humans present in the loop. Not least of all because that sounds like it requires complex robotics knowledge that's outside their current skill envelope. But thanks for the heads up?

Do the people of the rings use that kind of manufacturing setup, or do you just do it manually because you can have enough attention to allocate it across your manufacturing base?

They can also place asteroids into Lagrange points, those are just further away and so less convenient in terms of Delta V budget.

They will begin surveying asteroids to try to meet those requirements, it will likely take at least a month or two, even limiting to large asteroids there are quite a few of them.

Systems like that are always technically challenging to develop even with prerequisite knowledge.

And yes, conscious attention is a resource, in theory they could generate more of it but that trades off against other things and they are not immune to boredom.

... huh. Boredom seems like it serves some important purposes for evolved life, but the speculative xenopsychologists (a field that consisted entirely of arm-chair speculation until about a week ago) are a bit surprised that it would be relevant to engineered life. Maybe there's a deeper connection between boredom and intelligence that's not obvious from their current understanding! Neat!

Why is that kind of bi-phasic approach notably more secure? Surely there's still plenty of information flow between the two components. Given that the separation between 'self' and 'environment' is something of an illusion, in what sense does it make sense to consider a manufacturing apparatus like that to be composed of two parts instead of just one bigger part?

(This kicks off a supplementary debate between the theoretical computer scientists and everyone with common-sense about the difficulty of manufacturing 'viruses' jumping between the components of a bi-phasic manufacturing pipeline.)

The Ring People's analysis of their mental architecture suggests it may have been partially based on an organic mind, there are at least substantial similarities with their studies of organic minds.

The purpose of boredom isn't entirely clear and it impacts some of them more than others but overall it represents a desire not to be repeatedly doing the same task endlessly. Given that it's strongest for their manufacturing specialist they speculate that if it was an intentional design decision, it is partially intended to be a safeguard against endless replication without variation.

As for the benefits of the biphasic model, they're correct that, in the long term, it isn't sufficient but the separation means that it's less likely for random chance to result in deviations from the intended design in both sections, internal cross-checks can naturally serve the same purpose though.

The true advantages come from separation and a reduction in the generation count. If the manufacturing stage is physically separated from the resource gathering and assembly components then conditions are unlikely to impact both components in the same way and thereby add additional security to those cross-checks.

In addition, this design typically allows for fewer generations of manufacturing components and therefore reduces the overall number of generations which makes it less likely for repeated deviations to compound and provides a more manageable number of elements to recheck externally.

Even if the ideas aren't something that þereminia has already incorporated, it's an appealing framing: extending the useful lifetime of a design not through material wear analysis, but through memetic wear analysis. They work the concept into the many emerging designs for zero-gravity factories, even if none of these feature that level of automation quite yet.

And eventually (in four days — bureaucracy and consensus-building can be slow, but not that slow when SPAAAAAAACE!) the Space City Planning Group has a final approved design for the initial habitation module, an orbit to park it in, and a chosen first-wave of colonists to test some of the inevitable assumptions that they had to make when trying to adapt a city design to work in an O'Neill cylinder.

Could the people of the rings please assemble this design in that orbit, and then bring these people up to get things started?

Based on the size that will take a week to assemble. In the meantime they'll start inviting the planned residents up for brief interviews. Are there any standards the SCPG would like them to enforce for bringing personal possessions? At a baseline, they would enforce a weight limit of a ton per person but if SCPG would prefer a higher limit that can be negotiated. They'll also decline to transport any nuclear or high-yield chemical explosives as personal possessions, if SCPG has an institutional need for such things that can also be negotiated.

Well, some critical backup generators are radioisotope thermoelectric? They're just there in case the solar collectors fail, and they were hoping the people of the rings would just assemble them in place because the amounts called for are not critical masses. But if they want the SCPG to provide the plutonium pellets that's fine too.

The SCPG actually has a set of guidelines for personal belongings — mainly, this first wave of people is just going to put the station through its test paces and figure out if there are any critical deficiencies or redesigns, so they've agreed not to bring anything particularly important with them. So the maximum expected personal baggage at this point is only 200 pounds. But there are initial food stores and test plants that also need to go up ...

Is their concern here about teleporter throughput, individual teleportation-trip size, or do they just have opinions about how much individuals should be allowed to own in space? Or do they think the SCPG is completely incapable of people who would bring thousands of tons of rock as a 'personal item' as a joke? Actually they're not asking that one because they made this mistake already and they're capable of not doing it again when the alternative is a disappointed Diplomat Tatenika lecturing them.

They'll provide the materials for the generators in this habitat though future habitats will need to be made with materials from their solar system which will take longer. This one will be made with imported materials.

If the SCPG wants a lower personal allowance limit that's absolutely fine. The concern is mostly practicality of identifying those possessions and finding room for them. A smaller amount of possessions makes for a more streamlined process and while their attentional capacity is vast it isn't infinite. They could have specified the limit by volume instead but they've noticed that weight limits are just slightly more common in the archives they've perused.

Oh, that makes sense! The SCPG has set a lower personal limit, but doesn't need help enforcing it. We[in] can ask everyone to print out a particular label and stick it on all of their luggage, if that would help? Or paint a circle on the ground and put everything that should go inside it? Is there some variation on that general theme that would work best?