Well. The ship now has a giant hole in the middle of it. It is now, expectedly, sinking. The crew drones are mobilized to evacuate everyone and put everyone on lifeboats, no, you cannot bring your luggage with you your life is literally in danger. No, you cannot argue with the drones, they are drones and have infinite mental strength. Get on the lifeboat already.

Zemked sends out distress signals on the special frequencies. The other Keeper crew are managing the evacuation, while he focuses on getting help. In between transmissions, he takes a moment to look at the window.

This does not look like Zmavliterdi. Where are they.

Many on the Refuge keep journals, and nearly all of them keep notes of one stripe or another.

However, few are ever filled from cover to cover - most journals and notebooks are mostly blank pages. At some point in the writing - perhaps after a few eventful months or years wherein little or no journalling happened - if feels more accurate to start writing in a different book. Flipping through the pages of some twelve-year-old's life, you'll come to an abrupt halt - perhaps with an epilogue penned by some older and wiser child looking back on things, and occasionally with five epilogues each written ten years apart - after that, blank white pages.

Piraeus-take-forty-four (8505-present at 37.943 by 23.647) is not an old city, despite that the harbor while newly dredged has seen long long use, and despite that a stone's toss out of downtown the old stone buildings of the old stone town were certainly built to last. The very model of a modern metro area, houseboats clutter the water, mobile homes squeeze themselves between the ivy-sheathed sides of skyscrapers, and the air is thick with gyrocopters and powered parachutes.

They were not exactly expecting guests. But Refugites pride themselves on being prepared to improvise. When it's observed that while the strange alien vessel isn't responding intelligibly to radio it sure is taking on a lot of water and launching lifeboats, pings are sent @reservists and @everyone. A horde of rescue vessels and gyrocopters descend on the Yellow Ribbon. 

Please tell them that it's not leaking dangerous radiation.

Zemked is hoping that those...not-helicopters? aren't bombers. It would be valid of them to destroy strange alien vessels that pop out of nowhere and honestly that's probably the smart thing to do in a significant number of cases but he really hopes it isn't that.

It seems that the rest of the Zmavlipre are also of two minds about the prospect of aliens coming to meet them and only about half of them are making deliberate movements to get their attention. Usually the ones that have injured people are doing that. 

Zmavlimu'e is, or was, also really concerned about ships sinking and releasing enriched fissile materials everywhere, which is why the reactor is engineered very well. So long as it hasn't split apart in half or has had a hole drilled through it, it will gracefully shut down and become inert and self-contained, and is rated to sit in water for years and years. Of course, every time a nuclear ship has sunk the reactor was fished out at the earliest opportunity – yes, it's rated to withstand the ocean but why risk it. None of the Refugites' radiation detectors will read anything above standard background radiation levels.

The not-helicopters aren't bombers. Some of them lower ropes to the deck, some of them land or lower...

Like a zmavlipre sans tentacles, with no drones among them. Most of them are a bit shorter and thinner than average, but some outliers stand head and shoulders above the rest. The ones without hats on have fur on top of their heads, which mostly come in a variety of earth tones and greys (though some are vivid green or purple). They wear bulky flotation devices which aren't built to any particular standard, gas masks, and have rugged computers strapped to their arms or harnessed to their bodies. Much of their ensemble and tech has a haphazard or jury-rigged look to it, and some aren't wearing shoes. They speak incomprehensibly, and motion people variously towards ropes or flying machines or boats about the Yellow Ribbon.

Someone in power armor and a gas mask opens the door to Zemked's cabin. What she's saying, no one could know, but in between the hurried questions she's... laughing delightedly?

What are these rubber-forehead aliens.

Bald humans with a pronounced brow ridge in lieu of eyebrows. Shelfishish shellish plates helmetting their heads and - like spaulders - their shoulders. Tentacles extending and retracting from their backs as they clamber into lifeboats because of course.

They're taller than average, but not so much taller than average that you couldn't have found actors to play them. And one can't help but notice, uh, that the extras bulking out the crowd are shorter on average than the people taking center stage. It's dawning on the emergency responders that this isn't real.

A ship of alien design appeared out of nowhere with a tremendous splash. Allegedly, one assumes, because it did some kind of physics-defying warp jump or something. It is sinking. Because it was damaged in space combat or something. This is the first episode of a TV series.

How did they possibly arrange this? So much of it seems impossible.

This is the greatest practical joke in the brief history of Piraeus-44.

Word gets out not to get on the sinking ship because that's not going to be necessary, no one's actually in any danger. Some people with durable self contained underwater breathing apparatti are going to do so anyway and film it. (But not livestream it. You don't... you don't livestream the inside of an alien vessel, even as a game. There are any people on the Refuge that stupid but none of them both live in Piraeus-44 and have SCUBA armor.)

They have hair! And remarkable height variation. And remarkable color variation. Yes, these truly are aliens.

Why does the rescue team look so messy. Why aren't they wearing uniforms? Are they even coordinating? Most people follow the aliens gesturing towards the very strange and very varied rescue equipment but some are reluctant and would prefer to just go on the lifeboat and maybe go to shore themselves? They're more put off by the incoherency of their aesthetic – are they acting as a unified group? Will they get separated if they go with the rope people or the landed people or...?

Zemked is...disturbed...but they're aliens (despite the odd uncanny valley similarity in their morphology) so their body language is probably way different. In any case he, having worked in a public facing role for several dozen years, has impeccable impassivity. He will look very Calm and Neutral about everything that's happening and will start explaining everything in Standard Imperial, which, the woman wouldn't know how to speak. Once this becomes clear he takes out a laminated page that has the evacuation routes for the ship. It's again in Standard Imperial, but it has Pictures and Arrows and Ideograms which are surely a universal language, no?

If it is a joke it's a very expensive and elaborate one!! Lots of money and effort has been spent decorating and outfitting all the rooms on this ship – it is very luxurious and seems to be some kind of super deluxe pleasure craft, with some of the rooms' purposes probably being inscrutable (is that a torture room?)

Zemked gets word that a bunch of the aliens are leaving the ship, which is honestly valid of them. None of them are wearing biohazard safety gear – do they not have hazmat suits that won't be damaged underwater? – and they should probably minimize their exposure time until then. And Zemked can swim very well – he's not particularly afraid for his own life. But the injured people!! There are injured people on some of the lifeboats. Nothing life threatening so far, though. 

Should the Refugites be wearing full hazmat suits? They really hope not! SCUBA or filtration masks will hopefully be enough.

The woman in power armor takes a picture of the laminated page with a multi-function computer wrapped around her arm, and after some charades and typing (communicating with her allies outside?) she rushes off below decks. Her expression and body language comes across as less delighted by the end of it - more weirded out, and more worried.

Piraeus-44 doesn't have an established protocol for evacuating and quarantining aliens from another planet, but the reservists have drilled evacuations and quarantines separately; Refugites aren't prepared for everything but they are prepared to improvise; familiar and comfortable enough with their options to rapidly adapt to new circumstances. Between the Zmavlipre's existent plans and Refugite airlift, before long they have everyone off board... probably. They'd all feel a lot more comfortable if they could understand the Zmavlipre as they take headcount. If they are, in fact, taking headcount - there's no way to know unless someone gets agitated about it.

The Schelling Point for quarantining an alien species in a port city is the container ship in the harbor with the biggest surface area. Very few Zmavlipre are instead ferried towards other ships or the shore, and they are redirected before making landfall. Refugites typically have first aid training and first aid supplies, and professional doctors have flown in - if they try to treat the Zmavlipre like they would humans, does anything disastrous happen?

Piraeus-44 / Talk / Local / Urgent / ship sinking appeared out of nowwhere / Marine Xenobiology Pilot Episode

 

Containment Coordination (stickied)

 

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Yellow Days (MOD)

Joined 8536, 360.40/365.99

@Decker please sticky this thread please.

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Posted 8538, 102.49/365.99

 

worldwalker wamb

Joined 8530, 180.66/365.99

Since this thread is getting unmanageable, I volunteer @King_of_the_Rock_Lickers to make a summary thread.

 

Gentle reminder that this thread is for coordinating the alien evacuation and not for other things, for which there are other threads.

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Posted 8538, 102.49/365.99

 

Noctilucent

Joined 8520, 004.72/365.99

Photograph of the alien evacuation routes

Expand
questions I have are:

- at what point in their evacuation are they already (can we tell what hasn't been evacuated from the diagram)?

-is the thing on the diagram that looks like a reactor a reactor?

- which parts of the evacuation route are untenable/are there parts of the boat that nneed search and rescue?

@worldwalker wamb

Posted 8538, 102.49/365.99

 

iuhruwet

Joined 8513, 098.23/365.99

I've mirrored this thread to a few other places

spoilered to save space

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Posted 8538, 102.49/365.99

 

Yellow Days (MOD)

Joined 8536, 360.40/365.99

@Decker @Decker @Decker @DECKER

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Posted 8538, 102.50/365.99

 

Decker (MOD)

Joined 8505, 366.00/365.99

Stickied, thanks.

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Posted 8538, 102.50/365.99

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Decker (MOD)

Joined 8505, 366.00/365.99

A mod is you for the next 10 hours.

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Posted 8538, 102.51/365.99

Well yes??? They're literally aliens they could be contaminating your entire planet with microorganisms none of you have any defense for!!!! And the same goes for them.

Zmavlipre do do headcounts!

The Zmavlipre approve of being herded into a central location that is out of the way and do not try to go to the shore once they realize the Refugites want them to go to the container ship. 

The Zmavlipre will not allow any of the doctors to touch them and theirs because otherworldly contamination!! What you ought to do is to put all of them in a quarantine zone, but of course none of the Refugites will understand the Zmavlipre. They already have their own medical supplies but will accept, with some reluctance, any medical supplies that the Refugites give them. 

None of them have suffered any major injuries except for one person who lost a hand and a foot. They...don't seem very concerned about it? Their expression is oddly neutral, though a little strained.

The guy might be in shock, or maybe he's just putting a brave face on for the sake of the somewhat crowded quarantine zone.

Food is provided, though who knows whether or not it's edible. We also have fresh water, and various concentrations of saline, but don't know how to get across that you should be careful eating things that you don't understand (unless you understand them, which is kind of what we're hoping for here).

Someone found a pictographic language from a sci-fi novel they'd read and printed out a bunch of cards, they wonder whether that'll make communication easier?

Injuries mean that we have blood and skin samples now, which will be collected surreptitiously - Refugites dealing with aliens don't care to lay their non-pictograph cards on the table. What does all that look like under a microscope?

They won't eat any of the food until the Refugites have done chemical and biological testing to ensure that they have basic biological compatibility, such as not having opposite chirality amino acids. Not that they'll survive very long if that's the case but...if that was the case they would prefer to die more painlessly. They will happily offer to give samples to the Refugites but they're going to despair again that none of them know Standard Imperial.

It will transpire that Refugite and Zmavlire'a biology is...oddly similar? Similar blood components, similar skin components, also similar biology. No opposite chirality amino acids.

Kind of? It's difficult for them to express 'we are from another world with a different biosphere and you should have biohazard and quarantine protocols and place' in drawings. Several of the Zmavlipre offer e-reader type things (Zmavlimu'e has full color e-reader displays!) with various children's books with pictures and attempt to either walk the Refugites through it or shove it vaguely in their direction for them to take and figure out.

Standard Imperial is a constructed language so they think aliens would be able to learn it quickly. Especially since they do seem to have technology equal to or greater than Zmavlimu'e's in complexity!

"Similar biology" is a relative term. The Refugites were expecting them to be literally human, or, as a distant possibility, humans that had been genetically modified by unknown technology. 

Do the Refugites and the Zmavlipre have a common ancestor? If so, how far back do they need to go to find it?

And check the air fiters for microbes. There haven't been super unusual numbers of them, but let's try to identify all the germs we can.

As the minutes turn into half-hours, word gets around the globe that something very odd is happening at 37.943 by 23.647. 

What exactly? Well, no one yet knows. The common man in the street, however, feels safe making a certain few assumptions:

- If it's a prank, it is a very impressive one. Every way of checking confirms that there wasn't a boat there at one time stamp, and then there was the next.

- It's not aliens from outer space. If aliens could reach us, we'd have already been grabbed. If we were being grabbed, it'd a) happen too quickly for us to react and b) make a lot more noise.

- It's not aliens from a parallel version of our starter planet. If aliens from different versions of our planet could reach us, we'd have already been grabbed. If we were being grabbed, it'd a) happen too quickly for us to react and b) make a lot more noise.

- It's not actually exfohazardous. Someone wants us to think that, because they know we'll play around it, but it's not actually true (this is one of those heuristics that is almost always right).

- It is actually biohazardous. It's fucking always bioharzardous.

Some of the people who are tuning in - or who were awoken by emergency alarms - are the types of people who can be anywhere on the planet in four decimal minutes. The Zmavlipre see rockets landing in Piraeus-44.

Others work from the comfort of their consoles, but not on things that seem like they could be dangerous to spread around.

...The aliens are being quite insistent - using limited coms capacity to make clear - that they should be quarantined and that people who've interacted with them should be quarantined, and that the biosecurity precautions they're seeing aren't enough. That's... lovely. If the Zmavlipre are actually from a different planet with a radically different evolutionary history, keeping them alive on this mote of dust will be a trick. Or, this could be an urgent warning that the Yellow Ribbon was carrying a horrible alien plague, which if true would be evidence for the "this is a TV show or something styled to look like one" hypothesis.

At least the aliens being upfront about this raises the odds that they can be trusted (unless that's their entire ploy).

Until anyone has the vaguest idea what's going on, no one on board this ship will be leaving it. The new-minted MXPE Taskforce seems to be taking point on coordinating things and people are letting them do that. They have deep pockets for money and niche domain experts - probably the bulk of their Taskforce is a preexisting conspiracy and some people have passed the hat for a detective to look into that. Someone's putting together a record in case everyone suddenly dies (and a details-light record in case knowing about something in the record is what killed them). Word is tricking out into the greater Refuge that there's either a prank or a potential biosecurity breach at 37.943 by 23.647, and people worldwide are coordinating time sensitive details like tracking the winds and ocean currents and sending cleanup crews.

We can also drop like two thousand positive-pressure hazmat suits on the quarantine ship for everyone on board to wear.

It'd be really nice to crack the alien language but that's hard if they don't want to upload everything to the internet. Though some expert linguists and diplomats have now entered the quarantine, and they'll make as rapid progress as can be reasonably expected of them.

Cladistic DNA testing will reveal that the Zmavlire'a are from an entirely different evolutionary history or have been thoroughly genetically modified – many structures parallel that of humans, but they have tweaks even in very basal structures. If they do have a common ancestor it will be very nonobvious.

Also, it turns out that remna share the same set of amino acids as humans, but that they have twenty four rather than twenty two proteinogenic amino acids. The extra two aren't essential though, and can be synthesized from other ones.

The air filters will have foreign microbes but none of them seem pathogenic or are outcompeting the native microbes.

The Zmavlipre are going to hope again that those rockets are not nukes heading straight towards them. They will be very relieved when they safely land and there are no explosions.

The Zmavlipre are not surprised or upset that none of them are being allowed off the ship – that's what the Imperium would have done if the situation were reversed.

The Zmavlipre assume that the hazmat suits are not for them given that none of them are sized for remna, who are bigger.

Two of the Keepers are actually linguists, and another one who's currently a military officer has it as a long-time hobby. They'll also try to figure out Refugite language from what they're saying, but they're going to be much slower than the Refugites since they don't have the support of an entire civilization behind them.

None of the Zmavlipre are going to hand over any of their electronics given that this is an entire other world and that their ship – which had most of their stuff on it – has sunk. Another person will figure out the idea of displaying e-books on their device and then showing them to a Refugite, and then displaying the next page, hoping that they'll catch on and take pictures of video to digitize the thing. The other Zmavlipre cooperate with this strategy and display pages from various basic texts that have illustrations on them.