Where should I meet you?

Don't worry, I'll arrange pickup. 

Gosh, if you say so. Do I need to bring anything?

Just yourself.

A few hours later, Moira's car pulls up outside of Peka's apartment building, looking extremely out of place in the red district.

"If you don't want everyone in the district to wonder what I'm up to every time I'm away for an afternoon you have foxed that plan good," Peka remarks, coming down the front steps of her house.

"This time they are welcome to wonder."

Moira smiles as they leave the district - no subterfuge necessary. 

"Where're we going?"

"To a shuttle."

Moira smiles mysteriously. 

A minute later they pull up next to one of the small Amalien space shuttles. 

"After you, dear."

"Ooh, I get to go in space?" In she skips.

"Of course."

The shuttle takes off!

"I'll leave the inertial dampeners on a medium setting - I'm told it's more exciting when you can feel your first time."

The ship lifts off, silently ascending. It never feels stronger than particularly fast elevator ride, and only briefly feels that fast. The large front and smaller side windows provide a spectacular view as they escape the gravity well of Amenta.

"I'm going to have to block out the windows and turn the inertial dampeners on max for this next bit, sorry. A proper introduction to warp won't be able to happen without Amentan's discovering it on their own."

"Awww, okay."

The windows go back and a stifling sense of null inertia suffuses the cabin.

After a minute, inertia seems to work normally again, and the windows revealing the sight of a newly terraformed Katme below, the first geodesic domes under construction on the surface. 

In front, the Starship Keetim towers before them, far exceeding the size of their small shuttle.

"Oh, is that Katme - it's beautiful -"

"It is!

"That spot over there is your dome." 

Moira is pointing at a construction site.

"My what."

"The air isn't breathable for another Amentan year or two, so for now there will be a dome with an oxygen converter inside to make it habitable."

"Yeah I read in the news, but why would I have one?"

"I bought it, with the help of a few friends eager to invest in developing economies."

"It seems someone told them there were tens of millions of Amentans who were being terribly underpaid and had quite impressive amounts of social coordination, just waiting for someone to provide them with resources to get them started."

"Well, resources and the political cover of a sovereign charter city, with minimal regulation of out of caste income."

"- how did you get someone to let you put reds on Katme?"

"I knew a few Oahk blues who kept getting distracted by my rather generous donations whenever questions came up about what exactly I was going to be doing with this sovereign charter city they were granting me control of."

Cackle.

Moira has such a great girlfriend.

"We can visit but the dome won't be done for another couple of weeks. We'll be staying on Keetim tonight."

The shuttle heads towards Keetim's docking bay.

"We should also discuss immigration at some point - I'd have granted you citizenship already but my understanding is dual citizenship is complicated."

"It can be, usually because of figuring out who's responsible for the population count? Like would Tapa still have to count me as some of its population, if I had another baby would I buy a credit from them or get a permission from Oahk, like that."

"The city has it's own population count, distinct from Oahk's, so citizens would have to get permission from me, I suppose."

"Do you want to retain citizenship in Tapa?"

"I dunno, am I going to be going back and forth? If it turns out you can't stand me next spring, or whatever the alien equivalent of that is, will I never be able to get another baby?"

"Up to you whether you go back and forth. I'm happy to give you however many credits you like, regardless of what our relationship status is."

"When I said it's your dome, I didn't just mean you'd have a place to live there. I want your help in deciding how the place works, including the credits."

"I don't have an equivalent of spring."

"I know you don't spring but I guess I was expecting there to be a similarly classic reason for breakups... um, I'm not qualified for that literally at all?"

"You're welcome to help as little as you feel able, though I don't actually know any other reds who are willing to trust me enough to have an honest conversation at the moment. There are a few Ferengi as well as other Amaliens aside from me that will be happy to help as well."

"What are Ferengi like?"

"A very profit motivated culture - several of them realized that the Amaliens policy of finding and technologically uplifting new species was a fantastic opportunity to invest in developing economies. Since a few became rich off this they started bankrolling the Amalien Expanse enmasse. They view the sort of oppression Amentan reds were under as a horrific destruction of productivity. Well, not horrific I suppose - some of them seemed quite happy to have such a good investment opportunity." 

"We do, like, have jobs."

"Not jobs you're actually paid market value for."

"...we sort of do? In big enough towns there are competing red companies for a lot of things."

"How much would you have to pay a non-red to do a red job?"

"Well, you couldn't. Out of caste income cap."

"Yes, that's the travesty according to the Ferengi."

"- well but that applies to everyone."

"Yes, though my impression is that there's a greater disparity between red income and the free market value of their work than that of any other caste."

"Maybe, yeah. I dunno how that, like, factors in that people don't like us? Maybe there's tons of hypos who'd take the jobs if people wouldn't hate them."

"My understanding is that Ferengi tax collectors are paid quite a lot of money primarily due to how thoroughly they are hated."

"Are they not a democracy?"

"I'm confused. They have the minimum government necessary for diplomacy with people who expect that - they're a democracy for the same reason."

"I just sorta figure that if you're a democracy and everyone hates tax collectors they won't vote for people who pay the tax collectors a lot?"

"My guess would be the tax collector job is publicly auctioned off and not under the control of the government or something of that sort, but I'm not sure. Possibly rewards are involved for successfully collecting taxes."

"Regardless, they don't expect the tax collector pay to be determined by the government."

"Huh! Okay."

Eventually they arrive at Keetim.

Where Sierra is waiting to meet Peka. Moria hasn't said much about Peka to her but the sorta way she's mysteries about it feels like how she'd be mysterious 'bout someone she really liked.

"Hi! I'm Capitan Sierra. I'm glad to finally meet get a chance to meet you."

"I know you're not an off-icial rep-resent-ative of all the reds, but if there's anything we can do you should let us know. It's really important to us to be able to help everyone, not just the people it's easiest to help."

"I'd also like to say sorry about how we haven't be able to meet you, or any reds, before. We've been feeling like reds aren't getting our help as much as other people. We decided that giving Amenta as a whole more space and resources should be prioritized, and that it would probably help things so we could aid reds more without people getting angry. And I heard Moria made sure there will be more space for reds too."

"I mean, you could have emailed reds, if you really wanted to talk to some. But yeah I hear apparently we get a Katme dome! Or I get it all to myself or something, I'm not clear!"

"I think some of our operations staff did correspond with reds but we decided to prioritize the colonization and couldn't figure out how to loop reds in as a stake holder on that directly, without causing political complications."

"My understanding is that the dome is owned by Moria and her gift to you, but the city that will be there once the dome is gone won't be personally yours."

"The initial immigration spots in the dome are my gift - along with housing and such. For anyone you want to bring."

"Oh good, I think I'd really have to stay home if I couldn't take Katin along."

"You can take your entire family if you'd like."

She guides Peka down a hallway as they talk.

"Is this ship where you live?"

"When I'm not traveling, yes."

They pass through a hallway with full-size windows on one side, showing Katme.

Eeee Katme. "Is it just my imagination or does it already look greenish?"

"It's not your imagination, alge is hard at work replicating and making it fully habitable for you."

Moria is smiling with a hint of excitement as they walk down the hall towards her quarters.

Bounce bounce.

Eventually they arrive at a set of metal doors with a technologically complicated looking archway.

"Arch, my quarters please."

And the doors open into to a rather cozy Victorian study.

Moira becomes noticeably nervous once they step inside.

"Oh, this is nice - are the books real, if I take them off the shelf will they have words - like I couldn't read them but -"

The arch disappears behind them as they go in.

"Yup, you can read the books! Everything functions as you'd expect it to."

There's window to the outside, showing rolling hills and strange insectile horses grazing.

"Whoa, space horses. Them too? Can I ride a space horse?"

"Yup! They're ridable, though extremely unintelligent so you have to do all the steering."

"Would you like to go for a ride?"

"I would love to go for a space horse ride with you."

Moira holds out her hand, so she can walk Peka to the horses.

She is very obviously nervous about this! She has bribed her way into a creating a sovereign nation for this hand holding.

Handholding!!

Moira makes a face! It is a hand holding sort of face.

She will guide Peka to the bug horses as soon as her brain stops focusing on the feeling of Peka's hand.

No hurry. The bug horses will probably still be there in a minute.

She can squeeze Peka's hand! It feels warm and soft and squeezable and physically present!

Squeeze!

Eventually Moira notices time has been passing. She is not entirely sure what to do about that.

"Um. Where were we?"

"We were going to ride space horses but then you seemed kind of distracted."

"Ah. Yes."

"Your hand is very distracting you know."

"I have two." She wiggles the fingers of her other hand.

"So you do."

Moira does not know what to do with this information.

"Are you okay?"

"Sorry, I haven't actually had physical contact with another person in a few years, and apparently this was too long."

"The horses then,"

Moira leads Peka through the houses and out into the fields where the bug horses await.

"Years? The amaliens and whoever don't visit you at home ever?"

"Some do, but lately most of my life has been away from home."

"Oh. Hm, I think it's been less than one Amentan year since I had amaliens over for tea, I was speaking in terms of universal years which I'm more accustomed to."

"Oh, how long's a universal year?"

"A fourth of an Amentan one."

"Is that... how long the galaxy takes to turn around, or something...? - that seems really fast for a whole galaxy, what makes it universal?"

"Humanoid life forms are found most often on planets with years about that long, and even those that aren't often have biological cycles synced to the approximate length."

"Huh, how funny. Does spring being a 'universal year' long count as us being synced?"

"I think so, yes."

"An Amalien named Vira has a theory about how this is related to panspermia - she says the biological cycles seem to crop up even when it seems biologically disadvantageous for it to be that precise length of time."

"Weird. I don't know very much about how evolution does all the stuff it does, let alone how somebody deciding that having two arms and two legs was a great idea factors in."

Can she pet a space horse's neck with her unheld hand?

"Vira thinks that evolution was somehow guided by design, but I don't actually understand the details."

She can pet the horse! It does not react to light touches and the carapace feels cool and rigid.

"Are these from your planet?"

"No."

"They're one of the more interesting life forms that have simple enough brains that the holodeck can fully simulate and store them without using expensive amounts of power. Normally any life it creates are just ... imitations of the real thing."

"When you showed up did you depower half a city?"

"Approximately, yes."

"Well, I existed before that, but at a level of complexity below these horses."

Moira mounts the horse, helping Peka up in front of her.

Ooh, they can ride double! How clever. "How do you make them go?"

"If you press your knees into these spots just a bit hard it will move."

Moira demonstrates, the horse walking forward with a strange insectile gait.

Whee! "How do you steer?"

"You can push more on one side or the other"

Moira demonstrates this as well.

Peka steers the space horse around and then tries to get it to speed up.

It speeds up! Quite a lot actually, galloping faster than any ordinary horse through the rolling hills.

Moira keeps herself firmly balanced on the horse and will steady Peka if she seems in danger of falling off.

"WHEEEEEEEEEE!"

Moira smiles calmly - it's not like they're holding hands or anything.

The rolling hills contain streams and the occasional tree and eventually, in the distance, a tall and gorgeous waterfall.

"How is this all fitting in a room?!" exclaims Peka, making for the base of the waterfall.

"Something to do with inertial reference frames to disguise motion I think, I don't understand it myself."

Moira stops Peka before they can get too close to the waterfall.

"Not there I think."

"How come?"

"It's a reminder for me of how I first met my ex. A rather... complicated reminder."

"Oh, sorry." They can go downstream, then. "Can I swim in here? - can the water magically disappear off me when I'm done because it's fake water?"

"Yes, and yes."

Then Peka's going to slide off the space horse and take off what she is wearing and jump in. To a shallow place since she can't actually swim swim.

Hm...

"Arch." 

The arch over the doorway to the holodeck appears some feet away.

"Computer, add a pleasant hot spring please."

A hot spring phases into existence a bit farther down the creak. 

"Dismissed." 

The arch disappears.

Moira dips her feet into the pleasantly hot water of the spring.

Peka wades over to it.

Moira takes off her dress before joining Peka, considerably more nervous then she was when she pretended to go in the hot tub on their prior date.

Oooh. A view.

Moira takes a moment to enjoy the warm water.

"Mm, it's much more satisfying doing this when I actually have a sense of touch."

"I bet it would be! Is it weird not having a sense of touch, if you're just like, walking around or whatever -"

"It feels a bit like being disembodied, and I have to focus quite a bit on figuring out what I would be feeling in order to keep up the illusion that I'm really there."

"It's a shame - I miss out on feeling some rather wonderful sensations."

Moira smiles flirtatiously. 

"Like... hotsprings. And... handholding."

"Mhm."

Moira is never going to live that hand holding incident down, is she. 

"And other things, of course."

"And you've been going without for so long! Nobody visiting you! Even amaliens, let alone anyone who, uh. - I guess I'm only assuming they don't."

"They don't."

"It has been some time, yes."

"Not the sort of ex you can hook up with occasionally, huh?"

"Well, it's rather difficult to hook up with a fictional character. I read some of the stories of him and I on occasion, but it's a complicated experience to say the least."

"When you say it has been some time..."

"I've never had nonfictional sex."

"Gosh. So are you the take it slow type, or..."

"I'd like to feel in control of things, but don't particularly prefer to take it slow."

"I would like to see what sort of expressions I can coax out of you, I think."

"Oh that sounds fun."

Moira is not entirely certain how to get expressions out of Peka, but she's smart and great at reading faces so she's sure she can learn.

She brushes the hair out of Peka's eyes, continuing to brush her hand downward to see where Peka reacts most. 

Peka actually reacts kind of a lot to all of it, especially when more of Moira's hand is in contact with her, but, yes, she does also have specific erogenous zones and will squirm when they are found.

Moira is curious how much long she can keep Peka squirming continuously for.

Continuous is hard! She keeps trying to catch her breath! But it's not that hard to turn that into "keeps needing to catch her breath"...

Oh my. 

Eventually, after a while of this, she decides it's time for Peka to squirm in a more productive way.

She can produce! She can produce... sounds! And wiggles! And desperate pleading! And depending on Moira's reaction to that last, also orgasms!

Soon dear, soon. First Peka has to get Moira to make faces of her own.

Yes ma'am!

Moira can conveniently push Peka's face places so that Peka won't notice Moira's lack of control over her own expressions.

Also Moira appreciates being called ma'am again, she missed that. 

It's a much happier sort of ma'am than the kind that scary cleans get. (It's actually a slightly different word, in Tapap.)

Such a good word to learn from Peka.

As a reward she'll bring Peka back to the point of needing to catch her breath, and then, after the briefest pause, to orgasm. 

Peka's a screamer. Good thing they're in space. And also a holodeck.

"Well then."

Moira takes a bit to catch her own breath.

"You make quite a nice assortment of faces, dear."

"Thank you ma'am!"

Eee, Moira is happy about the ma'am. Peka can have a kiss in return.

Kiss!!

Moira cuddles with Peka for some more time, but eventually it grows late.

"Would you like to join me and the captain and some of the crew for dinner?"

"I would love to."

The private dining room is outside the holodeck, and has a diverse selection of alien foods based on advice from Moira on what Peka enjoys. Sierra, Vira, and Lucien are among the attendees of the dinner.

"Hi!!"

"Hi! Can you tell that you're polluted?"

Vira is ready to work on pollution things instead of terraforming now, it's very exciting.

"- oh, is that the kind of things space aliens like to talk about at dinner? Uh, I am aware, that I am polluted, and have been assuming you have plans to clean up after me if you don't want it to be a whole thing."

Sierra, not for the first time, wonders whether it would be worth Vira's res-earch time for Vira to invent tact and how to talk to people.

"Sorry, Vira isn't very good at figuring out how to talk about things other than just asking about them right away."

"She's very excited about moving on to new research topics from terra-forming and figurin' out how to help Amentans with pollution things is a big one - we have plans to clean up after you for dipl-o-matic reasons, yeah."

"We can talk about that after dinner if you'd prefer - or not at all if you would rather not."

"But she didn't say whether her sense of poll-ution is innate and sensory or just a fact she- oh I should talk about other things now instead maybe. Sorry."

Peka shrugs awkwardly and starts eating.

Moira is not bothering to fake eat, and will instead use the time to start a discussion about city planning for the red city.

"What are we going to, like, eat?"

"We can import in a bunch of pre-made things at first, while we get multi-story robot farming set up! And some recy-clers to turn sewage back into fuel for replicators to make food outta!"

"Wow, replicators can make enough food for somebody off what they excrete?"

"Not quite enough easily, but it can re-cycle a bunch of if and that helps! Replicators are really really cool."

"Where'll they get the rest of the fuel?"

"We can grow some on the multi-story farm things once those are working, till then we can import a bunch."

"Where is all this money coming from, Moira said something about Ferengi but I didn't really understand."

"So, there are three places money is coming from."

"The biggest one so far is Ferengi who are buying bonds I think - where the city is spposed to pay them back with interest at some point. If they don't get paid back the Ferengi will be mad but noth-ing else happens except it'll make it much harder to sell more bonds later if the city doesn't pay them back sometimes, and selling bonds is a really useful thing to be able to do."

"The smaller one that's happened so far is Moira spending her own money, some of that is in the form of buying bonds but some of it is also just her spending money on nice places for people she likes and things."

"The last one, which hasn't been used yet but would be used for some of the things we're talking about today, is the Amalien Expanse spending it's own re-sources and time. Amaliens want to help people and so we do things like terraforming Katme for Amentans but reds weren't really repr-esented in the deciding-to-do-that process and were just helped as a side eff-ect of that and Moira doing things with Ferengi, and we want to help reds separately from that help. So we're pri-or-itizing you now."

"Cleans aren't gonna like that," Peka snorts.

Sigh.

"Yes, it's really sad. We are trying our hardest to not cause con-flict about us helping people, but we are not going to stop helping people just because someone else objects."

This is basically the motto of the Amalien Expanse since the war with the Fedreration ended.

"I guess you could take 'em so they probably won't not-like-that violently."

"I really don't want to make us being able to win a thing that matters."

"But we would win if we really really needed to."

"Well, as long as they know you'd win, you don't have to actually do it, probably, if you don't really rub their noses in it."

"Mhm."

"Do you think there are things we can do to help be-sides helping setup the city for reds?"

"Well - how many reds are you going to be able to siphon off, anyway, even if your vertical farms are basically magic you might need more than one city for sixty-five million people, particularly if it has to be under a dome -"

"It won't have to be under the dome at first! We could also build it really really tall! We could build like, just really really giant buildings!"

"Well, that would work. I think the biggest cities on Amenta stall out around forty million but maybe you can get us all in one place with fancy enough buildings."

"I'ma build so so big buildings and also things that are under-ground!"

"It'll be really cool to figure out heating and transpor-tation and things."

"Have you, uh, built a city for sixty-five million people before?"

"Nope! It wouldn't be nearly this exciting if I had!"

"And probably not worth her time, I'd add. Vira's generally focused on figuring out how to do new things. She's really quite good at it."

"Buuuut if there's a problem it affects sixty-five million people."

"I made a viral vaccine that would have affected a lot more people if it had prob-lems. And a plan-etary force field. And Borg treaty code."

"Though I do like working with other people some-times and did for a bunch of those things and will prolly for this too."

"I mean, I'm not sure who you'd work with, all the city planners on Amenta are cleans, but." Shrug.

"Prolly other Amaliens and Ferengi and people who have built big cities before."

"Are there ones that have sixty-five million people? Who speak all different languages, too... and want kids."

"Not sure! There are cities with millions and maybe tens of millions? And where the people want kids - only the amalien spe-cies doesn't want kids really. Some places have lots of different languages and lots of people. Though we could also solve that with Cryptophasia which will let people trans-late easily."

Luciene taps on his datapad some.

"The capital city of the Ferengi has 253 million people. They mostly speak the same language, though there's a 23 million person district where a bunch of language are spoken and another city on the planet with 48 million people that also has a bunch of languages."

"Wow! Okay. Maybe it'll be fine."

"There's also a large amount of extra land I've purchased near the south pole we could use."

"Well, but we wouldn't season there."

"Why not?"

"There... aren't seasons, at the poles. Or equator."

"What do the seasons do 'xactly?

"They feel different and we only have babies in spring? - I don't understand how you can not already know this."

"I know that, I mean how do the seasons make you do that."

"I haven't the foggiest, I'm not green."

"Is really weird how you only know things if you have the right hair color."

"I didn't go to green school where they teach green stuff!"

"We can look into information on seasoning - I'm sure Lucien can find relevant information for you Vira."

"Possibly there are other uses for the extra land regardless?"

Lucien makes a note to send Vira papers on seasoning that he can find.

"We could prob-ably farm there? It's very irri-gate-able."

"If you already have robots, sure."

"We have some but also lots of Amaliens would help."

"If you've got lots of amaliens who wanna be polar farmers, sure."

"Bunch would do it if it's need-ed to help, so it'll make a base-line solution we could try to improve on."

"How many of you are there?"

"There are 134,203 amaliens - the spe-cies, not citizens of the expanse. I think maybe a ten or twenty thousand would be enough to feed the reds with quick to setup infra-struct-ure."

"That doesn't sound like a lot but I don't know enough about farming to dispute it! Let alone space farming."

"Farming is really efficient in terms of number of farmers at this point, most of the jobs are over-seeing various bits of automated labor."

"The robot apocalypse is here and it gave me a Katme dome."

Sierra smiles - it's nice to be able to be helpful.

"Do you intend to move in soon?"

"I - have no idea? I don't know when it'll be ready to have people living in it. I certainly can't go now, I left my baby at home!"

"The dome will be finished in about two and half weeks, three at the most. We could have a few buildings there by the time the dome itself is done, so if you'd like to move in then that would be poss-ible."

"You could bring your baby as well as other people from your home if you'd like."

"Well, nothing's really holding me there at home... I'd need to like, ask people."

"Of course."

"It's a pretty neat thing to be able to ask them though."

Moira smiles.

"Mhm. We do also need to figure out the citizenship situation."

"I don't have a clue what to tell you there."

"For now we only really need to decide what your citizenship status is, I think."

"I don't know what to do about that either! Especially since I'm going to live at home for at least a few more weeks!"

"We can just hold off on that then, and grant you and anyone you want to bring citizenship when you immigrate?"

"That sounds fine to me."

Eventually dinner winds to a close and Peka passes the night on Keetim in one of the shielded diplomatic rooms.

"Are you ready to leave? I have a conveniently discreet way down so I can join you in the district without arousing suspicion."

"Ooh, what is it?"

"I'd hate to spoil it." 

She leads Peka towards a room with five circles sized for people to stand on together on a platform.

Peka will step there with her.

A Ferengi at a console presses a few buttons, and then the both of them feel a strange buzzing sensation, their vision briefly going black, and then they are in Peka's bedroom.

"You can teleport? Why don't you do that all the time?"

"Amaliens can't use them because of the deconstructive process so the ship didn't have them. I paid quite a bit to have this one installed recently because it seemed useful under the circumstances. It costs a bunch in ongoing maintenance as well."

"The - deconstructive process -?"

"Transporters work by deconstructing people into energy and then reconstructing them somewhere else."

"So I'm - clean -?"

"Hm? You're still red?"

"Well - yes but - if all my atoms stopped existing for a second - my hair color isn't polluted."

"Oh."

"I mean, I'm not a theologian and also if I just tried to go out through the decontam exit nobody would, like, believe me, but."

This has Implications.

"What do we need to do to get people to recognize you and other transporter-ed reds as clean?"

"- teleport some of them and explain about turning them into energy and then ask theologians about it I guess?"

"We can teleport you again, I'll talk to Capitan Sierra and the crew about talking to theologians about it quickly."

"If this works, cleaning all the reds is going to be the Amalien's top priority I expect."

"It'd make a lot of things more convenient probably!"

Moira contacts her crewmates. 

Vira doesn't really understand how poll-ution works but she under-stands how Transporters work - they are a little bit warp related in some parts but she can explain the basic physics bits about changing things to en-ergy and  re-making them without men-tioning subspace. She messages Katme about it - they became friends when they worked on terraforming Katme together (giggle).

Katme says that sounds really cool and he hopes that Amenta can catch up to these inventions soon.

Does Katme think it could clean reds?

- Katme is not a theologian.

That said, he... cannot really imagine that it wouldn't? You can clean anything, the usual problem with the concept of cleaning reds is that they would be dead afterwards so there's no point. But if you just, uh, convert them into energy and back again - that seems to him like it should do it?

Okeydokes!

Vira asks Lucien for emails for some theologians and writes an email to them.

- which Sierra rewrites, including the numerous technical details and tangents as an attachment, and sending it herself.

The theologians are intrigued! One of them advances the opinion that the corruption is in the epigenetics and would remain but the others agree with Katme.

Lucien does some research and coordinates a whole team of Amalien operations officers and scientists to propose a complicated biological thing Amentans haven't discovered yet that could look like it's epigenetics but actually would be fixable with transporters and a bunch of graphs showing how it's definitely this. He has most of the operations and science officers on Keetim cont-ribute so it's very thorough.

Sierra emails a few blues, forwarding them what the theologians said and also her team's research into the epi-genetics bit since that seemed important to check.

Oh and also did the blues know that the first domes are ready and also the Amaliens have finished figuring out how the Amentans can affordably make tech to double the output of their farms within four Amentan years?

That's so awesome! say the blues. Cleaned reds will be much easier to pension off somewhere without any riots.

Sierra thinks the Unnamed Charter City that's getting set-up on Katme would probably accept them, which should be even easier then pensioning them off?

It's covered under a population control agreement, right? So that should be all right, though they should watch out, reds have a really high crime rate compared to everyone else.

Amaliens aren't actually running the city themselves, just helping, but she's been told they are cov-ered under Oahk's allot-ment. 

Sierra also thinks that people who were some-times criminals often stop doing crimes when things are more rel-axed and easier for them. 

(She doesn't tell the Amentans that even if reds were innately criminals they'd still be helping them.)

Well, it's their lookout either way, though they should be aware that it will be really hard to offload reds on other Amentans once they've been replaced even if the charter city discovers it's bitten off more than it can chew.

Sierra is sure that won't be an issue! Other Amentans don't need to worry, the charter city sounds like it is off to a really good start already.

And Vira gets to figuring out how to build GIANT and fast transporters for moving reds from one place to another place right next door. It's really fun!

And Lucien notices an issue. 

"Captain Sierra, I'm a bit con-fused 'bout what the Treaty says bout this sort of thing with trans-porters?"

"We can't give them the transporter tech, since sub-space is involved and that's a cen-tral bit of warp. Vira can't figure out a way round that, but we can build them ourselves and use them to help people."

"It's the helping people like this that I'm confused bout. The Treaty says we can't act as a shut-tle service and move people round using our ships all the time. A bit is fine but we can't effect-ively get around the res-trictions by acting as prox-ies. And I'm sort of worried using the trans-porters on so many people in such a big changey way is in a grey area."

Sierra closes her eyes briefly and shakes her head, upset. 

"Can you show me the bit of the treat-y?"

This bit, that says signers aren't allowed to "alter the course or destiny of a civilization through the proxy use of warp or warp-related technologies."

"That's... a grey area. Yeah." 

This is the hardest thing she's had to do since the war ended.

"It's. It's important to be the sort of people that can make treaties, even when that's hard."

"We have to talk to the Federation before doing this. See if they are okay with it."

The Federation Task Force for Treaty Compliance with the Amalien Expanse is usually stationed near the Borg quarantine planet, but they aren't doing essential quarantine functions there, just observing, and they can be dispatched in a small ship to come and have a look at the Amenta situation. There are five of them - looks from their hail like an Andorian and two humans and a Tellarite and a Vulcan.

"This is Ashovaol Th'zahlel," says the Andorian, "treaty compliance task force, I believe we've met."

"I'm Capitan Sierra of Starship Keetim, I think we met during the negotiations."

Sierra wouldn't have reco-gnized him - it's been several years and she's still not used to people aging.

"On behalf of the Amalien Expanse, thank you for coming and being willing to discuss further what I know is a difficult thing for all of us."

"Just doing my job. My understanding of your request is that you want to put tens of millions of people through the transporter for local religious purposes?"

"Yes. The distance transported is immaterial for the ritual."

"And how did these people come by a religious ritual that involves transporters... when they don't have them?"

"They have intense distress about... immaterial contamination. Their caste system contains an unclean caste which faces a lot of discrimination be-cause of this. They don't know how to ritualistically clear things that are alive without killing them, but apparently the basic mechanics of a transporter are sufficient to purify people. This way we can help the unclean caste become clean and they'll be treated a lot better."

"What do they already know about the mechanics of transporters?"

"We've explained what they do on a sufficient technical level for them to be satisfied of the ritualistic rel-evance, but not how the transporters work. No subspace rel-evant information has been shared."

"We'd like to meet some of the Amentans and talk to them about this, of course."

"Mhm. It's logistically comp-li-cated to meet members of the unclean caste but we can help arrange that if you'd like. Or you can talk to them remotely."

"Remotely should be fine at least as a preliminary. Will your ship be a convenient venue?"

"Yeah, it would be good."

Tense maybe, but she would prefer they met Amentans here then without nearby Amaliens in case things go bad-ly some-how.

They leave the Tellarite behind to man the ship. Everybody else transports across. "May I introduce my colleagues Park Ha-Yoon, Amani Imamu, and Isabella T'Mir," says Ashovaol.

"Good day."

"Hello. I'm Capitan Sierra of the Starship Keetim - Flagship of the Amalien Expanse. This is First Officer Neh, Chief Operations Officer Lucien, and Lieutenant Commander Moira - the ship's Navigator."

Sierra gestures to each in turn. Moira's job title wasn't very rel-evant to what she did a lot of the time, or why she was here, so she mentions the rank first.

... this is probably more formal than she needed to be able this but she doesn't want to surprise the Federation people with who's important. She's not-iced that a lot of them treat Amaliens as children except for ones they have noticed are important and it's good to avoid that.

"I'd like to hear whatever your prepared remarks are about why the treaty may permit this," says T'Mir.

"I'd like to confer with local religious authorities -"

"If you happen to have an Amentan physicist aboard, I'd like to talk to them."

"I'd like to be set up on a call with a representative of the unclean Amentans."

Lucien can provide them with emails for the local religious authorities, and will introduce the onboard Ameentan physicists, mostly here for col-on-ization things, to the federation official.

Moira leads the way to a conference room to set-up a call with a red.

And Sierra talks to T'Mir, going over the points she'd discussed with Moira and Lucien earlier.

"The relevant part of the treaty is the agreement in in Article 2, Section 3A, paragraph 1, which says that signatories must not 'alter the course or destiny of a civilization through the proxy use of warp or warp-related technologies'. Our proposal does not break this rule, for three different reasons - each of which would be enough on it's own to make us compliant."

"One, the natural course of the Amentan civi-lization would be for the elimination of the unclean caste, leaving only clean members of their society. They tacitly planned on doing this by population controls and exterminations. Our proposal replaces those methods with a method that preserves the lives and happiness of the currently unclean caste, but does not change the primary civilizational end result."

"Two, what we are doing is not proxy-use of technologies - given this technology the Amentan civilization would prioritize different actions, we are doing this only once on a scale relevant to the provision - not providing a continuous service, and Amentans will not primarily direct the process."

"And three, within the context of this situation and the relevant provision, the category of 'warp or warp-related technologies' doesn't apply to Transporters, because they are not being using to provide any services that are relevant or related to warp."

Normally Sierra would add things about how this is really important and using the transporters to clean reds is the right thing to do, but that's not really useful when it comes to listening to a treaty since they are s'ppossed to be followed even when it's important not to. Being able to agree with treaties is it's own sort of important that is right even when you have do something bad as a result. Also T'Mir is a Vulcan and mostly Vulcans seem to care even more than most Federation people about following the rules even when it meant doing the wrong thing.

"Of course, transported reds will be able, after this event, to affect the rest of Amentan civilization - presumably they are interfertile, mutually intelligible, planning to live in this system..."

"That seems likely, but we don't expect the civilization to change subs-stantially as a result. Just the lives of the Amentans."

"Why would the presence rather than the absence of a caste, even one with a small share of the total population, not affect the civilization?"

"The castes role is in menial labor, which is getting phased out regardless, any role they have in the future will be a new one which their caste isn't directly relevant for - they could have been another caste and it wouldn't make a sig-nificant difference."

Sierra will elide over how the phasing out is the result of Amalien introduced technologies - those interventions are allowed and not sub-ject to scrutiny under the treaty. 

"In your estimation the individual members of the caste are unexceptional and not likely to have any particular effect on the other Amentans' progress through their development?"

"Hmm..."

Sierra takes a moment to think.

"The distribution of abilities of the reds is unexceptional relative to that of the rest of the population, at least as far as Amentans' pro-gress and development goes."

Sierra isn't sure but reds might be less sensitive to pollution, but that doesn't seem relevant anyways.

"Some might argue that the process of exterminating undesirables is an irreplaceable moral lesson for a civilization."

Yes, it's true, some people are wrong.

Sierra keeps her voice sounding calm.

"This seems very un-likely to sub-stantially effect the civ-ilization's growth or development."

Also the Amaliens won't let the exter-mination happens anyways - if they can't use transporters there are less grey area ways to help the reds.

"Can you explain how your model generates this conclusion?"

"I think that choosing not to do the extermination might change the sort of lesson a civ-il-ization could learn, but planning on doing it only to have someone offer a different way doesn't seem likely to have a similar effect."

"Hm. What is your understanding of the phrase 'warp-related'?"

"Within the context of the clause and situation, I think it mans related to the application of warp tech-nology. Meaning use of warp technologies primarily for travel."

This bit of the arg-ument is sorta shaky, though it doesn't need to be accepted if the other parts are.

"The fundamental warp equation is unambiguously covered even though writing it down will not actually transport one any distance at all."

"I think that sharing the fundamental warp equation would have effects related to the application of warp tech-nology. Not direct effects, but indirect ones matter too I think."

"Transporters wouldn't have in-direct ones I think."

Hm... she does want to be open here but also is nervous about the stakes.

... It's her job to do hard things sometimes.

"I don't know if this point fully works cause there's a def-inition of warp-related technology in another part of the treaty that includes Trans-porters reg-ardless of us. It seems plau-sible that my inter-pertation of warp-related is what was meant in this bit by both sides though, and I do think it would be reas-onable for the Federation and the Amalien Expanse to decide to treat it that way."

"Have you already checked the language in all of the canonical translations?"

"I think we've only checked the Amalien and Federation Standard ones."

"The Vulcan text has a footnote which clarifies that it's meant as 'superluminal transit and allied technologies'. Now, you could argue that transporting people a meter to the left is not relevantly superluminal, but it is clearly an allied technology."

"Yes, that's included in the other versions as well. But the footnote refers to the first earlier bit that mentions 'warp and warp-related technology' and it doesn't say that it applies to all the uses of the term."

"It's conventional to understand a terminological footnote to apply throughout the document unless there is positive reason to contend otherwise."

"That seems like a reasonable objection, though I do think the intended spirit of the bit about was meant to focus on FTL applications, even if the close-est reading implies different. Feels like that bit of it we could agree to clear up and decide either way."

"Mm. I can't commit to anything on my own, of course. How might we verify that Amentans would not perform this ritual ostensibly motivated by their own religious convictions if they had their own transporter technology?"

"We are using the transporters in order to decrease the oppression of the reds and aid their flourishing. When we first told the idea of using trans-porters to Amentan gov-erments they told us it would be useful for helping make the genocide less hard for them."

"- the ritual isn't sufficient to alleviate the, uh, temptation?"

"It doesn't, I guess."

"I sorta hope they realize 'ventually. Some things seem to get better with time for differ-ent places if you give them enough things and help them enough. Just takes a bit to grow up." 

"Of course the position of the Federation is that outside help doesn't produce robust 'growth'."

"And the position of the Amalien Expanse is that trying to help is important. We've made mistakes when we tried, but mostly the people we've helped are still usually happy about it."

"This is a bit off the subject. How do you hope to secure the process so that it's impossible for Amentans to examine or steal relevant components of the transporter?"

Sierra has quite a bit of technical details Vira wrote up on this.

Which T'Mir can nitpick for quite some time.

Sierra will pass on the nitpicks to Vira! This is actually quite helpful.

Helpful? Her? Never.

Sierra will get all the useful advice out of T'Mir she can, though trying not to make the proposal seem any more in need of pol-ishing than she has to.

Eventually they will have something that T'Mir is willing to spend her colleagues' time on once they have finished their various meetings.

Sierra will arrange a joint meeting then, with the Federation officials, Lucien, Moira, and an Amalien scientist who has an earpiece with Vira on the other end. 

The observers confer about their findings, which add up to it being the case that the Amentan clean majority would in fact exterminate the reds with barely a qualm if it were convenient to do so and are willing to let the Amalien Expanse clean them so that they will not have to have their freedom of movement further restricted, whereupon they will live on a space set aside on Katme and do local business with Ferengi investment. The other Federation representatives are at least as nitpicky as T'Mir but she's anticipated most of their objections and given Sierra time to respond to them, with the result that they determine that one of them should stay on-site to monitor the process of transporting sixty-five million reds and report for backup if there is a breach despite the security precautions (T'Mir and the Tellarite both volunteer, the Amaliens can pick) but they can go ahead with this local one-time intervention as described.

Sierra conducts interviews with th Tellarite and T'Mir to figure out which to pick. She wants someone who is going to be fair, and hopefully care about the treaty because it lets them have peace and not cause they think the Amaliens were doing bad things and the treaty is the best they can get to stop them. She asks mostly about how they would decide on a few really weird edge cases that ob-viously won't really come up to figure this out.

T'Mir principally responds to the edge cases by asking lots of questions about the details of the hypothetical scenarios. The Tellarite seems to be the type who wants to consult his colleagues before deciding anything.

T'Mir can have hypothetical answers. The Tellarite can have a short interview.

"If it were necessary to transport reds a greater distance, if for example longer periods of immateriality were required for ritual purposes, I think we'd run into more security issues - you'd have to secure both ends, and you might leak salient information to the Amentans if they had to be informed of any constraints on the power draw per unit distance or intervening obstacles or what have you. If these were obviated, though, I see no reason we could not come to the same conclusion we reached today."

That's a reasonable answer. Sierra decides on working with T'Mir since she is more promising then the Tel-er-ite for avoiding delays if unexpected situations come up.

"Peek a boo."

Moira is attempting to play peek-a-boo with Peka's kid while entirely to self-conscious when she gets the news. 

"Eeehee!" says Katin.

(Moira is finding peek-a-boo much more difficult than she expected, it's rather difficult to do without making herself seem silly.)

"Peka dear, they've approved cleaning reds enmasse, we can setup a checkpoint for immigrants to your new city within the week."

They'd been holding off on starting the city until approval came through, to simplify pollution worries.

"Oh, I'm so glad they didn't find some excuse to hold it up!"

"I've already had an estate setup, I can deed the adjoining guest house to you today if you'd like."

"You're not even just renting it to me?"

"Not when I went through all the trouble of building it for you dear."

"Do you have pictures, can I see?"

"I suppose I can show you a glimpse."

And they are standing somewhere else, with a slightly translucent hologram overlaying the room they were in to show the intricate front garden/lawn hybrid of an extremely nice mansion by Amentan standards.

"Oh that's gorgeous, like you'd see it on an aesthetic blog..."

"I think you'll love the inside even more."

Moira lets the image fade. 

"But I'll save that for an in-person tour I think."

"Tease."

"Of course dear."

She is really looking forward to showing Peka the holodeck in the new house.

"Will you be moving your family there as well?"

"At least till Katin's second summer, I think. After that they might want their own place."

"There are some rather nice apartments being built near your house I think."

"What sort of jobs do you expect you or your family members to want to retrain into?"

"Mom might want to be a doctor! We can probably afford to have more of those going forward! Dad I'm not sure at all. Me, I want to sing, but who knows if I could actually make it in the business."

"I for one would certainly like to hear you sing more."

In that case Peka will pick up Katin, who is fussing about being ignored, and sing her a lullaby.

Eventually Peka moves in, the city is built, and migrants (cleaned at the border!) start streaming in.

And Vira goes to her first day of school!

Her students, enjoying as they do the benefits of universal translation, are packing the lecture hall - they want to know how to program computers and grow gardens on Katme and build spaceships (insofar as she is allowed to teach them to build spaceships).

Vira teaches about alien ecology stuff for growing really inter-esitng gardens and also how to program synthetic processing routines for automating work.

(There's another Amalien who's better at not saying things that can teach them about pre-warp spaceship things)

The people in her classes are mostly former outworkers who need something else to do now and aren't old enough that they can just retire in the changed economy. A lot of them have trouble keeping up with the material, though, and don't come back after the lunch break.

Vira messages Lucien about finding someone who's better at teaching to more people during the lunch break, so people who leave either classes have someone to teach them if they want. 

She keeps going pretty fast after lunch, trying to aim at things where even a few ex-perts would be really useful for the reds to have. She also tries to see if people have questions more, since she knows some people don't just shout out their questions when they have them like she does.

They're pretty shy about asking questions but there are a few people she can get more engagement from.

Vira is extremely enthusiastic about their questions! They are very good questions. She feels like there should be more questions.

"Can everyone write down a question they have about syn-thetic routine stability, even if it's really really silly and bad? You should sign it too. And try to write down a different question than everyone else, and we'll check and do it again till everyone has a different question of their own."

This process is confusing and intimidating and two people leave instead.

Vira thinks that is prolly okay 'cause she is only really good at teaching people who can sorta keep up with her which is hard - other Amaliens can figure out how to teach other Amentans. She could maybe fi-gure it out but she doesn't want to and it wouldn't be the best use of her time.

She gets people to talk to each other about their questions in small groups, bouncing round excitedly between them.

They're used to being able to look things up on the Internet, which sadly doesn't work nearly as well when the things they're learning about are not already well known to Amentans in general.

Vira will look into getting an ar-chive of the int-er-net they are 'llowed to look at from other planets setup, but till then she can be the internet for them and tell them things when they have qu-eries herself.

The class has shrunk enough over the course of the day that this is almost manageable. They want to be able to maintain their own replicators and power generators and robots. They want to grow plants and heal the sick and build themselves homes.

Elsewhere, Xeelia's office is visited by a stream of reds who managed to have medical crises on the trip or after the transport or in the hours immediately following. This one had a flareup of a chronic breathing issue, this one has gone psychosomatically blind, this one got into a fistfight.

This one will be issued properly performing lungs.

This one will be patched up and provided with superior fists correction: and deferred to judicial authorities.

This one will...

"You will restate your medical malfunction."

"I can't see. Everything just went dark, almost twenty minutes ago."

Xeelia scans the eyes again.

If it were a borg drone Xeelia would turn the eyes off and back on again. However, it's species does not support this recovery mechanism.

"You will provide additional details."

"It's never happened to me before. I thought it must be a transporter side effect, that it'd wear off or they'd have warned us, but nobody else seems to have had this problem as far as we heard." She's shaking a bit. Her boyfriend, who brought her in, is holding her hand.

"It is not a transporter side effect."

Xeelia scans the girlfriend and boyfriend at the same time to verify that they are in fact separate entities and this isn't the result of an anomalous conjoined lifeform.

"You will scan yourself for any attentendant side effects or anomalies."

"- scan myself? I don't have one of those doodads..." she says.

"Do you just mean, is there anything else wrong?" says her boyfriend.

"Correct."

"I'm really stressed out because I have gone blind and I don't like it! I'm not - nauseated or in pain or anything -"

Xeelia does not have any explanations in her Borg knowledge bank for this occurence.

However, in her other knowledge bank....

"Please describe your mental state prior to the blindness."

"Uh - we'd gotten split up in the crowd, I was trying to find him without making a scene, I went up a flight of stairs in the plaza to get a better look and I didn't see him but I saw the horizon, and then I looked back at all the people coming out of the transporter receiving hall and then my vision went black, around the edges, and it was all gone in less than a minute and I started yelling and he found me..."

"Describe how you were feeling in more detail."

"- anxious? Overwhelmed?"

"Prior to the blindness?"

"Yeah? I mean we're on - we're on Katme, we're clean, it's a lot...?"

"Correct."

"I believe your emotional malfunction may be resulting in your ocular one."

What should be done about this. Xeelia reaches out for the other borg unit present.

"You will hug this." Xeelia orders, holding up a tiny borg mouse by the scruff of its neck. 

"Beep."

"- I will hug what," says the patient, exasperated.

"It's a mouse," says her boyfriend, "a cyborg mouse, I'm not sure it's big enough to hug?"

"Very small hugs will suffice."

The boyfriend takes the mouse and puts it in his girlfriend's hands. She pets it awkwardly.

"I still can't see," she says, after a moment.

Beep "beeps" when petted. 

She holds out the mouse and her boyfriend takes it back and offers it back to Xeelia. "I did already hug him on my way here," she adds, patting her boyfriend's arm.

"This is unanticipated." 

Xeelia can not think of where to find a larger mouse so she will need to devise novel measures.

Perhaps if the blindness is a response to the substantial change in the patient's life then reversing that change will fix the blindness?

Hm... no - new changes should be overcome, not surrendered to.

"Please lie back on this table while I administer sedatives to decrease your bodies' physiological symptoms of stress and anxiety."

She lies down, patting the table to make sure she doesn't flop off of it.

She will not flop off of it.

"This will not feel like much of anything as we do not use primitive needles in our medical equipment."

Xeelia presses a few buttons, activating the sedative translators - using a modified version of the cocktail used to prevent newly assimilated borg from having averse reactions.

"You should feel weightless, and focus may be impaired. If very recent events become difficult to recall that is also an expected effect."

Xeelia would tell the patient not to worry, but it would be redundant.