Arguably he has a monster that does a form of mind alteration on his back, but he doesn't think "wakefulness" is what she meant. 

"Mind controlling people when they really don't want to be mind controlled sounds really bad and I would not, unless it was really absolutely necessary and I had searched for another way and maybe even not then."

"Do you think most reds would take a chance of dying or something really bad to become another caste?"

"- uh, probably depends on how high a chance, but plausibly. Why?"

"I'm um -" Lucien is tearing up a bit at this point despite his best efforts not to " - um. Trying to figure out how bad of an issue it is and whether I should be prioritizing it over other issues."

"...that might depend what you think there is to be done about it. If you have a monster in your pocket that can do, say, terraforming, that's priority one and will help the reds downstream."

"How would terraforming help?"

"I'm not sure how much you have noticed that we really, really, really want more places to live, because we want, very much, to have more children than replacement rate."

"But you found another place to live and both my and Meelia's impression is that there aren't actually any reds here for some reason?"

He thinks for a second.

"Sorry if I sound like I think there's an obvious solution or something - I really don't and know that it's prolly really complicated. I'm trying to figure out the shape of what makes it hard to make things better."

"This is the only place they have found where we can live. They are trying to avoid spooking you, or any of the potentially opinionated monsters, so they're going conservatively on this planet and waiting for buy-in from you guys before expanding, but there is not, ultimately, a limit to how much space we want, and as long as it's scarce -

- then there's no chance they'll let reds have any of it."

"How many planets do we need to terraform before that changes? Also what happens if the reds all come here anyways."

"You are looking at a very ugly situation if the reds come here. People are very opposed to the idea of polluting this lovely planet with adorable natives when we could just build only modernized cities on it. I - have you ever read a comments section on a news article, it's not generally advisable but if you've never done it, it might give you a sense of the ways public opinion splinters and shifts on an internet with billions and billions of people."

"I have not. Do you have a news article you could show me as an example?"

Lucien is confused about why this is relevant and also confused what "very ugly" means in that sentence but is being patient.

stars the poor alien baby what can they be doing to her in there!

we had the WRONG technological order of operations. FIRST clean house THEN get a new house.

Okay so what I don't get is... they rounded up all the reds... and then... the reds are still alive? Guys, we have had plastic for so long?

Hoping for the Good Timeline. Want my grandkiddos to be born in a clean World!

Why did they have the amalien near an oldstyle red district anyway?

guys I know the amaliens are the cutest fuckin things ever but you have to remember they are in point of fact not sweet innocent new babies. she knew what she was doing. she's a redloving greyhater.

have her foster parents even been INTERVIEWED? you foster an alien and lose it in the garbage pit you should at least be sterilized and they're menopausal so just hang them. (&EveryCasteShouldHang&)

if this slows down crediting ONE IOTA I say we kill them all. no more fucking around with polar hypovernal pensions and shit.

Lucien breaks down crying pretty quickly and doesn't manage to calm himself down very fast.

Pretty understandable reaction to internet comments.

Lucien eventually manages to pull himself together enough to get out words.

"You must hurt so much."

"- me specifically?"

"No. Amentans, with your pollution sense that makes reds so bad and and. Being red too."

Lucien is still crying but at least he can get out words. Though he still can't see much through all the tears.

"Reds are mostly hyposensitive. I am told that by and large they don't feel polluted in and of themselves, and don't bother each other. But yeah. Not every evolved trait is pleasant."

"Meant how they feel on account of how other people treat em, not how they feel on their own."

He's put together by now that Meelia was just completely right with her guesses about how the reds were treated and why they were so scared.

"Yeah. So I'd be more optimistic about a plan that makes planets so abundant that we could coordinate an exodus of reds to such a planet, where they could simply not interact with most Amentans."

"I think... "

Lucien wipes the tears from his eyes.

"I think that planning this right here on our own probably isn't the way to do this, and instead I should get a group of amaliens who are good at different things and rep-res-ent lots of us to talk about this with. Do you think that sounds like a good idea? Also, would you be okay with being included in that group if that was wanted?"

"I am fine with being included in that group. Uh, I do have the limitation that I need to earn money to support myself and at least most of it has to be formally grey."

"I'm planning to gather the group now, we can talk while that happens?"

Hm. Probably he should stick with Pelape so they can keep talking and she does not seem like the right person to convince other amaliens that this is important so he thinks he shouldn't gather the group himself. Meelia is the default choice for this sort of thing and she under-stands the sit-uation with the reds at all ... prolly she'd prefer to be included in this now even though she's sad and just home. It's important to her he thinks. 

"I'm going to have Meelia gather the group, I'll be right back. Uh, in the meantime do you think you'd be able to figure out some good articles or things like those comments for showing how bad the situation is for reds? Would be helpful to have for helping you and other amaliens communicate I think."

It'd probably be good both for presenting things to amaliens (okay, only Deet probably) who don't want to leave their jobs and also maybe good for helping Pelape approach things in a way that other amaliens would under-stand better.

"I can do that, if you think they won't take your word for it?"

"One of them is difficult to convince to leave his job, and I also think figuring out how to present the sadder aspects in a way that makes that explains how they're important will prolly be useful for helping you communicate with other amaliens for .... differences in how we think reasons? We're much more likely to see the scary sounding bits of it as important than you seem to be. At least you seem less focused on them then I would have expected."