Lucien is just about the busiest he's ever been! Things are moving fast and he feels like he can't do everything right but he's trying really really hard.

A couple of weeks into the prep-arations he goes to meet with the mayor of Chaspanti. 

(The meeting is only sch-eduled a day in advance cause he doesn't act-ually have enough things or-ganized to know enough to sche-dule to far in advance and it's sorta di-stressing but he's finding time to do the things!)

The mayor is always happy to meet with Lucien. "Good morning!"

Lucien smiles weakly.

"Morning."

He's been up for three hours already. He's not tired, though his back hurts badly enough that he wants to sleep anyways. 

"I um. Have a bunch of things 'bout the amalien exodus to talk to you about and preparations and. Such."

"Ah, yes." Concerned brow-furrow. "We'll be sorry to see you go."

"We're pretty sad to leave."

His lip wobbles a bit. Focus Lucien.

"Um. Not all of us will be leaving though."

"I do hope there'll be enough to manage the monster population, I don't know what we'd do without you if one of those decided Chaspanti looked like a nice place to start trouble."

Right, yes.

"That's a big part of what I'm hear to talk about, ac-tually. Trying to figure out who to leave to help with monsters and to do my job and things."

"I imagine it's not a skill that will be much called for offplanet."

"Oh we're gonna take a bunch of the monsters but not as many of the ones who might be hard do I guess. But the sorta skills we need for helping sett-le a new planet and for helping deal with monsters aren't that different? Lots of problem solving and things."

"...I'd have expected the kinds of problem solving to be almost completely nonoverlapping but perhaps amaliens, being immortal, pick up skillsets that include both more frequently."

"Oh hm."

"I think because we are older most of it comes down to per-sonality almost? And the sort of personality is a problem solving one who can deal with new things happening and stre-ssful situations well and stay focused and things."

"Um. So. The ob-vious choice for monster-dealing spe-cifically is Meelia. I wanted to check first to make sure you agree this is a bad idea and would not work cause di-plomacy with Amentans is also pretty im-portant?"

"- yes, I agree completely."

Here are the other choices! Keeta will be staying regardless but is busy, Eema is in-experienced but tries to be like Meelia (which might not be ideal), this amalien is good at calming scared monsters but is bad at telling how people feel (and has to ask a lot), and Deet can definitely do it but doesn't re-member things for very long and would pre-fer a more stable job than the Lucien type of job has been. 

It's clear from the way that Lucien is talking about all these amaliens that virtually all of them will be going to the red colony by default.

Well, they can probably pare down the relevant job description if there are going to be many fewer amaliens around, and could add some sort of interface person for the one with the empathy deficit or a scheduling assistant for Deet.

"Deet's issue isn't scheduling - he can remember things from the past couple of years. It's more... continuity of per-sonal identity shaped? He can't remember things farther back and he doesn't like it if who he is is constantly changing and so he needs a stable en-viroment."

"He can... have a house in Chaspanti? I'm not sure I fully understand what kind of support he needs."

"My job involves a lot of dealing with different things happening - so if he tried doing it he'd .... change quicker than he wanted to and become sort of a different person. I think that'll pro'lly happen anyways since things are changing so much right now, but he'll probably aim to find a new ... balance. He'd do my job here well... but ... he'd become a different person from year to year as different sort of issues cropped up I think? He'd stay good at helping I think, but he'd be sad about not ... existing for long or something like that? It's hard to explain."

"Would keeping - notes, a diary, something like that - help?"

"I expect he'd feel like he's reading the diary of a stranger who just happened to be like him in some ways? After a uh. year or something."

"I've never had occasion to think about what kind of structure might help someone with this trait, I'm sorry."

"Of course." Wow Lucien's back hurts so much.

Maybe the mayor thinks an amalien who's organized but not as good with monsters and the amalien who is good with monsters would work well as a team?

Quite possibly, if they're willing to both stay!

"I expect they will be given that it's important for you all to have help too."

He can move on to discussing other logistical things now if the mayor is good with that? The amaliens would also like to know if they can have help loading Marma onto one of the colony ships, they don't want to leave him behind but the logistics are difficult. Also there are places the Amentans should ideally not build things on, such as the important art things here, here, and here Lucien explains, pointing to places on a map on his everything. He'll email the exact details later. Those places are mostly art about amaliens being sad about leaving home / being left behind and they want them to stay as re-minders. 

Also the amaliens seem to have coalesced on Ember as the name of this planet.

That's a fine name. They can mark those sites as preserves. What kind of help does Marma need, what is Marma?

Marma is the giant manta ray monster. They need help managing the logistics of getting a 500 foot wide manta ray into a ship. 

Lucien is pretty sure there's enough room in the ship but the Marman amaliens were having trouble.

Well, does Marma need to be in water continuously or just transported onto the ship where he'll be fine till they get there?

Lucien thinks back through his hectic last few weeks, searching his brain for what he was told about this at the last meeting.

That's... odd.

"Um."

He pulls out his schedule and hurriedly flips through, until he finds a messy entry for a meeting where he'd be updated on Marma, crammed in-between two other meetings late at night. He... did not go to that meeting.... he must have forgotten.

"Um..."

"Probably that's something Marma's friends will want to check before trying to take it offplanet at all."