Okay, Ailor is now predicting Gremir has somehow solved the liquidity and rationing problems inherent in money. This opens up a whole new set of questions that are not the most important thing right now and will be tabled. For now, Gremir is being modeled as a Current Era civilization through some incomprehensible alien path. 

With Gremir laying it all on the table Ailor will certainly respond in kind. The read on space tech is spot on. Ailor's space program is likely similar or slightly behind Gremir, as it's focused on science instead of manufacturing takeoff. Ailor has orbital scale interferometry equipment and its lunar bases are almost all research projects. We don't have a lunar railgun yet- there's a small chance that material will be more useful where it is later- but the battlestar class airships have a railgun used to assist LEO launches. 
(The titanium could all be replaced by aluminum practically speaking, but on the off chance that elves were real and showed up the chance to flex by walking around in mithril buttons was too tempting to pass up. Similarly, the diamond soled shoes were a hedge against possible cases that didn't come up where subtle displays of wealth would be useful.)

Ailor's arcology tech is just different enough that we can see already integration and standardization is going to be a nightmare. The nearest capsule- equivalent is inconveniently not exactly half the size and only used for goods. People are transported via train/trolley/skyway, bicycles, and airship. Airplanes and recreational vehicles are relatively rare. Especially airplanes, for cultural reasons.

Gremir is also correct that it's centralized computing is ahead of Ailor. Even with EUV being an older technology on Ailor, well, sometimes quantity has a quality of its own. Within that domain we don't expect to realistically compete. We note you didn't mention any of the other forms of computing, such as wetware or quantum.

Hydrogen train tunnels might be better than our current best practices regenerative maglev. We'd like to compare specs. The biological specimen are also of interest.

Ailor is... not likely to adopt thermonuclear mining or the cybernetics. The first because of the side effects and the second because there's a long health and safety cycle for such things to be adopted into best practices, on the order of 70 years. Almost all of our interventions are bio identical where possible. Plastic and other new material medical devices are a thing of last resort. This won't stop biohackers, but just be aware you're marketing to a niche audience. (There's a look on the Ailor delegation when they realize that's not just a turn of phrase here.)

Ailor has fusion and fission for every conceivable purpose, although we do mostly prefer to use our Slack on renewables for aesthetic and cultural reasons. 

Military... well, no one will admit to anything newer than 80 years being a weapon. The weapons they do admit to from the World War are potentially quite terrifying. Jet fighters and tanks and flame throwers and a shoulder launched thermonuclear warhead. There's a reason that they were focused on being Friendly and not proactively talking about their tech! Even now, if it's not obvious why parts of their satellite constellation is made of solid tungsten or what the alternative uses for a suborbital railgun are it's probably a kindness not to say. 

Ailor very much hopes their contribution to other worlds can be their scientific specialization and fervor, with the military being a historical curiosity. 

Also blitz: Human microbiome project is done, we're moving into microbiome ecology. We've all but eliminated bad breath and a few other things via probiotics. We have extincted the majority of infectious disease such as Smallpox, Polio, etc. Right now uploading is taking up the bulk of our research budget. That's something time sensitive until cryo is provably reversible instead of just likely reversible. The largest known known economic problem is positional goods. People sometimes hang onto obsolete things long after the math says to replace them as a positional good. We haven't yet calculated the ideal positional good tax. Kinda had a slow start on that one because positional goods in theory weren't supposed to exist. 

The list of inventions both fantastic and untranslatable is stacking up, though what's coming through is fascinating!

(An outsider reviewing The Official History of the World, Abridged might notice any of three reasons for this: an absence of fossil fuels, their physicists seem to have hit a wall after a surprisingly early discovery of relativity and electromagnetic unification, and their industrialization was indeed less tumultuous but also much slower. And those are just the reasons one can infer from reading a book whose title ignores the irony of including both "Official History" and "Abridged.")

"I think most of this is beyond our current productive capabilities and I get the impression that developing a domestic electronics industry would be the first step in being able to use the technical elements of any reciprocally licensed intellectual property."

"We are currently not accepting any immigration out of concern for our ecology and possible disruption to our ability to remain at or above replacement rate.

We do have data access here if you want to donate technological specifications or commission Adventurers or Endeavours to gather further data of interest to you."

"If we're the same planet I think we'd have had to have diverged in, like, planet formation? We don't have such large land continents or so much volcanic activity, and I think we just lack the main biome for primate evolution, which is why cliff dwelling avians that started raft building to cross oceans easier filled the intelligence and tool using niche instead?"

Ailor predicts that any negotiating leverage will be best spent getting the default position in matters of standardization. If the leverage isn't sufficient for that, then we'll start with flagging and produce an ordered list of standards they think will benefit from the most. (The Head of Government helpfully taps the parts of their outfit that says "Anyone may approach for sex" and "Anyone may approach for conversation" when they bring up flagging, to be clear what they're talking about.)

If you want to race modernization, Ailor is happy to have a race! And a Friendly race is much nicer and less commons-burning than a competitive one! Here's our current optimized plan for an Ailor Gremir Vuleftis Kastakian trade hub. Here's our conservative prediction for opening of Ways beyond that. If we run into an emergency we have some expensive, commons burning, and dangerous options for larger scale transit we think will work but obviously there hasn't been enough time to get that through Ailor-level health and safety testing.

Active censoring is considered somewhat hostile on Ailor, so our censoring tech is all theoretical. Mostly we just don't bring things up if we don't want people to know them.

Space is dominated by the rocket equation. Getting certain sized things into LEO is insanely cheap fuel wise, but then you have to boost things.  We have infrastructure satellites that use ion drives, wireless energy transfer, and gravity slingshots to boost things slowly but efficiently. We can do direct launch or send up fuel for faster needs, but we try and make sure we never need to do that. Here's our current best practices boosting pattern.

Investing in science over exponential growth was a controversy. Part of that is gambling on breakthroughs like zero point energy or reaction-less drives. Part of it is just highly valuing the quality of our environment and going for the hyper efficient thing. Some of it is "because it's cool" which does drive our lifestyles more than it ought to. (The deciding factor was the military applications, which we absolutely are not talking about unless asked point blank.)

If you look through Ailor history the most obvious divergence points relative to baseline Earth are the counter ambush and assassination of Vladimir Lenin in 1917 and the prevention of the assassination of Lincoln. If you look closer, little divergence points happened everywhere all the time though. Assassinations prevented and successful, rights movements, experimental communes. There were almost twice as many Caesars. The stars are Earth stars. The major landmasses are the same, but there's some noticeably different islands. 

That skin biota looks compatible with our ecosystem. If our oral flora isn't of interest to you how about a gut specimen that lets anyone digest cheese? We'll trade information on that and see if we converge on the same standard. If not, I think it ought to be up to the others to tie-break.

There... is a lot of data being thrown around. Upgrading computing capacity is probably a priority for everyone. 

It is pretty obvious from looking that the Kastakians don't really go in for clothes. The data banks show that some protective and warming items are used in odd circumstances but many Kastakians can't tolerate more than essentially a soft blanket with big holes in and just avoid the circumstances.

They do wear various belt rigs, satchel bags and backpacks for carrying stuff.

"That flagging convention does look useful, any ideas on how to adapt it to something that fits on a belt or bandoleer?"

The Representative reflexively pulls up the standards for flighted sophonts and flicks it over to Thessalia before sheepishly realizing that's for hexapeds and nod quadrupeds.

"Uh, you should be able to adapt that I think. I know some people use feather-paints and ribbons too if you like those better. There's a digital protocol there if you're carrying electronics." 

If we knew Earth's history, we would be surprised by the violation of chaos theory, which predicts the shuffling of all sperm and the absence of the same historical figures in favor of the preservation of only the tendencies following a single deflected atom. But we don't know Earth's history and don't notice anything strange.

Our births ceased to coincide around 438 years before the birth of Christ according to your chronology. We had Empedocles, Buddha, Mo-tzu, and Democritus, we don't have Plato and the rest. Mohism was more popular than Confucianism, and your Buddha seems more negative-utilitarian, ours was just utilitarian. Europe was colonized by Carthage, not Rome, the collapse of Carthage resulted in the Dark Ages and the triumph of the nomads. Zoroastrianism, without Christianity, became the monotheistic world religion, various forms of paganism lived longer.

Indeed, all sufficiently advanced civilizations converge on the same bacteria to optimize their skin microbiota, to the point that benign infection is no longer a problem. The gut is more complex and non-infectious, opening up more options, so yes, please, your input would be appreciated.

It’s sad to hear about the border closures, but we respect your decision, Ferek. And yes, the deviation in planet formation was our theory, it at least somewhat simplifies navigation in the space of possible worlds connected by portals. Do we have the same solar system? Ailor's focus on fundamental science in space has clearly paid off, as we have no idea how the Ways work, and what is the reason for such a gap in bifurcation points in time.

The Kastakians organise for donations of scraps of ribbon from the encampment outside and make a pretty makeshift but reasonable job of adhering to flagging standards. The main prevalence is 'open to asking but ask permission explicitly' if there's a code for that, although the main delegates are fully open to conversations and there's a scattering of various 'no' varieties amongst their support crew. 

The Republic delegates talk concernedly among themselves. 

"Is this what we sound like when we try to make trade deals with less developed neighboring states?"

"The 'gene drive' modifies heredity to make animals go extinct and they want to give us crops that have had their genes modified? Does anyone else see a problem?"

"I don't think they're trying to trick us. If anything, they seem too honest, like we'd agree with them if only we understood what they know."

"Does that sound like the High Council to anyone else?"

Snickering.

"My best guess is no later than the Axial Age for when the three human-occupied worlds diverged. I have no idea how far back we'd have to run the clock to find when the Kastakians branch off."

Ranalite branched off early enough that some very ancient countries and ethnicities are recognizable by an archeologist, such as "Anshan" (which Lirakoz heard of, once), but stuff as late as for example Ea-Nasir didn't make the cut.

Lirakoz would be happy (subtype: calm to the point of seeming indifference, as usual) to participate in flagging, if needed. Making entry-level-information-affecting-other-information easily visible is always a good idea (and Lirakoz can share experience with some Ranalite conventions), but would need a clarifying explanation on how exactly it works again, and which things can be communicated, other than conversations (in this case: "yes, always, zero problems") and sex (in this case: "eh, probably not").

Multiple differences over time! If Ailor knew Earth's history they would go off on about a billion excited tangents as entire swaths of cosmologies either became more likely or got falsified. Gremir and the Republic's divergences provoke a mere million or so, all of which are not immediately important to the delegation. 

Yeah, it does look like our microbiota best practices are convergent. This is a place where the biohackers and medical data might come more into play. Here is our baseline load, it's all high health impact. Here's what we expect to get incorporated into best practices in the next 70 years. Here's our compatibility protocols. Upgrading and downgrading via horizontal gene transfer. Here's the most popular mods in the biohacker community.

Rapid adoption of flagging during the summit is, in fact, one of the most predictable good outcomes Ailor considered. They are over prepared with explanations and art-and-crafts materials. They will gladly share materials and labor for this. It can be a very prosocial activity! Physically it's just very dense brightly colored writing optimized for the use case.  

Each of the delegates is deliberately showing off different sets of what you can display. They all have commonalities (Approach for conversation, conversations are public, allergies:none) with slight variations (The Head of State flags do not approach for sex, the Head of Government flags ask for sex, the Representative's flag is that you don't have to ask for sex.)

The Head of State's flags start off with the limitations and responsibilities of the office, and then trail off with some history. It's a ceremonial, hereditary position designed to fulfill certain social roles. He's the only delegate allowed to receive gifts. The logistic nature of wealth and income taxes on Ailor asymptote exactly to his wealth and income. He has rules he has to follow literally as long as his arm down his sleeve, although a lot of those maybe shouldn't need to be spelled out like "follow all laws everyone else has to follow." At the end of the World War the surviving capitalist and noble families got merged (are still getting merged?) and their descendants get the option for the job in a certain order. There's a family tree. 

The Head of Government's flags is basically a resume. It starts with their current position and titles, then goes backwards in time to less important achievements. It's through. Second chair tuba in middle school is there. 

The Representative's flags are all about her. Her limits and sexual preferences first (nothing that causes permanent or lasting harm, etc.) since that's important. But the members of her polycule and 1st degree metamors. Her likes and dislikes for recreational activities. Her favorite short poem. Even her favorite foods and colors. 

Kastakians are having a little bit of trouble with the contrast between 'I am my favourite subject and I want you to know everything about me!' and 'too many ribbons starts to feel a bit like clothes and get distracting and unpleasant'. Also few other people seem to have flagged violence permissions and this is a confusing oversight, they've been told everyone is surprisingly low violence but were expecting flagging to make it a bit clearer.

Multiple systems like Ailorian flagging exist in the Republic, though not as extensive or systematized. Vuleftis's wedding ring effectively serves as a flag telling people not to approach him for sex. One of his aides is wearing a ring which he was told not to of a color and design that indicates he's seeking sexual encounters with women. The primary pin on each of their outfits is set in an orientation commonly used to imply "approachable/open for conversation" because that's why they're at a summit. 

Obviously the Ailorian system can't be overnight enforced by fiat, but there are ways to speed up cultural diffusion of a meme. It's unlikely that all their flags will catch on because that's an awful lot of personal information to broadcast. Exchanging business cards (and their non-professional equivalents) is much more discreet. 

Violence flags are... a choice. Non-violence seems like it would be sufficiently default that a flag would only be needed to convey opting in to violence. 

"I suppose you all use currency or something as your costly signalling mechanism for really caring about something? We tend to use personal violence instead. Like, only Adventurers with more risk tolerance than sense will not yield before risking serious injury, but generally everyone feels better about an intractable argument if they've had a good scrap about it even if they didn't win."

The flagging system is meant to be modular- most Ailori tech is. I'm such and such authorized representative is in fact in the standard flag list. Someone flagging an alternative set of preferences because you pay them is not only not right, it's not even wrong. Ailor has no clue how to even parse that and is going to leave it alone for now. 

There's some questions about what the levels of violence mean but being down for a physical tussle is something that can be worked out. Ailor has nearly absurd defaults for the amount of protective gear for contact sports, but they do have contact sports at all. Probably the biggest difficulty there is going to be working out best practices for making sure no one gets hurt. 

Too many ribbons... Here's an option that lets your flags trail behind you and get fanned for display like peacock feathers. Kastakians tail is a little different that what Ailor is used to but not so different that it's not field modifiable. How do you like that?

Some of the Kastakians enjoy the novelty value but most just pare down their tags to a reasonable level that fits on a belt and bandoleer. 

We also have no idea how to parse your inability to parse this, so yeah, let's just continue for now.

The delegates are also not opposed to violence against them, as long as it doesn't threaten death or serious permanent damage, but they are willing to accept months of hospitalization. They are in very good physical condition, although interspecies differences are greater than intraspecies variations. Their relevant experience is close to zero, they don't expect to win, but if it's valuable to other cultures they can try their best.

There are more volunteers among the delegates to fight than to taste alien dishes. For some reason.

Okay. One last check for everyone's flags sorted and then we can move on.

...Is there any pressing business left? Honestly, this seems like a good place to stop for rest and recreation if everyone else wants to break for the day.

"Uh, it'd be good to have some exact terms for how many Adventurers or genetic material thereof you want and what terms you'll be welcoming them on, then I can just let them through the portals while we're on break and it won't be so disruptive."

"Our quarantine period- assuming no surprises- is going to be six weeks. Ailor can take about 100 Adventurers right now without overcrowding quarantine, or about twice that if you're willing to use facilities designed for humans and Gremir or the Republic don't want to send anyone through in the next 2 weeks. Or if you're willing to bunk up with humans, that works too.

"We have a little time no matter what to work out the details. We can just kit you out a ship and let you explore. Worst case the military is a day or two away if there's an emergency. If you're interested in anything more intimate with the local population there's plenty of people who would likely be interested and we can make accommodations. Even if that's just being part of a convoy or taking on a few guides.

"The main things we see as potential problems is too many xenophiles bothering you, a much smaller but less pleasant population of xenophobes, and conflicts with the other sophonts on Ailor, uh," She turns to the Head of Government, "Are we calling them dwagons or drobbits now?"

The Head of Government has an exasperated tone, "Anything you call them can get you pranked sometimes. I would stick to D. Scio Sapiens. The scientific name is probably safest."

The Representative makes a face about that, "So yeah. They prank to blow off steam in a way that pattern-matches to the way you fight to blow off steam. But fights they respond to as a group. It's a pretty obvious potential friction point we want to get ahead of."