YOU MIGHT WANNA STEER REALLY FAST BECAUSE THERE'S A PLANET DEAD AHEAD

The experimental drive works! And it didn't kill them! But it also transported them to...not Proxima Centauri. It's a planet.

Regrettably, there is not much time to think about what's happening because the drive dropped them in the troposphere with no propulsion. The sublight drive is not intended for atmospheric travel, and the thrusters are only intended to be used to rotate the ship in zero-g. They are totally going to crash in minutes.

The crew is in the g-force insulated rooms and they should be fine. The rest of the ship...well. The AAV Arch is a very big ship. It has about a million cubic meters of total volume and it's about the size of a skyscraper. They set the thrusters to their maximum setting and override their safeties to try and slow down the ship as much as possible before landing. The space below is land, not water, but it seems to be barren desert. So at least they won't be crushing anything.

They recite the blessing for being on a planet.

Hail to the Generous Patron of Desire, who brings forth life from the barren rock.

The barren desert receives them sandily.

A lot of radio signals start yelling at them.

Looking at the diagnostics is painful. Most systems have been damaged or rendered inoperable in some way. Both the sublight and experimental drives were broken. They don't feel anything, from inside the shielded rooms, or even hear anything, but seeing the readouts on the screen...

What do the external sensors say? What are the conditions on this planet? It has a good amount of atmosphere, and have landed in a dry place, but what else? Where have they ended up?

Their wind-communication crystal was shattered in the crash, but some of the mundane radio sensors are still working. None of these radio signals are encoded in any encoding scheme they know. And they have diplomatic contacts with basically every state in the Solar system capable of radio transmission.

Okay. So they happened to crash land on a planet with aliens. It was a mistake to not have planned for this possibility.

They don't try to transmit anything, not knowing their language(s) or encoding schemes. They'll record the data and do a combination of feeding the data to machine translation models and doing divination rituals with wind magic. It's going to take hours or days to get anything useful out of them, though.

The other people in the crew leave the shielded rooms and gather weapons and other supplies. They hope that the aliens will be friendly, but they did not exactly arrive in the friendliest manner. They really really don't want to fight, and don't anticipate being able to hold their position for very long, but...yeah.

They set visual sensors on both the ground around them and in the sky to see if anyone is approaching them.

The desert is on the eastern half of the planet's single continent. The sky is going to take more than a few seconds to fill with choppers. But some of the radio is just prime numbers!

The scientists Really Really Really want to complete the prime numbers! The captain is hesitant. But given how they've already made their presence very clear, it's not like it's going to gain them anything to try to be radio silent. He allows transmissions completing prime number sequences.

Yay! The prime number frequencies will try other Math Stuff once prime numbers are established.

They'll send other Math Stuff like Fibonacci sequences and Euler's number and try sending other physical constants like the spectra of hydrogen and helium and the fine structure constant.

The ship is shaped like a very thin pyramid, with the drives on the fat end. The point has been driven shallowly into the sands. Despite the interior being all messed up, the exterior hull has remained intact. Well, it's scratched up and dented, but there aren't any major holes. They barricade the airlocks and what of the holes they can access from the inside.

The mood inside the ship is highly bimodal with the ship's crew being despairing and the scientists being overjoyed.

Whoever's on the other end of those radio bands reciprocates cheerfully.

There's some helicopters now. Is the place, like, radioactive or super hot or anything?

Nope, the desert is perfectly normal save for Giant Spaceship.

The captain plus a few others get ready at the airlocks nearest the surface of the desert. Presumably some of those helicopters will land and have aliens.

They pause radio transmissions for now.

The radio transmissions toward them continue forlornly.

One helicopter lands! Aliens come out of it! They look remarkably humanlike apart from the colorful hair.

Sorry aliens! The captain has been approving transmissions manually and now isn't. Not that they can transmit that.

Wow. That is. So humanlike. One more point towards the panspermia hypothesis.

The airlock will open and reveal three people: the captain, a priest, and one of the researchers. The airlock is about a meter above ground and is slightly tilted relative to it. They don't exit but do stay at the edge.

The three are wearing light grey coveralls with tall standing collars with various patches on the shoulders and chest that presumably mean things. Underneath, not visible, they have stone magic enchanted body armor. They have patrol caps with wind magic that shield against mindreading, save for specifically keyed telepathy.

The captain and priest have belts with various devices on them shaped like spheres or rods.

They are also humanoid but are much taller — the three are about two meters tall — and have grey skin. Their eyes are a light grey, and their lips are of similar coloration.

How far away are the aliens from them?

The helicopter landed about a quarter mile away. The disembarking group is two greys, a blue, and three greens.

One of the greens is taking pictures and the blue attempts a wave.

They would prefer if they approached them than the opposite, since if the situation turned sour, they could close the airlock. Though it does seem like they aren't the sort to shoot first before talking. They recognize the gestures of taking pictures and infer that that is what that person is doing, and they also recognize the wave. They are unsure whether to reciprocate.

Discussion ensues. They think the aliens have been unconfrontational thus far and, given how humanoid they look, perhaps they would have humanoid customs. The captain waves back, several minutes late. Do they begin to approach?

Yes! Slowly.

That's fine. They decide to sing, even though the aliens won't know the words. It seems appropriate.

The priest will lead them in singing a hymn. It's a slow song — it feels a little melancholy but mostly hopeful. They are very good at singing, perfectly on-tempo and in harmony. Their voices are loud and rich and carry well across the sands. Which is to be expected, since they are currently melding their minds in order to be able to sing with coordination. There is the added benefit, the captain belatedly thinks, that it will make them more coordinated in the event the situation turns.

Oooooh the one with the camera fumbles to make it take in more audio.

Okay the captain is being too anxious and it becomes too costly for the priest to maintain the meld any further than that. They stop singing. Are they still approaching? They are willing to wait until they enter the priest's telepathy range. Which is about a hundred meters. 

One of the greens starts singing too! Just one, so it's not harmonic, but the quality is okay.

Discussion ensues. The captain gives permission for the priest to sing alongside the green, about two thirds of the way through the song. The priest sings in unison, an octave lower. The tune is unfamiliar but so long as the chorus (and perhaps the verses) have the same melody, he'll be able to copy it.

The verses have a repeating melody too! The lyrics are presumably a mystery except where they repeat.

They're coming into telepathy range now.

Yep, the priest has just been singing "a" the whole time, not matching the words.

Telepathy, despite being a mind-affecting effect (i.e. it inputs or changes information in the mind, as opposed to just reading), is regulated less strictly than other mind-affecting effects. It is not considered hostile or alarming to do it in the Asteral Accord, or in many states of the new Earth with knowledge of wind lore. They could stop contact until they develop better machine translation, but the sooner they get information back to the Accord proper, the better. They are willing to take the risk of potentially angering them by attempting it.

The priest will take a moment to prepare, given how they're at the very edge of his range, and because he wants to send to all of them simultaneously.

It feels something like language, and yet not.

:Hello.:

They stop! They look at each other! They confirm amongst themselves that they all heard that! It's really exciting and they should maybe tell the radio people to chill out?

They have no shielding and aren't taking the mental motions to render one more resistant to psionic probing (but neither are they trying to make themselves easier to probe), but reading people's minds without consent is generally impolite. Probably these aliens would feel the same. So, he doesn't, even though it would let him know whether or not they have bad intentions. They don't seem to, though.

:I have the ability to send and receive messages directly between minds. If you think of something clearly and intend to communicate at me, I can receive it. I have formed one-to-one connections with all of you but anything you send to me here will not be sent to the others in your party.

My ability is more tiring the farther away the mind is. My ability is more tiring the farther away the recipient is and I can more sustainably do it if you are closer.:

They resume walking. The blue says (and speaks, to her group): Welcome to Amenta! Do your people need any assistance?

The three talk for a bit in private telepathy. Then, Rauha sends again. The tone or feeling of the transmission is different. More formal, more distant, more prepared.

:Thank you for your kind welcome. We regret and apologize that we arrived at your planet in such a manner. It was an accident and was unintentional. I am Presbyter Rauha Joiner of the AAV Arch. I have been authorized by the ship's captain, Nenad Kit, to negotiate on his behalf. Our (ex) state is called the Asteral Accord.:

The telepathy is contextful and signals that Presbyter is a title, whereas Rauha Joiner are names.

:I am not authorized to negotiate on its behalf or to make treaties that bind it.

Despite this, it is our (ex) wish for our peoples to engage in much peaceful, productive, and pleasant intercourse with each other, and this is the wish of our state as well.: The transmission is accompanied by a burst of hope and desire. The emotion is palpable internally but seems demarcated, not as though one was feeling it one's self, but through strong empathy.

Are the aliens smiling? Do they smile? They seem to have humanoid months too.

The aliens smile! And they're mostly doing it except one of the greys who is maintaining a serious professional expression!

I'm Sita Mekapi and I've been dispatched to welcome you on behalf of the nation of Tapa, where you've landed. I'm not authorized to unilaterally make treaties either, though I can relay anything you want to say to people who can, and invite more Amentans here if you want to talk to someone with another specialty of any kind. We are so delighted to meet you, accidental or no. She tries to push that through; it's real.

They smile too! Very big smiles. The researchers inside are recording the proceedings with the ship sensors, while the one attached to the airlock party is recording the thought impressions with a wind glass sphere.

Very good sign for friendly aliens! The ship being destroyed is kind of putting a damper on the mood, so he doesn't know if he can say back that he's delighted, exactly.

:We wish to trade for materials with which to repair the communications system of our ship so that we can establish contact with our homeworld.

Once contact has been established, I fully expect, but do not promise, that the Asteral Accord would wish to establish formal trade relations with Tapa and with Amenta in general, such that our (in) peoples may be made more prosperous in the process.

If this is amenable to you, we wish to receive information about what things are valuable among Amentans or Tapai.:

We would most emphatically value information about how you traveled here such that we could try it ourselves, even at the risk of a similar crash. Other science and engineering knowledge is also valuable to us, though of course in expectation little if any biology would translate between biospheres. There will also be great consumer demand for your media and history. What is it that you need to repair you communications?

:Our method will not work for you, because you do not have access to orgone. Orgone is exotic energy obtained from the higher planes: something analogous to 'universe' :which we have access to through the Edicts: theology-law? Social-law? :of our Hierophant.: theologian-leader

:Those who live by his Edicts are granted access to it and can operate orgonic artifacts, which our ship's experimental and sublight drives are. Orgonic artifacts operated by other people cease to work.: The captain forbids him from talking about other nations on Earth. They can think about sharing that later. For now they want to seem like it's plausible they have a world government. Though they probably have inferred it from Rauha's explanation already...

:It is likely, but I do not guarantee, that the Asteral Accord would be willing to organize shuttle services for our two nations or worlds to trade with each other and for people to visit and perhaps even live in or immigrate, and for us to transport Amentans to other places besides.

We are willing to share some scientific knowledge.

We require a very large crystal.: He gives an impression of a crystal that is house sized, though he also sends the impression that it's very possible it needs to be even bigger than that.

:The crystal must be transparent, preferably colorless, and must be as pure as possible. The crystal must contain as few defects as possible and cannot have any grain boundaries — that is to say, it has to be totally monocrystalline. We typically use crystals of corundum or quartz.:

I don't know there to be any currently operating manufacture of crystals that size, but I expect we can accomplish it if we set our minds to it. We would be very happy to travel as your passengers until such time as we can learn more about your theology.

:I am qualified to speak on the topic of theology since I am a priest: theologian 

:What religion or religions are practiced in Tapa, or Amenta in general? We are prohibited from proselytizing but it is permitted to us to speak about it if we are asked: which he was, so.

Probably, Rauha and Sita are using some mental-word-concepts differently. Rauha feels that it is probably so but doesn't ask clarifying questions about it. Yet.

By this time the Amentans are within what would be a reasonable non-shouting conversational distance. People have different beliefs about what sorts of lifestyles and social setups are healthiest for people. We've converged on a shared understanding of some things relevant to international treaties, like a minimum pollution standard and an escalation-prevention approach to greys, but in most ways people can pursue all kinds of theological approaches in things like how they relate to their families, their mental health, their work, and other important things. It wouldn't be straightforward to enumerate all the possible combinations.

Intense psychic discussion ensues. Their faces are really quite emotive, but at the end they revert to Very Big Smiles.

That explanation is both surprising and also not. Not preparing for first contact was such a mistake. He is probably bungling this so badly. He wants to delay explaining the situation on Earth...

:Could you please explain what pollution and greys are?

Pollution is our word for things that are contaminated or unclean and therefore risky to handle without appropriate distance and equipment. Greys are one of our castes. She indicates the greys flanking their group. Amentans have different castes to specialize in different categories of work, and greys are where we draw our soldiers from, so to avoid any conflict progressing to total war we have some international rules about them in a way we don't for other castes; we wouldn't expect you to necessarily have converged on anything quite like that.

Huh. He thought he felt something different when they mentioned that thought-concept but Earth also does have pollution standards, so. That makes sense.

Oh, a casted society. That makes sense. And they mark it with hair color. He supposes all of them would be greys under this classification. Both because of their hair and because the Asteral Accord runs on a militia system. He does not volunteer this information.

:What castes does Tapa have? Could you give an overview of them and their roles?

We (ex) do not have any — or rather, we only have one caste.:

I'm a blue, the governance and diplomacy caste. Our escorts are greys, as you see, and these three here are greens, the scholarly and artistic caste. Most people are purples, which covers farming, manufacture, shipping, and most other miscellaneous good and service provision. There are also oranges, teachers and medics and such, and yellows, programmers and bureaucrats. Regularly polluting work is sequestered to the red caste, which is otherwise quarantined.

:Is this caste system shared by any other states on Amenta? Are the castes biologically distinct from each other? How does reproduction work among them? Would we be expected to try to fit ourselves to your caste system, given our situation?

Which types of work are regularly polluting? Our understanding of pollution is such that polluted people can be cleaned with appropriate decontamination.:

A broadly similar caste system prevails everywhere, with some local quirks like how to caste firefighting or boat operation. Most marriages are within caste, and there are plenty of biological traits that prevail in one and not another, but cross-caste reproduction is not unheard of. People will want to know what to most closely round you off to, especially in some languages that lean more heavily on everyone having a caste, but we do understand that you're aliens and won't have come to the same arrangements! People can be cleaned of incidental contact with pollution, but unfortunately the red caste was established at a time when that was impossible to do thoroughly and someone still needed to handle bodies and waste, and now have a generational problem.

Oh. Pollution is a metaphysical thing too.

:Our world has much more diversity in caste arrangements and, regarding linguistics, we (ex) tend to prefer to come to a consensus as to select which caste we want to be the closest to socially, so to speak.

Is caste denoted by hair color? We have black, grey, or white hair, which I think corresponds to the grey caste. Most of the people on this ship are researchers and so would be green by profession. What are the proportions and populations of each of the castes, in Tapa and Amenta in general?

Our Hierophant's Edicts grant us a blessing which magically keeps our bodies and spaces pure, and those who choose to convert and live under them would be granted this same blessing too. I am capable of performing this ordinance, as a presbyter. I can also demonstrate this magical cleanliness blessing to you.:

Caste is signaled by hair color, but that's a marker, not the underlying meaning, and Amentan hair doesn't even come in black. If you're researchers it sounds like you're closer to green. That blessing sounds absolutely wonderful! What's the process like?

Rauha explains the blessing. Broadly speaking, dirt and grime do not accumulate on their bodies or clothing. Both internal dirt like particles of skin or skin oils, etc., and external dirt like...dirt, or spilled food, etc. This extends to the spaces they frequent, such that homes, offices, cities and the like also are cleansed. This is both involuntary and voluntary — if you put on makeup and want to take it off, you can just think of it as 'dirt' and it will vanish from your skin.

Yes, they still excrete waste. Yes, they still have indoor plumbing and sewers and sanitation systems, but like. In space. 

Showering or sweeping or other cleaning activities are still done, but only for pleasure or familiarity, not necessity. Yes, it does violate conservation of matter in that just causes the offending material to disappear. 

The blessing does not tidy or rearrange messes, nor does it repair things. Stains and spills are cleansed, but if say, bleach was spilled on clothing, the bleach will disappear, but it won't fix the bleached part of the clothing.

Wow, the Amentans are really into cleanliness. It's evident from their mind-voice. So they really ought to give a demonstration of it. Some discussion ensues and the researcher with the party volunteers to come down from the airlock.

Rauha transmits the researcher's mindvoice. The man carefully drops down from the airlock and walks closer.

:Hello!: He is Very Cheerful and Very Smiley. :I'm Felicity Cornerstone. I can demonstrate the cleanliness blessing for you. It is very good, I agree — many other Crowned do not grant this blessing, or grant a lesser version of it which does not extend to spaces.

As for demonstrating it, I can throw sand on myself, or you could do so, and then I can will it away. Or if you have some sort of liquid like water, that would work too.:

They did bring water on their walk through the desert! One of the greens excitedly hands over his canteen.

Okay! Actually he's going to combine both of these: he accepts the green's canteen with two hands and a small bow, and then pours out some water on the desert sand. Then, he grabs a bunch of the wet sand and smears it on his coveralls and on his face. He raises his muddy hands to show them.

:Once I think of the mud as being undesirable dirt, I can do a mental action and...:

It vanishes!

Do Amentans do handshakes? He wants to shake the hand of Canteen Green with his now magically cleaned hand. And also return the canteen.

Canteen Green will shake hands!! Wow!!!

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.

:We have been working on machine translation for Tapap and Standard Asteralian but we want to also use telepathy to avoid miscommunication. Our intention is to display what we can offer you so that we can trade for supplies and the very large crystal that we talked about yesterday.

Before we continue, would you mind if we (ex) pray to our deity, Teiatat? You may join if you wish.:

He is now doing what Mekapi did yesterday and saying the words he's transmitting out loud in Asteralian.

She too is speaking aloud for posterity. "We would be curious to watch, but don't know how to do that."

Hm...it is possible that the aliens have no concept of religion at all and he needs to give more context.

:Teiatat, the Generous Patron of Desire, is the entity which grants our Crowned, the Hierophant, his powers, and from whom we also learned our magical lore. It is also through this connection that we have access to orgone.

Praying is an invocation or an act intended to supplicate or request something of another. It is also used to focus or declare one's intentions. There are prayers with fixed wordings said at fixed times, but one can also pray extemporaneously with free wording. We will now do so. The language that we use for prayer is different from our regular language.:

The rest of the Asteralians join in saying the words.

:O, Generous Patron of Desire, your Asteralians have met with the Amentan people through fortuitous accident. May you enable us to have pleasing, profitable, and productive intercourse with each other. May this be the beginning of a fruitful partnership. Years from now, may our children and their children beyond that celebrate this occasion. Let it be so.:

The Lavender Language is sibilant and rich in vowels. Standard Asteralian is English-derived in phonology.

Nothing else observably happens.

The "may it be so" construction does not translate neatly into Tapap. They wind up kind of expectant, waiting for the delivery of the miracle that they just ordered to show up any minute now.

Tragic. Does Tapap not have any hortatives?

Rauha was thinking that Mekapi would want to say some words of her own but he should be more explicit.

:If you wished to say some words to mark the occasion, this would be the time. Otherwise we can begin immediately.: He sends this only to her and doesn't say it out loud.

Tapap has hortatives but they are not usually used in situations like this one. This situation is, grammatically speaking, unheard of. They are not saying "let's go to the mall" or "you may want to use the rear entrance".

"We would also appreciate this," she says, for lack of a way to match the style.

Oh well.

They've decided on the strategy of showing off what they can do first before telling them what they want. So they're going to do that.

:Much of our equipment was destroyed, so what we have to offer immediately is limited. Also, the nature of orgone means that, even if we give you the exact specifications of our artifacts and you made them, they would not work if you tried to operate them. 

However, we are open to sharing a large portion of our knowledge, both magical and mundane, and also offering our services in managing magical artifacts or infrastructure once it is built by you. We are going to demonstrate some of these now.:

The Lore of Stone and Rune is used for manipulating forces and orgonic energy. It's made by carving runes into stone and perhaps inlaying them with various materials. Trying to analogize it to mundane sciences, it's a combination of assembly programming and mechanical engineering.

The experimental drive that led them here is built using it.

It is possible to use stone magic to create orgone collectors which gather it into batteries. In this way, large constructs requiring enormous energy can be powered, like the aforementioned experimental drive. It can also be converted into mundane energies like electricity to power industry. It would also enable the Amentans to have a limited number of their own orgonic artifacts by charging them with said batteries. They sell orgonic batteries to various states back home which don't have access to it. The orgone collectors themselves still have to be managed by the Asteralians or they stop working. The experimental drive used many orgone batteries and they had to have a separate hauler travel with it to carry them.

Stone magic is also used for material reinforcement. They use stone magic to create stuff like space elevators, the outer hulls of spaceships,  and g-force isolated rooms. Every spaceship in the Accord has these and they function as panic rooms or escape pods. It's what allowed them all to survive the crash without injury (though some people did get injured afterward during their survey of the ship).

Stone magic can also generate or nullify gravity. They could have zero-g rooms on the surface of Amenta or full-g in space. They also construct some shuttles out of these so they don't need to use rockets. They land so gently that they could potentially land on a city square. They show a video of a shuttle touching down on a field and then flying back up, the plants underneath trampled but not burnt.

They're willing to demonstrate stone magic in person by showing them one of the shielded rooms, which are kept at zero-g. However, this is inside the ship. Are there people who are willing to enter? They have prepared the path from this airlock to the nearest one so it should be safe to traverse.

They've got an artificial crystal engineer on hand to give them a preliminary estimate of how long that will take and a ballpark guess at how expensive (not that they are expecting the Asteralians to pay in tap but it's useful as a benchmark).

Where does orgone energy come from, that it can go into batteries, do Astaralians just generate it on a continuous basis or do they have to do something?

Do they have any use for Amentan medical anything? Drug compatibility is probably low to zero but maybe they set bones, or need disinfectants?

They can have their pick of these Amentans to come on board!

It's probably going to take months or more. They appreciate the estimate.

Orgone comes from other dimensions, called 'the higher planes'. They readily admit that they don't actually know that much about the basic theory of it and mostly know its application.

Asteralians have to, broadly speaking, live in Asteralian society. And be observant to the Edicts. They don't generate it but they channel it from their connection to the Hierophant's Edicts and the Hierophant's connection with Teiatat and the higher planes. Orgone collectors tap into places where the higher planes are especially 'near' in a figurative sense. They have sensors to measure which places are most suitable.

They do not need Amentan medical supplies — the shielded rooms have some water magic equipment and they were able to recover the living wood staves necessary for it, even if many of the elixirs have been spilled.

They can come inside! Everything is built to be for people bigger than them but this means that they won't have any issue fitting through the doors and corridors.

The shielded room has been prepared for them and most of the stuff has been cleared out. There are metal bars on the walls and cords stretching from one side of the room to another, intended to be handholds. It's not clear where the runes are — the walls seem bare. The walls and most of everything in the room is pure white. The room is around the size of two shipping containers.

The Asteralians warn them that the moment they stick a leg or an arm through the threshold, it immediately ceases to be affected by gravity and so the appendage might jerk suddenly as the muscles exert against a force that is no longer there. Also, if they begin to feel nauseated, they should immediately tell them and be escorted out — it would be very bad to vomit in zero-g because they might aspirate it. Also, they should make sure to always be holding onto something or otherwise have forward momentum. Otherwise you risk getting stuck in the middle of the room. They'll rescue anyone who does, though.

They are going to escort them one by one if they want to enter, holding them by the waist and arms. The people tasked with this aren't those in the main negotiating group and can accommodate zero-g playtime for as long as they want.

One of the Amentans hangs back, having had an experience in zero-gravity that Did Not Go Well, but the others forge in bravely. One of the greens wants to go in last and play with the gravity/zero-g boundary but nobody here is actually that enamored of bouncing around per se.

That is valid.

And yes, they can play with the boundary! It removes the force of gravity but does not remove other forces: if an object enters with some momentum, it will retain it. If you throw an object at an arc such that it goes down and into the doorway, it will continue going "down" but won't be accelerating anymore.

Is anyone interested in an aerialist show? Yes they did get prior approval for this from the captain!

Oh yes PLEASE says photographer green.

They remove one of the cords and bring in a hoop with two cords tied to opposite ends, and then attach these two cords to opposite walls.

One of them will remove his boots and go up to the hoop at an angle to get them both spinning.

They explain that zero-g aerialism is way more accessible than weighted aerialism because you don't have to contend with gravity (so you need less strength) and if you make a mistake, you just float away rather than falling to the ground. It's super common in the Accord.

There are no strength holds to be found but lots of displays of flexibility — it's somewhat obscured by the coveralls the performer is wearing, though. And a lot of moves alternating between stretched limbs slowing down rotation and then bring them back in to speed up.

Zero-g soccer is also common but regrettably they don't have the setup for it. They offer to let other people try the hoop.

The greys try, one at a time, and one of the purples brought in to consult about the giant crystal.

They can do so! If they are done, they can bring them back out, supporting them through once again, this time to prevent them from crumpling because their muscles aren't resisting gravity.

Meanwhile, the people back at the main meeting talk about the Lore of Fire and Crucible, which is used for transmutation of matter and creation and manipulation of mundane energies. Fire magic requires very precisely calibrated alloys of different metals. The composition of an artifact determines what it can do, though to a lesser extent the shape matters too.

They use fire magic to transmute different materials into other ones. So you can conceivably turn lead into gold. Doing something with precision or which preserves the original structure is very difficult, though. Useful for recycling! Relatedly, they should shift away from using precious metals as currency if they're doing that. The Accord uses fiat currency managed with wind magic. Although there are still rare materials — materials which are inherently magical and which are difficult or can't be transmuted into with fire magic.

Fire magic is also used for the creation and transmutation of mundane energy. They use it for lighting and sometimes radio transmission. Also heating, both for industry and domestic purposes.

They demonstrate with a lightpencil. Felicity takes out a pen-shaped object — it's white, tipped with a silvery hemisphere at the end. There are a couple of dials near the opposite tip plus a button near the end. He turns the dials and the holds it, pressing the button.

The hemisphere glows and leaves behind a trail of purple light, like a neon sign, except it's immaterial and just hangs in the air. He draws flowers with it, then fiddles with the dials again and adds green stems and leaves.

He waves his hands through them and they remain in the air, though they're a little distorted by it. He explains that the markings will last several minutes to hours, depending on the setting. They can also be erased: he demonstrates by fiddling with the dials again and passing the tip across a glowing line, which is extinguished.

Felicity offers Mekapi the lightpencil if she wants to try!

Amenta does not use precious metals for representing or backing wealth any more. Are these magical applications for things like lighting cheaper or merely cooler than accomplishing them technologically?

Mekapi will try the lightpencil, though she keeps her drawings unambitious - triangles, a bit of text, swirls and stars.

It can be cheaper for the Asteralians, because you only have to pay the one-time cost of the metal alloy rather than continuously pay for electricity, but since Amentans don't have a native source of orgone, it may not be economical.

Fire magic can also be used for lasers and very directed heating, which can be useful industrially.

They also use it for weapons, but they don't talk about that.

It makes sense that they wouldn't talk about that since they do the armed neutrality thing (which strikes Amentans as pretty sensible).

They have gotten the sense from the provided media that it might be possible that some Asteralians are trans-species?

Yes! A requirement to join their society is also to change form to be like them. It is one of the Hierophant's Edicts. Presbyters and apostles — a higher rank of priest — can perform the ritual which effects this change. The ritual is instantaneous but the change occurs over the course of months. It is a requirement for being a citizen and being able to vote. Also, you will receive the blessings of cleanliness, ability to channel orgone, and agelessness.

The Hierophant is unaging and bestows this blessing upon all of the citizens of the Asteral Accord. So they don't senesce or die of old age. They can still die, though, through accident. Though basically never through disease, because of water magic! Which they will explain later.

Rauha predicts, but does not guarantee, that the Asteral Accord would be very pleased to have Amentan immigrants! The Accord does accept a much more limited number of permanent residents who can live in their spaces but retain their original forms and citizenship. There are also Asteralians who wish to live in other places and they would permit them to immigrate to Amenta or Tapa, if they allowed them. He says it in a tone which implies many countries Do Not allow emigration.

Also, how many people live in Tapa, or Amenta in general?

Tapa's got about a billion, approximately 1/13 of the global population.

Would emigrants... turn into Amentans? Besides the anatomical changes, and the code of conduct, what else changes about a person who turns into an Asteralian? Since they have population controls, why are they interested in taking immigrants? What limits do they place on non-trans-species permanent residents, and how long can impermanent residents stay?

Wow. That's a lot of people! The Asteral Accord only has seventy million.

Emigrants would not turn into Amentans but there are water magic ways to turn people into Amentans if desired.

Biological impulses would be altered. For example, since Asteralians don't have breeding seasons, they will stop experiencing breeding seasons. Otherwise, it does not itself effect any mental changes.

They have population controls in the sense that they have mechanisms to restrict reproduction. He explains that the Asteral Accord began in the asteroid belt, in a single asteroid with limited magical lore, and resources were very limited such that they could support very few children. But now they have many more holdings on asteroids and moons and habitats and orbitals and now there is great abundance in space and resources. So while the population controls are still in effect, the barrier for getting a permission is very low. Most of the people in the ship could decide they wanted a child and be permitted to have one within a month...though obviously they're not going to try to do that in this situation.

They are interested in taking immigrants because they think that the Asteralian way of life is a very goodly way of life and there are many people who would be suitable for it and flourish within it. They think that people should be allowed to move to where they feel they would be the happiest, again with the sort of phrasing and tone which implies that other countries Do Not think that way.

The restrictions on non-trans-species permanent residents and impermanent residents are decided on an asteral basis. An 'aster' is basically a 'province', but in space, so it's typically a single large habitat. It is its own political unit and it can set how many of these it will permit. And it's also dependent on the nationality of the resident. Some may allow lots or none at all. Citizens have free movement between asters, but they may not necessarily obtain voting rights for that specific aster immediately (though they retain federal voting rights).

Generally, 1% of the population is allowed to be non-trans-species permanent residents. Things are much more free with impermanent residents and tourists though, and they have many free movement or visa-free travel arrangements with various states.

If they stop experiencing seasons, what season would it feel like all the time?

Do they not expect eventual diminishing per capita capacity to provide resources to support people with?

They don't know what the Amentan experience of seasons is like, so. They can't really comment. Could she elaborate on why this is particularly important?

Well, they have magic, so conservation of entropy is no longer true. If there's too little space, they can just build more orbitals. And advances on making magic and technology better and more efficient keep coming. (Rauha wants to explain the Kuliapu Hierarchy but Nenad stops him. The focus is on getting the giant crystal!! Don't say anything that will compromise this.)

Well, Amentans already have a way to experience spring all the time (they can move somewhere without seasons, like the equator, poles, or moons), and this is widely unpopular.

The Amentans are all so fucking delighted to hear about the building orbitals option! That sounds great! They might be having a little impromptu party about that right here and now!

Why is experiencing spring all the time widely unpopular?

They're glad they're happy? But like, the orbital habitats wouldn't have seasons. Asteralians don't care that much about having seasons.

Well, the problem with springing all the time is mostly that you can't have a baby all the time. Even if you can afford a few credits that's not enough to have a baby until menopause.

Huh. Asteralians do not experience the desire to have babies that strongly. What does it feel like to spring? They can transmit other qualia through the telepathy: Rauha demonstrates by sharing a memory of his first EVA. 

...do they want an example of a normal spring or a bad one.

Both, but start with the normal spring please.

Mekapi thinks she has pretty normal springs. Maybe on the gentle end of normal. It's like so -

Hm. He doesn't think he's felt anything like that but he thinks some Asteralians might? People vary in how much they want children and Rauha is lower-middle, he thinks. For Asteralians.

What is the bad spring like. If someone is experiencing a bad spring right now they can volunteer to share their experience.

Nobody with a cripplingly bad spring has been assigned here, because: it's spring.

This guy, though, has been menopausal for ten years and he used to have pretty wretched ones. Aaaaare the aliens sure about this.

They want to try! Rauha has experienced looking at Bad Memories before.

Okay. Here's this guy's bad springs from when he still had those.

ugh oof ouch ough

That's so sad! That Amentans have to experience that! Asteralians do not experience that at all. Perhaps there's a way to use water or wind magic to relieve people who are suffering from that.

(Nenad is getting Very Annoyed that this is Not about the Very Large Crystal and can they please get on with the presentation of the magics so they can make the deal to get one already. Hurry up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Would the Amentans appreciate an explanation of water and wind magic now.

Please! Magic is so incredibly exciting!

Okay!

The Lore of Waters and Life, as the name suggests, operates on biology. It can diagnose and treat diseases and also effect changes in biology. Staves and wands of living wood are used for it, and this magic can also be infused into solutions, typically called 'elixirs', which can have effects when administered (some topical or intravenous or by mouth).

Water magic can be used for manipulating the biology of plants and animals too. They use it for hydroponic farming, ornamental plants, and artificial meat.

It can also be used cosmetically or to effect gross changes in one's biology.

Regrettably, they don't have any live samples of water magic to show — their staves would need adjustment and calibration to work on Amentans, though they are quite sure that it's possible, because it works on a wide variety of different biologies. And most of their elixirs were either destroyed or are reserved for their own use in the case of injury. They show before and after pictures of how it's used cosmetically, though. It can do things as simple as hair growth or pigment change, all the way to sex or species change. These pictures are of other species who live back home who are not Asteralians.

They can export all of these things when they're calibrated for Amentans! Do they want to start posting speculative auctions, for a loose idea?

Yes, if that doesn't commit them. (The ship has few water magineers since that isn't what the ship is about.)

Also, can they receive samples of Amentan foodstuffs so they can see whether they can eat food here. They will offer several different MREs in exchange.

It would be polite to give the winning bidders of any given auction the first opportunity to buy under whatever scheme they settle on and it would also incentivize more accurate bids. They could then use this information to take out a loan, if they would like to finance their gigantic crystal in that way instead of trying to scrape together trade goods off what's on the ship.

Here are some Amentan food samples!

They're interested but they're going to defer to making a decision on the auctions until later today.

A few people are going to come out holding long woody plants with protuberances and braids and flat parts that clearly mark them out as being artificially shaped. They have leaves growing on some parts. The plants are capped at the bottom by what look like plastic spheres. They wave the food samples across some of the plants and wave some of the plants across the food samples.

They say that the food samples are good for them to eat. They may want to purchase food in the future, in that case, or perhaps Amentan crop seeds.

The last magic is the Lore of Wind and Whispers. This magic deals with thought and communication.

Wind magic is how they are able to do telepathy!

Unlike the other types of magic, it is possible to practice this magic without any equipment (though some effects still require it). Such people are called psions. Priests are psions though they obtain this magic as instinct from blessings from the Hierophant rather than through deliberate cultivation. Regrettably, because Amentans cannot channel orgone, they cannot become psions, though they could still use wind magic artifacts with orgone batteries.

Psions do psychotherapy and lie detection via mindreading, and this is also what they plan to do before they sign any agreements.

Psions are also capable of telekinesis, with loads depending on their strength and number (a team could conceivably lift a house). Rauha has very weak telekinesis but he can make this stone float!

Wind magic can also effect thought, emotion, and personality changes and they use it for stuff like rehabilitating prisoners, media that becalms or puts one to sleep, et cetera. They think it might be possible to use this to alleviate bad springs. Water magic might also work for that but much of their water magic infrastructure was broken.

Wind magic can be used for long ranged instantaneous (faster than light) communication, using crystals. It's what they use in space rather than radio, because light lag is very inconvenient. The latency is so low you can play action games with someone on the other side of the star system!

Is there a way for it to become possible for Amentans to channel orgone while continuing to be Amentans? What governs the strength or weakness of a given psion's powers? Is the psychic effect transmitted through nonmagical recordings or do you have to play the media off a magical artifact?

(Nenad does not allow Rauha to explain how there are more pluralistic-in-form Crowned nations which have orgone.)

Rauha will say that he thinks it's possible that orgone batteries could be used to enable Amentan psions, if they wear portable batteries. But they have no prior art of doing this.

It's half innate talent and half deliberate cultivation. There are practices for it like meditation. The different psionic skills correlate but not perfectly — someone might be good at mindreading but not telekinesis, like him. Rauha also says that it's possible to link minds together with psionics to enable synchronized work, which they used when they sang. It's difficult for a regular psion to do this but their Hierophant's priests give specific instincts that make it much easier for them.

Psychic effects are not transmitted through nonmagical recordings. They have a lot of regulation about labeling media with direct psychic effects and when and where they are permitted to be played.

However, it is possible to use psionic mindreading to gather a lot of information about how a mind is structured, which can inform one's creation of nonmagical media intended to perform a specific effect. Rauha gives the analogy of inverting a classifier neural network to see what sort of input would give the maximal value on a classification...okay that might be too complicated so he gives the alternate analogy of optical illusions: there are no magical effects there, but because of the particular way sensory processing occurs, we are given to think that they look different from what they are.

These are called hypnotic effects and media, though it's a loose term and it's not necessarily the case that mindreading is required for them to call something that. Rauha gives the example of a very touching play that moves one to tears. Unlike psychic media, which is a strict term since it's any wind magic effect that requires orgone, hypnotic effects don't have such a clear definition.

Hypnotic effects would be transmitted through nonmagical recordings.

Rauha emphasizes that they have not attempted to influence the Amentans in that way except insofar as the song they sang in the beginning they tried to sing in the most beautiful and pleasing-to-the-senses way they can.

The Amentans appreciate how polite and aboveboard they're being about the psychic powers. What is a "priest", please?

A priest is someone appointed by the Hierophant — not necessarily him himself but under his authority — as someone who is an exemplar of his Edicts, and who has the authority and knowledge to speak and advise people about them. Also to perform various rituals that are pleasing to Teiatat. You have to go to school or apprenticeship for it, typically for a year.

During your service you receive powers such as the aforementioned psionic ones, but also a few other rituals like the fertility bestowing and the species transformation. Doing these things is also part of their job.

There are three levels of priest: deacon, presbyter, and apostle. Rauha is a presbyter. Most people become priests temporarily at the level of deacon, for two quadrums. This enables the Accord to have a way higher number of psions than other states — while they lose the easy and instinctive power, they retain their experience with wind magic. Presbyters and apostles serve much longer terms.

Who is the Hierophant and how did he get his job? What does Teiatat get out of people performing rituals, do they like, watch, or something?

Nenad taps Rauha on the shoulder and silent, presumably psychic, discussion ensues.

:My apologies, I've been using my telepathy for several people for hours now, today and yesterday, and I'm getting tired. It's mentally exhausting in the same way difficult intellectual work is. I'm going to ask another psion to step in for me — they are qualified to perform the lie detection via mindreading and work out a contract for the crystal.:

He bows and then goes back into the airlock.

Another person drops down from the airlock!

:I'm sorry for the abrupt transition, Rauha was very excited about this momentous occasion and forgot to pace himself. I am Constance Way.: Mild embarrassment, endearment. Constance's mindvoice is richer than Rauha's and carries more overtones.

:If it would please you, we would like to call: and he mentions the purple who gave the estimate about the crystal's price to come closer.

Here's the purple!

:Hello! What's your name? I am so happy to meet you!: And then Constance will offer to shake their hand.

:Are you fine with being mindread? It's fine if you don't want to. If you would get in trouble for saying no, we'll say that we're 'having trouble' with reading you and that another person should give the estimate.: He says only with telepathy and not speech.

I'm fine with it but my supervisor will have to remotely sign off on anything we want to make official, so's you know.

:Okay! I am only going to inquire and probe about things related to the crystal manufacture, but psionics is messy and I might get some stuff outside of that. I will try my best not to do so but make no guarantees. You may choose to refrain from answering a question, though I'll record that.:

Constance will ask, this time both verbally and with telepathy, various questions about the proposal and the estimated costs of each step.

He will also ask, and at the same time probe, about the following topics: whether they actually expect they can create such a large crystal, whether he thinks the prices (both the total and the price of each component or step) are fair or reasonable and why, whether these prices would be the prices they would charge if the customer was an Amentan, how likely they think there will be cost overruns, and how likely they think complications or delays would arise and what would cause these.

The purple thinks they can do it. It has not been done before - they don't have uses for crystals that are any bigger than a throw pillow in their present industry. But they do know how to make artificial rocks, and there is no obvious reason they should not be able to scale it up. It'll just require a lot of bespoke high precision equipment and that's going to add up quite a lot.

They are if anything giving the aliens a discount relative to what they'd charge Amentans who wanted such a crystal for... like... decoration or something. Aliens are important, everyone knows that, they need the money to buy the equipment because otherwise the equipment won't actually exist to use but they don't need to add very much surcharge, it's the sexiest possible job in the field, making a giant crystal for the magical aliens to do alien magic. He kind of thinks the high-end thermometers they buy might not be better than the slightly cheaper ones their competitor on Shi Alassei sells but that's not his call, and maybe they're actually worth it. There will on priors probably be cost overruns, that's how everything is always even if you try to account for it. The estimate includes some padding for delays but it might not be enough, though he's actually optimistic about that part because everybody's going to want to be a part of this and that should smooth things along. Though maybe it'll actually slow things down, if everybody wants to touch the project and it's more people than it needs? Unsure.

Okay that's great! Constance reports this to Nenad. Some discussion ensues, with the people inside the ship also looking it over, but it seems good. They agree to it.

:We thank you for your patience and would be willing to purchase it at this price.:

They now seek the lawyer. Constance will introduce himself and ask permission and give disclaimers in the same way. Does the yellow object?

The yellow is okay with being mindread if it's strictly business, but it's hard to keep one's mind on strictly business in the middle of spring surrounded by aliens when you have an aliens kink.

That's okay and he feels similarly! He also thinks Amentans are hot. He says that the Asteralians' plan is to formally offer the possibility of sex between the two delegations once this is settled. He would offer to use his psionic powers to keep their mind away from non-business thoughts but that would constitute greater-than-telepathy-mind-effects and so is procedurally fraught — that is to say, it exposes them to accusations of having coerced agreements out of people.

Is the yellow fine with mindreading now after these statements or are they still reluctant.

Oh if the alien is also into it they can have Slow Burn Workplace Drama Psychic Flirting and that is spiffy.

Burst of amusement and interest!

He will ask, and at the same time probe, about the following topics: what is the state of the civil courts in Tapa? (Implicitly, in the mind voice, he's asking whether or not they're fair or corrupt, but he doesn't say this part out loud). Supposing that a Tapai entity has reneged on their agreement, what options for legal relief are possible? Do they expect that the complaints of Asteralians would be taken seriously? Given that they might contract with other nations but that their spaceship is on Tapai soil, which court would have jurisdiction over those contracts they sign? Are there international courts they can appeal to?

Constance will say that they'll ask about loan details later when they have more details on what they have to sell.

There is a moderate amount of corruption in the civil courts? Not more than most countries, though. There is a province where they're trialing letting both parties to a case refuse a couple judges before they're stuck with the next randomly selected one, but the Apta Desert is not in that province. They really don't want to CHEAT the exotic and attractive MAGICAL ALIENS though, they're not going to pick a blue who'd be biased against the magical aliens.

More complicated is the extent to which the Asteralians have standing to make a complaint as opposed to a de facto excellent in to ask the feds to do this on their behalf. Like, they aren't citizens or residents or anything, they are space aliens, and technically speaking there is no box on the paperwork for "complainant is a space alien" instead of their name and credit number. If the Asteralians got into a tiff with the crystal manufacture folks, the federal Tapai government would put in a civil court complaint for them, probably. So if the Asteralians are worried about the feds not behaving well for some reason, they probably want to do something like have another country on the back burner for backup negotiations, so they can walk away from Tapa if it misbehaves, which will make the feds smarten up. To be clear it is not likely that they need this extra incentive. But if the Asteralians wanted to make extra sure that would be how - "see to it that our complaint about the crystal factory is treated appropriately or we talk to insert-other-country-here".

There are international courts for international treaties but there's not an extant treaty about aliens - past attempts to write one have run aground on all the material facts they did not have available at the time about aliens they had never met and were only hoping might exist and have sex with them. That having been said, she confidently predicts that if the Tapai pissed off the aliens and then tried not to let them talk to, like, Anitam or Cene or something, Tapa would have an extremely serious international problem on its hands, just not a pre-prescribed one.

(It's a little saddening but it seems it's the best they're going to get. Oh well. They suppose it's good that they would give them a judge that wouldn't be biased against them.)

Thank you! Constance is glad that Tapa has a functioning legal system. In that case they are willing to agree to and be bound by a contract in the jurisdiction of Tapai civil courts, even though they are not necessarily legal persons. They understand that this is an unprecedented situation and are thankful that they are being understanding with them not following more typical channels. They want to make contact with many other countries in Amenta for the purposes of communication, of course, but they understand that they landed in Tapai space and that it is therefore their host.

(It is very good that that is the case and that Tapa doesn't have the capital to force them to buy from them. Nenad is very happy!)

...Constance will apologize and ask Estimator Purple whether they are willing to give a time estimate too, for the crystal manufacture, and also be mindread for this. (How long they expect to be here will determine the sorts of things they ought to sell).

Yeah, the Estimator Purple - himself working off estimates, from various equipment suppliers - thinks it will take about three months if there are no truly novel technical challenges in scaling up, more if there are.

Okay, he's going to report that and assume it will take a quadrum. Thank you!

They offer the following list of things to sell.

Water magic services to diagnose and treat diseases.

This has startup time in the form of figuring out Amentan biology and calibrating their tools for it. They are confident that they can get it to work, since water magic works fine for other species, though when is another issue

Provided there aren't issues, it would take a week to a few weeks and they would need to scan people to get data for it. The scanning is noninvasive though for safety they would want stuff like tissue and fluid samples.

At highest throughput they would be able to treat a gross people in a week. They would be best placed to treating injuries which cannot be healed by Amentan medicine. They can do restorations of lost body parts (they can do up to "you got beheaded and we grow a new body for you"), deaging, restoration of fertility, cosmetic changes, sex changes, etc.

Wind magic and psion services for mental change and for treating mental illnesses. 

This theoretically requires no startup time, but since mental issues are highly culturally dependent, they would want to study this at least somewhat before beginning. They are confident that this will work because their telepathy and mindreading works fine.

They can treat stuff like depression, anger issues, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder, et cetera. They can also do more mundane things like "I want to develop a habit of X". It is possible they would be able to treat bad springs, but it seems like that is a physical as well as a mental issue. They are unwilling to perform value change treatment at this time, nor prisoners or those remanded to mental institutes involuntarily. Value change is stuff like "I don't love my spouse anymore and wish I did".

Wind magic can't do lasting magical effects. For something to stick, the application has to be either strong enough to affect nearby mental structures such that the mind is fixed into that new shape, or applied repeatedly. They greatly recommend the latter because it's more reliable and safer, but it's slower. How many times a patient needs to come in is very variable. For inpatient treatment, a week to a month is typical. For outpatient treatment twice a week, a month to a season.

Time in the zero-g rooms can be rented out.

Sex work! Also psionic sex work! You can do lots of cool things combining the two. Some people are good enough with their psionics to share a lot of their qualia so you can feel what the other person is feeling.

Also they are willing to act in porn and receive a portion of the profit.

Regrettably, a lot of their trinkets cannot be sold because they involve magic, and so would stop working (though not instantly) once they leave the hands of the Asteralians. Also, it doesn't seem like there are any fire or stone magic services that they can offer, only infrastructure, which would take too much time or would stop working/not work if there aren't Asteralians managing them.

How much would the Amentans value these?

They should probably decline to do restoration of fertility for anyone who was sterilized judicially, that's a whole can of worms. Maybe it's okay if their sentence was overturned. They should probably also be notifying eugenics boards of anything that would let someone pass a screen that their genes strictly speaking ought to fail, unless they're confident their improvements are hereditary. They can put up an auction page once that's ironed out though, and watch the bidding go up up up!

They can require everyone who needs deaging or fertility restoration to produce a police certificate of their country of nationality which says that they don't have any offenses charged with judicial sterilization.

Germline changes are way harder to do and they don't think they'll be able to figure out how do them in time. So it will just be somatic changes for now. And yes, they can report these once they receive what standards there are. What sorts of things disqualify one?

Hm...do Amentans have an XY sex-determination system? If so, then FtMs will have to provide a Y chromosome donor so that they can be fertile as males. MtFs do not need to do so since they can just duplicate the X chromosome. This is technically a germline change but since it affects whole chromosomes rather than individual genes, it's way easier.

Yes, please put up bidding! They want to make these services available to all Amentans, but they understand that they are within Tapai space. Therefore, they will reserve 5% of the water and wind magic services to be for Tapai customers only, but the rest is a free for all.

Hmm...they typically do generalized sealed-bid second price auctions, but if the typical auction is done differently on Amenta, they are willing to adopt a different auction form.

Different countries' eugenics boards (they assume they want to allow medical tourism from abroad, here? to drive up the price? yes. by the by here is the relevant tax regime, they're going to count this all as in-caste work considering but there is a very small income tax on gigantic transactions and a small export charge, really very tiny, though, they get their government funding from credit sales) have different priorities and they probably just want to let relevant eugenics boards know that the person has had work done and to what end and require that the patient allow this disclosure as a condition of the work.

Amentans have an XY sex-determination system, yes! Most interested parties will probably be able to produce their father or a brother or something to accomplish this, though not necessarily all, so if they came up with a way to trim an X into a Y that would be cool.

Many different auction forms have been invented on Amenta and that one will not be too confusing to savvy customers and the unsavvy customers usually don't have nearly as much money.

Yes, they do want medical tourism for abroad!

Also, yes, the tax is fine.

That's not possible because many genes on the Y chromosome are unique, so they have to find Some Guy. Theoretically, one could fashion a chromosome out of whole cloth but that would be very complicated and would probably take a season or longer to figure out how to do sustainably.

Great! Let the auctions begin!

(Nenad is very relieved that everything is proceeding. A lot of the other people really want to interact more with the Amentans and do Cultural Diplomacy. Nenad really does not want to have to deal with this and wants everyone to just wait and do their work until they get the giant crystal and contact home already...but he recognizes that he can only forbid them for so long unless he wants to get really heavy handed. And of course the Amentans will get suspicious if they suddenly want to greatly reduce contact. So he should get ahead of that.)

It will probably be a while for the bids to come in, and they want to take a break from all of the negotiation thus far. The Amentans seemed amenable to partying previously, so do they want to do that? They can share food and sing and dance and have sex!

Tomorrow, once they have gotten some bids and arranged for financing — does it seem like the services they are offering so far will cover the cost of the Very Large Crystal? Would there be extra? — they will make more formal statements and presentations that they would want the whole of Amenta to hear. But tonight, it can be very informal.

Not all of these Amentans want to have sex - some of them are monogamous, or too gynephilic to be into hermaphrodites-with-dicks, or whatever - but quite a few of them love the idea, and more of them want to try the food, and some of them want to dance and sing!

They can definitely afford their Very Large Crystal off what it seems like they will be able to sell, based on early bids which should be expected to go higher as more people check their finances and hear about the array of options.

That's alright, not all of the Asteralians do either, though proportionally there are more of them than the Amentans. And they want to have sex with Amentan women too, though a little less than they do for the men. Did they watch the educational porn videos? Actually they want to watch Amentan educational porn too so they know what they're getting into, even though it seems very similar to humanoid genitalia.

The food is definitely not the best the Asteral Accord has to offer, all of it being MREs. They did have fresh food but it wasn't in the shielded rooms and was rendered inedible or unappetizing in the crash. There will be a lot of mushrooms — mushrooms seem popular in their food. Their has less sour tastes and fewer things that are fermented or pickled or otherwise aged in some way (or flavored as though they are). Also the portion sizes are enough for one to feed two Amentans.

They have weighted dancing styles and zero-g dancing styles, if they want to go into the shielded rooms for it. Doing pair dancing given the size difference seems like it will require a lot of creativity, though.

Lovely! They are pleased that they will probably have the money for it.

Amentans do not have an educational porn genre in the exact way. They do sex ed before a kid springs for the first time and the content for that isn't titillating because there's nothing there to titillate. But they can come up with a selection of Amentan porn that will be informative!

Amentans sometimes eat mushrooms but they are not anywhere near this popular. They split MREs thoughtfully and show off the best of what Amentan meals survive the trip in a helicopter through the desert best.

They are informed! It's popular among Asteralians to do sex roleplay but they're going to refrain from attempting this for now because they might inadvertently offend. The non-psions will want to do a lot more communication beforehand and get lists of useful words and establish a safeword beforehand to minimize the risk of incidents — the psions also do the latter but since they can just communicate during, they don't prioritize it.

Alien food!!! They hope that they will be able to share the best of what their cuisine has to offer in the future.

The linguist on hand, Fianha Sekuseku, is SO excited to REALLY fuck an alien in real life eeeeeeeeeee.

An alien is going to approach her! He's holding a tablet with one hand and is holding out another to shake her hand. He has short black hair and white skin. He's wearing the same coveralls as all the other people.

"Hello!" he says in Tapap.

"Hello!" she beams back in Asteralian. Shake!

Shake! Big smile!

"My name is Satya Noon. All of the sounds of my name are in Tapap. That is good!" he says in Tapap, checking his tablet as he goes. His speech is halting and the accent is weird but he does pronounce all the phonemes correctly.

"Satya Noon!" she repeats back. "My name is Fianha Sekuseku."

He repeats her name.

"Do you want to have sex? There are rooms in the ship for it."

Nod nod bounce bounce! "I'm a little nervous but I do want to!"

"I am the same! Let us go." He will lead her up through the airlock — they have already placed a makeshift staircase for easier travel — and through a few corridors before going into a small room. The doors are sliding ones and he opens them manually. There's an Asteralian-sized bed and a shelf with various supplies: bottles, packages, other things that aren't obvious at first glance, but also things that are obvious at first glance, like dildos.

He closes the door behind him.

"We like to have a word to say if we want to stop what is happening. What word do you want to say, if either one of us wants to stop what is happening?"

"Um, how about just 'stop'?"

He checks his tablet again.

"'Stop' is when...you want to stop this, just this, maybe. But this special word is...stop everything, stop the whole thing, talk about what happened. Does that make sense? The word can be Tapap or Asteralian."

"You can teach me the Asteralian word for it!"

Okay, sure, this can work for now. He gives it.

He's going to take off his coveralls now. It has special flaps and zippers for easy access but it seems more convenient to just take it all off right now, as well as his boots and socks. He doesn't have any body hair to speak of! What he does have are rather large male genitalia. Blessings of Teiatat.

Fianha was told to show up in something suitable for a) work and b) walking in the desert for a bit, and wound up in a beige jumpsuit thing she found in the back of her closet and a light hooded poncho thing to keep the sun off. They are not hard to remove. She attempts a sexy pose and then curls up in self-conscious giggles.

He seems into it! The Asteralians have been advised to go very slowly and to check in often and not just jump into it. So he's going to do that. Amentan facial expressions seem like the map surprisingly well to Asteralian ones, so what does she feel about him getting closer and running his hand across her arm?

Actually the height difference might be awkward so he's going to try turning so that he's sitting on the bed and she's standing up.

She seems to approve of arm-stroking! She is really fascinated by his hair and is going to see if it's soft.

It is! If she looks closely there's an ombre to it — the tips seem a little lighter than the roots, but the effect is both subtle enough and with a gradual enough gradient that it doesn't seem like a dye job. Not a simple dye job, anyway.

Satya is going to continue touching, now moving onto her chest.

"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.

:Okay, I need to go, apparently someone got a boo-boo and needs fixing up. Was there anything else you wanted to say to me? Also, if you want to talk again, or have sex, you can ask for me.: He points to his chest, then looks embarrassed.

:Sorry, I wanted to point to my nametag.: All of their coveralls have them.

I don't really know what else to say. I have questions but couldn't do anything with the answers... Yeah we can try this again later. She reaches for her jumpsuit.

Understandable. He puts on his clothes too and leaves.

Once it's nighttime, the Asteralians distribute a bunch of the lightpencils for the Amentans to try and make air-murals with. It looks way cooler when it's dark. The Asteralians do a bunch of geometric patterns and flora and calligraphy and sketches of the two peoples dancing.

They will take the lightpencils back later and account for all of them, though, after a few hours.

Nobody tries to steal one. (Somebody was hoping really hard they wouldn't ask for them back but hands it over.)

They're going to go away now and propose a time tomorrow to reconvene. They say that the tablet with media that they left behind can still access what's left of the ship intranet and so they can use it to send a message if there's anything urgent — Nenad demonstrates. There's only one available channel on it (which connects to Nenad).

Once that's settled, they all go back into the ship. They don't close the outer gate of the airlock but they do close the inner gate.

The Amentans all go camp out in the desert except for the ones assigned to be up all night streaming media from the tablet to folks who are not in the desert.

There's actually not that much media on them and given how they are just uploading and not actually reading the text of the books, they are likely to run out in the early hours of the morning. There are only a few hours of video total.

They still have the everything from yesterday and are going to go on the internet again. They have way better machine translation now and can competently translate Tapap text. They don't have passable machine translation for other languages still, though given that Lawyer Yellow mentioned Anitam and Cene they are working on Anitami and Cenemi translation first.

What has the Tapapsphere Internet been saying about them? From there they also deduce what the contact team has been sharing about what has been proceeding here.

The internet has more information to work with now. The internet is confused about why their sleep schedule is so rigid so that they don't have somebody talking to Amentans round the clock, when Amentans would obviously accommodate that. The internet is so excited about aliens wanting to have sex with them right back. They want to know how the spaceship works. They are polling each other about whether they'd like to turn into Asteralians; most hesitation is driven by anxiety over the mystery about what exactly the cultural practices you have to do are and the fact that you have to move to a place none of them have even seen pictures of, but there are also people with cosmetic or patriotic objections, people who just want to live on a planet, people who think the aliens are up to something, and people who think it cannot possibly be the case that this elaborate immigration process is necessary and they will just have to establish their own thaumaturgical base.

Very useful information! The sleep schedule thing is honestly valid. They were actually doing it to be accommodating to the Amentans who do have a circadian rhythm and who are diurnal but they can float the idea of 24/7 negotiation and knowledge exchange tomorrow.

Rauha thinks that they really should inform the Amentans more about their cultural practices!!! I mean it makes sense that they would be nonpushy with their proselytization when it comes to other Lavender nations but the Amentans have no exposure to the Generous Patron of Desire at all! They are wronging them for not sharing it as soon as possible!

Nenad reiterates that their goal here is to establish contact and then they can do all of that. I mean they don't even have contact with the Hierophant. Obviously, you want want contact with the Hierophant for something as important as this. For the sake of doctrinal accuracy and all that. Rauha has no words to say against this.

The other researchers generally think that they should be freer to talk to the Amentans...I mean they can share secular cultural practices! Why does the informational control have to be so stifling. Nenad reminds them that the experimental drive is a state secret and so obviously they are going to have this control. Even if it's not related, it could still leak. Did they forget the NDAs that they signed. He sings a song about how you should keep your promises and abide by your contracts. They are quelled.

Nenad does approve more media being given to the Amentans tomorrow, including pictures of what their habitats are like. Nenad will approve Rauha's proposal for having a press conference with a Nenad-approved prewritten speech. Nenad will also approve the idea of establishing formal internet-based communications so that they can answer questions from regular Amentans, but only answered approved by him will be published. They are not to have communications with Amentans outside of these bounds. Nenad is going to sing another song about how you should obey the captain of the spaceship. The rest of the crew rolls their eyes and puts up with it, yes they get it.

Tomorrow, there's a new psion tasked to negotiate, introducing himself as Cosmos Drive.

What is the status of the bidding? They would like to discuss potential financing options with Lawyer Yellow, now.

They have two basic options: get a loan based on their projected capacity to make money and pay the crystal guys with that, or actually sell a bunch of magical services and then use that money to pay the crystal guys. They can probably get great loan terms and it will get things moving faster.

Internal discussion ensues. They definitely want to get it sooner rather than later, so they are much more inclined towards taking a loan now. Which entities are willing to make a loan to them? They'll prefer a Tapai entity because they are in Tapa and doing international litigation seems Complicated, but if there are other entities who are offering much better rates, they would be inclined to contract with them instead.

Every major bank in Tapa would be happy to work for them, especially if they can film shaking hands or something to use as ad footage.

Yes they would actually love to do that! (It's good for their PR and it gives a legible record of their transaction. Actually...)

They are planning to do a press conference at some point. Later, or perhaps tomorrow. Could a TV crew be arranged then? They plan to talk about themselves and the crystal and their financing agreement. And then they can do handshakes and smiles with said major bank. Would that be acceptable?

Absolutely! Here are bids from a dozen crews.

Yum yum bids. Okay they are going to work through the contracts and ask questions about legal wording but they don't anticipate any issues.

Hm...they're not going to naively pick the best bid but they are going to want to strike a balance between "lowest rates" and "has flexibility to refinance in the case there are issues, either the Asteralians taking longer than expected to make money, or are making money slower than expected, or the crystal manufacturing running into cost overruns and needing more money".

The banks are willing to strike variously flavored deals about adjusting the interest rate to compensate for a slower repayment schedule and allowing the inflation of the loan amount if more is required.

They will select one after some deliberation! Nenad is going to be the one to sign or otherwise solemnize the contract on behalf of the ship.

Cosmos will float the idea of setting up the Asteralians with a formal identity and website on the Internet so that they may do communication more broadly, in addition to the press conference.

They haven't done any radio transmissions since stopping on the first day because they don't know the international radio transmission and spectrum frequency laws and don't want to be a nuisance. 

They should get a webmaster yellow who can manage that for them - maybe a whole outfit's worth, they're going to have a lot of traffic and correspondence!

Tapa can inform all the countries they were talking to of this mollifying explanation for their silence.

How much will it cost to set that up? And the ongoing costs. (They are expecting Tapa or other countries to offer to pay the cost in whole or in part but it would be presumptuous for them to assume that). They don't anticipate being able to answer many questions since there are way fewer of them here than there are Amentans, and they're not like. Actual diplomats.

The two things they want are something like an email address with which they can contact other countries formally with. Then a public mailbox people can send questions to, with an attached FAQs section — the main issue and cost, they think, is hiring people to sort through the questions to sort away obvious spam and group similar messages together. They don't anticipate sending replies individually will be a good use of time (though it would be good for PR).

Yes please, thank you! They weren't intentionally snubbing the other countries.

The Tapai government will offer to manage the website and screen their mail for them but doesn't want to just assume they would not prefer to pay thus and such an amount per year to not have their website be government-managed.

They're actually going to take the offer! (There is the risk of the Tapai government reading their mail, but they plan to meet in person with foreign diplomats anyway and they can share encryption keys with them.)

Great! They'll get right on that.

Now that financing has been set up, they will give the papers to Estimator Purple. Is it possible to finalize the crystal deal now?

Yup, here's the work order his supervisor drew up for them to approve!

They'll look over it and make their own assessment, but the physicists onboard will give the okay. Nenad will again do the requisite formal approval.

They would like to obtain test subjects for both wind and water magic testing. They would like subjects male and female from all castes. Preferably there would also be foreign test subjects — they definitely want at least one test subject from each country who has at least one person who won a bid for wind or water magic treatment. They want babies, children, young people, old people. A few of each, so that something like a couple hundred people.

Test subjects for water magic should be in good health for their relevant demographic. Test subjects for wind magic should not have any mental illnesses and exhibit normative behavior according to their culture; they also should not possess classified information, because it involves mind reading.

They affirm that the testing is entirely passive and that they expect very little risk during it. However, wind magic testing will involve interviews which may get into emotionally sensitive topics, so people who have unworked-through trauma or who are easily embarrassed or upset should not sign up.

Is it the custom to do pay test subjects in Amenta? If so, how much? They predict it varies by caste. 

What kinds of emotionally sensitive topics do they need to screen people for tolerance of? It is customary to pay test subjects but they are space aliens so they can charge them, if they want, and it will barely decrease the rate of fraudulent attempts to pass the criteria.

It's less about the specific topic and more that they can talk about their past experiences and emotions without having a mental breakdown. Subjects can refuse a specific question but if they refuse too many then it reduces the worth of the sample.

There's a set questionnaire for wind magic calibration! It asks about: life history, interactions with family and friends, likes and dislikes, what causes them to feel certain emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, etc.), their hobbies and work, how they see themselves and describe themselves. Mindreading will be done while doing the interview and they measure the outputs of that. Interviews typically thirty minutes to an hour — it's very variable because people are encouraged to say as much or as little as they want.

Babies aren't going to be asked any questions obviously but looking at them is still useful for looking at instincts and basal drives.

Ah! Well in that case they can auction the slots in the same way as previously. They're not so concerned about fraudulence here, since once they gather enough data it will be obvious to tell that someone is unhealthy or deviated from typical in some way, although it does waste time. They're more worried about...they say or ask something that drives a wind test subject into a rage and they attack. The psions will be able to use their magic to defend themselves but of course that's going to cause an Incident.

Can they get the Tapai government to lend them cameras for the interview? So that any possible incidents can be recorded. They're going to request these for all test subjects actually, not just the wind magic ones. They request that recordings be destroyed afterwards if there are no complaints on either side for the purposes of patient confidentiality. Do they have that concept in Amenta? Otherwise they can explain.

The Amentan concept of patient confidentiality is... porous... but extant. They can figure out recording deletion with local-only storage.

What does...porous...mean. If they have different customs for it they can adjust to adopt local norms. How is it typically done?

Usually the government including the eugenics board can get your medical information if they want it. Random people can't though.

Ah. Well, that seems to be the done thing so they can do information sharing with the government.

It has come to the attention of the Asteralians that there is doubt regarding their statements that orgonic artifacts won't work without them, because Amentans can't channel orgone. They would like to dispel this doubt.

They're going to, for free, share a blueprint for the simplest lightpencil model: it only has one duration setting (5 minutes), one color setting (full spectrum white), one brush-size setting, and no erase feature. There are two parts and they need to be shaped in this way and both require alloys of common metals. The metals should preferably be as pure as possible but it's much much more forgiving than the crystal and it would work with only two nines of purity of the component metals. The blueprint is very exact but it doesn't say anything about theory or why things are the way they are. It should be trivial for Amentan industry to create.

They're going to give the delegation two lightpencils made in this way, in a transparent plastic case. They are gifts and they may disassemble or analyze or do anything that they want with them. They demonstrate that it works, and that it works if the Amentans handle it.

They explain that the reason why artifacts don't instantly stop working when they're handed to Amentans is because of an effect similar to electrical capacitance where some residual energy remains and is then used up.

In the event that they do create lightpencils according to the specifications, they assert that they are not going to work if handled by the Amentans but that they are going to work if the Asteralians do (and then would work for Amentans for a short while after due to the above capacitance effect but then soon stop working).

The Amentans will try this experiment. It does not affect public opinion very much, though, because there are other ways the Asteralians could get this effect if they were lying.

Sigh. It ultimately doesn't matter as long as they can get the crystal. But they're going to go on the internet again and see what the opinion is regarding the experiment and what possible ways they might demonstrate truthfulness, since this is passive and costs little.

Some people would be convinced with more technical information about how orgone works, where it comes from, what about the Asteralians allows them to manipulate it, etcetera. Some people are pretty sure they ought to be able to turn Amentans magic, or have half-Amentan magic babies, or something, because it's magic and magic ought to work that way. Some people will buy it once some Amentans trans-species themselves and report back.

They are going to refrain from attempting to address these doubts for now.

Also, given that they're going to be interacting with the General Public with the treatments (even if it's a very selected public), they would like to receive copies of civil and criminal law of Tapa. Do they have a civil law or common law system?

They're not acting on behalf of their government given that...they don't have contact with their government. So they assume they don't have diplomatic immunity — do Amentans have that concept?

They would appreciate some sort of legal liaison or lawyer who could have attorney-client privilege with them and could consult on law issues. They assume Mekapi doesn't count as that. Do Amentans recognize attorney-client privilege.

It's more like a civil law system, though obviously it has no historical continuity with anything on Earth. Here's a copy, first-pass organized by what might have anything to do with them (they are not going to go fishing in international waters in the Apta Desert, they are not operating a school, they are not applying for child credits).

They do not have diplomatic immunity, but Amenta does have the concept.

Amenta hasn't invented adversarial justice and as a consequence does not have a robust form of attorney-client privilege.

Huh. The Asteral Accord also has an inquisitorial system, in that the judge is also involved in information gathering and calling of witnesses, but it does have the concept of having legal advisors who are sworn to secrecy. Anyway, thank you. They affirm their intention to follow Tapai law while in Tapai space.

Given that the spaceship is immovable and much equipment is, while technically portable (basically all the nonportable equipment has been destroyed), is incredibly difficult to move, they expect that all of the people will be transported here. How will they be so transported? Also with helicopters?

They want to receive standards for Amentan air traffic control and airstrip requirements to see whether or not they might be able to fashion together something so that non-VTOL aircraft could come here. (This proposal may have been given more because the stone and fire magineers are feeling useless and sad.)

(Also, they are making progress on clearing out rooms and are likely to be able to make space inside for guests. It's not going to be very comfortable but it's might be better than camping...wait they're going to refrain from offering this actually because the plumbing systems are broken and they've just been using their magic to stay clean rather than bathe. Very much like the pioneers. But they predict the Amentans would be So Upset about this.)

Yeah, if they were going to permanently be a spaceship-town in the desert they'd build out a train track but since it's temporary they're doing helicopters and some sand-adapted cars. Amenta does have planes that need runways, that's just not what they do when they're going to somewhere that is not an airport, and the desert is not an airport. Their legal code copy has the aircraft code in there, though it has been sorted toward the back because they weren't expecting that.

Nenad does not approve the plan of using what stone magic resources they have to build an airport.

They want to discuss the possibility of sex work and pornography as another means to earn money. They anticipate that it will earn much less than the wind and water magic but there's probably going to be extra expenses that they're going to incur so better to have extra than to have not. Also it's fun and they genuinely want to do it!

How do these two industries work, in Tapa?

Seeing clients is orange, filming porn is grey, not that that applies to them. They can hire film crews and just go to town if they're writing and directing their own stuff, or source scripts from somewhere if they're not feeling it, lots of companies would be happy to put in submissions. If they want to include Amentan actors they should probably go with an established company and collaborate on the choreo.

Seeing clients will impose a lot of screening overhead - like, this is a sensitive installation, they don't want people whose qualifying feature is "hasn't yet been kicked off Marmalade" showing up in case they do crimes - but if they want to do that, there is no particular reason they should not have people over and fuck them for money.

Does Amenta, or Tapa, have copyright? The Accord doesn't have it or recognize intellectual property at all, and creatives make money by selling official copies, merchandise, and patronage — the Accord does recognize claims of authorship and provenance (it's classed as fraud or false advertising) and you can sue if someone pretends to be official/endorsed by the original creator when they're not. They also recognize trademarks.

What is Marmalade. Also, that makes sense. They think they'll wait on that and see how the test subjects work out first.

Amenta in general and Tapa in particular has copyright with some irritating fuzziness about translation and international stuff and whatnot.

Marmalade is a website for hiring prostitutes.