"- I don't think I have enough background on what a borg is to fully understand that explanation."

"Borg are a type of thing that converts other people into being borg like Xeelia. They all sorta share the same mind - though Xeelia's cut off from that now - and they try really hard to make everyone into more borg or destroy them if they can't, since they think only borg are okay. They are very violent and have very advanc-ed tech and are very very hard to stop. We let them assim-ilate all of a planet when we were sure they would follow through on a promise not to leave the system."

"Later we let Xeelia come with us when we made a deal for her to be not-evil and be a good doctor and obey rules and not make anyone a borg unless they understood what it meant and were really actually okay with it and would go back to the borg quar-antine system afterwards."

"Do they all look... dead... or is that specific to her having been an amalien before?"

"They all do."

"How unpleasant. I suppose it probably doesn't matter much in that case what the value on offer from joining them is."

"Mhm. They're scary."

Nod nod. "Anyway, thank you." He tests his knee.

It works! A tad bit of swelling but he probably doesn't need the cane for that.

"You're welcome!"

Meanwhile in the cafeteria, Captain Sierra has joined to meet the new Amentans that have just arrived.

The blue introduces herself as Kei Afeen, from the eugenics and population board of Tapa, and her assistant Sasashu Nuan (yellow), and two purples who work in spaceships and engineered ecology respectively as Makuns Tahai and Shian Jasha, and a yellow from the department of the treasury called Appi Oan.

"I'm happy to welcome you all here, and I hope we'll be able to help you with many of the issue's you've encountered. I'm Captain Sierra, and I'll be trying to meet with each of you today for at least a short time - though I expect some of you will find the best meet-ings to be had with other Amaliens on our starships who are really good at things relevant to your skills."

Lucien hands out schedules to everyone, showing what meetings they have scheduled and when meals will be. The schedules are color coded and hand drawn even though he has fancy computers that could help. They are really detailed and crisp and he had lots of fun figuring out how to make them all snap together nicely into one big seq-ence of meetings for everyone, but he's not saying that aloud.

"Oh, how fancy," says Oan.

"Thank you very much, captain!" says Afeen.

First up for Tahai, Jasha, and Katme is a meeting with Vira about terraforming.

Vira can be found in her lab, which is also an elaborate treehouse* in a giant warmly lit cavern in Keetim.

*tree not included

"The decor up here is so cool," says Tahai. "It's not economical to decorate moon shuttles and so on for us."

"Keetim is real easy to dec-or-ate. Also Fora point-ed out that my work-ing even a little better or find-ing it less annoy-ing was prolly worth a lot since very few Am-al-iens can do what I do."

Vira is poking around an as-big-as-her sized model of Katme that seems to be made outa mat-erials similar to what Katme's made outa. Its floating over a platform so she can get underneath it or ro-tate if she wants to.

"What's your specialty?" asks Jasha.

"What'd you mean?"

"The thing you're irreplaceably good at?"

"Figuring out stuff?"

"Like, science and math and things."

"So you're like a polymath?" asks Katme.

"Guess so?"

"S'easier to know more things once you know one that's kinda similar I think."

"Some Amentans study a lot of different subjects but most people at the apex of a field are specialists," says Afeen. "Leaning on an underlying talent that could have bent in other directions, but focusing their time and energy on whatever presented the best opportunity."

"Oh! I have way more of those then Amentans I think."

"I thought you only had this level of technology relatively recently?" says Oan.