"Do you guys do kissing...?"

Tablet check!

"Yes, we kiss." And he will punctuate that sentence by kissing her, putting both his hands on her shoulders lightly. Kissing is somewhat more intimate than would be expected for a first time encounter for Asteralians, but it's not unheard of. And of course she doesn't have that context.

She doesn't! Kissing is first date material on this planet and she will slide right into his lap for it.

Slide! She will find that Satya is hard and leaking.

:There's something you should know. Don't respond verbally! Just use the psychic connection. Think thoughts at me.: The tone of his mindvoice is Very Serious.

- oh boy what is it. Am I gonna have a hybrid baby.

:No, we have magical contraception. We haven't lied to you — nonlying is important to us — but we also haven't been entirely forthright. About our history. And how we came to worship Teiatat. Do you really not have...like any conception of gods, or religion?: He sends the Earth concept of religion to her.

....nnnno? Or, uh, corners of that where you're fasting and meditating and giving to charity are maybe on, but not the gods part -

:Okay, so. Teiatat basically occupied our solar system. He — we think of Him as masculine but really they're an eldritch entity — occupied Earth, which was our planet. It was involuntary. In the histories they just say that He 'came to Earth' but that undersells it. It wasn't violent in the sense that there wasn't really a war. This was fifteen years ago. He announced His arrival by blanketing the planet in pink auroras.

His occupation changed Earth. It's unclear whether He deliberately arranged for this or whether it was an accident. But the Earth was very affected and...it became extremely difficult to farm and there were dangerous sex creatures and there were fogs that, if you went in, would turn you into sex zombies, and also the Internet broke, and...At the time there were eight billion of us. Estimates are very difficult to find, especially because a bunch of people were kidnapped in pillars of red light to Mars to become soldiers...but somewhere between one-tenth to three-quarters of all people on Earth died.

Teiatat's Emissary appointed a bunch of people, including our Hierophant, to create societies that would be pleasing to Him and would shelter and guide the population of Earth — the Crowned. People who would be most compatible with their societies would be teleported to wherever they were, and I was one of them. Each Crowned sent out calls for people and our Hierophant's was one of the strongest, and yet he only got thirty million people. There were a few hundred Crowned so...you can do the math on that one.

With His coming, there were also other eldritch magical powers that set up shop. There's one in Mercury and one in the asteroid belt and some near the Great Lakes region — the latter has basically put the population there into lifelong debt peonage, in exchange for protection from the changed Earth.:

Throughout this communication he's going to continue touching her like nothing is happening.

She is confused about why you mentally assign a gender to an eldritch entity that doesn't have one. She is pretty horrified about the death toll and will switch from kissing to hiding her face in his shoulder. What happened to the people who got kidnapped to Mars? How did he pick the Crowned?

Satya will shift to accommodate this.

:Gender is way more important to Earth people than Amentans. You have way less gender dimorphism.: He sends an image of baseline Earth humans before the arrival of Teiatat. Nowadays, they have way more morphological diversity.

:They became soldiers. Teiatat has three aspects: Teiatat-in-Crimson, which is warlike, and occupies Mars — there used to not be any people living on Mars, Teiatat-in-Lavender, who we worship, and who occupies Earth, and Teiatat-in-Argent, who is super mysterious and occupies Venus and we know very little about them. We trade with Mars but we don't know that much about what goes on there. We do know that some Crowned hire mercenaries from there and sometimes use them in conquering other Crowned states, but the Emissary doesn't like this very much.

Some of them were picked as a reward for helping Teiatat occupy Earth — I don't know the details on that — while some were picked...I think just because Teiatat liked their vibe, or something like that. That's what the Hierophant says. I'm paraphrasing but that's basically what he said.:

And who's the Emissary -

:The Emissary is Teiatat's spokesperson. Teiatat doesn't like, speak to people directly — He's too immaterial.

Relatedly...I realize that I very much ought to have asked this of you earlier — but please don't tell anyone that I told you this. Or that I'm a psion.:

I - um - not even Mekapi? She's heading the project...

:Definitely not her! I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for unauthorized communications for it, and it's possible that they'll ask to mindread her. But I guess you can just say that you got it from 'a source', or something.

To be clear, I love living in the Asteral Accord. I love being an Asteralian. I'm unaging, I have a body I like, I have a good quality of life...I can show you how wretched my life was before, and the life of many Earth people before...: He's going to show her his memories of living in a slum. It is, expectedly, wretched. It's more run down and filthy than a red district. There are people peeing on the street...

...and then memories of his life in the Accord. He's a water magineer and doctor. He has an apartment. There's a creche in their quarter and he takes turns there taking care of the kids. Memories of him going to a zero-g water park with floating rivers controlled by stone magic with his godchild. Everything is clean, so so clean.

He sighs.

:Nenad, the captain, is stopping people from talking too much about Teiatat and our religion, I think because he understands or remembers this and predicts that the Amentans would find it horrifying and refuse to work with us — I don't know whether he's old enough to have memories of the old Earth. And the other people don't understand and think he's being unreasonable because...this is all they grew up in. And they think Teiatat-in-Lavender is omnibenevolent — though to be clear, He is way more generous than the other eldritch powers.

What I'm saying is that it may not necessarily be in your best interest to allow us to get that crystal. Even if you may only be able to delay it. Because I don't know what Teiatat would do once they know that Amenta and its 13 billion people exists. Or the other Crowned nations — the Asteral Accord is actually really good when it comes to rights and quality of life and other countries are worse. I've traveled a bunch and I know. A good number allow slavery.

There are still those who cling to independence on the changed Earth and Teiatat's Emissary is pleased when the Crowned nations assimilate them — we have a policy of not doing this as an extension of not invading or occupying other peoples. But the other Crowned nations won't have that policy. Those who join the Accord would be protected, of course, and if a good number join the Accord or the other Crowned nations or become some kind of...dependency...then it's likely that Teiatat won't do anything. I think.

I am a selfish person and were I to have a choice in what was to happen before, I would have been fine with letting the other people on Earth die so that I could have this life. I...I understand that I have been sending extremely mixed messages to you. I guess it's just...I like my life and don't want it to be threatened so I'm not willing to stake much for your sake. But I feel...morally, instinctually compelled to tell you about it so that you can make your own choice. So that the memory of what was doesn't die out. Sorry, I'm...I'm not explaining myself very well, and I should have prepared better for this but haven't talked about this with anyone...

Do you want me to eat you out? It's been a while since I had sex with someone with a vulva.:

- people peeing on the street is NOT SEXY (even though massive scary space fantasy plots actually are) and she is going to grope for the Asteralian "hold everything" word and say it! But she will just sit next to him on the bed and catch her breath and not do anything worse than that about being freaked out.

I don't want billions of people to die! Your magic is very very cool but I think it is not billions of people dying cool!

He holds everything and doesn't make a motion to touch her again!

:That's very understandable. I apologize for showing you something that upset you. I don't really have anything concrete for you. Or like, an actionable plan. I just felt like I ought to say that to at least one person.:

But if I can't tell anyone else - I'm a linguist! I don't have any pull with the crystal people or anyone who does just on my say-so.

:Well...it's actually in my best interests to have it proceed smoothly, because then I can go home. My desire to help is...very narrow and limited.: Yes, Satya is aware he's a horrible person.

:And even if you refuse to help us, other countries would. Even if not, we could very likely cobble together enough pieces to get one of our shuttles to space and have orbital industrial infrastructure. It might take decades, but we're unaging. 

From what I know, Tapa would not dare to say, bomb us and our spaceship, because that would cause a massive diplomatic incident and make Tapa a pariah state for ruining Amenta's relationship with aliens...

So possibly what ought to be planned for is Amenta's eventual contact, to minimize loss of life and like, enslavement of Amentans.

Tangentially, why do Amentans want babies so much? People were talking about it on the ship, and how you were extremely desirous of additional space — we thought you would be more interested in say, unagingness. I suppose it biologically makes sense, to really want babies...:

Do you not like babies? They're so little and soft and good... if billions of people die that will be so many babies, babies that people worked hard to earn and want to see grow up...

Satya likes babies but like. Not that much.

:I'm sorry to have burdened you with this knowledge and I should have just stayed silent, really. I've caused you to suffer for no reason.

...I think...if there was a way to bestow blessings upon you, I would greatly wish that. And I would want it to be done without loss of life. But the only ways I see that happening are if a significant portion of Amenta submits themselves to join the Accord, or the societies of the other Crowned. Which may be better but are largely worse, in many objective metrics like lifespan or rights. Maybe if there was a way to bestow protectorate status or something — the Houteng Mandate does that but the Empress there rules over other, lesser Crowned, and Amenta doesn't have any.

And even if most Crowned states would desire this...Amenta is huge. The Asteral Accord is one of the biggest Crowned states and it has less than a hundred million people.

Sorry, again. I don't really know what I was thinking. If you would prefer, I can try causing you to forget. I would get into a lot of trouble for doing this if anyone else found out, because it's tampering with another's mind, but.:

I think - if there weren't this whole billions of people dying problem - a lot of people would want to join you. It sounds like a lovely lifestyle and the holdouts would be people who are really attached to specific things that - that wouldn't be true still, about home, if all this awful stuff happened to it. ...or their hair color, I guess, though I can't imagine being that attached to my hair color. She has amber-yellow roots and spring green dye, in a braided ponytail. Though, uh, I don't really understand the 'worshiping a god' thing but from how you're psychicing it, it sounds like it might be hard to do for somebody who has killed billions of people? For me, anyway. And it sounds like it is pretty important to how you do things.

:I mean, I don't know if that would happen to Amenta. It happened on Earth but I don't know if the same would happen here. And it's genuinely unclear whether Teiatat deliberately caused it to occur or whether it was just a side effect. But...I understand that. I think that might just be a difference in psychology, or something. Gods killing billions of people hasn't stopped people on Earth from worshipping them.: He sends the story of Noah and the flood and how Christianity used to be one of the most popular religions on the old Earth. He's actually unsure about the veracity of the story — he used to think the claims of Christianity were untrue but then like. Apparently magic and gods were real.

:People used to start lots of wars over religious differences on Earth.:

Worshipping is like...he can transmit the feeling of it. The feeling that there is something more powerful that loves you, and cares about you, and wants you to have good things, and does give you good things, and feeling gratitude towards them, deference and submission. Has she felt anything like that?

:That you have that exact feeling or some feeling like it isn't necessary to do the rituals, though it's better if you do, and it would be necessary if you wanted to become a priest. And of course we have brainwashing if you feel like you want to experience that but can't. And it's only done consensually, of course, except...there's a lot of social pressure there. It's like...okay, Amentans seem really into things being clean, so it's like, I don't know. If you didn't like being clean and didn't want therapy about it, or something. It's like, 'why would you not desire this Obviously Objectively Good Thing'.:

She has... parents? And when she was little it was sometimes sort of like that, like, if they took her out for ice cream and she was being extra good to make them glad they did that? She might still have been extra good for ice cream if they had also murdered three-quarters of her siblings (she actually only has one sibling) but it would have felt different, she thinks.

There are some hyposensitives who don't want therapy but, like, they are insane, hyposensitivity is a mental problem. It does not seem like a mental problem among Amentans (maybe it is among Asteralians, she wouldn't know) to not be into being extra good for ice cream performing rituals for magic powers, at the genocidal ur-alien.

:Very valid. I think the main difference between us is that I hated my old life and you didn't. And the rest of the Asteralians have either forgotten what it was like, or don't think about it, or keep quiet about it. Or have grown up living like this.:

It's not a mental illness but it's like...okay it's kinda sorta a mental illness even though it's not recorded in psychology books, in the sense that people will think you Need Help.

His tablet is making some sort of gentle buzzing alert noise.