"Likewise. See you tomorrow," Damin says, before he leaves, following one of Griffith's drones leading him to the guest room.

Griffith's drones will take dictation and tell him when Damin is ready to talk. Which is half an hour after sunrise. Damin is expecting breakfast, which the drones will bring to the table. Does Griffith want to eat alone or talk while eating?

Breakfast with conversation sounds good.

The drones will prepare breakfast for two.

"Gifit was usually interested in hearing about my petty dramas. Are you? You seem more...technical...than him. A lot of people dislike drama. I live for it." Damin laughs.

"I think hearing about it will be informative about local culture, so go ahead and tell me things."

He sighs, but smiles. "See...when you put it like that you make it sound so unappealing and unsexy. Like I'm reading a history textbook to you. Hmph."

Nom nom nom.

"I'll tell you a little. Konrad gets hit on a lot, see, and, well, that's not surprising, given how hot he is, but the issue is that he doesn't keep any drones, so he doesn't really have a way of telling people off. And I offer to have my drones accompany him, but he refuses. Anyway, I saw this article from this one local teletype blogger who, although he didn't name him directly, wrote an accurate description of him, and said that Keepers walking without drones should be illegal, because he got rebuffed. Apparently Konrad stabbed him in the arm. So. In hindsight that wasn't petty drama, actually, he might get sued.

Honestly! I can't believe I'm still with this man. All the trouble he puts me through!" Damin gesticulates wildly with both arms and aftendrils.

Sip of water.

"I would ask you what's going on in your life but like, I imagine this incident pales in comparison to basically losing your old life and having it be replaced with another one." Damin looks abashed.

"Is your guess that Konrad was stuck escalating to that given the other person's behavior, in which case I am rather disappointed that your – our monoecious nature hasn't led to better behavior regarding these matters, or is it more the case that if I want to flirt with someone whose retinue isn't present I ought to do so from a safe distance? I've never been stabbed or had to deal with an unwanted admirer trying to corner me, but a lot of the female people I dated were pretty concerned with checking that their partners weren't inclined towards rape, and given crime statistics they had a point. And I could tell you about the domestic companion animal I had, or recent broadcast media productions, or such, if you'd like."

"Oh, sorry, right, I need to explain assuming no context. So, when you want to come on to someone, you approach them. That's good. That's great. But you don't want to make it too easy for them. That's no fun. So you like...make motions to resist. Or try to stop them. In the past people would literally chase each other through the forests, but many people now don't have either the fitness or nature-survival knowledge to actually do that. But sometimes you resist because you literally do not want to be with them. We distinguish between those using drones. If I don't involve my drones and just have myself try to get away from you or fight you or stop you, then you keep going. But if I tell my drones to block you off, then you know that I'm Truly Not Interested. 

You see now where the issue is if you don't have drones with you. People without drones are like, really rare. Less than one in a gross gross – I don't know the statistics. I'm not sure there are even statistics of such people out there.

Right, you're dioecious and dimorphic. What are the difference between males and females? You were a male in your old boy, yes? 

I would love that. I'm surprised your people have domestic animals. Are they useful?"

"You literally … that's, uh, wow. That's a set of norms. It seems kind of hot to me to be pursued that way but kind of a mess as the normal way of flirting? Apparently less so with drones as a signaling medium. It's too bad they don't fail more gracefully in the case of someone going out without drones, it really seems to me that if you don't have a clear signal established for the person you want to play that sort of game with conveying actual disinterest then you just shouldn't play and if you try to anyway and end up stabbed that's on you. But maybe if I were talking to a friend of the stabbee they'd tell things differently."

"Anyway. Differences between male and female adult humans include size, sex drive intensity, upper body strength, and short- to medium-distance running speed, and propensity towards direct physical violence, all of which are higher in males … those aren't necessarily the most dramatic differences, they just sprang to mind in the context of this, uh, courtship custom. Some sex differences are mediated by genetics, such as the prevalence of color blindness – are you familiar with chromosomal systems of sex determination, some activation gene appearing on an unusually short chromosome? Birds have the short chromosome in females, humans have it in males. This is obviously relevant to recessive diseases located on the chromosome pair that includes the sex chromosome, the sex with the unusually shortened chromosome will be more prone to them due to lacking redundancy. In humans that includes red-green color blindness. Other factors are somewhat mediated by hormones, such as the growth of breasts – female humans typically tend to grow them and have them present even in the absence of lactation, male humans don't. Male humans tend to grow a lot of thick hair on their faces, female humans tend not to. I was male in my old body but taking low doses of a cross-sex hormone for its plausible effects on lifespan and its mild positive effect on my mood."

"Humans have a lot of built-up social norms around sexes. In part this is because in the past upper-body strength mattered even more for industry and violence, alternatives to human milk for feeding babies were worse, prevention of pregnancy wasn't reliably feasible, et cetera. So we end up with this incredibly irritating system where female people are pushed to specialize in producing and raising children and low-physical-strength interruption-friendly forms of labor like spinning thread, and male people are pushed towards roles requiring strength and violence, and of course if one group is successfully specializing in violence, then that group ends up having an unfortunately disproportionate impact on norms to the detriment of other groups, which is bad. It's really very disappointing that for all our intelligence and technical development people still commit sexual assault."

"We have domestic animals. There are food-producing animals, like I've mentioned, and small felines which historically were used to hunt mice but also were just very appealing to us, and a lot of different breeds of domestic canines trained for various tasks, though these days they're also popular as companions. Even though their need for exercise and socialization is often higher than they can really get while being companions, it's unfortunate, I tried to pick a breed that'd be relatively okay being home alone. You can use them to prompt you to go for walks, and people like them so it can be a conversation-starter, and they have good textures and you can play some simple games with them like throwing things for them to fetch, and you can have them as a source of companionship in your home without the same complicatedness that bringing in another person to live with you would cause."

"People who literally don't have drones are really rare, and...a significant number of the people of the people who go out 'without drones'," he makes quotation marks in the air – they're differently shaped from Earth quotation marks, "are into the idea of being taken 'against their will'. Really they have drones who are hiding on standby if they don't actually like what's happening. So it's just really messy. Generally, brandishing weapons will get them to turn away, because although you might bruise and scratch each other, it's...traditional and expected to do that unarmed, using only the tools that nature gave you. It doesn't stop everyone though, clearly.

Mm. Sexual dimorphism seems really problematic. I couldn't imagine having to choose between being strong and being able to give birth to my own children. 

I'm...I read about that, but I couldn't remember the specifics. Thank you for the refresher. 

Interesting. Lactation for you is hormonal? For us, it just has to do with direct stimulation. Usually you'll want to do that a season before your baby hatches, so that you'll be producing enough milk for them. After that, the baby's suckling will be enough to sustain it. Many people continue to do it even without the baby, because they like that. Including yours truly.

Is taking cross-sex hormones common? Would that impair fertility?

Ugh. Yes, sexual dimorphism is very problematic. Although, I get that initially females would have to submit to males because of the strength disadvantage, but once you have tools it becomes moot, no? Especially since you're living together. I'm weaker than Konrad, but if he tried to threaten me, I'd stab him with my spindle.

We have food-producing domestic animals, as you know, but no non-food-producing domestic animals we keep for like, pest-keeping or companionship. That can already be had with drones. It makes sense that a droneless species would have them, though. There do exist people here who keep pets, but it's a niche hobby. Many of them are zoologists of some sort. I don't think we have domestic canines or felines, but I know some people keep snakes."

"It clearly doesn't stop everyone, indeed! What a mess. It's really too bad that your boyfriend gets treated this way."

"There are strong female humans, if you were a female human and put lots of time into exercising and had good food you'd be stronger than a lot of male humans, especially now that strength-based work is increasingly being outsourced to machines. Lactation for humans is hormonal, but the hormones are related to direct stimulation, and I wouldn't be surprised if zmavlipre in fact invented lactation-inducing hormones in the future. Though just giving birth tends to lead to a human body to be prepared to lactate, I don't know why it doesn't for you. Taking cross-sex hormones is rather rare – less than one pergross of the population does it – and does impair fertility, but fertility can come back if you stop taking them. Strength disparity also affects tool-wielding, though less so in the case of tools that provide their own force, such as guns, and it's essentially irrelevant in the case of poisoned food or such, though it's harder to argue that such usage of poison constituted self-defense under typical legal codes."

"And maybe I should get a snake. What do you know about snake-keeping here?"

"Truly, although in his case he could just keep just one drone and be done with it forever. Actually, he doesn't need to own it, just let one of my drones accompany him. But he likes being truly alone.

We're oviparous, so after you give birth*, you need to wait a year before the egg actually hatches and gives you a baby to breastfeed. 

Not a lot. There's a shop in Kosfor, I think. Sells various reptiles and amphibians, not just snakes. I know that people keep nonvenomous and nonpoisonous snakes, and that they breed them for docility and for beautiful coloration. And they're useful too. The skin – both the shed skin and the actual one – are used in things like jewelry."

* Give-birth and lay-egg are the same word in Standard Imperial, with compounds being used to distinguish if necessary.

"I have opinions mostly on the axis people here apparently don't track much. On axes you do track … it seems ugly for roleplaying to so overwhelm honest communication that it doesn't even leave honest communication one small signaling channel, does that opinion make sense? And, right, oviparity versus viviparity, you wouldn't want to lactate right after laying an egg. I'll probably look into snakes at some point, I don't think we have much snake-breeding for docility at home."

"Yes. But see, as I said before, not going around with even one drone is very very rare, so such a signaling channel wouldn't really develop. Unless everyone starts becoming like Konrad. For as much as I like the man, that wouldn't be good for our society.

I wish you luck on your snake keeping endeavors."

Damin lies back on the chaise longue and has his drone, Ders, drop pitted lychees into his mouth. 

"Do tell me about those recent media broadcasts you were talking about. What's on them? How are they broadcast?"

"We have audio and color audiovisual shows broadcast over radio waves. There's some which are 'live', meaning that the show is of something currently happening, and those tend towards athletic competitions or commentary thereon, shows which take telecommunications from listeners or viewers, direct broadcast or discussion of ongoing events of interest, and discussion of local weather conditions. There's also some which are pre-recorded. For audiovisual broadcasts, this includes artistic content like dances, visually appealing informational content that isn't time-sensitive like information about gardening, special competitions that are just for broadcast purposes and for which timeskips are beneficial, et cetera. For audio broadcasts it's usually music, with different radio frequencies having different genres of music, but occasional broadcasters will tell stories or such. Also it's often free, because radio broadcast favors that, and funded by people who pay to have popular broadcasts interrupted with mentions of their products."

"Wow. I can't wait for us to develop such a thing. That sounds great. Hm...although, the funding. Many people will not like the advertisement interruptions. And if it's being broadcast wirelessly, then there wouldn't be a way to make it such that only paying customers could access it. Probably people would find it tolerable so long as the advertisements adopted the same aesthetic as the shows they were embedded in – certainly that is the case with advertisements in cities.

Did you watch a lot of that? What shows did you watch?"

"So, I think it's possible to do access-restricted radio broadcasts, it's just more difficult. If you can't make the unrestricted ones profitable maybe they'll just be full of things broadcast because the sender wants to broadcast them, or maybe the Imperium will have to allocate less bandwidth – people can't broadcast two things nearby on the same frequency so it needs to be allocated by someone. Probably the Imperium will just treat it like land, it's a rivalrous natural resource. Anyway, I liked a video broadcast about historic farming practices, and some of the music audio broadcasts. I liked the broadcasts about gardening when I was younger, but I didn't end up with good opportunities to garden as an adult so I didn't keep liking them because it made me vaguely disappointed with my choices even though I broadly endorsed them."

"Yes, that makes sense. Like public service announcements. The Imperium does actually regulate radio frequencies now, because of wireless telegraph transmissions, but if people are using them to transmit voice and audio, then it will have to be more rigorously regulated. Probably some sort of land tax like thing will be applied to it.

Interesting. Given our technology level relative to yours, I bet we would give off the same energy as those farming broadcasts, although I doubt the knowledge would transfer, given our different crops and growing season and whatnot.

My sympathies. Well, at least you get to garden now!" He laughs.

"I'm surprised that they don't show porn on the broadcasts. Or, no, surely they do, you just didn't use it as an example."

"Porn was to my knowledge only on access-restricted broadcasts. Many people, myself included, considered sufficiently sexual imagery to be inappropriate to have readily available such that one could encounter it accidentally. Though the lines people draw are culturally bound and somewhat arbitrary, it's common to use imagery of scantily-clad attractive people when promoting your product even if it's nonsexual. Many people find it aversive – there are plausible arguments that it's implicitly insulting to various groups – and there's speculation that it's harmful or otherwise inappropriate to children to encounter, though the harm claim hasn't been well-researched and inappropriateness is subjective. Also, it was I expect profitable to access-restrict video-broadcast porn, though I don't have a solid model of that."

"...inappropriate why? Why is it aversive?"

Damin purses his lips and closes his nictitating membranes, [which is culturally equivalent to squinting your eyes].

"I really don't know where to start, but I can try to explain? It's very attention-grabbing and visceral, which means that if you're not in the mood for it can provoke strong negative emotions while also being hard to look away from or forget about, and for some people it can produce unwanted arousal, which can feel like a violation of personal boundaries or something, especially to people who are opposed to porn. Inappropriateness … so, for humans wanting to have sex tends to show up late in puberty, and unwanted sex is generally rather harmful. And there's a phenomenon of wanting to shield children from harmful things and depictions thereof. Does that gesture at the conceptual space?"

"Mmm. Yeah, we don't have that here? If you don't like what's being shown you can just turn it off or look away? And people here seem much less averse to sex than on your world.

I get not having sex with children – we don't do that here because they don't really understand what it's about until puberty, but I don't see how them seeing it is harmful. Or why depictions of sex is."

He claps his hand.

"I'm kind of too tired to interrogate that topic right now, so let's talk about something else. Semisal and Rapap just happened. Ah, that's an artistic gymnastics competition. Do you have gymnastics in your world? You said you had sports. Which are popular?"

"We have gymnastics. Popular sports include football, er, American football, which– maybe I should give a broader overview. There's a lot of competitive ball-based sports. These tend to take the form of two teams in a play area, who each get points for scoring goals by getting the ball into a space their opposing team guards. Members of the teams specialize in different roles. Within this category there's American football, in which the play area is grass, attempting to wrestle the ball out of the possession of the opposing team is somewhat permitted and goals are scored by throwing and the 'ball' is actually a bit pointy, the sport globally called football but in the Fractious States called soccer in which the play area is grass and players can't touch the ball with their hands, one called basketball typically played indoors in which the ball may be touched and bounced but not held and goals are scored by throwing the ball into a very elevated basket, and some others. Outside this category there's automotive races, a type of formalized fistfighting, a game of hitting balls into small holes located across large landscapes, performing stunts with human-powered wheeled vehicles… I could go on? Gymnastics isn't particularly popular for broadcast video that I've noticed, though it does get broadcast when it's part of the big every-few-years international sports competition."

"Ah, I think we have something similar. We don't have automotive race sports, but that's probably because our state of automotive technology isn't very advanced. I'm surprised gymnastics isn't more popular – it's very fun to watch. It's one of the most popular if not the most popular sport here. It's a little ambiguous because it contains subdivisions."

Damin will continue to talk to Griffith about various other low-stakes topics as they finish up breakfast.