He will flex his blessing to the maximum extent while doing so and Canteen Green's shaking hand will feel like it's been washed and dried.

Okay, that's enough interaction. Please come back.

Felicity will wave goodbye and clamber up to the airlock.

Okay, they've established that the Amentans, or at the very least the Tapai, are friendly and aren't the sort to want to nuke an crashed spaceship. Now what they need to do is to successfully negotiate the building of a better communications crystal so they can tell Amphitrite what happened. Sita is their liaison but she isn't authorized to make that kind of commitment. They're probably going to send in other people who can do that at some point. They need to prepare their messaging and negotiation strategy.

:We wish to exchange basic literature and media in our languages so that we might be able to communicate without the use of telepathy. Only some of us have this capability. After this, we would like to take a break to rest and to study. What time would be convenient for you? How is time measured here — what are the synodic orbital and spin periods of Amenta?:

One of the greens (neither Canteen Green nor Photography Green) takes over to explain the astronomy underpinning their time system. They can make just about whenever work, though Amentans usually sleep at night and it will take some time for a chopper to get here from anywhere people might be coming from. Can the ship get onto the Internet?

They sleep 4-6 hours in a twenty four hour period, but they don't have a set circadian rhythm. What time of day is it now?

Oh wow. Their days and years almost exactly match! But they separate their year into four quadrums rather than seasons, because they don't have seasons.

They have radio transmission and reception capabilities, so maybe they can connect to their Internet. But it will take time for them to have their software follow Amentan transmission standards. Rauha proposes that they exchange display media loaded with whatever media that they wish to share.

Right now it is late afternoon. The helicopters were packed very hastily but they do have a pocket everything they can hand over, and the pocket everything is not loaded with a lot of preexisting media but it can get on the internet.

Okay, they are willing to borrow the pocket everything once they are shown its basic operation. And how to connect to the Internet. Is it basically like a smartphone?

They're going to give them a digital tablet and show its operation too. The tablet does not have Internet access.

Rauha proposes reconvening at sunrise. Is this acceptable to the Amentans? It is fine if they want to camp near the airlock, and it is also fine for future helicopters to land nearer to the airlock.

Yeah it's basically like a smartphone but from space.

Sunrise sounds good! They'll be able to rustle up more people overnight, are there any anticipated specialties they want represented?

They want engineers who specialize in industrial crystal production (diamonds, garnets, etc.) especially.

He says that they are willing to sell artifacts, services, and knowledge in exchange for the Very Large Crystal that they need so people who are informed on what is valuable in Amenta should be available to consult. That's a very broad ask, though, so they explain that they have four types of orgonic magic: stone, fire, water, and wind.

Stone and fire magic is most useful for industry and infrastructure so they should have civil and production engineers. Though most likely they won't have the capacity to do any major infrastructural projects on their own, maybe they have nonorgonic insight which they could sell.

They also want biologists or physicians to see whether their water magic healing would work on Amentans.

Additionally, they want theologians and psychologists. Wind magic has to do with thought and communication and can do various effects and divinations relating to the mind. This is very particular to culture though, so they don't know whether what they have will be of any use.

Also they want a lawyer who can consult on typical business practices and contracts in Amenta as well as the way they typically do treaties so that they can draft something that is amenable to and understandable by both parties.

Any negotiators or consultants they send should not possess classified information, since they may use magic to detect truth, which may involve deeply probing mind reading. Rauha says that they will not do any mind reading beyond detecting what is intended to be sent, as in telepathy, without prior consent. Rauha also says that he and their whole party have not done any mind reading of the Amentan delegation beyond detecting what they intended for them to send. The mental tone of his transmission has the impression that he has said these sentences many times before.

Do they need a test subject, for the healing? If so what kinds of things does the magic heal?

They can definitely get them all those kinds of guys first thing in the morning.

Water magic works on all things biology and so can theoretically cure any disease, though they have the twin problems of much of their equipment and supplies being ruined by the crash — Rauha says that they're planning to assess the damage caused during the break — and mapping it to Amentan biology. So most likely they won't be able to do much on that front, but it's still possible.

Back home, they use water magic to cure infectious and hereditary disease. Or, well, used to. Their society is such that they've basically eliminated all of them over time including stuff like allergies and common colds, though given the amount of trade they do and foreigners that they host, they still do mundane public health procedures like quarantines and vaccinations.

Water magic is also used to create stuff like artificial meat (farmed meat is extremely rare in the Asteral Accord because growing animals in space is difficult and costly) and pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

They want to receive information about Amentan physiology and biology — there doesn't specifically need to be a test subject. Their plan is to just do as much noninvasive scanning as they can with the tools they have and see what they could do from there.

Artificial meat sounds so clean and convenient! They'll bring in an Amentan biologist (in both senses of the word "Amentan").

Okay, that seems to be all. Do the Amentans have anything else to say before they close? If they want to adjust the duration of the break, they can accommodate that.

"Is there any context we ought to have before going in about the media on the tablet?"

:We deliberately selected material we thought would be appropriate and at a simple level, such as those aimed at children and immigrants. Later, we can arrange for more technical material.:

"Great. Then we'll see you tomorrow."

They have camping gear in the chopper.

There was a lot of debate about what exactly to put in the tablet, but they converged on the following:

Something like a simplified Gray's Anatomy. Asteralians, aside from being bigger, are also: hermaphroditic (they have external genitalia in the form of a penis and testicles but have a cloaca which opens into a rectum and a vagina, and there's a flap that closes the vagina like the epiglottis in the throat), have a nictitating membrane, can still the movement of fluid in the semicircular canals to stop dizziness especially in zero-g, have much less muscle and bone atrophy when not being put under load, and their skin color ranges from pure white to pure black to shades of grey in between. They tan evenly, and their hair color is the inverse of their skin color (someone with light gray skin has dark grey hair). Their irises are light gray though they can turn opalescent in some situations. They have very little variation in height.

They seem well-adapted to space life, generally.

Several books about Standard Asteralian intended for immigrants and also linguists. It has audio and video of all the phonemes. Amentan and Asteralian mouths are very similar and the former can pronounce all the phonemes, though Asteralians have fewer teeth and longer tongues.

Various children's storybooks. Many aren't very contentful, but many are educational. The Asteral Accord is a federal democracy, which contrasts many other countries where the Crowned is the ruler. They have trade relations with so many peoples! Look at these peoples (they look very different from Asteralians)! It's giving primary school globalism aesthetic with furries and big-boobed elves. The Asteral Accord has a very strict policy of armed neutrality and non-aggression and this is how they are able to maintain good relations with other people and trade with them and this is Very Good. Asteralians marry, most often in pairs. People have godparents which are sort of like lesser or backup parents and all children have to have them. Children attain the status of adult when they turn three (and can vote and sign contracts), and this is also when puberty starts. Many young children are raised communally in creches. Most of the storybooks have space imagery and it seems that most Asteralians live in space.

Government-produced pornography intended to teach teenagers and immigrants about sex. It's very similar to sideways male Amentan porn, save for the narrator explaining what's happening. They do not use protection or talk about diseases. Asteralians naturally produce anal lubrication. Asteralians don't have a breeding season.

They may be able to deduce from the wording that immigrants adopt the form of Asteralians when they immigrate. It's said that a priest is involved but any further details are absent. Also apparently priests are involved in allowing people to have children — they do have population control. Also they have average sex drives comparable to young Amentans in spring.

They did not put any hypnotic effects on the media!

The tablet is capable of displaying media but otherwise has no special capabilities.

Various Amentans are glued to the feed of the tablet output all night long.

They take stock of the labs and workshops and storerooms and everything. It's such a mess. Many rooms are inaccessible from here. They do what they can in gathering up anything usable and putting them in the relatively undamaged rooms. People sleep in shifts. They eat. They still have lots of food and water — these supplies were distributed all throughout the ship — but they should definitely raise this issue tomorrow.

They have the Amentan phone now which is connected to the Internet. And they've collected enough data from the talk previously to get started on very rudimentary machine translation. Does the Amentan phone have apps on it? Can they access dictionaries? They're going to gobble up all that data if they can.

If this is anything like Earth, people will be saying Many Things about the aliens. They will try to visit a variety of websites and see what sorts of opinions or thoughts Amentans have about them. And figure out what the Amentan first-contact team has shared publicly about them, from what media is available online.

The Amentan phone comes with a bunch of basic apps including dictionaries and the translation projects that connect them for machine translation of content!

PEOPLE WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT SHUT UP ABOUT THE ALIENS. They are headline news literally everywhere. People want to meet them and go home with them and learn their magic and have sex with them and tour their spaceship and have them settle in the desert to be resident friends and trade with them and see if they can have hybrid babies and watch their TV shows (those haven't been released yet, people are just assuming they have them) and study their language and did they mention have sex with them? (It's spring.)

Nom nom dictionaries.

That's so great!! Amenta is very friendly. And yes, they really ought to have sex. They were too caught up with the awfulness of what happened to offer that during first contact. Also, they really should explain about Teiatat. Everyone on Earth is already acquainted with the Generous Patron, but they don't!

They do not try to post anything given that this everything this isn't connected to their identity.

They prepare for tomorrow's negotiations.

Their primary goal is obtaining the Very Large Crystal. The secondary goal is to maintain friendly relations and set up context and prior friendly dealings such that when Amphitrite sends a second ship, it will be easy for them to establish formal relations.

Their BATNA is...they could try retrofitting the shuttles to be able to launch without an attached ship. And then try to recreate orbital industry via asteroid mining.

The Amentans are very friendly but if the Asteralians refuse negotiations, then they might turn hostile. They very obviously want interstellar travel which is, well, relatable, but they're kind of surprised at how much they desire it compared to all the other things.

Nenad, Felicity, and Rauha are back at the airlock at the appointed time. They drop down from it this time, and they're accompanied by a bunch of other people. They've set up tables and chairs with equipment on the sands. Everyone is once again Very Smiling. They are wearing the same clothes as previously.

Their interior design and furniture choices are very minimalist. Very Dieter Rams "monochrome with very careful use of color or accents or shiny metal or wood". Some of them are touchscreen based and some have button and dial maximalism.

In the morning a substantially larger contingent of Amentans has been flown in! Some of them are a little groggy from having been on a helicopter late into the night and needing to camp out but they are cheerful for all that.

"Good morning!" says Mekapi.

"Good morning!" they all repeat back. They are Very Synchronized.