"Hm.

I appreciate your coming to me with this. Founding a new country is - politically complex; a lot of Amenta's stability, insofar as it has any - I don't know how we compare to historical Rasikan geopolitics or any other species out there - is based on long-negotiated policies about defense and rights to various common goods and so on. I don't actually expect you to be attacked on a substantial scale if you carve out a Voa-backed nation in the arctic and fill it with reds, you're too popular, but we did lose the last war we fought and it was over something uncomfortably similar, at least in the public consciousness."

"I was hoping we could frame it as... working to help your people in several different ways at once? Taking over dirty jobs, and also giving reds new jobs and homes so they don't riot? ...One of the things we'll be doing up there is figuring out how to build seasoned arcologies. We have a lot of data on this kind of thing from the vault era and we really think we could figure it out. And once we get it working, we can distribute the technique to everyone in the world. ...It'll be a year before we could really get started, hopefully that'll give us a lot of time to figure out potential hurdles and ensure smooth and safe transitions."

"Did Rasikans have a similar seasonal cycle? Not all Amentan animals do."

"The Rasikans had drugs for managing their reproductive cycles, but needed various artificial climate control features while underground for extended periods of time to avoid developing severe mood disorders. We'll need to talk to your relevant experts to figure out what exactly we'll do and what the most promising research avenues are, but we're optimistic a solution can be found in time. We've done a lot of medical research, as a people."

"I can probably convince the general public to accept that I am exchanging the reds as seasoned arcology research subjects - allowed, of course, the standard two children apiece per Voan custom, as interfering with that would confound seasoning-related results - for your robotic assistance. I am not confident the reds will take it particularly well, and would want a plan for if they do not and you receive somewhat fewer of them than agreed or they aren't as tractable as you might hope - I don't know what your plans for policing in general are."

"If that's politically feasible that would be acceptable to us, as a high level plan. We'd like to take point on communicating and coordinating the plan with Voan reds, when the time comes; we suspect that our lack of a native pollution instinct will make them less afraid of us.

We can build and operate extremely durable mobile platforms and will use those for our policing needs. We are also prepared to build and operate shuttles for transporting reds to us, when we're ready to move to that phase. We're committed to paying as much of the costs and handling as much of the logistics as is at all feasible; we're very invested in making sure we can have a smooth a rollout here as possible, both for its own sake and for the rest of the world to see."

"You directly addressing the reds might or might not work, but I can issue an order that their social workers facilitate it for you."

void-your-warranty: ...social workers?
space-ourselves: Oh babe, haven't you been following Makoki's findings in red communities?
void-your-warranty: I'm barely following anything! All my cycles are going into our bootstrapping efforts.
space-ourselves: I know, I know d:
space-ourselves: Anyways, you're going to hate this.
hopelessly-entangled: So in theory, social workers are oranges in charge of interfacing with reds for the clean castes and making sure their needs are met.
hopelessly-entangled: ...But in general, they aren't any more positively inclined towards reds than any other Amentan is, and they have an absurd amount of power over them.
void-your-warranty: ...Oh no.
space-ourselves: I was skimming red discussion boards earlier, after Makoki first told me about them! Here's the most positive review of a social worker I could find:
space-ourselves: "Ours is kind of okay, mostly because she seems dead inside."
void-your-warranty: Yikes.
space-ourselves: See, it's actually kinda funny, because the reds are used to dealing with dead people, so,
hopelessly-entangled: Muroti!
void-your-warranty: You were right, dear! I absolutely hate this.
life-should-flourish: It's pretty bad! We really do not want to do this through social workers.
light-and-wonder: Yeah, no worries, I'm deflecting on that.
space-ourselves: Honestly, I'm not sure social workers do anything that couldn't be better done through an online form?
hopelessly-entangled: Seconded, though I'm not sure how we'd make it happen?
life-should-flourish: Maybe float the idea to Avalor?
light-and-wonder: Next time we talk, maybe. It'd look suspicious if we did it now.
light-and-wonder: Going to wrap up the current talk now. Last call for agenda items?
hopelessly-entangled: None from me! I'm writing up a summary to send to Kavut; I think he'll be happy about how well this went.
void-your-warranty: (...Wait, who's Kavut?)
hopelessly-entangled: (Respected Voan red community leader. Shasali introduced me to him, he helped us workshop our approach here a bit.)
void-your-warranty: (Oh, cool!)
space-ourselves: Avaker and I finished the informational prepwork for hosting a fission energy science/business conference, so you can offer to host that in Voa as a show of goodwill.
light-and-wonder: Excellent! Thanks.💙 
life-should-flourish: And don't forget to ask about the best way to do a followup is.
light-and-wonder: I won't 💙 

"We'll attempt to reach out on our own first, but if that ends up being necessary, we'll let you know. We're very grateful for your assistance. 

As a way of thanking you for being willing to hear us out and work with us on this issue, Avaker and Muroti have prepared and translated into Voan a batch of introductory material on a kind of advanced power generator that can be built and run with current Amentan technology. If it's alright with you, we'd be happy host a conference here, explain the science, and setup some business deals with your local power companies. We'd be happy to give them legal permission to resell the technology and designs abroad, with 70% of the cut we'd usually take going to either the companies directly or your government, your choice."

"That's very generous. I'll consult some of my staff on what the economically preferable way to distribute it would be. You'll attempt to reach out as in, without the social workers mediating?"

"Yes. It may end up being infeasible, but I find I do my best work when I can speak to people one-on-one, so I'll be trying for that first.

Oh, and before I forget; Avaker wrote a protocol-translation plugin for Amentan email, so she could easily have secure communications with our business partners on the ground. Would you like a copy, in case either of us want to follow up or check in without requiring you to clear your schedule?"

"That does sound more convenient but we have a policy against adding third party software to government employees' work machines."

"That makes sense! I suppose we can be vague via digital communication, and Muroti drew up some prototypes for a hybrid Amentan/Azurifice pocket everything; we could give you one of those just for contacting us, if you like.

I've covered everything on my agenda for this meeting; is there anything you'd like to ask us while we have the privacy? If not, I can let you get back to your day's vacation; have someone on your staff send us an email once they're ready to start discussing the power generation technology distribution plans."

"I can accept a dedicated pocket everything but I'd have to keep it somewhere out of the way for similar reasons - the policy is mostly about espionage. Do you need to know what address to expect the message from?"

"That makes sense! We aren't going to be offended if you keep it in a secure box far away from everything important.

We have really good email filtering! If you let us know the email address we'll see it about 10 minutes sooner." 

Avalor gives the address for an Allocator Mozeen.

"Thanks again for your time! We'll be in touch."

Zanmi disconnects.

Allocator Mozeen emails them a short time afterwards (suggesting that Avalor doesn't take her days very off) about how to decide who to invite to the conference and how to split the resulting revenue.

The Azurifice want to give the majority of the revenue they'd typically collect in this kind of situation to either the Voan governments or the companies facilitating the sale; the exact details of who gets what are up to Voa.

Avaker suggests they invite these greens (physicists who've published papers on radiation and radioactive decay) and these purples (industry experts in mining, steam-turbine-based power plant construction and operation, and hazardous chemical waste transportation and storage). 

Meanwhile, Makoki messages Kavut using their encrypted system with a summary of how the initial talk with Governor Avalor went.

hopelessly-entangled: ...and then Zanmi thanked her for her time.
hopelessly-entangled: We think this seems promising, especially if we handle the transit ourselves. Thoughts?

kavut: If she's willing to route around the social workers that's pretty promising, yeah.

hopelessly-entangled: Yeah I told Zanmi to be diplomatic but also firm about wanting to avoid going through social workers.
hopelessly-entangled: Because that entire system seems like a disaster.
hopelessly-entangled: Muroti wants to suggest phasing out social workers and replacing them with online forms/communication, do you think that'd be popular in your community?

kavut: That'd work for us but I think they want the social workers keeping an eye on us.

hopelessly-entangled: Yeah, we think the biggest barrier would be convincing them and we don't currently have an angle on that. 
hopelessly-entangled: But if we think of one, we'll let you know, and if you think of one feel free to reach out.
hopelessly-entangled: I'll keep you appraised of ongoing developments, and I'd like to do another strategy chat before the next time we talk to Avalor, but that won't be for a couple months.

kavut: Thank you.