The Amentans don't think it's odd at all that they don't have a lot of pollution, that's just responsible of them.

They will hang out listening in on the radio for a while, though they will say hi if it looks like anyone has noticed them.

Some people transmit messages saying 'Hi' or 'What/who are you?' with voice or using Imperial standard radio codes.

...there's a brief flurry of communications, and virtually all radio transmission ceases for six hours.

Huh. Hopefully they have enough to make some progress at piecing the languages together.

There are still a few people transmitting, but they're ships in the open ocean. Depending on how strong the Amentan's sensors are, they may or may not be able to pick them up. All of those transmissions are codes, though, and not voice or text.

There is one transmission now directed straight at the Amentan ship, which will be coming from a single source. It's a prime number sequence, a gap, and then the same sequence again, repeated, seemingly asking them to complete it.

Yeah, they will play prime numbers, that seems fine.

More silence for hours. Night has passed and is now dawn.

The Imperials have thought about how to do first contact but like, honestly not that much? At least with communication. You'd think that a planet where linguistics is popular would have something better, but they're not sure how to handle encoding schemes.

They'll choose to transmit a bunch of sentences from Standard Imperial language primers in audio, as well as the same in text, and then at the end ask the aliens to do the same.

Yeah, okay, they can have introductory Tapap primers.

They're kind of a bit slow on transmitting. They will learn Tapap. They will transmit more complicated sentences in Imperial, with what they hope are the correct Tapap translations.

At the end, they will say that they are interested in meeting. Is it safe for you to land here? Both for you and for us. We can prepare a spot for you to land on. Please transmit desiderata for landing areas.

They have tried having some probes scoop atmo samples so yeah they're pretty sure it's safe! They need this much room that can take this much force.

The Imperials will prepare a square of flat solid land near the capital, which is its own province, and then transmit the coordinates to there.

The landing spot will have a bunch of tents and temporary structures and people milling about it, and will also have radio towers transmitting 'land here' over and over so that it's clear they should land there.

There is a Very Coherent Aesthetic happening with the people and structures: there's a gold and red spiral symbol in many places, and in general people are following the color scheme of yellow/gold, red, blue-black, and white. 

Huh. Wonder what that means.

Down they go! Out they step!

The aliens' body structures and appearance are very similar to the Amentans, except that they don't have hair, and instead have plates like shell or nacre on their heads (and shoulders, but that's concealed by clothing), and also have six retractable tentacles on their back, which will be rhythmically oscillating – extending and retracting repeatedly, and are bigger. There seems to be two distinct types, with the ones that look like they're commanding others being taller than the ones who look like they're receiving orders.

There's about six people who have stepped up nearer to the shuttle, who are dressed in elaborate costume, in the same general aesthetic and color scheme! There is lots of gold embroidery involved. It's kind of over the top.

The one in front speaks.

"I am Consul Restem Talset Meden. I welcome you to the Imperium," he says in Standard Imperial.

He reads from a piece of paper saying the same thing in Tapap, except that 'Restem Talset Meden' becomes 'Testem Talset Meten' – it seems that the translators preferred not to simply say the name, but transliterate it.

Tapap may not have those sounds but greens and blues learn foreign languages and can approximately pronounce them. "It is good to meet you, Restem Talset Meden!" says a blue - very short, barely half his height. "I am Shenmi Asauki. Thank you for your welcome."

"It is also good to meet you, Shenmi Asauki. What is the name of your civilization? Are you authorized to speak on its behalf? I am authorized to speak on the behalf of the Imperium."

Restem will stand a bit farther than where he would usually stand so that neither of them have to angle their necks awkwardly to look at each other.

"We are from the nation of Tapa on the planet of Amenta. I am authorized to speak for Tapa in most matters."

There are remna – members of their species – recording the words being said in shorthand, and also people recording the audio of the conversation, but they're well away from the main conversation and are unobtrusive.

"I, and by extension, my nation, is very interested in peaceful trade and exchange-of-information between us."

Well. He's hoping that the Clearly Very Technologically Advanced And By Extension Militarily Powerful Aliens would want to trade. I mean, they did come here to talk. That's something, right?

"We are excited about both of those things! We have longed to meet aliens for lifetimes."

"Likewise!" he says, even though internally that longing has also been mixed with fear, because Potentially Hostile Aliens.

"We would like to create a more permanent structure for us to talk more and talk about our civilizations cooperating. What sort of amenities do you want for this structure? We can build it here or elsewhere. Or does your space-vehicle function as your home?"

"We can live in our space vehicle! We can also build a structure ourselves given some materials that would be silly to bring all this way."

"What materials do you need to build it? Could you provide samples of said materials so that we can see if we have them here?

We would like to set up mechanisms for treaty-enforcement and also language-learning so that trade and information-sharing can occur quickly."

"With your help I think our purples can build a satisfactory structure with wood and whatever you already use for electricity and plumbing, and local tools since your hands are like ours, though possibly versions for juveniles would suit us better. What mechanisms do you have in mind?"

"We will bring wood that we would personally use to build structures with. We can also connect your structure to a sewer line or set up a septic tank system, and also connect your structure to the electrical grid.

I'm not sure about the tools..." He checks for a few minutes with some other people.

"We can get you local tools, but they will have to be custom made and will take time to make – we don't have juveniles do construction work. However, we can help you with structure building if you give precise schematics – as a signal for our receptivity for prosocial interaction, and not just antiantisocial.

Could I get a translation check on 'purples'? That is a color, yes? How do colors construct things?"

"Purple is a caste. We have castes, and they are indicated by hair color. Tapap has words that are just for the castes, but those will not translate, and the colors are acceptable nicknames for all of them. I am a blue."

A pause while Restem gives the orders to get wood for construction, and another pause for Restem to consult with others concerning 'caste'.

"We don't know what a caste is. I'm not sure we have the concept. Could you explain?" 

The hair is indeed captivating. Many Zmavlipre are kind of jealous, but of course they don't say that. It comes it so many colors. The animals here which have hair usually only have black or brown or white – no exciting colors.

"A caste is a group of Amentans who all do similar jobs. Usually people have families within their caste, so over time we can become better and better at our specialties."

"Oh, I see. We might have a similar system – parents usually teach their children how to run their business and allot them drones which are already trained in it, but it's not...as formal as your system, I think. Purple and blue are two castes – what other castes are there?"

"We also have yellows, greens, oranges, and greys."

"Should we treat people of different castes differently? In the sense of...social norms. What work does each caste do?"

"Blues own land and direct the government and judiciary. There are very few of us. Greens do research and professional art. Yellows do clerical work of various kinds. Oranges do medical and caretaking work. Greys are our soldiers and police. And purples do things like construction, agriculture, shipping, and manufacture. About half of Amentans are purple. We talk to each other a little differently, but it is not important enough to worry about so early in learning about each other!"

"I see. If I was to map myself onto your castes, I would be a blue, though I used to be grey, or, hm, I'm not sure. I was an explorer, surveyor, and sailor. Is that a grey job? Prediction: castes are inherited and people do not change castes."

One of the others will say that it will take a few hours for the wood to arrive, and longer – probably a few days – for the sewage and electric connections to be set up. If they have other requests they can accommodate in the interim they can handle those.

"Your prediction is right! And those would be grey jobs, yes."

For the interim the ship is totally sufficient for their needs.

"In the meantime, we would like to know more about your desires with regards to interaction between our civilizations, as well as products or information you want for us to trade. And also, the manner by which you wish to conduct this trade, and what measures of value or currency you use. We would like there to be openness between our civilizations – connection is only possible through openness; friendship is only possible through vulnerability. Likewise we will be open about our answers to these same questions to you, if you are."

"That makes sense! We have more technology than you do, so except for things we are working on here where transporting it is a cost, probably most of what you make will not be in much demand for us. But we would love to settle some people here, purchasing land for those people to live on while they teach you more about what we know and learn about your world and people."

He feels mildly abashed about how bluntly they said that but being blunt makes sense what with the language barrier. Fortunately, he has impassivity training even though he's not a drone – it's very useful if you work in government – so it won't show on his face.

"Most land is owned by the Imperial or regional governments, and can be purchased according to their appraisal of the land's value – this appraisal is done once every dozen years in the Imperial census. However, most of that land is either remote, barren, prone to natural disasters, or otherwise undesirable in some way, since all of the desirable land has already been purchased by people. You will need to negotiate with those people privately if you wish to buy it.

The income source for the Imperial and regional governments is land value tax, which involves paying a portion of the land's appraised value as tax. The corollary is that the governments are obliged to purchase the land from the owner at any time at the appraised price, since that is what the government has claimed the land's true price to be. In this way, the state has an incentive to appraise the value of land correctly. People who work in governance such as myself receive a very, very small portion of the total revenue of the state as a salary.

The land outside the Imperium's borders is outside our jurisdiction, and you can do with it as you wish – although there are already people there, we have no obligation to them – they are not Imperial citizens. Likewise, you are all not Imperial citizens and so would not be able to buy land here, but we can work out an immigration scheme, such as permitting residency for Amentans such that they cannot enlist in the military, run for office, or vote, but can own land."

"We might be able to use land that is undesirable to you! However, it is important to us that land have seasons. Your year is shorter than ours and we are not sure if it is long enough to work with our seasonal biology, but we think it is worth trying; however, polar and equatorial locations will not work. Are the people outside the Imperium organized in states or are they generally stateless?"

"Yes, you have much better technology, and I would be happy to see unproductive land being put to good use. It is efficient and not wasteful – this is one of our values. The majority of people live in the subtropics: there are fewer people living in temperate areas. The two regions both have distinct hot and cold seasons, but in the subtropics, the temperatures do not drop below freezing. Unless, of course, there's a cold snap.

I'm not sure. We don't really pay attention to people who live outside the Imperium. From what I know, they have small regional governments, but many are stateless."

"We love temperate areas. And we can separately talk to people from outside the Imperium to find out their situation. Do you have information on their languages?"

"Yes, but it's not the best. We abolished the death penalty after the early days of the Imperium, and now we only practice exile. The people you meet probably will not be friendly. We cannot assure your safety there – though I presume that you have your own protective measures. 

For this reason, many people outside will still speak Standard Imperial, or an older version thereof, but there are other languages from before the Imperium's founding which are still in use. We can give you language primers and corpora for them."

Both standard books and microfilm will be provided to the Amentans.

"Thank you very much, our linguists will get to work on these! Can we see a map of where the Imperium covers?"

They will produce a map!

The world is divided into roughly two landmasses or continents, separated by a circular-ish or ellipsoid central sea. The part on the bottom right is labeled "Old World" and the one on the top left is the "New World". There are ice caps and minor landmasses at the poles, but not big enough to be called continents proper. Both main continents are longer than they are wide, with large seasonal variation.

The Imperium's borders are marked with a red and yellow line: it seems that it occupies roughly three quarters of the Old World, and seven eighths of the New World. The majority of the land in the Imperium's borders is subtropical – it seems that they prefer that? The leftover land is mostly temperate forest, tundra, tropical forest, desert, and mountains.

The parts which are inside the Imperium's borders are marked with the locations of major cities. The parts outside have fewer labels, although they do mark the locations of the main non-Imperium cities.

"Thank you, that is very helpful! Would you like to see a map of Amenta?"

"Yes, please." What does Amenta look like? Do they have a dominant polity, or is there a balance of powers? What's their geography like? Restem would assume that it would be at least somewhat similar to Zmavliterdi's given that they want to live here.

Amenta looks like so. Tapa is this area here; it's got a desert and a lot of coastline. Most of the land is in the northern hemisphere. There are dozens of countries, though Tapa is one of the biggest, along with Voa, which it has a border with. There are deserts and mountains and seas and islands.

"Does Tapa have connections with the other Amentan countries, like a federation or a union? Will we have to negotiate separately with the other Amentan countries – are they also interested in coming?"

"We have treaties with the other countries. They are not supposed to come to planets we find without our invitation, so you don't have to negotiate with them unless you would like to."

"What are your expectations regarding how diplomacy should be conducted? How do Amentan countries negotiate with each other? What sort of things get put in treaties? We would like to know this so that we can avoid or forestall miscommunications.

We are most interested in how you handle extradition and immigration, since those are two things which we ourselves will have to talk about soon – I understand that we have only recently met and will not take anything you say as being binding: we can formally draft and ratify treaties later."

"This meeting we are having now is not unlike Amentan diplomacy, though normally there would be a permanent ambassador. Treaties cover topics like acceptable tactics in times of war, immigration and extradition, the use of global resources including the cleanliness of the air and water and the supply of fish in the sea and the carrying capacity of the planet and the other celestial bodies in our home system, trade and international travel policy, cooperation with one another's control of sensitive information, and, yes, extradition and immigration. In general Amentan countries do not want immigration except of particularly valuable citizens with rare skills or other standout qualities, but it's in everyone's interest to allow some migration; most pairs of countries have agreements that their citizens can change places across international borders in commensurate number and caste. Extradition varies a lot more, since not all Amentans equally value their traveling citizens being interviewed for their charges at home."

"Why do Amentan countries not want immigration? Wouldn't those new citizens pay tax? In that sense, it is in the government's interest to want to attract as many citizens as possible.

With regard to the Imperium, we care deeply about freedom of movement, so people from different provinces can freely move between each one – the Imperium's governance is divided into the main Imperial government, of which I am a representative, and the provincial governments. The Imperial government manages the military and all foreign affairs.

Likewise, although we patrol our borders, we don't police them – people are free to enter and leave as they wish. The only issue is that those who are not citizens, residents, or visa-holders will not be subject to, and by extension be protected by, our law, and so anyone who commits criminal acts against them cannot be prosecuted by us.

Citizens can own land, enlist in the military, run for public office, and vote. Residents can only own land but not the last three. Visa-holders are like residents, but also cannot own land."

"Most Amentan countries, including Tapa, don't actually have taxes, except for Pigouvian taxes and other such things intended to discourage certain kinds of consumption or produce a tightly coupled budget for a specific program. Even countries that do have taxation are typically democracies, and Amentan populations generally prefer less immigration to lower per-capita taxes. While support positions in our military are available to the appropriate castes, combat positions specifically are by international law limited to greys, and public office is blue-specific; anyone can own land but collecting rent on it is classified as blue income."

Restem is really glad to have had impassivity training, such that he only stares blankly for several seconds rather than making a face of utter confusion.

"Where do your governments find their income given that they don't collect taxes?

The Imperium used to be run autocratically, by the Imperator personally, but he transitioned the government to democracy slowly, fearing a power vacuum if he died. Which he did, a gross, three dozen and three years after the formal transition."

"Most government income in most countries is derived from auctioning the opportunity to have children."

...that was very unexpected. Impassivity training saves the day again. Wow. If such a thing was implemented here, the government would be overthrown instantly.

"Fascinating! The wood will be arriving very soon, and we would like to take a break to eat, process this conversation, and learn your language more. We want to take a break for three hours."

A mechanical clock is furnished with a second hand, so that they can demonstrate how they tell time.

"Okay! We can reconvene in three hours."

The purples get underway - they do have some of their own tools, just not, like, a lot - on clearing a site to build a meeting room complex thing in.

The Imperial linguists pore over the conversation transcripts. Drones deliver the wood using automobile trucks.

Right. Okay. Time to orient. It's really very stressful having the future of your civilization resting on your shoulders.

There are very powerful spacefaring aliens who want to live here. They seem friendly, but the issue with being weaker is that you have to hope that the stronger party isn't interested in squishing you. Their blue representative seemed to imply that they would want to be able to live here, but wouldn't extend that same right to Imperials, because they don't like immigration. And they have tons of children, presumably, because they auction off child credits – probably that was some sort of policy to prevent the population from getting too high. Actually, it definitely was, because Shenmi talked about 'carrying capacity'.

Would that be bad? People would be unhappy, he bets, but if they pay tax and follow Imperial law, then it's all good. The lack of deontological symmetry would be very displeasing, though.

What leverage do they have? They absolutely cannot defeat the Amentans, but they could potentially deny them what they want. There was a proposition in the Senate a while back that passed with narrow margin about preparing scorched-earth tactics in the case of invasion – although in that case it wasn't specifically about aliens.

If they were willing to commit civilizational suicide, they could destroy all their infrastructure, technology, and stores of knowledge, and release hazardous materials into the air, water, and soil. 

Would that make the entire planet uninhabitable? Probably not, but the most desirable areas would become unlivable, or at least very unpleasant to live in. Presumably if the Amentans had the capacity to clean up environmental pollution and also weren't interested in being antiantisocial, they could have just bombarded the planet from orbit and cleaned up afterwards.

Is he willing to do that? It only counts as leverage if he's committed to use it against aggressive actions. Does he have the conviction?

He's not sure. Decision theory says that he should be willing to. He really really hopes it doesn't come to that.

Okay. Time is up.

Are the purples done yet? The Imperials assume no, but the Amentans also have spaceship technology, so they have no idea.

They haven't got the place finished yet, no. They'd invite people into the ship but they're really too tall to be comfy there.

Discomfort is totally fine if it means being able to see space! One of the Legislators accompanying Restem, along with two of his attendants, volunteer to go. They can just crouch or crawl if the ceiling is too low.

Oh, okay! They really won't fit into the restraints, so they can't take them up flying unless they're okay with getting knocked around kind of a lot - probably won't kill them, but they could get banged up - but they can see the ship. Launch couches, comms and bridge, quarters, bathrooms, kitchenette, water recycling, propulsion engineering, cargo. It's all very efficiently laid out.

Ah, that makes sense. They say that they would be willing to have the drones go up carrying cameras, but that the Legislator himself wouldn't be comfortable with going up.

Amazing! The things you can do with this level of technology. The Legislator looks appropriately extremely awed, and makes comments about how the water recycling must mean their sanitation systems are really efficient. It took them a lot of time to figure out good sewer water treatment technologies. The other two remna – the name of their species – maintain their neutral expression.

If they'd like the shuttle to bring some drones and local cameras when it takes off they can do that! Are drones a... caste...?

The Legislator has to confer with Restem and the linguist for several minutes before answering.

"Yes, however, it's possible our understanding of your castes is wrong. The Keeper and drone division is set at birth, involves physical markers, and greatly influences which types of jobs a remna performs.

Trying to map our castes onto yours might help with both of us understanding. Blue and green work is done exclusively by Keepers. Yellow work used to only be done by Keepers, but is nowadays done mostly by drones. Orange, grey, and purple work is done by both castes, but in these cases Keepers mostly take supervisory roles. For example, a factory would usually have a Keeper plan the layout of the assembly lines and arrange the marketing and selling of goods, and also that the products meet legal standards, but the actual work of putting together the items is drone work."

"Oh, I didn't expect you to have castes just like ours, though having only two is a bit of a surprise," says Asauki.

"Yes, I was surprised at how many you had. Does the whole of Amenta follow that six caste division, or are there subpopulations where there are fewer or more, or divide the castes differently? For us, the two caste system is the same across the whole planet, although there is variation in what types of work are considered 'Keeper work' or 'drone work'."

"Castes were invented on Amenta long ago and crystallized into their current form also long ago, and nearly everywhere is standardized on the same set, with some minor variations in whether certain occupations are held by one or another caste, and a dubiously internationally legal dual-casteing setup in the small island nation of Ereith."

"Likewise for us. We don't know exactly when our caste system fixated, but it was before recorded history."

When Asauki mentions Ereith, the Legislator Suksub apologizes for having to pause again to check with the linguists, Restem, and the scientists.

"Could we have more information on dual-casteing in Ereith? If two people from different castes have children, do they belong to both castes?"

"Not usually! Intercaste marriage is rare, but every country has a rule of some kind - usually just simple inheritance from one or the other sex, most often the female - governing what caste the children are. Ereith had a lot of intercaste marriage in its early history and now construes practically its entire population as both grey and something else; the reason this is dubiously legal internationally is that it allows them to in principle flout some rules about grey numbers and combat positions, but as long as they aren't in fact in an armed conflict and are small enough that their so-called greys don't actually outnumber any neighboring coalition's, it's tolerable."

"Oh."

A shorter pause to check things.

"There's been a terrible misunderstanding, I think. Our castes are...biological. Drones cannot reproduce. We are...we do not know the Tapap word for this. Our species is divided into two groups with the same genetics but different physical manifestations, with one manifestation being capable of reproducing and the other being unable. Keepers can reproduce, whereas drones cannot.

It may be useful for both of our species to prosocially communicate basic information about ourselves before engaging in diplomacy."

"All Amentan castes can reproduce, in the springtime only. We live about forty Amentan years before dying of old age, if nothing happens to us before then. We are fifty percent male and fifty percent female. Amentans need water and food every day, air constantly, and in most cases a seasonal cycle and frequent social contact for mental equanimity."

More pauses. The Imperials are communicating through sign language between each other – they don't seem to be using devices to do it.

"Only Keepers can reproduce. Keepers can only be produced through sexual reproduction, but drones can be produced sexually and asexually. We do not senesce. We are hermaphroditic and Keepers can produce both male and female gametes. We are capable of reproducing regardless of season.

We also need water and food, preferably every day – it's possible to survive long stretches without them by becoming dormant but this is unpleasant and risky – and also need air constantly."

"Amentans can't become dormant. - do you choose, when reproducing, whether to have a drone or a Keeper?"

"It is possible to assure that only a drone is produced when reproducing sexually. Keepers can willingly try for Keeper children, but it is not guaranteed that a Keeper child will result."

"That explains why you have such low population density despite not senescing!"

"Having a Keeper child requires much preparation, since they must be given an allotment at two dozen years old. There is a legal minimum for the value that must be provided to the child – either one-twelfth of each parent's total wealth, or the total wealth of a person at the threshold of the bottom duodecile of wealth. This is legally mandated, however, it is more common to give more than that, and give an allotment at least equal to or greater than in value of the allotment one received from one's parents."

"When we have more of an idea of the relative values of our currencies I will be curious how much wealth that represents."

"I am also curious as to how expensive Amentan child credits are. How is it enforced? For us, we do not restrict people from having Keeper children. However, if they are unable to pay the allotment by the child's two dozenth birth anniversary, they will incur debt to their child which must be paid – and if they do not pay, they can be punished with seizure of assets, or, if the amount of assets is insufficient to cover the debt, or stronger punishments like exile."

"Enforcement differs. We have medicine which makes it impossible to conceive, and it is free for everyone, as are abortions, the safe induction of miscarriage. Children approaching reproductive age are given medicine-dispensing implants, or correspondingly effective reversible surgeries, and doctors who could reverse these check for a child credit in hand."

"I see. You are unable to induce abortion on your own? With your thoughts, I mean, the same way you would move the muscles of the body to cause it to walk."

"We are unable to do that." Also some of the other Amentans present make flinchy faces about the concept.

Suksub notices the change in expression, but doesn't know how to interpret it. Did he say something bad? Maybe he should change the topic away from biology.

"You said earlier that around half of the Amentan population are of the purple caste. What are the fractions of each caste? For us, there are about four dozen and two drones to each Keeper."

"About half purple, half a percent blue, the yellow population is at 22% and climbing, 9% each orange and grey, 8% green."

"Based on what you have said, I believe that Amentan governments set how many child credits are assigned to each caste. Is this prediction accurate? If so, what decides how many credits is given to each caste?"

"Yes, that's right. Most governments have a dedicated population department juggling factors like the labor market present realities and forecasts, constituent needs, eugenic desiderata, and how much money the credits have been selling for in the countries where they are sold."

Suksub really wants to ask political questions now, but that's the Consul's job, and he shouldn't overstep.

"On a different note, it is common for us, when hosting guests, to serve food. However, we do not know whether our food is appropriate to eat. We have prepared various raw foodstuffs and simple dishes for you to examine to see whether they are suitable for you. We would appreciate it if you could do the same – we are interested in trying your food."

"We're excited to examine them! Spaceship food is under a lot of constraints that aren't about taste, so these rations," they produce some rations, "aren't the best Amentan cuisine has to offer, but if we're biocompatible one day you can try our delicacies."

"Likewise. We deliberately prepared samples so that we will mutually be able to identify whether the other party's food is suitable for eating."

Drones will cart several dozen samples of foodstuffs in glass sample cases: various raw animal meats, grains, vegetables, fruits, as well as very simple few-ingredient dishes like bread, porridge, steak, and wine.

Suksub will accept the rations with both hands and then pass it off to other drones to be chemically examined.

The greens appear to be the ones who will be chemically examining the local samples. "Thank you very much!"

A drone brings a message to Suksub, which he reads.

"Thank you for permitting us to tour your ship. Consul Restem is asking whether you are available to discuss managing immigration and technology exchange between Amenta, or Tapa more specifically, and the Imperium, since those two seem to be the issues both parties are most interested in resolving."

"Yes! Though there is little unclaimed space on Amenta, that doesn't include the areas that lack seasons, including the equatorial areas, polar zones, and moons. There is plenty of space if you like to live in those places, just as there is space here in the places you do not like to live. We can talk about that and about technology now."

They leave, and drones will bow, but Suksub will only nod.

Tapa doesn't have any polar territory but it has some equatorial territory, mostly occupied with farms of equator-friendly crops where they currently have to pay exorbitantly to get people to live there and do the work. If remna like living on farms, that could be a great fit! The moons and poles have less stuff that needs doing on them but not none.

Okay. He hadn't considered the fact that they wouldn't live in the equatorial zones. They're actually willing to also let them live there. This is looking much better for their prospects already, and the prospect of Amenta cooperating with and acting antiantisocially with the Imperium, even though it doesn't have to.

"We do like living on farms, in the sense that people prefer to own their own land. Generally, Keepers will have a house on their farm and an apartment in the city, and then move between each depending on their needs and wants. Nowadays, however, it is more common for people to only have an apartment in the city, especially if their job does not require lots of space, such as artisan work.

We prefer to live in tropical or subtropical environments where it is humid and does not get too cold. Dry or cold environments are unpleasant to live in. We are very willing to have Amentans live in our temperate regions and Imperials in your tropical regions."

One of the other people in the delegation, Legislator Lisal, asks whether their moons are habitable, or whether they have the technology to render it habitable such as terraforming or habitats.

"The moons are inhospitable on their own, but we have arcologies on them. They're expensive, but early in our space program it was symbolically important to have the experience and learn from it as a step to one day being able to travel the stars."

Amazing! They have rockets and missiles, but none which have been able to cross the boundary to space quite yet. The closest they've gotten was through weather balloons. Several in the delegation express interest in working in the arcologies just for the experience of it.

"As for technology, your people clearly are much more advanced compared to us. We are very interested in learning from you, and likewise, you from us, in the chance we have discovered something you have not, or which could inspire refinements in technologies you currently have."

"It seems likely that we will learn from each other in that way naturally as we come to work and trade with each other! For example a lot of spaceship construction work occurs on moons, because of the lower gravity and the vacuum conditions outside the arcologies."

"Indeed.

Ah, yes, that makes sense. You mine and process ore directly on the moon itself, then? Presumably it would take too much fuel to lift that much material economically. Or do you have ways of bringing it up with less cost? There have been proposals for things like space elevators which require a weight to be put on the other end, but we have no material available to us which could withstand the tensile forces.

Provided the food samples give good results, I am keen to make arrangements for Amentans to live here, and for Imperials to live on Amenta – or Tapa more specifically – as soon as possible. Although we would want only a small number of each to arrive at first, to be able to give adequate support to those who move and work out problems unforeseen during planning, which are guaranteed to happen. Adjusting to live on another world must be quite a shock. 

We would want to maintain that initial population for...at least four years, maybe, perhaps longer, with only a small number of new people moving in during that time, or none at all. The core concern I have for you is that you said the year length of Zmavliterdi – the name of our planet – is shorter, which may cause problems with your springtime reproduction cycle. How long is the Amentan year, exactly?"

"I'm sure that as long as no other aliens are turned up by other exploratory missions anytime soon, other countries would probably also be willing to extend hospitality to some Imperials. An Amentan year is 1,460 days long. Certainly we'd want to swap out anyone who couldn't season here but the delicacy of the hormone system varies."

"Very much longer, in that case! Almost four Zmavliterdi years. We would definitely want to live in an equatorial or subequatorial region if each season is almost one of our years in length – the majority of people would find a winter lasting that long to be intolerable. It's quite fortuitous that we are very different in our desires for climate.

How long is the transit time between Amenta and Zmavliterdi? We would like to send ambassadors of our own, to Tapa and potentially elsewhere, but our preparations will change depending on whether it takes days or months or years to travel."

"Days! Four, at the most fuel-efficient speed accounting for supply requirements at various durations."

Impassivity training saves his jaw from dropping.

"In the early days of Amentans settling here and vice versa, we will probably have to make ad-hoc adjustments to laws. However, it would be good to have a head start on the sort of things the Imperium should do differently when interacting with Amentans as supposed to Imperials, and likewise, which laws should be managed and enforced by us, or enforced on your own side. We will follow Tapa's laws – after negotiation to account for inherent differences – when in Tapa, and of course we will expect Amentans to follow Imperial laws after the appropriate adjustments have been made.

As an example, we do not do child credits because we take a lot of time in having Keeper children – no one has them before they reach two dozen and get their allotment – and the majority of people only have Keeper children after reaching a gross years in age. People usually would have had a few drone children before then, though. The Imperium would have to have an arrangement to manage Amentan child credits once people here have settled enough to be comfortable with having children – preferably way before then, so that prospective parents know what to expect."

"I agree that figuring that out in advance is smart. If something goes wrong in the early days we'd like the ability to take all our settlers back and have room for them, so we'll need to throttle the growth here anyway to fit within Tapa's allowable growth rate at least until we find an uninhabited seasonable planet to settle. Meanwhile, our population laws are not remotely designed with a view toward the possibility - and popularity! - of sterile offspring."

"Indeed. An additional complication is that we do not senesce – there is no guarantee that a remna will die after a set time, whereas presumably this is the linchpin of Amentan child credit calculations: each person must produce at least a little more than one offspring in their lifetime, or the population will decrease. 

There was, long ago, a proposal in the Imperial Senate to introduce a poll tax on drones, so as to encourage people to use drones more productively and refrain from having any more if their labor would be insufficient to pay for the tax they would incur on their Keepers. A similar scheme could be implemented on Tapa to discourage Keepers from having excess drones – perhaps a progressive tax rate? With it being adjusted every so often in response to population numbers. This does not solve the problem of Keeper children, however. In any case, that was me simply thinking out loud – I was not intending to make formal proposals just yet.

Oh, a related question: are all castes people? For us, drones are not legally people and can be owned by Keepers."

"We're not biologically distinct like that and don't own other Amentans of any caste in the present day."

Restem nods, then adds a second later, "This is sign language for acknowledgement."

"It has been less than a day since you arrived, and I am sure we will be able to come up with better solutions in time."

Okay. Time to make the implicit explicit.

"Earlier, you mentioned that part of Amentan diplomacy had to do with rules during war. Could you elaborate on that?"

"For example: we have rules against instigating biological warfare - the deliberate release of pathogens. Non-greys are always noncombatants. It's illegal to give a false surrender. It's illegal to attack medical personnel even in a warzone."

Having to ask these questions is mortifying.

"I am confused. Laws are enforced using force, but in war, you are pitting the force of your polity against another. How can these 'rules of war' be enforced?"

"This might not be a concept you have because you're the only sophisticated state on your planet! On ours, all the major countries have signed all the major international rules of war treaties. If one is broken the other countries are all committed to punish whoever broke it."

"Hm, no, we do understand what you mean, it's just that for us, war is...war is definitionally refusing to care about the other person's desires, and choosing to act antisocially for your own benefit. Otherwise, you would just talk, make agreements, and trade. I am confused why your major countries haven't made treaties simply agreeing to stop any aggressing country from doing any aggressive action, rather than merely limiting the types of aggression they can do."

"In principle that might be possible one day! We haven't gotten there yet. It's much easier for everyone to agree that no one should unleash engineered plagues on their neighbors than that the borders of every country should stand as they are now."

"That is indeed a better equilibrium than the natural one.

We would like to take a break for us to review our conversation thus far, and think about how to integrate Imperials into Amentan law and society, and vice versa. In the meantime, we have Imperial scientists and artists here who interested in potential exchanges of science and art."

"Wonderful! We brought scientists and not artists, but can show you images of Amentan art."

"That would be lovely. Thank you for your time."

Restem leaves and are replaced with a bunch of Keepers. There are strenuous conversations about who should get to speak to the Amentans first, but they die down quickly.

They do have artists but they're much fewer in number than scientists. The artists are kind of going to get pushed out by the scientists given that learning about Alien Technology is of a much higher priority than art. Art can come later, and besides, think of all the ART you can do with SCREENS. Clearly you have to do science first.

The Imperial tech level is industrial, but their state of theoretical science is further along that what surface level appearances would imply. Every Keeper is independently wealthy, so they have the time to do science, but this along with free drone labor means that they have less incentive to apply what they've learned, and engineer economically profitable products. The gap between knowledge and exploitation is much bigger.

The state of the art with data storage and display is teletype or telex, and regular printing and microfilm. The screens are very cool! None of them dare to touch any, of course, unless it's explicitly offered. They won't even get closer than an arm's breadth.

The Amentans are curious about how far their theory has gotten! They can explain the screens and let the locals poke them some.

They will happily poke at it. Gingerly and with much apprehension. Obviously the aliens would not have given them permission to touch it if it was fragile but just the possibility of potentially breaking the Priceless Technologically Advanced Alien Artifact is mortifying.

They have the concept of converting analog signals to digital, and of encoding data digitally through binary codes, via differences in frequency and amplitude. They also have computer science and the concept of complex programming even though their computers are still relying on punched cards. 

They will happily send over textbooks they have – both standard books and microfilm. Generally, they have mid to late-20th century Earth level theoretical knowledge, but only early-20th century engineering.

Wow. Punchcards.

They will get going on scanning in the textbooks and OCRing them for language enrichment and also information on the state of the art.

OCR! Amazing – who needs drones when your machines are that smart.

All of the books are written in Standard Imperial, and are written in the newer if not latest versions. Standard Imperial is managed by the Imperial Standards Authority. They'll learn words for their more uncommon concepts, but the grammar will be very stable.

Notably, there are many taste and smell qualia words which do not have Amentan equivalents, probably because Amentans do not have the level of sense of taste and smell remna have.

Maybe they'll have the chemists come up with chemistry-derived Tapap words for the taste and smell words. It's interesting that their language has a managed standard; Tapap doesn't.

Yes, the Imperial Standards Authority has many standards on many things. The Imperial government will only accept products from private sellers, for example, automobiles, which follow specific standards it sets. Likewise, all Imperial government publications are in Standard Imperial, and Imperials have to speak it in order to talk with government officials. It does also publish standards on very mundane things, like how domestic spaces should be cleaned and arranged.

People don't have to follow these standards – mostly they don't, except for speaking Standard Imperial – but they are very useful points for coordination, such as businesses wanting to standardize parts, and for regular people: if you don't know the specific preferences of someone, it's always safe to default to what the ISA says. 

Interesting! Amenta has international cleanliness standards for imported products, travelers, being out in public, and stuff like that, but people can arrange their homes however they want.

Likewise! The cleanliness standard is for drone training. Basically every Keeper has drones do housework, and in the case where you want to buy a drone to clean your house, well, it wouldn't know how exactly you wanted it to be arranged. Having the ISA-standard means that you're starting from a predictable and stable baseline, before you instruct it to arrange things more specifically to your tastes.

Funnily enough, it is our cleanliness standards which are distributed. People who own land have the right not to have it be interfered with by others. For example, people are permitted to use violent force against someone who they want to leave their property, and who did not obey a verbal command to leave immediately. Likewise, people may sue if their land is polluted or befouled in some way. 

The Imperium places no restrictions on what goods can be bought or sold, but companies which choose to have their products bear the ISA's seal, and notarize this, can be sued if their labeling is inaccurate or if they make claims which are misleading. There is no restriction on buying or selling goods which don't undergo notarization and seal-display – it's just that most shops won't stock them and customers won't buy them. The Imperial government is very interested in preventing fraud, but it doesn't really care about what exactly people choose to buy.

As a matter of public health Amenta considers it a pretty big deal if someone's spreading anything unclean around and that's definitely something they'll have to hammer out before any Imperials come to live on Tapai pineapple farms.

In the Imperium, it is assumed that people will handle their health themselves. The Imperial government probably does less than Amentan governments, because each Imperial citizen is assumed to have a bunch of drones under them and can delegate work, whereas Amentans don't. 

They will definitely tell Restem and the Legislators that.

They have the concept of quarantines and such, but they are always voluntary – Imperials will definitely comply, because they don't want to die of disease, but trying to mandate it would cause uproar, because imprisonment is only something the government can do for criminals. It breaks the fundamental contract between the Imperial government and its citizens.

The Imperials say that many of them would be fine with mandatory quarantines and cleanliness standards if they came to live on Tapa, though, because anyone who didn't like that can just move back. And of course, anyone who didn't like that wouldn't move in in the first place.

Anyone who didn't like it could just move back after making sure they were at that moment compliant. They can't get spaceships gross.

Yes, that makes sense. They say that of course they would consider the implications of Tapai laws before moving in.

On a related note, they are very interested in sharing information about disease and medicine so that they can forestall anything bad before it happens.

Yes of course here is lots of information on that right now.

They do the same.

Remna body medicine basically only has emergency care and treatment of infectious disease – they don't have the concept of chronic illness. They do have genetic disorders, though – in all of those cases the disorders only manifested itself late in the development of the child, since if it was immediately apparent they would have aborted the fetus or killed the newborn.

There are many references to body control in the books, which seems to be like a more advanced form of proprioception. There are many many exercises in the books about poking and prodding specific areas and thinking of specific mental motions and trying to feel particular sensations – which likewise do not have Tapap equivalents – to both detect injury or disease, or manage its healing.

Sounds so useful! Amentans don't have it, alas, which might be why they have chronic illness - they can't clear it up by controlling their bodies in this way. There are also diseases of aging, which remna wouldn't have.

That is so sad! Some of the Imperials express hope that their better biological analysis technology could be used not just to better Imperial health but also Amentan health – extending lifespan, perhaps even indefinitely.

It would probably require a drastic restructuring of child credits were such a thing to be successful, though. Though now that space exploration is a thing, perhaps that won't be an issue.

They'd sure need a way to keep the planets coming but if that were squared away it sounds great!

The Zmavlipre are very interested in knowing more about the spaceship's air and water filtration systems, since you cannot just eject the air and water into space if you want journeys to be able to sustain themselves for long. Instead, you have to recycle it. How do they remove all the contaminants? How do they make sure the air remains clean and smells fine? Pleasant or neutral scent and good air quality are very important to them.

Spaceships actually do not smell super great, there's kind of a stale mineral quality to the air, but they get everything dangerous or distressing-to-Amentans out like so.

The stale air is kind of really awful but who cares about deeply-unpleasant-but-ultimately-physically-harmless sensory qualia when you have SPACE. Almost any deeply-unpleasant-but-ultimately-physically-harmless sensory qualia can be excused by that.

What does constitute being distressing to Amentans though? The Imperials have a pretty good idea of what's dangerous to them, given the similarities in chemistry and body plan, as well as the medical information, but what is sensorily or psychologically unpleasant?

Loud noises, temperatures outside these ranges with some individual variance, the fear of contact with dangerous substances, bad tastes, rough textures...? They don't like the way spaceships smell, either, it just didn't seem like a priority on their radar.

That makes sense. And yes, taking care of smell would also be far down their list, unless they were planning on staying on the ship for a long time.

A message arrives by drone, and says that Restem has a preliminary proposal for an arrangement for Amentans to live here, if they are ready to do diplomacy again.

Sure! What's the proposal?

"You may wish to pause or cancel the current building, unless you are planning to have it be an embassy – this land is close to the capital, so it would be a good spot.

We have thought about places which are good to host Amentans in, and have settled on a plot of state-owned land in Glabis Province. It is temperate, with temperatures dropping to below freezing in the winter, and with roughly equal durations of each season. The land is suitable for some agriculture, but the soil quality is middling. We have conducted geological surveys on the land and found that the land is suitable for tall buildings – we suspect that you would build large buildings since you have better civil engineering. The land is close to the provincial capital, Guskai City. It is about three hours away on foot – shorter if you use automobiles, although the city prohibits their use inside it. You may also extract material resources from the ground, so long as this is not polluting, although the land does not have any significant material deposits. Perhaps you may find some with your superior mining technology.

We would prefer that all Amentans who wish to leave the plot be escorted by a Keeper interpreter and their drones, both to resolve potential tensions before they occur, to translate in case of language difficulties, and to protect Amentans in the rare case of danger. We will not forbid Amentans from leaving without this escort, but we will have to have them sign an affidavit saying that they absolve us of responsibility in the case that something untoward happens to them. We do not expect this – Glabis Province is below average in crime – but going unescorted necessarily means that we cannot guarantee their safety. We will be able to dispense with the escorts once we have worked out the differences between Imperial and Tapa laws and can integrate Amentans and Amentan practices with our law system, and vice versa, and thus have Amentans be managed by the same law enforcement systems. 

How big the plot would be depends on the number of people we agree to host. We would like to send a number of Imperials to live on Tapa equal to the number of Amentans who will live here.

Where on Tapa do you believe is good for us to live in?

We are unsure of how many people can be transported by the spaceship at once, nor how many spaceships you have available for transporting settlers. We would prefer that the initial number of colonists be transportable by a single spaceship such that all of them can be evacuated at once in the case of disaster."

"That sounds lovely. I have a few questions about the details. If Amentans wish to leave the area with non-remna escorts or self defense contingencies, what's the limit on what is permitted there? Will the Amentans living here be permitted children, or is the population meant to remain fixed?

"This area here -" a space on the map, "is equatorial Tapai territory. It's currently farmland, and privately owned, so we will need to buy it from its present holders but we expect them to be willing to sell, and remove the tenants if you don't want to hire them yourselves. It would be convenient if the farms continued producing the products grown there on the open market, since otherwise the prices of those things that only grow on the equator will jump quite a bit, but it wouldn't be a condition of your residing there.

"We have more ships coming off the line back home, as interstellar exploration is very valuable to us. I'm not sure what the advantage of having a single ship able to hold all the colonists will be over having a fleet of ships at any given time in orbit sufficient to hold them and the latter offers a lot more flexibility as the ships could go back and forth with trade goods as their replacements came in.

"You've several times referred to drones in a way that makes it unclear to me if you normally count them as population; we would, since they eat and breathe and take up space, for this purpose."

"You may bring your own escorts, and may bring any armaments you wish, so long as they are not disruptive to others when not being used, such as by moving on large loud wheels or treads, for example. We used to have personal arms laws but nowadays we do not – we likewise do not restrict you on whatever personal armaments you wish to bring, only in the manner in which they are used. Please take care when engaging – we will consider it fully justified if you aggress against someone who aggressed against you, but it would cause a diplomatic incident nonetheless.

We would like the population to remain fixed. This arrangement is very preliminary and seeks only to make sure that any 'fish-in-water' revelations occur in a controlled setting. What I mean by that is...there are many things in cultures which appear to be obviously true and sensible, such that you expect them to be universal, even though they are actually not. We can discuss things all we like, but the only way to discover these is through direct experience. We would like to facilitate these direct experiences while minimizing fallout from the resultant culture shock.

Our plan is for this arrangement to remain for one Zmavliterdi year, after which we may renegotiate. This would also be the minimum amount of time for you to see whether Amentans can biologically accommodate the drastically shortened year. It is currently ten days after the summer solstice for the southern hemisphere, which this place and Glabis Province is in. We have not decided whether to permit replacements in the case of deaths – this will probably have to be negotiated if it comes up, when we have better context on the situation. Likewise, we will prohibit any Keepers from having children, both Keeper and drone children, and will not send replacements until we have negotiated for this to happen.

We are fine with this arrangement. Will we be permitted material extraction rights on the land? Will we have to pay land value tax, or other taxes? I should clarify that any Amentans living here will be exempt from taxation as long as this arrangement is in force. We will probably sell the items on the open market, since we're not sure whether the crops will be palatable to us. Probably the supply would decrease, though, since some people would want to try to grow our own crops there instead. We are likely to hire some of the tenants as consultants to advise on handling Amentan growing conditions and crops, but would not hire all of them.

Oh, I see. I had modeled your spaceships as being rare, and only being able to go on voyages with large expense. In that case, I retract that suggestion.

Apologies. Drones are population biologically, but not socially? They are not Imperial citizens. I qualify my earlier statement to say that we would like an equal number of remna to go – remna encompasses both drones and Keepers."

"We can actually tell quicker than a year if we season here - after a short period of re-seasoning, anyone who can season here should fall into step with the local seasons, so we'd know in a couple of months, and could swap out anyone who didn't, allowing plenty of people to test themselves for compatibility.

"The same non-polluting requirement applies - I can get you copies of the Amentan standards for that - but mineral extraction can be part of the arrangement if it's important to those living there.

"Spaceships are currently rare, and new, but we expect the number of them to only go up.

"I don't expect to have any trouble finding as many Tapai interested in trying to season here as there's room for. About how many remna do you expect to want to live in -" She calculates the area. "Forty thousand square miles, in the optimistic case where we can buy it all up?"

"Oh, I did not know that. In that case, it would be better for us to mutually agree to be able to swap out settlers at will so long as the total number remains constant."

The other delegates will accept the Amentan non-polluting standards and will read them.

"I don't expect any of them to do it – buying it on the market is more convenient and cheaper – but here buying land means you can extract resources from it, so I would want to negotiate for that in the off-chance someone is interested.

That makes sense."

Wow. That's...a lot.

"I'm...not sure. I don't anticipate there to be that many – many people would want to visit Amenta, but much of our wealth is tied to structures and investments into the land, which cannot so easily be sold to facilitate moving. In any case, I would not want to try fitting as many remna as could fit in such a large area at once, especially since the purpose of this initial arrangement was to forestall conflict with regard to differences in way of life between us, and also to give time for our institutions to accommodate people with different lives. 

I was anticipating a number more like, a dozen gross (1728). Or perhaps a dozen and six gross (2592). They would probably require...about five dozen square miles of land."

"Well, if that's all the interest on this end and you strongly prefer population parity rather than, say, land area parity, I guess we can do a small trial town of Amentans."

Restem does care about land area parity and would prefer the Amentans not buy up all the land, but that's his personal preference – the Imperium has no preference either way, which is why he's not going to say anything about that. In any case, this has been going better than he thought: he was afraid that the Amentans wouldn't respect their property rights. Right now, his biggest anxiety has to do with potential cultural differences.

"We would probably need a dozen days to prepare the land for you, both in setting up cordons, informing the nearby people, and also putting up our own structures outside of the plot to house our own officials. A little longer to find people who are willing to move to Tapa and farm. Probably two dozen days. It is fine with us if the Amentans arrive on Zmavliterdi earlier than the Imperials arrive on Tapa."

"All right. We can start screening volunteers and buying up the equatorial land now."

"Wonderful. We will do the same."

The Imperials continue to communicate with the Amentans over radio, now that they have a mutually intelligible encoding scheme. 

A five dozen square mile roughly square-ish plot is cordoned off with a fence of stakes, with strings with yellow and red bunting between them, the stakes bearing a sign with the Imperial seal. It isn't meant to keep people out or in, but merely to denote the exact borders of the Amentan plot of land. Imperial law necessitates that the borders of private property be clearly marked, otherwise, the claim to the property is invalidated. Aside from the seal, there's a sign explaining that the land is for the use of the Amentans, and has directions to and the teletype address of the Imperial consulate near the entrance to the plot.

The area has a temperate climate, with roughly an equal division between four seasons, with winters being well below freezing. The ground is flat, except for the east, which has small, gentle hills, and the northwest, which has a lake and lush temperate forests. There are smaller forested areas throughout the plot, however. At the south is the 'main gate', which is the only opening into and out of the plot, and is connected by macadam road to the main road leading to Guskai City and elsewhere.

On the other side of the gate is where all of the Imperial buildings are located: the consulate, guardhouse, radio tower, and various other things, although many of them are temporary and makeshift and are intended to be replaced with more permanent versions later.

The Imperials transmit the coordinates of the plot to the Amentans, and coordinate a landing spot near the main gate.

Down they come, in several shuttle trips, with construction equipment and supplies and great big excited smiles! They are gonna put farms on the hills and put their downtown up against the lakefront and most of the residences in the easy flat part. The initial wave is mostly purple and second-mostly green, just a handful of blues and a double handful of yellows and enough oranges and greys to cover their internal needs. The greens are here to study all the everything and the purples are here to assemble the city; the ones who don't season, or go home to buy a credit, will be gradually replaced with a changing caste balance over time. They're going to call the town Enisha, "new star".

The Imperials have brought a company of drones playing cheerful marching band music. They've also prepared food, which mostly consists of snacks – they've been prepared elsewhere and brought here. There's enough such that all of the Amentans, despite their large numbers, could get one if they wanted to. There's sweet bean paste dumplings, various hard candies, and meat puffs. It's clear that a lot of effort has been put into the plating and presentation of the food – the way the food has been arranged and cooked looks like it belongs in a fancy restaurant.

Restem and the other delegations from the previous talks are also here. They distribute bilingual Tapap-and-Standard-Imperial pamphlets to the settlers giving a map of the area, where to go to contact Imperial officials, how to get an escort if you want to go out, potentially dangerous animals in the forests, and otherwise Generally Useful Information for travelers, but with more context, and assuming the people know less. The pamphlet says that more services will be available in the Imperial buildings near the main gate as they set up more. For now, the main one is Standard Imperial lessons if they feel like going out without needing interpreters. Both the Amentan and Imperial diplomats and delegates have learned each others' languages, at least to some degree, but the other settlers and the natives wouldn't have.

Does Tapa inflect for number? If so, the Amentans might want to reconsider 'Enisha', because Zmavliterdi orbits a binary star system. Otherwise, it's a lovely name.

Tapap doesn't usually inflect for number in proper nouns specifically!

They're biocompatible, so the Amentans cheerily take snacks - they like the dumplings a lot. The blues who have come all want to learn Standard Imperial, and the green linguists, and most of the yellows. The purples mostly skip it and get to work breaking ground.

The Imperial government encourages people to learn Standard Imperial, because all government communications are done in that language. It's a necessary component for being able to interact with it. However, their two civilizations have only just met, so they are very willing to accommodate the language differences for people settling in the Imperium.

The Imperials were kind of afraid of all of the Amentans wanting to learn the language at once – certainly all the Imperials would want to learn Tapai even before they settle there – but if only the blues, greens, and yellows want to learn, at least, for now, then that's more manageable. The Imperium doesn't really do mass schooling and only goes for individualized instruction or tutoring. They've gotten a bunch of tutors from the Imperial Standards Authority, as well as vetted private language tutors to come and teach them – all Keepers. Many of the few hundred Amentans who want to learn will get their own tutor, or be put in a group of two to four people, depending on how their schedules are set up. Coordination will happen with regards to scheduling and the spaces in which this tutoring will occur – the current structures are all makeshift, so there's not a lot of space.

Blues want to learn for diplomatic reasons, and greens for intellectual ones, and yellows because they will be programming the computer translation software to work better. They were expecting that for most purposes a random monolingual purple could use the software and maybe consult someone who spoke both if there was a complicated nuance, does that sound wrong? None of the people who are here now are even sure they'll stay, they might not reseason, so then it would be odd to put the time in if they didn't have one of those reasons. Some oranges who successfully reseason will want to learn so they can teach kids but they don't have teacher oranges on the planet yet because they weren't supposed to have any kids here.

Wow, they did not know technology could be used for automatic translation. Standard Imperial was designed to be able to be parsed formally for validity by hand, and potentially by machines, but automatic translation they wouldn't have dreamed of. They would love to learn how to do that!

It could be that the Imperials are just much more keen on learning new languages than the average Amentan. Part of the reason Standard Imperial became a thing is so that everyone always had a common language regardless of how many new conlangs are cooked up. And the Imperials also don't have the reseasoning concern. 

The Imperials restate, although it had already been worked out in communications previously, that the Amentans are free to lay out their plot of land however they'd like, and that the Imperials will not enter without permission save for this section near the front gate. Regardless, they ask how Amentans usually lay out their cities. What aesthetic are the Amentans going for for their city?

The city planner blue can show them the layout he has in mind! Apartment towers here, offices there, shopping and recreation boardwalk/boulevard by the lake, shuttleport over there, leaving the forest for the time being for the botanists but it'll get gradually cleared as they have more needs for the space, farms for some Amentan crops that don't have close-enough analogues locally up on terraces in the hills with hiking trails among them - this was a really exciting project for him, you never get to start this much from scratch on Amenta in a place expected to be as exciting and important as this one - initial geology report suggests there might be iron deposits down there but they're not really worth going after under the circumstances, they only have so much room to work with, and presumably they can buy raw materials from the Imperials, yes? Architecturally speaking he hired this one firm that does swoopy glass stuff, it's frankly plain by Amentan standards but it builds quick and it'll look familiar to the residents and it doesn't look like anything else on the planet at the moment.

Interesting! Imperial cities centrally plan their aesthetics, with Very Detailed Instructions on the types of decoration and facades for buildings, and incentivizes this by offering land value tax discounts on the regional level depending on the level of adherence to the standards. Imperials care deeply about coherent aesthetics. They don't centrally plan the layout of their cities though. Is this the sort of thing that was done because this was on a new planet, or are all Amentan city layouts centrally planned?

Yes, the Imperial government is currently making arrangements for businesses to come here near the main gate and offer their services and goods to Amentans, including raw materials suppliers. If they have specific things they know they'll want and need, they can tell them what they want so that the Imperial officials and send messages over the teletype network for prospective vendors.

The swoopy glass stuff is indeed otherworldly! It's a little lacking in color for Imperial standards, but the effect produced by the curving glass is exquisite. Their glassmaking technology would mean that if they tried to build similar looking buildings, they would be way too expensive and way too fragile.

Amentan city layouts are planned but usually not centrally all at once because usually no one person owns all the land a city sits on and there is usually already some settlement you don't want to just demolish in any location where you'd want a city - new cities grow up gradually as some kind of stationary resource like a farm or a port or a mine requires workers who demand goods and services whose providers in turn demand services, etcetera. This is just a new stationary resource (their land grant from the Imperium) but it's much more sudden!

They're going to need glass according to these specs, or sand they can turn into the glass like so - and steel, lots of that, and do they know how to refine aluminum yet? - and material for plastics but they can use, like, inedible plant husks, for that, if they need to, it'd be good to know early so they know how to allocate space to e.g. refineries versus bioplastic factories.

That makes sense.

They will send out calls for businesses to arrive here so the Amentans can examine their product, and transmit the specs they gave. Yes, they know how to refine alumina into aluminum. They have fractions of petroleum that they've used for plastics before, but the state of plastic chemistry is in its baby stages. The Imperials will give information on the sort of plastics feedstock they have.

If the remna like learning new languages, should they be having the linguist greens teach them Tapap? Also, what Amentan exports interest them that they can exchange for their materials?

Yes! That would be lovely. Lessons on other Amentan languages would be great too.

You can exchange gold for Imperial rupnu at any bank. One gram of gold gets you one Imperial rupnu. There was talk about transitioning to fiat currency when you came, to prevent destabilization of the economy because of foreign gold, but that would be extremely politically unpopular. The system remains in place for now.

They will happily pay for Amentan books and media, both non-fiction and fiction, especially books about your technology, of course. Food likewise will be very popular. Ornamental art will be very popular: functional things which are beautiful. Generally, the Imperium much prefers ornamental art over fine art. They would also love to see Amentan performance art, and potentially even hire some, if Amentan art forms are received well. Some people would want to hire your architects and builders to make swooshy glass homes for them.

Okay! They didn't fill up their population allotment to the brim with would-be settlers so they won't have any trouble swapping in a dance troupe or band or architect if someone wants to pay the amortized costs associated with their berths on a ship and their usual performance fees, which, translated into gold at Amentan prices, would be - yea much. Here are some paper catalogues to distribute among interested parties with pretty dishes and cabinetry and shoes and containers and so on they can order - or commission like instances of (especially anything that needs to be made in remna sizes, since those are pushing the Amentan bell curve pretty hard).

Lovely. The prices are...kind of expensive but they were expecting that, what with them having to travel interstellar distances to get here. The paper catalogues will be distributed, with notes saying that extra custom commission costs should be expected if you need or want the items upsized.

Are there any other things the Imperial officials can arrange for them? They say that the sellers and buyers should arrive slowly within the next dozen or two days, depending on how far away they are. Transportation technology is something they are very keen on learning!

Would they like the Amentans to build a railway from somewhere to somewhere else? They can watch if they like.

The Imperium has steam locomotives, but the Amentans probably have better trains. Yes, that would be lovely. If they want to trade quickly, they can build a railway from here to Guskai City. The steam locomotive station is placed outside the city's borders, since it produces smoke, but if the Amentan trains are smoke-free, and do not produce lots of noise (or is such that such noise can be largely muffled), then it could potentially be inside the city's borders. They'll have to ask the residents, though.

The Imperials propose alternate routes connecting nearby cities if they're not interested in that, though.

Amentan trains are electric! They don't have a great generator built here yet but they could do it in parallel so the trains are ready to go when the generator is with, uh, 20% more purples? Or they can just swap out the generator purples for the train building purples if the remna would rather wait.

Amazing! They know enough theory to hypothetically build electric trains, the problem for them is getting electricity that isn't polluting like burning coal or oil. They've been using geothermal, water, and wind thus far and looking into solar and nuclear.

They can wait. Honestly they're surprised they work so quickly. "It must be the better technology," they say, although the other reason they're thinking about is that Amentans have a limit to their lifespan, but remna can just wait patiently for something to be built. They don't say that though, it seems kind of cruel to remind them of that fact.

Amentans like geothermal, traditionally, and hydroelectric - wind takes up a lot of space they could use for other stuff, but they sometimes do solar especially in rural areas - but these days they have net positive antimatter generators!

More marveling at Amentan technologies, and hopes that Imperial engineers would one day be able to build such a thing.

Aside from raw materials, what sort of things or services would the Amentans here or back in Tapa be interested in buying? Sellers will come to the gate regardless, but we can put out messages if you are looking for something specific.

Also, here are teletype machines and how to use them to connect to the Imperial networks. It's kind of sad compared to Amentan internet, but it's functional.

Souvenirs! Art objects, such as books and paintings!

Food is the most popular souvenir in the Imperium, but they're not sure whether the Amentans are looking for that. What types of souvenirs were they looking for?

Many of the functional-art-pieces are too large for Amentans to use, such as fountain pens, cutlery, or furniture, but there are some which would fit them, or which don't require you to be a specific size. Once the market has a better idea for Amentan tastes, there would probably be many manufacturers and artisans who would accommodate them.

There are books-as-art! Not art-books, but books where care is taken to ensure that the book itself is beautiful. Here's a catalog of them. One of the featured ones is a marine zoology book that's evocative of Kunstformen der Natur, with the cover having an embossed graving of one jellyfish. Here's another one that's a pop-up book of buildings which are considered iconic, and explanations for how they fit the style of the cities they're in.

Painting as fine art is relatively uncommon on Zmavlimu'e, but there are some. What types of paintings? Illustrated diagrams or data visualizations of some kind are common in the Imperium, are they interested in those? Here's a globe of Zmavliterdi with land borders of gold wire, with the ice caps made of milky quartz. Here's a biological drawing of a wheat plant, Grey's Anatomy style, but in the form of a tapestry. Here's an ancient love song's lyrics in calligraphy, where the words form a drawing of the flower alluded to in the song. The paper is even scented to smell like it.

Food counts, it's exotic, but it needs to travel pretty well to make it to Amenta and that's where the real huge market is.

The art will probably wind up in museums, though it's not impossible to eat with a comically large fork. By books they meant, like, novels? Do they have those? The globe is exquisite, though, that would get pride of place in a Zmavliu'e-art wing of a museum.

There is food that will last for dozens of days up to (Zmavlimu'e) seasons. They can have those. There is candied fruit, tea, preserved meats, candies, wine, and spices.

Oh, novels! Yes, they have novels. Many novels in Zmavlimu'e have sexual content, and they weren't sure whether that would be appealing, what with the dioecy and non-eusociality of Amentans. And the different biology in general. A lot of them are just...porn in book form. Do you want to get the most popular books now, or for us to try and select books that we think Amentans would find interesting?

Huh, Amentans have written erotica and some of it is about (imaginary) aliens because some Amentans have, like, alien kinks, so it'd have a niche, but it is perhaps not as mass marketable as nonporn stories would be. They can try anything they think will sell now that they have this information on the Amentan erotica landscape though.

The imaginary aliens niche is much bigger per capita in the Imperium compared to Amenta, it seems. Much of the work is also BDSM-y, either totally or in part. Although that isn't considered a 'kink' here, it's kind of...normal. Here's a catalog with blurbs.

They find stuff with relatively little to no overt sexual content and put a catalog together. Zmavlimu'e fiction in general is characterized by very consistent theming and emotional valence, the absence of the concept of heros and villains (it's only protagonists and antagonists), lots of thought put into worldbuilding (many of which will have addenda elaborating on it, or perhaps even ancillary books), and growth/power fantasy/competence porn narratives. To an Amentan's eyes, Imperial fiction evokes 'yellow who wanted to get into fiction writing'.

Here's a hard sci-fi novel about people on a spaceship which had a breakdown, causing them to get stranded and have to work very carefully to survive and return home. The novel is...technically inaccurate, now that there's a literal spacefaring society here able to factcheck it, but the novel has great dramatic tension. Kind of tragic, though. Some people die. Many of the books, including this one, have an openable envelope containing potentially spoilery tags or content warnings, such as character death.

Here's a fantasy novel about people who get different magical powers with aptitudes in each one depending on their personality, and whose strength at the moment depends on what emotion they're currently expressing. There's a lot of interiority in the characters, and a lot of time is spent on digressions about mental exercises, many of which are lifted from or inspired by the Imperial Church's ritual and meditation teachings, and how the characters use those to cultivate their powers, and also how having to deliberately adopt certain patterns of thinking changes them, for better or for worse. Very power fantasy-y. Also very popular because Zmavlipre kind of like fiction that has categories like that, which causes everyone who likes that franchise to categorize all their friends according to it. It's kind of a cliche.

Maybe the alienfuckers have enough overlap to produce alienfucking video porn, that would be well-received by some. Here is a list of video porn companies if they want to pitch any on the idea. Do they have an idea of how BDSM achieved fixation as a sexual taste in remna?

The books are circulated with bad machine translation and gradually, as the popularity data comes in, hand-translations from the most advanced of the yellow language students!

There are many Zmavlipre who would love to shoot porn, either with themselves or with their drones. Many messages will be sent to the companies.

Prenu, in the ancestral environment, managed their drones with operant conditioning and with scent, so they already were very willing to do corporal punishment. For drones, they had to be able to respond to said conditioning but not run away from their Controllers. Dominance and submission is kind of baked into their biology. As for submissive or masochistic Keepers, it is known now that Zmavlipre and drones share the same genotype, but the differences in phenotype are because certain genes are expressed or suppressed – and that there is variation in this, which leads to certain Keepers exhibiting drone-coded traits and vice versa.

Huh, the Amentans were lowkey assuming that drones just automatically did what they were told. Eusocial animals on Amenta don't have to train each other.

Yes, that's the case now, although back then they weren't sapient and hadn't developed language yet. So it was kind of hard to get drones to do what you told them to, because you couldn't tell them what to do.

Oh, it does make sense that there would be a phase between "all desired behaviors are simple enough to be basically instinctual" and "language" where conditioning would play a big role, yeah. Anyway, BDSM is not so mainstream among Amentans but it's not unheard of, they should just script a little more aggressively to make sure they don't trip over assumptions about each other's meanings in that department.

People still practice conditioning today. It continues to be a very robust form of drone shaping. Drones which have been trained to be too literal might get stuck in ruts where they keep doing the same thing over and over and have to be broken out. On the other hand, too proactive drones can be too liberal with their interpretation of commands and become unpredictable: punishment creates bright white lines they shouldn't cross. Also, it's fun! Nowadays they have hypnosis, though, so really it's not that necessary. That last reason still means that conditioning will continue to be a thing, though.

They can do that. The Keepers will participate in the scripting, but as for the drones, they say that they can do whatever they want with them so long as it wouldn't permanently damage them, maim them, or kill them. Otherwise it's fine.

That's as may be but they don't know how robust they are!

Drones are very robust. Here's some big no-nos: asphyxiation, stabbing the torso, or application of strong blunt force to it, restriction of food and water for more than a few days, permitting large blood loss, head trauma.

Here's an anatomy textbook: as long as you don't touch the organs or the brain, it's fine. Also, the drones have good enough body-control such that they can report if things are getting too bad.

The Zmavlipre express sadness that Amentan sadists haven't gotten to experience The Joys of Dronekeeping and are very glad to alleviate this.

The ones who do porn are not necessarily the same as the ones who would get the most Joy out of Dronekeeping but, presumably, the remna settling on Tapa can alleviate that.

Ah, that's true. Is sex work only for specific castes? If so, which castes do sex work? Many Zmavlipre voice their predictions out loud: the majority guess orange, with the rest being split on green, and a few grey.

"It's orange because it's caring work." It seems that taking care of sexual needs is considered a part of nursing and doctoring in Zmavlimu'e.

"It's green because it's artistic work." Many people hire sex workers because they want to have very elaborate roleplays, and fiction writing is a green job.

"It's grey because you want your escort to be robust." The vast majority of Zmavlipre think big muscles and strength are hot, and greys have that, so it has to be them.

In Tapa, porn is grey by analogy to performance dance, but seeing clients is orange. In other countries all sex work is grey. The scripts, if elaborate, may be written by greens, but usually not; greens do have the written and drawn erotica market, though.

That divide is so interesting! (And economically unproductive, they don't say.)

Are these divisions cultural or legally enforced? What if a Tapai grey said he wanted to write erotica?

Oh, he can! He just can't make more than 20% of his income from it, but that's easy if he gives it away or just does it on the side.

(Ah, so not as unproductive as they thought. And if they've had the castes long enough such that each caste could be selected for different traits, then it would make sense to structure the economy around that. They probably have to do it to be able to do mass-education, teaching certain skills only to certain castes, what with the lifespan limit.)

How does Tapa do education? It would seem that, because of senescence, they would have to have efficient education and would have enough children per year to have the economies of scale to do mass-education. The Zmavlipre predict that each caste receives different education – both in structure and in content.

Oranges teach children! They have fairly similar structures, although, like, greys get more gym class and yellows get more computer lab time and stuff. They have varying class sizes and smaller ones do work better but not by so much that they don't do a lot of teaching in large groups.

Oh. The Zmavlipre had predicted that each caste would get their own schools, since you want the elder members of each one to pass down their skills to the younger. Given that they have many castes rather than the remna two, they were assuming that people would be more specialized.

Controlling a classroom full of children while they learn X turns out to be an importantly different skill from just knowing how to X. The schools are casted, though some are intercaste, and the oranges pick up appropriate domain knowledge sufficient to teach little kids the first steps of a field; advanced instruction sought in adulthood will normally be in-caste as they guessed.

Ah, that was more in line with their prediction. Zmavlipre usually have drones do all of the pre-pubertal childcare, and only afterward do they start being more involved, because then the child needs to be taught skills. Back then, Keepers did all the teaching, but nowadays, drones can teach the basics of numeracy and literacy to children also.

Amentans learn a lot of things before puberty! Possibly because they senesce they're in a bit of a hurry to learn all the things they'll need for their careers in just a few years.

True. Keeper children are usually too busy doing their own thing to be meaningfully taught complex topics.

Are the Amentans here interested in buying things? Or perhaps just window shopping? (It is explained that it is not considered unseemly to observe but not buy, and even if it was, they're aliens, so they're expecting that the Amentans would be more circumspect with purchases.) The sellers nearby have come and set up stalls near the gate – there's a specific section that the Imperials have laid out for them.

Well, if it's definitely okay to look and not buy they'll get a bunch of people treating the shops as a bit of a museum! What's there?

There are not that many sellers so far – everyone here has come from their own accord, rather than from the broadcasts the Imperium has done over the teletype network.

Ridzal sells tea. There's white tea, red tea, black tea, fermented tea, and of different grades, and coming in loose leaf or tea bag form. There are very detailed signs next to each one talking about the varietal, growing conditions, proper preparation technique, and what the taste is like. Sadly, many of the qualia words don't have Tapap equivalents. He offers free samples – there's a gas burner there boiling tea so the drones can brew some. He will also permit the Amentans to smell the tea leaves, if they want. That's usually a thing you do with tea. He says that he doesn't sell tisanes though. Do they have tea in Amenta? A gross grams of loose leaf tea will average about three dozen fepni, higher or lower, depending on the specific thing. The dust and fannings tea in tea bags is much cheaper, at one dozen to one dozen and six fepni for a gross grams.

Tetkad sells drones. Apparently he's very good at languages, because he starts speaking Tapap. With a very strong accent, but with good grammar and appropriate vocabulary. He's brought a dozen and five drones who've achieved similar levels in fluency. He would love to receive advice on better pronunciation so he can train himself, and his drones, better. Seven of the drones are young and untrained, but the rest have been trained to do domestic work to Imperial standard – how do Amentans usually manage their home? Presumably they have machines to do that for them, but if not, then there you go. He also says that he offers psychotherapy for both drones and Keepers, or in this case, people in general. The way he says it implies that drone training and psychotherapy are somehow linked, or that people doing one usually also do the other. He says that it's fine for them to touch or examine the drones as much as they want, but that they shouldn't hurt them. The way he says it implies that sometimes sellers allow that. He's flexible, but he says that the price of the untrained drones starts at two gross rupnu, and the trained domestic ones at three gross six dozen rupnu.

Semsis and Radan Company sells fruit – Semsis came here, while Radan remained in their store in the city. They grow tropical fruit in large greenhouses, which lets them survive the winter months. There's lychee, mango, and jackfruit, all still whole, and priced by weight. One gross grams of each is four fepni, ten fepni, and nine fepni respectively. Similar to Ridzal, they've actually cut up some of the fruits and offer them as samples. Semsis explains that they normally wouldn't do this, but of course, he doesn't know whether they have similar fruits in Amenta, and he wouldn't want them to buy a whole bunch only for them to hate it. The fruits will taste very similar to the Earth equivalent, but have very little acidity or sourness to them, but will otherwise have the same flavors and aroma.

Amentans have tea and it's really popular in colder parts of the world; some of these Amentans have a taste for it and will sniff teas to see if any smell tasty.

A green linguist will be waylaid by Tetkad's stall and coach them on pronunciation! What kind of maintenance do drones need? Will they behave weirdly if they're supposed to obey an Amentan who won't smell right? How do drones enter the market anyway, don't people just give birth to them when they want them, is it just not weird to them to sell their offspring? The green calls over a theologian friend who is here to consult on emergency theological questions and they talk about housekeeping, which is apparently a theological matter to Amentans, and ask about psychotherapy and what that tends to entail and why drones would need it. Does he rent drones, if someone is not sure they want to keep one indefinitely?

Exotic fruit is popular given that there's tastes available! Not very tart though, are they, might want a squeeze of Amentan lemon on top, or maybe they should just be strictly dessert applications...

The black teas are quite strong smelling, especially when brewed, but the other types of tea are more mellow. Do Amentans like stronger or weaker teas?

Tetkad will happily accept the coaching. Drones need water, food, rest, and medical treatment in the case they encounter something their body control couldn't handle. On the one hand, drones experience more stress than Keepers, but on the other, drones usually have better body control than Keepers. Yes, but he trains his drones carefully to not rely so much on that. So long as you follow a consistent punishment regime, you'll be fine. No? Drones might be given birth to, but they're not people. Many people do get attached to their drones, but it varies from person to person. Interesting that Amentan housekeeping is a...religious thing? He supposes he could see it – housekeeping is one part of maintaining an aesthetic sense and of evoking emotions in ritual. Psychotherapy is necessary to change the psychological characteristics or behavioral baselines of drones, such as training them to be more proactive versus literal, or expressive versus impassive. You also use it to ensure they remain responsive to your commands without needing corporal punishment, and to ensure that your bond to them remains strong and doesn't fray, especially since you are not their parent, and indeed, do not express any Keeper pheromones at all. Tetkad does not lease drones, usually, but he's willing to lease drones to the Amentans if they want to test them?

The drones which are trained will be wearing simple brown tunics and pants, but the untrained ones will simply be wearing loincloths. All of them are wearing metal collars. They're all standing still in a line.

Semsis will be surprised – people usually hate sour tastes in fruit, and indeed they have carefully bred their fruit plants and trees to produce non-sour fruits without compromising on it having other flavors. He's not that surprised, though, of course aliens would have different tastes in fruit. They have citrus fruits, but they have similarly undergone this selective breeding, although since the baseline was higher, they still remain more sour than other Zmavliterdi fruits.

Amentans vary in how strong they like their tea but there is at least initially a preference for the weaker ones while they get used to local flavors.

Does that mean that remna do not enjoy pickles? Tapai love pickles.

A punishment regime sounds potentially like a lot of work, what does that entail?

Nope! They used to do pickling to store food for drones to eat – but not for Keepers. Nowadays they have enough food, and have also developed better food preservation techniques like canning and refrigeration, so people don't do that anymore.

You punish your drones if they do stuff you don't like. Punishment is anything that's aversive. Usually that's corporal punishment, but there are other things you could do, like simply berating the drone. Less effective, though.

Nowadays it's more popular to do hypnosis to manage drones: it's less physically demanding, you don't need to oversee the drone as much – punishment is most effective when it is delivered as close as possible in time to the unwanted behavior, and you can shape behavior more finely. Tetkad asks what the state of hypnosis or psychotherapy in general is in Amenta – presumably it's better, because they have better technology. He would love to buy books or training if so!

They actually don't have a well developed field of hypnosis! They do have therapy, and psychoactive medication, but it's for Amentan maladies, and while they're biocompatible they probably have hardly any of the same mental illness presentations.

Huh. There was a big push to develop hypnosis as a drone management technique since nowadays work tends to be more complex and require more thought and judgment, and it's much easier to manage drones by using hypnosis as a first-line technique with corporal punishment as a backstop, for people running companies with many drones such that they have to spend their time wisely.

But still, he was expecting that there would still be some economic incentive, even if you don't have drones. There are fewer uses for hypnosis for Zmavlipre, but there are still some.

It helps you remember things easier, although the type of memory is an inferior one: it lets you remember a word if you consciously call for it, but it won't 'creatively' or 'spontaneously' appear if you're only thinking about things which are adjacent. It's how he and the drones learned Tapap quickly. 

It can also let you increase or decrease the urge to do certain things, or feel certain emotions. For example, a person who is deathly afraid of spiders might get hypnosis about that, which will remove the visceral fear they experience. Hypnosis only touches on urges or emotions, though – they will still probably avoid spiders the same way, because they understand that spiders can be venomous. They just won't feel anxiety about it.

It's also just generally relaxing? Although in that case that relates more to induction, or the beginning parts of a session, and not the suggestions.

What sorts of mental illnesses do Amentans usually suffer from? Maybe they're similar to Zmavlipre ones.

It's possible that Amentans just don't hypnotize as well as remna do.

Amentans can have mood disorders or hypervernal syndromes of various subtypes or executive function disorders or compulsive disorders or hyper- or hypo-sensitivity or psychosis or developmental failures or etc. etc. etc. But they did not bring any crazy Amentans to the colony because it was pretty competitive.

Tetkad says that normally he would just offer sessions for free simply because they're aliens to try and test that, but sadly that he's planning to travel to visit some friends soon. He could refer them to some people who specialize more in hypnosis and less on drone training if they're interested, however.

Zmavlipre have depressive, anxiety, executive function, compulsive, hyperempathetic, and hypersocialization disorders.

What is hyper- or hyposensitivity? Sensitivity to what? 

What is hypervernal syndrome?

That makes sense! The Imperials nowadays do offer hypnosis for healthy people, though, since hypnosis has developed such that you could use it to aid the process of changing particular personality traits, and not just repairing damaged or malfunctioning psyches. 

Sensitivity to pollution - the abstracted concern that something may bear disease, sort of like love is the abstracted supposition that someone may share genes or ownership is the abstracted social construction that different people have different investments in and accesses to things. Remna don't seem to have this at all and might be running all their infection-prevention psychology through aesthetics or something? Which is absolutely fascinating but so far they have no reason to think that they're not clean enough to suit anyone you might name (who isn't hyper, but again, they didn't bring crazy people).

Amentans have a seasonal cycle, which is why they're not trying to live at the equator on either planet. Spring is the one where they can conceive babies and it's when they're most excited about conceiving babies, both coming and going. Hypervernal syndromes come in lots of flavors but mostly boil down to one or both of "spring too much" (e.g. random blips of springfeelings in the middle of autumn, or not reseasoning correctly when moving hemispheres or reentering a seasoned area from an unseasoned one, or springing upon moving ten degrees north, etc.) or "spring too hard" (anything that fucks up your life because your sex drive or reproductive drive cannot be reasoned with).

Something like that! Remna are sensitive to bad smells and 'ugliness'. They believe that this was adaptive because they were very good heuristics: bad smells could indicate poisonous gas, rotten food, or disease transmitting fluids. Likewise, ugliness in the form of misshapen body parts, or collections of holes could indicate infectious disease, genetic syndromes, or parasites. Nowadays they have a much better idea of what actually causes and does not cause disease, so for example would not freak out if they came into contact with a flower that smelled like feces, but only smelled like it to attract insects and didn't actually have any on it. Still, the sensory valence of bad smells and ugliness remains, so they avoid them even if they know it's not physically harmful.

Could they elaborate on why housekeeping is part of theology? Does it have to do with Amentan aesthetics? Religion here is very concerned with aesthetics.

Ah, the closest thing to them is when two people want to be monogamous, but have differing sex drives, but also don't feel like using their drones to relieve themselves. Although in those cases, usually the person who has the weaker sex drive receives hypnosis to have a stronger one – not the reverse. People do not like the idea of not wanting more sex. Tetkad supposes that since Amentans don't have drones, it's more problematic for them because the alternative is masturbation or hiring sex workers, which he imagines would get really expensive.

Sex workers do add up! For most people it's not that hard to find free casual sex partners in the spring, but not everyone is able for whatever reason to wrangle that (social anxiety, disfiguring scars, outré kinks, whatever) but even for those who have no trouble locating hookups, it can get time consuming - the babies end is actually much worse, hypervernals get incredibly tragic about it instead of just working hard and saving up for credits like normal people. Er, normal Amentans.

Housekeeping is part of theology because theology is about how to order life on the individual, family, and societal level to make sure it's all peaceful, clean, orderly, and constructive. A disordered or gross house intensifies domestic conflict and makes everything else that goes on in the home more difficult and unpleasant.

Tetkad feels deep sympathy for those who aren't able to find people to be with during spring. What do you mean by tragic? Supposing that the hypervernals are able to have sex, doesn't that satisfy them? Is he missing something?

Ah, that makes sense. Zmavlipre religion and ritual theory is concerned with evoking emotions and catharsis. In many rituals, the space has to be prepared in a specific way for it to be conducive for the emotions being evoked. For example, a funeral should have dark colors with little patterning, and have very good sound insulation, or for it to otherwise be very quiet. 

Regular housekeeping in the sense of cleaning, laundry, and arranging furniture isn't managed centrally like that, aside from the ISA standards – most people do housekeeping differently depending on their specific needs and wants. His housekeeper drones are trained to maintain spaces to ISA standard, but that's usual for trained drones being sold on the open market.

Are the Amentans looking for drones trained in more complex tasks? Like as factory workers, for example?

- the hypervernals can mostly manage to have sex. They can't all have a baby every year, that would be dysgenic on top of out of step with the population control measures!

Theologians don't centrally manage housekeeping tasks like that, just theorize and advise.

They have purples for factory work, but drones are probably stronger than most Amentans and might be useful for some sorts of hauling - they're working on robotics but don't have it functional in most industries yet.

Oh! So it feels bad to not have any children at the end of spring. Tetkad expresses his sympathies.

Indeed! Drones are often trained to be strong – some drones are trained to pull carriages running. That's one of the most strenuous tasks drones do. The housekeeping drones he has are enduring, but not significantly stronger than the average one when it comes to plain lifting capacity. Drones doing simple physical work is becoming less common, though, because of factories and machines. That trend will likely accelerate when Amentan technologies are introduced to Imperial society. It's good that they've figured out how to have drones do skilled labor too, now. He knows one of his friends that trains drone calculators, although that friend ought to go into a different business soon because of Amentan machine computers entering the market.

Yeah, the demand for drones in general seems very uncertain right now - it could go up, theoretically, if everyone gets a lot richer and drones become a luxury popular among Amentans too? - but a couple of the purples will try leasing small numbers of drones to test them out on some tasks that are hard for Amentans to do for long without bulky power tools that haven't been imported yet.