Well, it wasn't before, but it apparently is now.

After some internal discussion, a ship tries to contact the planet -

"This is the Sesati starship Sky's Eternity, of the Sesati exploratory fleet. Our intentions are peaceful. Your coastlines match those of a planet photographed by a civilization we've previously come into contact with, known in one of its local languages as 'Amenta', but we're aware of cases of planets that look very similar from space. We request confirmation that we have made contact with Amenta, or an introduction to the planet we've found instead. We request documentation on physical and ritual cleanliness standards in use on this planet in order to ensure that they are equal to or stricter than our own, and to comply with them ourselves in case visits or trade of physical goods turn out to be possible."

Everybody on the planet is now very excitedly yelling at them that this is indeed Amenta but they haven't met their civilization before, are they time travelers, they are so happy to meet them, here is the documentation they asked for.

There's a pause while they read some of the documentation to confirm that it sounds like Amenta's usual bullshit -

("Matches the download from Summary Bank."

"Does the replicator already have presets for their magical fucking soaps?")

- and while they talk strategy and then they respond.

"We're happy to meet you, too. We aren't time travelers but we do have the ability to step between branches of reality - from worlds where massacres happened, to worlds where they were prevented; from worlds where people lived long and happy lives, to ones where they were tortured into insanity. The Amenta we heard about before from the civilization we met was probably a near miss, to you. We only knew about it because an emigrant from Anitam was working as a diplomat for a different spacefaring civilization, Vanda Nossëo, which we had extensive contact with. Anyway, we're a little confused that you treat animal feces as theologically clean but it doesn't sound as though you'd be trying to trade us objects covered in it. We're relieved to say that there are no other ways in which our standards are stricter than yours that aren't fully redundant with procedures for avoiding cross-species disease transmission. All ways in which your standards are stricter than ours seem possible to fully accommodate by doing a full Amentan-standard decontamination of any objects we send you that might at some point have come into contact with pollutants and been decontaminated only according to our standards where they're laxer.

"If you're much like the other Amenta, you'll want the secret of faster-than-light travel."

Everybody on Amenta who is talking to them agrees that they want this secret.

"We left our planet in more of a hurry than we would have chosen, to slip between realities in search of the power to stand against Vanda Nossëo. It’s unlikely that Amenta has such power yet either. We will need to look farther afield, and that will be dangerous. We have families with young children with us. Eventually, we will find a new planet to claim; it's possible that in the interim it would be useful if we could leave our civilians on one of your moons, or on a tropical island. We have concerns about the way your society is structured, assuming it matches the other Amenta; it would delight us to ask you to do right by Ereith first -

- But we have all seen what happens, when powerful aliens sweep in with every demand they can think of. They get bitter grudging acquiescence at best, and if they dare to sleep soundly it's only because they're fools. We have many things to offer you. We can end hunger; we can end aging. We have songs so surpassingly beautiful they heal the sick. We defy death itself and can retrieve anyone we like from its grasp. We have no need to be grudging and no desire to make enemies. So as a gift, and a gesture of good faith before negotiations truly begin, the warp equations that will free you from your planet - "

That still probably leaves them neatly contained to the system for a while, while they actually build a warp drive, and over long distances or in familiar areas the Sesatis can outpace them. But, well, the point is not to actually empower them, the point is to seem less obnoxious than Vanda Nossëo.

They are extremely fucking grateful and radio the praises of the benevolent aliens. Tapa offers to vacate a moon dome and turn it over to them, Cene offers them a tropical island. What is it they wanted them to do with Ereith?

Oh, they don’t need an existing dome if there’s space for a new one! They can construct one, it's no trouble at all. They let Cene know they'll get back to them about the island when they’ve done more research on whether to expect disease transmission to occur between them.

They don’t honestly really get what happened there? It sounds like Ereith helped them fight their common enemy, but then the other nations turned on them because... Ereith fighting might get its own people killed? And they were so concerned about that that... they killed some more of them? Do they even have that right, that’s bizarre. The aliens are honestly very confused. Probably Ereith is not this confused, maybe the other Amentans should ask them what would make things right.

Incidentally, would the Amentans like to confirm that all-new bodies animated by copies of the final mind-states of (formerly) deceased people are clean by their standards?

Tapa offers them space to construct a dome near their existing ones!

Amenta's international community benefits by having a firm line not to be crossed about involving civilian castes in combat roles. Ereith's thing is different in a way that threatens that firm line. No one wanted to see the Oahk Empire conquer anyone, except for the Imperials, but it has historically been their position that this doesn't justify fully arbitrary escalation (for example, blowing up the entire mainland continent would probably also have prevented the empire from conquering Ereith, if they'd been able to do that and the empire had invaded anyway). The international response to boundary-crossing in sensitive areas like war crimes, population, bioweapons, etc., does generally involve ganging up on the offender to make transgressing unappealing and unlikely to work. They are happy to hear how other places solve this problem, it would be kind of weird if their were the objectively best way.

That sounds... clean, yeah, assuming the new body is, like, alive?

("Can we tell them they're idiots?"

"We can tell them anything Zatar okays but we probably want to be careful which fights we pick."

"But how can they be that horrible? Why?"

"Found a Summary Bank article about it. It's wild.")

"This document was produced by a planet most of whose societies lacked a specific military caste at the time it was written, and which otherwise had technology likely similar to our best guess at the technology available during the time the events of the war between Ereith and the Oahk Empire occurred. The people involved seem to be among the most similar species to Amentans, both physically and psychologically." Here, have the Fourth Geneva Convention, with all its unexplained references to "children under fifteen" and "objects of religious worship". It does a lot of calling out specific categories of protected person or object -

The wounded and sick, as well as the infirm, and expectant mothers, shall be the object of particular protection and respect.

As far as military considerations allow, each Party to the conflict shall facilitate the steps taken to search for the killed and wounded, to assist the shipwrecked and other persons exposed to grave danger, and to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment.

Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians of another High Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases.

The obligation of a High Contracting Party to allow the free passage of the consignments indicated in the preceding paragraph is subject to the condition that this Party is satisfied that there are no serious reasons for fearing:

(a) that the consignments may be diverted from their destination,

(b) that the control may not be effective, or

(c) that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy through the substitution of the above-mentioned consignments for goods which would otherwise be provided or produced by the enemy or through the release of such material, services or facilities as would otherwise be required for the production of such goods.

It's extensive. And it's clearly only the tip of the iceberg; it references other similar agreements.

"Sesat has not sought the protection of specific categories of person but has agreements with some of its neighbors regarding perfidy and oathbreaking. It angers us to see people forbidden to defend themselves.

As for resurrected people, their bodies are certainly alive. We're pleased to know that all Sesatis are or can be clean to Amentan standards."

Many of these things don't make sense to them ("religious worship"? how long are these years? does the civilization these are from even have population control?) but they do appreciate the example to learn from! The prevailing minority opinion on what else to do with Ereith is "declare that they are in fact All Grey, and monitor their population movements accordingly", but it's not a particularly live issue since no one has in fact invaded Ereith since the Empire and it hasn't come up.

Well, that's about as much of a fight as they really want to pick over Ereith. They can clarify that the species in question has severely painful and deadly childbirth and doesn't need a specific year length so only a few of their civilizations have ever ended up pressed for space.

They put up their own moon dome. It seems to just kind of appear, and very quickly once they actually get started on it.

WOW how did they do that.

("We could just tell them. But it's threatening and we literally can't share - probably better if it's not obvious there are things like that, didn't go over great when people wouldn't share with us - "

"It's not literally impossible for them to invent worldleapers and go looking for Revelation or Space and summon. But then they're even worse off than we are."

"But they could and we're not stopping them. Not facilitating, either, I guess - are we? Does it please my lord for us to ferry them to Revelation?"

He turns to face the two of them. "Absolutely not. But we'll tell them. If they come up with something to make it worth our while."

"Could send us their women."

"Could let us kill and resurrect all their reds.")

"That information would be useless without substantial additional prerequisites. But we are willing to sell it, or more immediately useful information about ending senescence, or a new moon dome of your own. We would like to see additional progress toward a framework for laws of war that will interact gracefully with the vast number of alien cultures that don't have a specific military caste; it's possible that if we poll all our people, some will be interested in commissioning works of art; if this Amenta has magic of some kind, that might be of interest to us; some of us want the chance to ask questions of Vanda Nossëo's Anitami diplomat; and in general we are open to hearing about trades that interest the people of Amenta. We look forward to a future of mutually beneficial trade, at least while we find it useful to stay in this system."

And meanwhile, they're incidentally entirely capable of spying on what any or all of Amenta's governments are saying about them. And reading some local news and social media to get a sense of the popular reaction. So what are people saying down there?

Their Amenta has no magic. Do some Amentas have magic. Artists they have, and they'd like to see more templates for escalation-prevention that doesn't rely on having a grey caste. The thing they most want is of course more planets of their own; they're working on warp engines and will do their own survey if necessary but if it happened to be convenient to point them the right way that would be so super excellent.

If they are hoping to be sent women for prurient purposes they will be pleased to know that Amentans who kink on specifically aliens are at gender parity, very common, and willing to talk about this on the public internet. There's a lot of discussion about warp - they like it except for a few people who are nervous about polluting other planets or who think Amentans should be going deliberately extinct to spare future generations various discomforts of life - and about the implications of the alien documents with which they've been provided. Are these hand-translated? By another Amentan from another Amenta or what? There is so much context they're missing.

Well, they may not have actually surveyed this universe in the way the Amentans expect but they can check it for, a. other nearby aliens, b. grey goo expanding at warp speed in all directions, c. the nearest planets with similar gravity and year length to Amenta, and d. what exactly is orbiting Amenta's nearest few stars anyway. They’ll send the information on the nearby solar systems and the best candidate planets if they can get information about whether there’s a local version of this diplomat, they have a picture and a name and a country of origin, and what he's up to if he exists. Or for the laws of war thing. Or if there’s a local version of this abstract sculptor from the other Amenta who'd like to do something for this prompt submitted by one of the aliens.

They can send... treaties on unconventional weaponry and hospitals in occupied territory from some crystalline amphibians very concerned with making sure that no one turns the water a bad color? A treaty from some arboreal bird people banning the use of child soldiers? The other Geneva Conventions? Sesat doesn’t really have anything useful here, and Vanda Nossëo really doesn’t.

That... diplomat... appears to... have red hair? So perhaps there has been a mixup and he's not an Amentan.

"The government of Vanda Nossëo - we mentioned we were seeking the power to stand against them - considers ritual cleanliness a fundamentally illegitimate thing to strive for, and physical cleanliness barely any better. They neither have a caste system nor respect any other society's, and are ideologically committed to accepting all immigrants who might want to live under their rule as well as a few who don't, regardless of what their societies of origin have to say about it. We expect the version we met had probably been killed and resurrected and is therefore probably clean according to your standards and ours but we don't know if they bothered to make sure of that before they made contact by landing him and his party in our capital city. Without space suits. Because they were sure that if any diseases could jump from them to us, or the other way around, they could certainly cure them. They did not to the best of our knowledge care whether we could. He's Amentan. We want to talk to him. Frankly, we want him sent to us alive in an airtight container, but we don't have anything remotely resembling an extradition treaty with Anitam and have very little interest in making demands and you might not have a local version of him anyway."

Anitam can poll their social workers for anybody who thinks he looks familiar and if they really want him shipped to them they can probably finagle it.

They'd appreciate it.

(Is the internet horrified? Some of them are very curious if the internet is horrified on their behalf.)

The internet is concerned about lots of things, among them the ludicrous insult of sending a red as a "diplomat", but at least they do not seem remotely concerned for Nelen's welfare. He is located in fairly short order. Do they have specs for how they'd like him packaged beyond "alive and in an airtight container"?

...Also ideally in a condition to stay alive for a while? And capable of talking? They don't really need anything from the container beyond that he should be delivered alive and they shouldn't have to gamble about local diseases. They'll figure out a nice humane setup on their end.

They will send him in an old about-to-be-donated-to-a-museum-but-still-fine shuttle that can be slaved to an escort and drop it off at their dome. They trust the Sesati will be responsible about making sure he doesn't touch anything important.

The Sesatis aren't going to share space with him, he's an alien and they don't know if this Amenta has the same diseases as the other Amenta and only have preliminary information about whether they can catch anything the other Amentans get or vice versa. And this one hasn't been resurrected. What would have to possess them to let him touch things, they're not Vanda fucking Nossëo.

But the fishbowl they set up for him has a private bathroom and a soft bed and a pot of fake flowers. There's a push-button-to-talk setup and a big transparent wall that looks out on a little room for visitors. There's a curtain, on Nelen's side of the window, if he wants to close it. And there's a Sesati who won the argument about who would get to talk to Nelen first.

Nelen is extremely terrified, not falling for the curtain trap, and prostrating himself on the floor and shaking violently as soon as somebody walks in on the other side of the glass.

"So I'm tempted to lead with 'we're really not half as offended as you're probably thinking and I'm really the best person to have called dibs on talking to you' but I actually have no idea what you've even been told about anything. Do I need to start with 'hi, there are aliens'?"

"Nosir."

"On a - professional level, you could say I'm an enemy of the alternate universe version of you who's wildly unqualified to be a diplomat and works for a power hostile to my people and almost everything we care about. On a personal level, when most people involved on both sides decided to blame him personally and make him the scapegoat for their failure to get us to surrender without a fight even though all he did was follow orders, I brought him soup and played video games with him. If you stop acting like my slave it will not materially increase the chance that I decide to kill you."

That's not going to get Nelen up off the floor.

"Well, guess that's all the reassurance I have in me. Hi, you've been recruited to help us figure out what to say to your government, you don't really have a choice about it and they have your family, I'm sure you have no particular objections to that and don't really need any kind of compensation for it beyond whatever we manage to pull off for all the rest of your people, right?" There is something very brittle and bitter in his voice. "Stop acting like it will help anything for you to kiss the floor. Tell me why none of your planet's governments have picked up on the implication that we can clean reds and asked us about our willingness to do it."

He sits up a little. Not very much. "I - I don't know sir."

"I hate Amenta. I hate how useless you're being, and I hate that I can see exactly why you're doing it, and I always wanted to tell your alt not to go back to work until he was ready to dye his hair blue but I somehow don't think that would even help with your problem. Look, just - we said what we had to say to get you here. Some people are pretty angry with your alt but - he fucked up by being blue and thinking he was yellow, not by being pond scum or whatever your stupid planet thinks you are."

Nelen has absolutely no idea what to do with this!

"Our - sort of enemies, or at least not really allies - have a stranglehold on the healing magic that'd make it a good idea to share air with aliens, otherwise I'd offer you a hug. I can offer you a space suit."

Nelen doesn't want a hug! But that wasn't a question so he doesn't feel the need to offer this preference.

"Fine. Okay. Go ahead and act like a slave if that makes you happy. Would it be good for most reds to wake up clean and on another planet in a clean but otherwise identical replica of their homes? And if that happened after Amenta tried to kill them, would it be provocative?"

"- yes sir?"

"Thank you. - Hm. Actually. Would a purple act the way you're acting in this situation?"

Tentative headshake.

"Didn't really think so but I would have felt really dumb if actually it had turned out that was just ordinary mildly deferential body language in Anitam. I wish you'd stop but - the only way you're going to stop is when I've gone long enough without having you tortured that you start thinking it's surprising. I could give you a ring that keeps other people away but it wouldn't do anything about projectiles or keep me from teleporting you somewhere dangerous so I don't see how it'd help."

That didn't contain any questions or orders.

"I would be completely shocked if you expressed a preference at this point but for what it’s worth I can take you somewhere else if you don’t want to be here."

"...sir??"

"Did you fucking believe that we got them to let you out of their control out of purest malice. Are you as stupid as they are."

"I don't think I understand, sir!!"

"Honestly? Neither does anyone else. The worlds we've been to are weird, and bringing you here was something a lot of people argued for for a lot of very different reasons. But - currently my people are unaging unkillable high-tech spacefarers with no meaningful scarcity of anything except antimatter and really heavy-hitting magic. That's who we are today. When I was born it was the bronze age. Just speaking for myself here, I'm inclined to draw some conclusions from the fact that Amenta is a very comfortable planet, and the fact that our enemies think your cleanliness standards are stupid.

But, you know, I lived in a city that smelled like actual shit once, and if I traveled back in time I wouldn't kill myself in horror at the prospect of spending another day there. And I trained to go to war against people who wanted to do horrible things to my people, and I recognize what that looks like, and I'm not blinded by the fact that your hair isn't silver. I can't promise you that none of us hate you for petty reasons, or that I'm not annoyed at how hard you are to work with. But I can promise you every single Sesati in this universe old enough to have anything to say about it knows you're just an annoying person who's hard to work with, not garbage. And I supported the kidnapping plan because we didn’t otherwise have a good way to get information you have about what kinds of things would be good ways to help your people. I’m not going to cooperate with keeping you prisoner and they can’t keep you if I want to take you away. I don’t think you’re going to ask me to, because you don’t want to admit to having preferences and if you trusted us that much then you’d want to hang around helping. But if you did ask, I would get you out of here or die trying, I swear."

That's a lot of words that aren't questions or commands so if Nelen has any thoughts on any of it he's not telling.

Sigh.

"Do you want to recommend a course of action we can take to make it less bad for the reds when we inevitably facilitate Amenta developing robots."

That will get him to look very alarmed. "You - sir, you mentioned - cleaning - reds?"

"Yep! On the technical side it's not complicated at all, getting the Amentans to agree our solution would definitely work is one of the first things we did here. We just have this small problem where people who only barely trust us enough to say anything beyond 'yes, sir' need to cooperate with a plan where step one is that you die."

Ah yeah that does sound hard.

"We can also just wait for that part to happen on its own. We don't need you to die under any particular circumstances or anything. And then I guess we'd eventually stash you on a planet in a totally different universe from this one when we happen to feel like it, and hope Amenta doesn't get around to developing the right kind of transit until after they figure out that their color-coding is stupid. But it seems like it'd be horrible to die not knowing and, uh, I don't think I want to stand by and watch what the reds do if they don't realize their impending deaths aren't for real."

Nod.

"If you were a remotely competent diplomat or you trusted me enough to express preferences or you showed any signs of realizing this conversation is voluntary, I would have more questions for you. As it is - well, I guess I do have one. I don't have the good healing magic but I have some and I assume the other Amentans didn't think we'd mind if you were a little bruised, do you want to listen to a magical song that makes wounds heal faster?"

"- okay, sir?"

Heyyy that's basically a normal way to respond to a significantly cooler person offering you something.

Song! Not sped up because sped up it's illegible. At normal speed it's theoretically possible to learn it just from listening.

It's very pretty. Nelen sways his head very slightly to the rhythm.

"If you decide to trust me as far as taking my advice, I think if you stay here and someone decides to yell at you about things that happened in an alternate universe, acting like they're not worth your time would work better than the way you've been acting."

Nelen does not respond out loud at that but does - tilt his head curiously.

"You don’t want to tell us anything you aren’t forced to, right? But the forcing isn’t going to happen and we all get mean when we sense weakness. And you somehow have the Amentans fooled into thinking you’re stupid and that your war is just the mindless thrashing of a savage beast but - your alt isn’t much of a diplomat but he’s thoughtful and articulate and passed the most grueling test of character in the world. And we’re pretty sure it’s a close alternate universe, the kind where at some point you were identical. You're not too broken to have opinions, you're just acting - afraid of what we'll do if we know what they are."

Yeah it's not acting.

"See, it’s completely plausible to me that after plotting riots and spending your life ready to be called on to die for your people you’d be too terrified to talk to aliens who - "

"...Fuck. I’m sorry."

"Sir?"

"So. The powers I can arrange for you to get in under half an hour are a personal space ring, an anti-aging necklace, and the ability to understand everyone in all the worlds as though they were speaking your native language. Being able to share powers like teleportation is one of the things we hope to gain by traveling between realities, and I can’t offer you that yet. I would if I could. With more time we could teach you to make magic jewelry, and in theory maybe someday you could do just about anything that way, but - we don’t know how yet. You’ll have to figure it out. And - if there’s an oath you would find reassuring, I can consider whether I can swear it. Let me just - "

He vanishes.

Nelen's going to go over and sit on the bed they put in here with him while nobody's staring at him.

That's what it's there for!

Valan reappears with jewelry. "I thought maybe just the things that don't involve doing anything directly to you until you chill out." There's an airlock setup for giving them to him. "We'd have a fancier cleaning setup if we thought you were going to complain that merely not having any germs left isn't good enough but I bet you aren't."

"No sir."

"...There is also a song for steadying your nerves but - I don't want to imply that I care if you listen to it. It exists."

Nelen blinks at him.

"It - works. Some people are bothered by how well it works. I don't want to imply that I have an opinion about your preferences about mind-altering magic songs, because if I have an opinion that you can discern I'm afraid you'll take it as an order."

"- yes sir."

Shrug.

"If the empire we met hadn’t wanted all the people in all the worlds for their slaves I - wouldn’t actually be here, but I’d be able to just hand you the power to go wherever you want and heal any injury instantly. I bet you’d be easier to talk to."

It's Time For Nelen Silence. Again.

"Got a completely abstract idea which direction is objectively better to err in in the absence of better information?"

"Which direction regarding - what, sir -"

"Whether to play music."

"I... don't have a policy on that, sir."

"...I think if you don’t express an opinion I’m going to play it because it’s not permanent and wouldn’t make it harder for you to say you hate it. But I think you should express an opinion."

"I - don't think - it is irrational to be afraid - sir."

He laughs bitterly. "Of course it isn’t. Yet. Making it irrational to be afraid is going to be the work of decades."

Silence.

But that was sort of like a no on the music.

"...So, do reds have computers and if so do you still have yours?"

"My pocket everything is at home sir."

"Want a copy of it here?"

"...that would be very impressive sir."

He sends a message to the demon they brought with them.

"You do really hate just saying 'I want you to do this' or 'I don't want you to do that', huh."

"As you say, sir."

And someone else arrives. She looks more alien: she has big black wings and she's got a cool scaly design going on around her temples.

" - You're really being ridiculous, you already agreed to clean everything you send them, didn't you? Hey, red guy, do you want your own spaceship, because I can do that," she says as, with no obvious connection to anything about her behavior, Nelen's pocket everything appears on the bed.

Wow that's startling. He manages to startle in a way that doesn't touch anything else out of pure reflex even though he's loose in this sealed compartment. "- thank you ma'am."

"Cool, what kinda ship do you want?"

"I - thank you for the offer, I don't know how to - fly a ship..."

"That's fixable! I can get you a manual. Or a simulator. Or both."

"Pretty sure he's trying to turn you down."

"You want to turn me down, you say 'no thanks, I don't want a spaceship.' Did he seriously already teach you to say everything in subtext, I don't think that's a good first priority at all."

"...ma'am I don't understand."

"You've been talking to a Sesati for, what, five minutes? And you sound just like them? I know that's not how people talk in Anitam."

"I'm - sorry - ma'am??"

She raises an eyebrow at Valan.

"He was like this when I got him!"

She sighs. "Okay, well, you can talk however you want, I guess."

"- yes ma'am."

"Hey. Val. Get out of here, I need to ask him if you threatened him."

Valan vanishes.

"Actually, I don't really care whether he threatened you or got all subtexty about not threatening you or is a perfectly lovely person and you just don't like his hair. I just want you to know that if you want to wake up somewhere away from all this in a high-tech high-magic society with universal basic income, I can make it happen."

"- ma'am????"

"You seem kinda scared and from what they told me they didn't so much ask if you wanted to be here but the other place was planning genocide. Seems like a situation where you’d want more options."

"...ma'am, I was abducted from my home by armed police and thrown into a nearly decommissioned space shuttle to be brought here. I don't understand what they want from me but I assume that if I try to go home to my family by any means I will encounter the police again."

"...I thought the police were a different color and wouldn’t go anywhere near you but I bet I can talk Zatar into telling them we’re done and don’t need you anymore."

"They'll go near us. They'll just be very unhappy about having to the entire time."

"Okay so like do you want me to convince Zatar or do you have a way to secretly ask your family if they want to go to space or what."

"I... don't know if my pocket everything will get service. Here." He can check. "I don't think they want to be... kidnapped."

"Do they want to be secretly teleported up here and then back down? Do they want to move to another world and learn magic? Do any of them want a spaceship?"

"They don't know how to pilot spaceships either."

"And none of them can learn new things?"

"Ma'am I am so confused."

"...How confused - has anyone filled you in on anything?"

"Not - unconfusingly? -"

She starts pacing. "Okay, so there are these different universes. They can be next to each other and you can move from one to another if they're next to each other but not straight from just any world to just any other world. It - kind of looks to me like the thing that makes the map is something to do with what the people in them would think of each other? The neighborhood's full of humanoids and compatible fundamental physics and people made of similar enough materials that they can use each other's technology. The worlds that are so similar they'd bore each other aren't next to each other but they're next to worlds that are next to each other. It might not work that way, who knows. It just seems like that'd explain why, like, the other Amenta is next door to a world with lots of black-haired humanoids who think the most important thing is that nobody ever lose custody of their kids and don't have very many of those in the first place. It'd be boring if the other Amenta were your neighbors, or if the black-haired aliens were next to themselves-but-it's-a-generation-later, which there are like six of all scattered around. And then it'd also be boring if their neighbors were arguably-living crystal things that don't really have politics. But anyway I completely made this theory up, it might be bullshit."

She runs a hand through her hair and sighs. "My point is I don't know if that'll let you guess what we'll find next but it should let you make the right kinds of guesses about what we've already found. There's another Amenta. It's later there but there was probably a time when it was literally identical to how your planet was before we showed up. There's a Nelen from there. Used to be red. Looks like you except for the hair. Lotta Sesatis blame him for some shit that went down a while ago. See, he works for this huge... kind of a federation, Vanda Nossëo - they're collectively big and rich and powerful and they go around meeting small and poor and weak planets and saying 'hey, sign up and enforce these laws we like and we'll pay you. In our currency, which we'll take payment in for resurrections and new planets and stuff, and not your currency, which is worthless now because we can counterfeit your primitive gold coins as much as we want.' Tends to go over okay, new planets and resurrecting the dead and healing all ills covers a multitude of sins. You'd like it, and I can get you there, and I can get your entire family there." And she sighs again and rubs her face. "Didn't go so well with Sesat. They put your alt - the Nelen - two people who were the same for most of their lives in parallel universes are alts, plus some other alts who are just kinda echoey. Anyway, they put your alt in charge of talking to Sesat, didn't really give him enough leeway to change course or, like, enough information to know what he was getting into. He got sent there as training on the theory that if he screwed up it’d be fine and he'd - " (jazz hands) " - learn from experience. Spoiler alert, it turns out it barely matters because Sesat has all these taboos about half of Vanda Nossëo's laws. But it matters some because Nelen Utopia fucking loves Vanda Nossëo and every time he hears about one of them he says 'oh, it’s okay, I’m not judging you because you’re too primitive to have invented ethics yet.' By the way, that’s super offensive. I guess on your planet you’re not allowed to learn that unless you have blue hair." She makes a face.

"Anyway, so long story short they invited me to disappear with them and go looking for a new place to live where Vanda Nossëo can’t find them or more power or both. And then they brought you here. Lotta people talked about that, they had a bunch of things they wanted. There's..." She pulls up a list on her computer. "Some of them want to ask you what the fuck you think your alt could possibly have been thinking. One guy wants to hurt you, I don't think he's allowed and I will pitch a fit if he does it anyway. The guy you were just talking to wanted you here because he thinks if we just do whatever we feel like there will definitely be a genocide and if we try to do anything to be nice to reds without asking any reds any questions we'll do worse than nothing - Vanda Nossëo maybe did worse than nothing with Sesat, see, got some people tortured, and they weren't a model of smooth diplomacy with the other Amenta, either. And nobody can say the other Nelen is some kind of coward or too stupid to say anything useful and some people already have a little practice reading him. And then someone wanted you where we knew where you were in case you got up to anything annoying. And someone wanted to talk to an Amentan in case there was something we wouldn't notice the blues were lying to us about that you'd mention. And someone actually thought your alt deserved better and wanted to make sure you personally didn't get killed. And someone else said maybe if Sesatis talk in a weird idiosyncratic way then Amentans might too and we should get a local to run stuff by. And we could totally sneak you back to Amenta if that's what you want - we can teleport, we can change your face and hair, we can do a lot."

She flops dramatically against the window. "So yeah. That's how we got here. I will totally take questions now."

"I have - I have no idea what the blues have been saying to guess if they're lying to you -

"- Utopia..."

"Oh, right, is that a proper noun? It means a perfect place where everyone wants to live."

"Yeah. That's - well - that is not my job name right now -

"I don't know that I am actually right now a good person to talk to about, uh, anything, especially not if a lot of these people are - mad at me -"

"I’m gonna make fun of them. 'Oh, you wanted someone to consult with about first contact, so you picked Nelen Utopia's alt with even less diplomatic training? Smart. Instead of grabbing an Amentan who might or might not be qualified, pick one where you know for sure!' Wanna watch?" 

"If you like, ma'am!"

"I kinda do but I didn't ask 'do I want you to watch?' Whatever, tell me your email and I'll figure out how to send you a recording."

"Blazartumblr at thirdspire ma'am."

"Thanks. I'm gonna tell Valan to come back because when we stop monopolizing you you might meet someone else and I think maybe you don't want to. Unless he really was threatening you."

"...he could have chosen to be more threatening ma'am."

She bursts out laughing so hard she would probably double over if she weren’t already leaning on the window. She does hit it a couple of times.

........probably this doesn't presage something awful.

"D'you want Mr. You Tried Star or should I just sit on the floor and see how long that keeps people away for?"

"Whatever is convenient of course ma'am."

She looks away. She’s making a face and doesn’t want to be making it at Nelen.

"I don’t really care. Not if you don’t."

He can't think of a good reply to that.

"Is there literally any object that would solve your problems if you had it?"

He actually thinks about that one good and hard.

"I don't think so."

"Shame, I'm really good at problems you can solve with stuff. Unfortunately your problem maybe calls for rule of law or indestructibility for your whole family or the ability to heal all wounds and turn into a bird. Well, I'm outta here."

Turn into a bird??

"Thank you for explaining to me, ma'am."

"Totally. Oh, actually. No matter what email setup you have, no matter if you have to write it on the floor in your own blood, you can always reach me if you write 'Mail for Santa Inanna Vashti'."

"- I don't know how to spell that, ma'am."

A pad of sticky notes appears with her mail label at the top of each one. "Now you do. I might not be able to get to you very quickly but I will if I’m around. And if you die of this nonsense I will get you back, and if you end up in a realm of eternal torment I will get you out. Well, I'd hire someone to get you out."

"...thank you ma'am."

She leaves. The door hasn’t even finished shutting behind her when the guy from before reappears.

Nelen blinks at him but doesn't chance a "hi".

"I don’t suppose whatever you two talked about got you to chill."

"Chill, sir?"

"Should I expect talking to you to be less frustrating if I try it again."

"I don't know, sir."

"Well, do you want to tell me if you have some obvious advice that anyone who wasn't a complete idiot and knew things every Amentan knows would be able to think of about whether we can do something better than facilitate Amenta getting all the technology the other castes want and then get you folks a planet in another universe?"

"I would recommend talking to the community organizers about this, sir, I'm not one myself."

"Are you going to tell me who one is and how to get in contact with them?"

"I only know my own but she will know others sir."

"Does she have an email address and do you think it's safe to use it?"

"I don't know if she has a public one. Usually email is as safe as anything."

"We can also communicate by causing paper notes to appear and read anything addressed to us even if it’s been burned. Or I can go visit her in person."

"...I suppose you could, sir."

"I have no idea if Inanna can send letters just from that information. I would need a picture of a private place to visit her there. And obviously if we’re going email her we need an email address. So. Whatever you end up facilitating, I guess."

"Are you... asking me... to email my organizer. Sir."

"Yes. If you can’t get online I'll go complain to someone who knows how to fix that."

"My everything plan does not cover lunar service sir."

"I can go tell that to someone who works with the internet or I can secretly teleport you someplace on Amenta long enough for you to send an email."

Nelen's eyes go very alarmedly wide.

"If I could make you able to teleport yourself or teach you to cast dimension lock I would. I'm sorry."

That didn't help at all! Eyes still very wide over here!

"Do you want to say some words out loud."

"Sir?"

"I guess that technically counts! Do you want to say some words out loud about why talking about email logistics has you looking like that."

"...I don't think I understand the question sir."

"...I can teleport. With passengers. That could get you off the moon and someplace where you could send an email, right?"

"It could sir."

"Were you making a face about the idea of being near the blue ones?"

"The - blue ones? - sir I can't see my own face."

With the right combination of camera and display any computer can be an unnecessarily complicated mirror.

"You seemed like you were worried about something - about me getting tech support or about me being able to teleport or about going back to Amenta? And I was wondering if it was the last thing because the Amentans with different hair colors want to kill you."

"I am not aware of anyone who wants to kill me specifically right now, sir."

"Do you have a preference about whether to go back to Amenta to send an email."

"I don't think I understand the question sir."

"I’m going to talk to tech support."

He disappears.

While he is gone Nelen is going to put on some soothing music that he can retrieve from the everything's local storage and curl up on the bed with it near his ear.

By the time someone stops by to give Nelen the wifi password he has email from Inanna.

Okay. He can log on to the wifi and send emails to like half the people he knows.

Aaaaand after a few minutes someone new comes in.

"Hey, asshole."

He puts his everything down and puts on his very best 'appeasing cleans who are shouting abuse' face.

"Take a look." He has a picture to show Nelen and it’s - well, it doesn’t look like the human in the picture was having a good day, or would ever have another good day again.

Concerned brow-furrow!

"Under what circumstances do you think someone might deserve that."

Oh fuck is this a trick question. What are you supposed to say to cleans asking you trick questions. "I can't imagine, sir!"

The sound this person makes queers the laughing/snarling binary.

"What do you think of someone who says 'I hate you and I'm better than you and want to destroy everything you love and let you have children only so that I can convince them to hate you and watch your heart break, and the only way you can ever get back at me is to do this to someone else. Promise I really do care and really will mind.' and then, having the ability to go anywhere, and the ability to heal all wounds, doesn't ever happen to find the time to save the victim? Do you think that someone who does that is one of the most deserving people in hundreds of worlds? Do you think that person is trustworthy?"

"Sir I don't understand!!"

He smacks the window. "Answer my fucking question, asshole."

"Sir, I don't understand," Nelen repeats, flinging himself on the floor prostrate.

This guy takes a picture of Nelen groveling.

"Scared if you say anything else I'll challenge you? All you have to say is 'no, that's not one of the top ten thousand most moral people on all the planets in in all the galaxies.' What is so fucking hard about saying that goading people into torturing innocents doesn't make you an examplar of virtue who deserves absolute power over the rest of us?"

"That is not one of the top ten thousand most moral people on all the planets in in all the galaxies! Sir!"

"...Yeah." Sigh. "Don't ever try to be an important person unless you grow the fuck up and stop being... awful. You're an awful person. At least you aren't pretending you're not."

"Yes sir!"

"You're a pathetic coward and I bet your alt is too. Quite frankly I think we should just send you back and let you die fighting the rest of your fucking rainbow. You bring shame to your fucking hair color."

That one doesn't obviously call for a response? As far as he can tell?

"You're less deserving of freedom than him."

He's getting quieter.

Nelen holds mostly pretty still on the floor except for some trembling which he hopes is appeasing.

"How the fuck does someone like you end up believing they could be a diplomat."

He barely sounds angry, at this point. Mostly just sad and tired.

"I don't know sir."

"I think maybe I do. All the rainbow idiots telling you what’s wrong with you is that you can’t possibly have any virtues because they’re squeamish about your hair, all the other reds being brave enough to fight to the death for their families and probably fine people... and you’re a coward without any principles but how would you ever realize it was true if everyone who said so said it was because of your hair. It’s not because of your hair."

"As you say sir."

He makes a disgusted noise. "Vanda Nossëo had their pick of dead red rioters, but they would rather a spineless piece of garbage. They don't have real tests of character, you know. They have tests of stubbornness and if you don't bow you can't have anything nice. They're only pretending to be better than us. Guess the thing where if you think you can get away with it you're awful to everyone weaker than you is just - I guess they couldn't be choosy, picking out people as pathetic and slavish as you."

"Yes sir."

He leaves.

Meanwhile Inanna is reading Nelen's blog. Actually both Nelens' blogs. Were they actually ever identical? What did Utopia blog about when his world made first contact? What if anything does he blog about now?

Parallels between Sasa Peshi roles [twelve gifs]

Anonymous asked: Are you REALLY red
blazar answered: Yes.

Anonymous asked: why though
blazar answered: I always have been.

>>The Tapap translation of Sixth Moon is actually better than the Cenemi original. Cavashera is a really mediocre lyricist - that's why Sixth Moon is so much less successful than everything he wrote with Lerkal on the book - but the translation team, Syllabest, is phenomenal (they also did Catch My Cloud, Seven Seasons in Saffa, etc.) I don't even speak Tapap but I can hear all the consonance and rhyme scheme is really tight.

>Yeah but that's at the cost of being really insipid. For a native Tapap speaker there's no couplet more cliched and tired than "living on the moon / hoping for tomorrow". "Moon" with "hope" is the cheapest rhyme in the entire language. And it's like that all the way through.

Is there a sample of the Tapap version available anywhere for free?

Costume stills from the bootleg Living With Chash. I've attempted color correction but can send the original screenshots to anyone who'd like to try it for themselves, I don't have specialty software.

Anon asked: DNI ewwwww!
blazar answered: This site doesn't have good DNI enforecement tools, but I think if you block me you shouldn't notice my account popping up anywhere it will bother you.

Today is a "listening to Fifteen Griefs on loop" day and I'm not even seven yet.

Noni Sal's cover of "Past the Glass" is... maybe even better than the original. I wonder if she'll ever be cast in a production or if she doesn't want to act on top of singing.

Well, that’s not very useful for figuring out what is up with this guy. He seems snarkier on the internet. More like someone who will appreciate the video she sent him of her vicious mockery of the idea that talking to him could possibly be useful. She listens to Fifteen Griefs. She converts seven into Earth years. ...That part is maybe a little useful. She talks to some people and then goes to see Nelen again.

If he has been left alone he is back to listening to music on the bed. If the shouty guy is still there he is still prostrate on the floor.

Shouty guy is long gone.

"Hey. Thought of anything I can make you?"

"...I assume eventually someone will feed me, ma'am?"

"Sure, whatcha want?"

This could be a trap but it doesn't seem like one that will go worse in any significant way if he names an actual food he would actually eat. "Egg salad sandwich?"

He can have the very platonic ideal of an egg salad sandwich. On a plate. With a fork. The plate has little cartoon aliens on it. (The aliens are koalas.)

Wow, everything about that is confusing but he will eat his egg salad sandwich. "Thank you ma'am," he says.

"You’re welcome. Do I need to go yell at Maran for you?"

"I don't know the name ma'am."

Shrug. "He said he talked to you and he hates you personally so I'm guessing by 'talked' he means 'acted like a complete asshole' but you never know."

"Ah. As you like ma'am."

"I don't really but you seem all wilty. Anyway, they want, uh," she consults her computer, "a list of recently dead rioters that you get along with who have political opinions, and to know if you've heard back from whoever you were emailing. And they sent me because where I come from we have invented the concept of being nice. Actually they sent me because they were both complaining that you're horrible to talk to and I said 'what the fuck are you talking about'. But I think it's because where I come from they've invented not being an asshole."

"- How recently dead, ma'am?"

"I can ask... uh... recently enough to be useful to talk to."

"Useful for...?"

Shrug.

"What will happen to them, ma'am?"

"Same thing that's happening to you but less cramped and lonely. I will offer them spaceships and let them know that if they want to they can go back to being dead. - You can also die if you want and in your case you're all by yourself in there and there's this lovely window so I would definitely make your body explode in a shower of gore but, like, only if you wanted to die in the first place. Which I guess you do if you ever want the other Amentans to be nice to you. Uh, anyway."

"- I don't know any dead rioters who I want this to happen to."

"...Do you want to die because you kinda implied it a little."

"I imagine for most people that would depend on the life they could expect, ma'am."

"Sooo the thing is, you can expect that at some point you end up on a mostly empty planet with some other reds and a few cities worth of infrastructure and instructions on making magic jewelry, off in another universe where the kind of FTL we just gave Amenta won't let them find you. The thing that could make that not happen is if you say 'that sounds terrible, I want to do something else.' In which case you have choices like going to a crowded planet with different species or getting on a spaceship or joining us and going on adventures. Maybe. I'm not sure if you can manage that last one. Anyway, the thing is, if you die now then you skip the time between now and the new planet. If you don't die now then you hang out here until then. I bet you’d be happy about it if you died today but I bet you’d be fine if you didn’t."

"I... don't know if by infrastructure you mean to include some way to... farm?"

"Maybe. Might do a thing where all the wild plants happen to be edible, I have to check if that actually works for Amentans but it works for species you can usually share food with... hm, it works with Earthly year lengths, too... hang on a sec." Is there prior art on doing a Valian ecology variant for an Amentan colony?

No, turns out Amentans don't really like eating unwashed wild leaves.

"So that's a yes on the farming, sorry."

"Reds do not know how to farm ma'am."

"If I say you can learn are you gonna tell me your hair is the wrong color for that?"

"- no, ma'am..."

"Okay, well, I can get arbitrary books about it and whatever seeds you want and also you can start with a ton of canned stuff. Or I can try designing a planet where everything is edible. Or, like, worst case scenario, in a couple decades we make you Vanda Nossëo's problem."

"Decades, ma'am?"

"Probably not your decades but who knows. If the farming thing looks intractable it doesn’t cost any extra to wait on resurrecting people. Doesn’t leave you any less time either."

He blinks at her.

"If it only starts looking intractable once people are living there I will see how long I can hang out making food."

"Thank you ma'am."

"Do you actually think I’m cool or are you just scared if you stop ma'aming me the evil alt of Miss Manners will show up and have you with some red wine and gravy?"

"- ma'am?????"

"The Sesatis do it because they think I'm cool and that's fine, I am cool. - The evil cannibal alt of Miss Manners is a joke."

"If you say so ma'am!"

"Do you want me to make your hair come in blue and change your face and drop you off halfway across the country from wherever they got you? Possibly after replacing your entire body so they couldn't possibly claim you were made of magical dirt?"

"I am not sure why you would do that ma'am."

"Because you're miserable and maybe you'd be fine if you could go home except for how your home is lowkey planning to murder you and literally treats you like shit so maybe if you went back with the hair they think is the best they'd be nice to you. I'm sure there are problems with that exact plan but maybe something like that."

"Caste is not identical to hair color, ma'am."

"Look, is there literally anything that could happen to you at this point that would not suck?"

He considers this. "... maybe?"

"Cool. We can probably make most things happen, seriously, if the only thing you can think of that wouldn't suck is turning into a telepathic bird with a glowing beak and the ability to conjure arbitrary material objects that works as a TV news anchor it might be annoying and politically complicated to pull it off but it's not impossible."

"I could go home if the government were told that you were all through with me and had no complaints about my behavior, ma'am."

"Did no one already offer you that???"

"- I don't believe so ma'am, people have made many offers but I don't think any included that the government can be told that I am not absent without leave if I go home."

"If Zatar won’t sign off on that I’ll go on strike. Lemme email him."

"Yes ma'am."

Email email. "Fifteen Griefs is really something," she says while waiting for a response.

Faintest smile. "Yes ma'am."

"He says to ask if you want us to offer to kill and resurrect you first because that should make you ''''''clean''''''."

"...if I am going home I doubt that will do me any good, ma'am."

"'Kay. ...Really? They wouldn’t be nicer without their excuse?"

"I could be wrong of course ma'am."

"I bet you’re not."

"As you say ma'am."

Email email.

"Also your planet's primitive attempts at computer security are no match for me, want anything pirated?"

"If you can also provide the game system some of my relatives would consider a copy of The Strategy And The Honor a pleasant reprieve from. Stress. Ma'am."

"What system?"

"Gameworld 4."

Does the internet suggest that this system is small enough to make now and let Nelen take home in a pocket?

It's not pocket sized but it could fit in a backpack.

"Think you can carry it home or do I have to go find where you live and make it there?"

"I might need a bag."

"They won’t steal a bag?"

"- I don't believe Amentans will steal a bag that I have touched that is a gift from the aliens, ma'am?"

"'Kay. You gonna want to fit anything else in it? I can make whatever."

She seems really into this making stuff for people thing. He will list a few other games, one kind of fruit, and some paint for his aunt.

And he can have all these things. Right now, in fact.

"Thank you very much ma'am."

And the aliens let Anitam know they’ve gotten what they want from this Anitami citizen and will be returning him soon, plus some gifts since they’ve taken up so much of his time.

...sure, uh, do they want them to take the shuttle back to transport him or do they have a way to do that cleanly themselves?

They’ll just send him with a teleporting escort in a space suit.

And they'll clean the space suit?

Obviously they will clean it before exposing Amenta to it and then again before returning it to their living quarters. Is there an additional time they aren’t thinking of when the Amentans would like them to clean it or do the Amentans just think they’re idiots.

(Well, that’s what the subtext is, anyway. The text is politer than that.)

They don't have a protocol for cleaning the outsides of spacesuits so they wanted to make sure the aliens had one! What is it, please? In case it ever comes up?

The aliens can provide them so much information about the history of spacesuit cleaning - people have tried washing them with liquid nitrogen, isn't it cool! - but the best option if they want to be very very sure is probably this specialized form of teleportation that the Sesatis are pretty sure leaves most pollution behind! They can pretty much do whatever they want, though, because spacesuits are very cheap so they're not especially fussed about making sure any cleaning method they use is gentle.

Cool!

And Valan drops by with a couple of last-minute questions for Nelen. He'd like to know if the organizer ever answered her email and he needs a picture of wherever he’s supposed to take Nelen.

Nelen shows him a picture of a water treatment facility - he doesn't work there but he can hitch a ride home from it and frankly he'd prefer to go the last mile himself. The organizer gave Nelen an email to give the aliens and he passes it on.

"Thank you, I'll be ready in a bit. I'm sorry that I failed to communicate to you that we could tell the blues something useful. And that I - scared you."

"Thank you sir."

He leaves to go get suited up and passes the organizer's email along to Zatar and there's email for the organizer before he's finished suiting up.

This is Zatar, leader of the fleet which has recently made contact with most polities of Amenta. We believe that robotics research will happen faster due to trading with us, because the population permitted to study will increase as the population in general increases, because we can resurrect dead roboticists, and because FTL is no longer a pressing problem distracting some of Amenta's most brilliant minds. We can probably clean you. We can probably transport you to another planet. These things would not be meaningfully harder to achieve with you dead. You can respond to this email in the normal way (by clicking "reply") or by writing a reply prefaced with "open letter to Zatar of Riverwatch et al" on paper and burning it.

May I know the content of the "probably"?

We have multiple options for destroying and remaking bodies using different atoms.

It seems likely you will be asked why to bother with the remaking.

Why not?

I doubt I can simulate an argument with a blue beyond that first question, I apologize.

I do have some people suggesting we help out of charity. And it’s also not impossible you could offer me something I want more than I want to avoid spending time tediously resurrecting millions of people. Will the blues object or just not pay for it?

I could imagine either. The latter seems to me more likely.

If it’s going to be terribly inconvenient I won’t get involved. Some of my people might resurrect you eventually anyway. We have heard good things about your courage from the other Amenta. Are you able to hear what we tell the whole planet?

Yes. Some Tapai districts might have problems if it's not something the blues would like us to know. They sometimes block communications in an area.

Anyone can write to us on paper the way I told you.

I will try to make this widely known.

We spoke to other aliens who were quite convinced that pollution could not be hereditary and the reds on the other Amenta were secretly clean all along, but these aliens (the Quendi) were immune to all diseases and designed by a malicious creator. We never finished formalizing a caste system before it became clear that the need for different skills would vary too much over time to make it worthwhile in the longer term. So we don’t have reds and never have. One of my people spoke to the presumably cleaned alternate universe version of Nelen and your Nelen and thought the former was smarter and braver and more clearly principled and more clearly a person but that one is older and might have had magic jewelry that made him more intelligent and was certainly able to heal himself from any injury. It’s hard to say what might have contributed. And there are different cleaning options anyway, some that would make more changes than others. We could ask the blues if they want to test whether the version where a specifically healthy new body is conjured without needing to be identical to the old one has interesting results; it runs on an ordinary personish understanding of health instead of a computerish understanding so it might even change the hair. Unfortunately that one is more work for us than the one that does simply produce an identical body. And it’s not clear that suggesting it would help you. This really isn’t a situation we have experience with and we appreciate having the benefit of your personal experience as well as the deep expertise of Amenta's theologians.

I am available to answer your questions. Many Amentans have to dye their hair, and I couldn't confidently suggest it would be worth any extra effort to change anyone's hair.

I don’t even know that it necessarily would. But it would also fix things like badly healed old breaks, some forms of chronic pain, and even brain damage - almost any damage your lifestyle might have caused. In my species, hair color is an indicator of health (it tends to bleach with time and illness) and does change.

Amentan hair so far as I know does not change with age. I am sure many possible recipients would appreciate repair of old injuries.

If Amenta turns out to be able to compensate us adequately for restoring thirteen billion people to perfect health we would be glad to do so. It seems unlikely that the entire planet has enough to offer us to make that level of tedium worth our while, and there's a smaller group who can't even be clean otherwise and might all be killed more swiftly than would otherwise have happened as a result of our presence here. It seemed worth looking into it.

I am having some trouble finding the questions in your messages.

There wasn't one in my last message. I only thought it might be courteous to provide you with some background information. I am not entirely familiar with Amentan courtesies and want to indicate to you that if you have things to say to me about contact between my people and Amenta I am generally open to hearing them. I've exhausted the questions I know enough to ask already. You are also welcome to ask me questions. If I have missed any that were implied, I apologize.

Whenever you have a timeline on what steps will be taken regarding reds I'd appreciate a copy.

I'll let you know when I have such a thing.

There is no further reply.

Well. They have a moon base where they've stashed the infants who will be daeva or spellbinders someday and their parents. If they absolutely have to they'll accept that tropical island, too, and live there and make use of Amenta's industrial base.

But there's no useful magic here that they didn't bring, so the one and only avenue by which they might grow more powerful is inventing new kinds of magic jewelry, and the Peal has more people working on that, and frankly it has smarter people. This is a fine place to hide forever from their far superior foes, and that's all it is or can be.

A ship leaves to scout another world.

This one's an Earth! It looks like it might have the Wish magic system, but it's different - magic is openly practiced, sought, and discussed. There's a magical Empress whose small territory has China as an exclave and she's like four thousand years old.

They return to orbit around Amenta to be more likely out of reach while they research the new world and refresh themselves on Wish.

"It's Wish magic, right, that's how Wish magic works?"

"So we want to get the wish-granter from the Kyuubeys - "

"Do they have it?"

Inanna checks where it is.

The wish-granter is too magic to conjure. The space around it is a spaceship with some tentacle aliens in it.

"Yep. Are Kyuubeys moral patients?"

"Are they?" asks one of the Sesatis.

"I don't think so," says Valan, "but are they holding up anything that'll collapse without them if we manage to steal their box? Can we steal their box?"

"Gem bought hers with a song we already have," says Zatar. "Look for references to magic music on their Wikipedia or let me know if they don't have Wikipedia."

"Or happiness magic," says Inanna.

"Yes, thank you, or that."

They divide up sources and do some reading.

They have Wikipedia and don't have happiness magic.

Probably they can buy the wish-granter.

Maybe they have a use for Amenta after all, it's a big population to sift through for passionate people.

They're gonna read up on the political situation before they do anything, though. What's up with this magic empress? What's known about the Kyuubeys? Do Kyuubeys write things?

Empress Jun Wu is a well-respected but not particularly showy manager of magical girl affairs; there's a bureaucracy and whatnot under her but if there's ever a really big problem and big guns need to be called in, she's one to call.

Kyubeys are obscure - most people can't see them - but not really secret. Kyubeys do not write things.

"...Not obvious we should buy it from them, maybe it's the empress's to sell?"

"Do the magical girls even know the deal they're making?" Inanna muses, looking up grief seeds on Wikipedia to try to check that.

Ahaha nope.

"Fuck Kyubey," Inanna growls. "They don’t know. Okay so for the humans we’re cutting witches off at the source and for the Kyubeys we’re giving them unlimited energy. How do we pitch that?"

Zatar gives her a slightly irritated look. "Correct, that’s the main plan we’re considering. Assuming no one would rather have the wish-granter - suppose they would rather that. How do we take it anyway? No plans that rely on teleportation because someone will have tried that. Are there records of attempts to steal it?"

"Not written by Kyubeys, anyway." Anything on the topic happen to be easy to find?

Nope!

"We’ll send Relu to talk to the empress. How do people get audiences with her and what’s been published about the etiquette for it?"

Oh, to a first approximation they don't. She will on rare occasions visit heads of state, the UN, that sort of thing.

She does have a secretary who does sometimes talk to people!

And does the internet say anything about the etiquette for talking to the secretary?

Observers of the traditional forms will call her by her full name (Ling Wen) rather than just one of those. Magical girls traditionally present themselves to the court and its functionaries in costume; non-magical girls should simply dress formally for their native culture (in the modern day a business suit for men and a complicated bunch of nonsense for women will do for people from anywhere but it is also totally fine to show up in traditional costume if you are less than 100% westernized). Present any objects you're handing over with both hands. Bow a little - a bit of a nod will pass these days but full-on three-bows-from-the-waist are not overdoing it. Don't make direct eye contact, look down.

They... do, actually, care a little about not doing anything that might lead to them crawling back to Vanda Nossëo to beg for healing, even when not trying to impress Amentans. But Relu has actually gotten vaccinated against a lot of standard Earth diseases (a lot of them have; it seemed better to give the Peal's healers less leverage) so if they can just confirm that this world’s diseases are about the same Relu can go with just a big backpack full of stuff and see about getting an appointment. Can that be done online at a public library?

The diseases at least have the same names but the etiology of mental illness is WILDLY different because, like, that could be witches.

Yeah, that’s one reason Zatar's not going. It’s not clear if Relu's occlumency is any good yet but it is clear how expendable she is.

Relu can't just put herself on Ling Wen's calendar, but she can fill out an online form. There's a dropdown menu for meeting purpose (application to become a magical girl, matters of state, etcetera) and various identity questions and a summary of the agenda items you have in mind and what kind of availability you have and so on.

Her availability is all of her waking hours which are expected to be like so, and her agenda is that she has information that may be relevant to the decisions surrounding the magicking of some future girls and possibly a business proposition for the empress, and her identity is. Uh. She has a name.

The form won't actually go through unless she selects a country of origin from the dropdown.

...She’s currently located in China because it’s close to the Empress and that’s as close as she’s going to get to a correct choice.

Oh no, that makes more fields pop up that a real Chinese person would have answers for.

Never mind! She’s from Afghanistan!

Needs her visa information because they don't want anyone getting in trouble in China on the way.

...Okay, fine, she’s from China, every associated dropdown menu gets the first answer, and any free response fields get "actually I’m from a bronze age kingdom you’ve never heard of and have no paper trail this century" if it will fit.

That's not going to work to validate her phone number.

...Does Ling Wen have a physical mailing address?

Well, you could try writing "Ling Wen" on the top of the general mail communications address for the empire.

She doesn’t have a return address. Just this email she could get in a couple minutes.

She writes home for a pickup. She goes somewhere that doesn’t look like it’s being watched.

China has a lot of countryside to get lost in.

She takes a picture and gets a ride home. (And hangs out in Nelen's room because it would be frankly embarrassing to start a virgin soil outbreak among the Sesatis when they already went to all that effort.)

Inanna checks if there’s been any mail sent to Ling Wen lately, and if so where exactly it was delivered to. Is there perhaps an accessible mailbox?

Ling Wen's office receives several deliveries each day from the imperial mailroom and everything goes through her staff first.

...Fine. How do things get to the imperial mailroom?

Care of Chinese mail most of the way.

Eventually they figure out how to send a letter. They copy the salutation off a template on the local internet.

I wasn't able to use the online form to request a meeting. I haven't interacted with modern governments much and don't have a real return address; this one is fake. I do have an email address.

I have information you need, and a business proposition. I don't want to commit it to writing. It concerns the possibility of eventually eradicating witches.

And the letter provides an email address to send a reply to.

The Sesatis, meanwhile, have been availing themselves of new, modern inventions like instant messaging. They've got a quaint little chat with just a few members -

<zatar> Well? How was Nelen?

<meadow> are we COMPLETELY SURE the other amentans arent right about reds not being people because that was sure not distinguishable from a slave

<santaclaus> he was fine when i talked to him.

<santaclaus> maybe your problem is being too much of an asshole to let him get a word in edgewise.

<meadow> ma’am with all due respect hes a fucking coward you can fucking tell

<santaclaus> well, i did notice he did weird things like call me “ma’am” all the time.

<santaclaus> which definitely disqualifies him from personhood for sure

<santaclaus> would someone cool and brave ma’am me

<meadow> 🖕

<convallaria> I just saw this. I think he was just aware that we could basically do whatever we wanted. Even if he was planning our deaths, it wouldn’t do any good to shout about it. I tried giving him magic jewelry but I think the thing that actually needed to happen was both or neither of him and the person he was talking to being able to trivially kill the other.

<convallaria> We need to be more careful about not making contact with people we don’t need anything from. We could have just not talked to him and he might not have had to pretend not to have thoughts.

<convallaria> Not that he did have to, but how was he supposed to know that?

<convallaria> So now we have an email address for his “organizer” and maybe that person will be better at holding up under this kind of insane level of pressure.

<zatar> We can hope.

<zatar> Anyone who sees this and has anything useful to say, help me put together a list of things we’ve learned and ways we should change our approach later.

<cuttingedge> Amenta’s a template. We should have delayed contact while we looked for an Amentan who wrote a book about everything wrong with Vanda Nossëo’s approach to first contact. Sure, they were waiting, and sure, we knew *some* things, but we could have done more.

<cuttingedge> We could have looked for criticism by reds. I know we did better at getting in touch with them than Vanda Nossëo, but we didn’t do enough better.

<zatar> What would better have looked like?

<convallaria> Like no one we talked to feeling the need to act like a slave?

<cuttingedge> Tall order to get that from the first red we met. Did anyone think Utopia was a coward?

<convallaria> SOS didn’t say he was.

<convallaria> Maybe we couldn’t tell.

<zatar> He was powerful. When would we have seen Utopia afraid?

<convallaria> Yeah.

<cuttingedge> So, less judging people by total strangers they’ve never met before who have completely different lives?

<convallaria> Yeah.

<zatar> Maybe.

<convallaria> We should have made it clearer that he wasn’t stuck with us but I did try!

<zatar> But you clearly should have tried differently.

<convallaria> I should have said “we’re totally willing to tell Amenta something useful for you” but, 1. I hadn’t run it by you yet, 2. I wasn’t sure it’d work and not get him killed just for having come to their attention.

<zatar> More discussion of what we can offer before we talk to people.

<zatar> And more saying obvious things explicitly in five different ways in case they sound meaningfully different to the people we’re talking to.

<zatar> I’m serious about finding five ways to state the obvious next time anyone we talk to is confused.

- and a somewhat less cozy one where they partake of other modern inventions like red rights discourse.

<zatar> Emoji poll. Do you care about helping the reds? Do you want to see effort and resources go toward that?
✅124 ❌145 〰️201

<symbols-and-sorrows> What, *any* resources? Not lots, just any?

<zatar> Enough to matter to us.

<TanaSmith> how do you emoji poll

<TanaSmith> can’t figure out how to do it

<TanaSmith> never mind i got it

<convallaria> Expanding on my “maybe” vote, I only want us to get involved if we can do it without making things worse. I’m against deciding we hate their oppression so much so we’ll start enforcing foreign laws on people who didn’t actually manage to seriously hurt them and only tried under really horrible circumstances. I don’t want children being tortured because we want to act self-righteous. I don’t want the thing VN wants. I want to help them be safe and free to grow, not just take them in because they’ve already been beaten down so much that some of them make nice docile pets. And I want to help the other Amentan colors, too, not kidnap people and leave their children to be tortured.

<convallaria> Fuck Vanda Nossëo. Fuck them.
💯82 ‼️14

<zatar> I think we were all assuming “helping the reds” didn’t mean “encouraging them to be docile sheep, getting revenge but lying about whether we think revenge is a good idea, and generally having a kafkaesque nightmare of a court system”

<zatar> You want to rule out revenge for how they were treated in general or just if it’s a kafkaesque nightmare that endangers innocent children?

<convallaria> The reds have a right to their own vengeance. I wouldn’t want to take that from them.

<zatar> If they ask me for help?

<convallaria> I’m not against giving them all rings of personal space or songs of healing and leaving them to it.

<convallaria> It’s reasonable for them to do what they want and it’s reasonable for some Rivikni to expect them to do whatever they want. It’s not reasonable for some Rivikni to expect aliens to show up and get revenge and it’s doubly unreasonable for some Rivikni to expect aliens to show up and get revenge while claiming the problem is that their laws were violated because they claim jurisdiction over the entire multiverse.

<convallaria> Look, do we hate the clean Amentans and want them all to suffer horribly? Is that what we want? Because we can totally achieve that. We have a great model for how to achieve that.

<zatar> I could do better than VN at that.

<ashes> It’s not like super clear that the reds are ~victims~ who just need to get revenge for all the ~atrocities~

<ashes> Like fuck vn with a sword but

<ashes> The reds have been systematically murdering the cleans for doing things the reds don’t like and I’m not saying that’s unreasonable of them!!
⬆️23 ⬇️9

<ashes> I’m just saying they have been doing it

<ashes> Let’s all take off the vn-colored glasses for a minute here

<z> nah

<z> not “doing things the reds don’t like”

<ashes> Yes doing things the reds don’t like

<z> plotting to kill them

<z> a normal thing to kill people for
😛3 💯30

<ashes> Yes that is a thing people don’t tend to like
🤔8

<ashes> Such as reds, an example of a group of people that don’t like it when you plot their deaths

<ashes> Not that that’s even right

<ashes> They weren’t plotting reds’ deaths, they were developing new technology

<ashes> That someone could have used to stop NEEDING the reds

<ashes> But they have to have green hair to be allowed to develop robots and blue hair to order people to exterminate the reds and grey hair to actually do it

<ashes> What we have here is a situation where some people want to keep other people down so they stay necessary

<ashes> No fucking wonder vn fucking adores them

<z> yeah i see what youre saying but the reds are super super reasonable for thinking the greens wanted to kill them

<z> also literally the case everyone was talking about was a green murderer

<ashes> It’s not murder it’s war

<z> no its serfdom

<ashes> Serfs aren’t separate self-administering nations that pursue a coherent foreign policy toward the rest of society and that foreign policy if it existed wouldn’t be killing a bunch of people

<ashes> It’s definitely war not serfdom

<convallaria> We should obviously help them develop robots.

<z> if a serf murders someone thats not war

<z> if a dozen serfs pick one they all listen to thats not being a country

<z> reds = serfs
⬆️2 

<ashes> Serfs have rights
⬆️6

<z> haha supposedly

<ashes> They do though! Do you want examples of people being tried and convicted for misconduct toward serfs?

<z> i have NEVER heard of that happening

<convallaria> I have heard of it happening more often than never.
⬆️8

<ashes> Okay so I know of a case of a jeweler traveling through the countryside and ending up on trial for rape and not getting convicted because they weren’t sure he was the one who did it but it was the kind of thing that gets tried and I know of a case of a lord who did unspeakable things to his serfs’ kids and that never got tried but he got pressured to leave the governance to his son and go away

<convallaria> Anyone else heard of the Reaper?

<convallaria> Serial killer near the Irali border.

<z> none of that really counts

<ashes> Oh man the reaper that was fucked up

<z> the reaper was forever ago and didnt just pick on serfs. the jeweler didnt get convicted. the other guy didnt get tried and you could just be making that up.
⬆️1

<ashes> Reds are self-governing because point me at one example of someone else governing them

<ashes> Do the blues care if they murder each other?

<z> some places reds get to vote

<ashes> Really???

<z> theres a list on summary bank

<zatar> There are six countries with ostensible red suffrage and none of them offer reds even as much decisionmaking power as purples.

<zatar> The reds obviously organize themselves as a polity at war with foreigners.

<zatar> And the Amentan governments claim jurisdiction over them.

<zatar> We can compare anyone we want to VN but let’s not.

<ashes> Lots of governments claim jurisdiction over other people they’re at war with

<ashes> That is a normal thing to have a war about

<ashes> I’m not saying the reds have done anything wrong

<ashes> I have literally not once in this conversation said any reds have done anything bad

<ashes> I just think they give as good as they get
⬆️3 ⬇️5

<convallaria> I don’t think they do.

<convallaria> They could take the clean Amentans down with them if they wanted. They could go on strike. Stop having babies for a couple of years first, maybe, or a suicide pact, obviously…

<ashes> War isn’t zero-sum we can both lose

<z> yeah instead of fighting all the time they do work for money

<z> you know like serfs not like enemies

<zatar> Enough.

<zatar> No more on the question of whether reds are better understood as serfs or enemies of the other castes for a quarter hour. Discuss other aspects of the situation.

<convallaria> They’re remarkably forgiving for letting that happen and not leaving the others to fend for themselves.

<convallaria> No wonder VN likes them so much, I guess.

<symbols-and-sorrows> No, don’t be ridiculous.

<z> orrrr theyre not that coordinated and couldnt pull it off all together

<symbols-and-sorrows> They’re rich and happy.

<symbols-and-sorrows> They complain about how ~poor~ they are with their electric heating and their internet and their multiple outfits per person

<z> like how would they do it on the internet when the blues read the internet? they cant have secret private sites because the yellows would make the internet so they couldnt

<symbols-and-sorrows> The old-fashioned way. Word of mouth.

<vine> so is pollution real?

<z> no
🥷1

<symbols-and-sorrows> No, it’s like gods

<ashes> Mayyyyyybe? VN doesn’t think so but I don’t know of any other reason to think it’s real

<convallaria> It’s not real or fake like dirt. It’s real or fake like honor or oathbreaking.

<convallaria> You can’t look at someone and see a broken oath. I don’t think you can even conjure for oathbreakers, @santaclaus ? But it can change how other people want to interact with you.

<ashes> Ohhhhh is that what it is

<z> thats wrong

<z> theres a study that says pollution causes brain damage

<z> if it were real it could do that and since its fake it doesnt do that

<z> oathbreaking doesnt cause brain damage

<ashes> It causes the ultimate brain damage when someone decides to beat you to death
💯2 🤔3

<vine> so does that mean amentans think it’s evil to touch reds???

<ashes> Yes

<convallaria> Yes

<z> unless youre murdering them

<z> murder is fine

<vine> i dont think i understand amentan virtues??????
⬆️5

<zatar> No more than anyone else understands ours. We won’t disrespect them.

<vine> IS THIS WHAT WE LOOK LIKE TO VN????????

<convallaria> I think maybe we do.

<zatar> I’m assuming we do. And we won’t be like VN to them.

<convallaria> I really do think there might be something to it.
⁉️3

<convallaria> Look, imagine this. You’re from someplace where they don’t believe in courage or honor. You’re fine because you get fed for being such a good sheep, like in VN. Then someone says “when I say in a certain way that I’ll do things, it’s magically true that it’s just objectively bad in a way you can’t see or hear or taste or smell or feel if I don’t do those things, even if it seems like I have a good reason for changing my mind.”

<ashes> I get that they wouldn’t understand

<convallaria> or “no, that clever scheme to convince your enemies you’re surrendering and then not surrender is actually evil even if it wins the war easily and your enemies were evil and you save a thousand people.” No, it’s not just that they wouldn’t understand. It’s that they might be better off if they did.

<convallaria> Like, do you think it’s just as good to be one of VN’s sheep? Just a harmless foreign quirk?

<convallaria> I want to be someone who could notice there being something good about virtues I haven’t heard of before.

<ashes> What’s good about this one?
🤷‍♂️1

<santaclaus> no i cannot conjure for oathbreakers or polluted people

<santaclaus> does any of this… matter? like, at all? to how we deal with Amenta?

<ashes> How would it not matter?

<santaclaus> vOv if you aren’t gonna make any demands and you are gonna trade with them then they’re gonna kill the reds and then I have to conjure 65 million bodies and another planet, right? But if you do some kinda complicated thing where you convince everyone to be nice to each other, they go “great, let’s have the reds be clean and give them a planet” and i make 65 million bodies and a planet

<santaclaus> right?

<zatar> transporters

<santaclaus> oh! great, i don’t want to make 65 million bodies!

<santaclaus> please finesse the fuck out of this problem.

<z> no yeah does it matter? were not forcing anyone to resurrect them and its not a binding poll

<z> my lord is just feeling people out and now were shotting the breeze

<ashes> I just think people are being unfair to the blues, greys, yellows, greens, oranges and purples

<zatar> Don’t start arguing about whether reds are at war with the other Amentans again yet.

<ashes> Yes my lord

<convallaria> Since my lord is asking for our input, would it be helpful if instead of answering individual questions like “should we spend any resources on reds” we composed and voted on broader principles governing how to handle contact with other societies without turning into VN?

<zatar> Yes.

<ashes> Let’s not take sides in fights that have been going on for generations
✅34 ❌5 〰️49

<ashes> VN took sides and they suck

<convallaria> Let’s not leave anyone scared that they can’t afford to have a will of their own, let alone actually try to take away all their options besides service.
✅3 ❌68 〰️20

<z> what if they commit perfidy

<convallaria> We really need a better way to keep people dead, don’t we? We could kill them and make them VN’s problem but that just gives VN more people, however little they’re worth to us…

<ashes> Let’s not leave anyone scared that they can’t afford to have a will of their own, let alone actually try to take away all their options besides service, unless they committed perfidy or tortured a child
✅69 ❌3 〰️18

<z> patricide?

<ashes> Nahhhh I think we were too harsh on patricides, a clean death is fine

<convallaria> Sometimes you don’t know what a man does to his children in private.
☹️2

<convallaria> But being able to trust your family is important. Let’s treat patricide like we treat fratricide.

<zatar> You expect this to matter to first contact?
⬆️7

<convallaria> What if we meet slaveowners or something?

<zatar> There’s a difference between enslaving someone and merely not interfering with it when someone else does.

<convallaria> Also, we might meet some more evil gods.

<zatar> We probably need to kill them and hope for the best.

<convallaria> When would we actually want to do that to someone in a first-contact situation, then?

<ashes> I think “leave” should be “make” and then we’re fine

<ashes> Either there’s a government already dealing with it and we don’t have to, or there’s no government dealing with it and us doing it would start a war

<ashes> So I propose a First Contact Rule: no starting wars about anything less bad than Melkor
✅1 〰️2 ❌2

<convallaria> What if the aliens insult us?

<ashes> They won’t if we don’t start talking to them

<convallaria> And if we start talking to them and then they insult us?

<ashes> How are we even supposed to tell

<ashes> Aliens

<z> mmmmmm “we”

<ashes> Who’s to say what aliens think is an insult

<z> if someone insults me im gonna be normal about it

<convallaria> I mean what if their government insults us all as a people?

<z> i wanna go to war if they do that

<z> but i dont need help if it’s some guy insulting me personally

<santaclaus> i’m not going to war over someone calling you people weirdoes

<convallaria> “Weirdo” isn’t a mortal insult.
⬆️1

<santaclaus> imagine knowing that

<santaclaus> couldn’t be me

<convallaria> It can be you! I can explain.

<santaclaus> also i don’t really care, i’m only going to war with evil gods and stuff like that

<z> you dont have to help us if you dont want to maam

<z> were grateful that youre with us and we dont need you to answer insults to us not because you couldnt but because its our problem

<convallaria> I just actually don’t want to go to war with people we make contact with on purpose over insults because either we can leave and they’ll hate it, or we’re not making things better for them and should have left them alone.

<ashes> No they might take something important and then start insulting us

<convallaria> Okay, it’s possible there are ungrateful aliens.

<z> i GUESS we can just fuck off if itll show them

<z> but like yeah what if we give them all this cool magic and they take it and then they start insulting us

<santaclaus> wow, who would do such a thing

<z> maam vn really actually sucks

<santaclaus> yeah, and?

<z> maam you make a good point but i didnt say the aliens couldnt do it because they think were evil

<z> kinda fucked up to take our stuff and then tell us that but thats super duper not what we did

<z> we arent gonna start it by telling them we hate everything they care about right?

<santaclaus> Official First Contact Principle: no telling the aliens their deeply-held values and principles are atrocities we hope they grow out of?
✅7 〰️3 ❌2

<convallaria> What do we tell the least convenient possible aliens who want to maximize oathbreaking and torture innocents?

<zatar> I’m only paying half my attention to this conversation, so I don’t always notice things, but I don’t see a reason why we would neither ignore nor kill them. If they’re that evil, they’re beneath our notice or the same kind of thing as Melkor, right?

<symbols-and-sorrows> What if their children could be raised to hate them?

<zatar> Again, I could be missing something, but any reasons that isn’t a horrifying atrocity in itself aren’t immediately coming to me.

<convallaria> I think it’s fair when people do it to Melkor by rescuing the orcs.

<vine> excuse me, i’m having trouble keeping track of the proposed rules for first contact, can we have separate threads for those and the other things?
⬆️2

<zatar> Be it so! Everyone stop typing for a moment while I create three new threads.

<zatar> Further discussion of pollution and Amentan theology in this thread.

<symbols-and-sorrows> So, they’re not wrong that being clean keeps you healthy, but unless we think germ theory is fake (I don’t) they’re wrong about what is clean
⬆️2

<convallaria> What if they’re not wrong and there’s more there?

<convallaria> Not all diseases are caused by germs.

<ashes> So, is this like “honor is important even if you think no one will know because everything goes better when people have honor” or like “not being super evil is great because it makes you not super evil, which you would care about if you were not super evil, but actually you don’t care because you are super evil”

<convallaria> I’m not totally sure.

<ashes> There should be something real about it if it’s the first kind of thing

<convallaria> Amenta’s a nice place in some ways.

<z> uhhh????????
⬆️3

<ashes> It’s a rich place
⬆️4

<z> ereith??????? what they did to ereith????????

<ashes> I’m not seeing any ways it’s a nice place that aren’t just down to electricity and recorded music
⬆️1

<convallaria> They have amazing state capacity.

<convallaria> They take such detailed records.
☹️1

<ashes> Yeah because look how many yellows they have because the farmers are so productive

<z> and what they did to ereith
💯3

<convallaria> They were trying to keep wars from getting out of hand.

<z> badly!!!!!!
⬆️1

<convallaria> Obviously, they have a problem with thinking the castes should all have totally separate sets of virtues. They can’t honor valor in blues or recognize it at all in reds.
🤔3

<convallaria> We shouldn’t be Amenta.
💯8

<z> theyre really super super awful for that tho

<meadow> amenta is awful to the reds for no reason. i’m not saying you’re wrong to wonder if pollution is worth thinking about, sir, but amenta is more awful than they need to be even if pollution is worth thinking about
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<convallaria> Who among us has never planned a genocide?

<meadow> me, sir
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<convallaria> Touché.

<z> could people worth emulating really think only greys should be brave
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<convallaria> Worth emulating wholesale, no, absolutely not.

<convallaria> But if they’re not maximally bad at everything then it’s always possible they’re better than us at something and we can learn from them.

<ashes> By taking five hour showers

<ashes> And their state capacity is because they have electricity

<ashes> So is there any other way Amenta is better than we used to be besides state capacity and electricity making life easier and giving everyone enough food and recorded music and germ theory

<zatar> Their weapons seem impressive but maybe that’s also downstream of electricity.

<convallaria> Their philosophers on tumblr talk about happiness in a way that seems like they see something about what’s valuable in life that Sesat underemphasized.

<convallaria> I found a social justice blog that talked about the importance of listening to purples and oranges about their lived experiences and it was interesting.

<z> thats criticism of amenta tho

<santaclaus> they do sort of have democracy ish?

<ashes> Do we need a democracy discourse thread

<z> i want a democracy discourse thread
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<meadow> it might be that my lord zatar will consider it on topic here because of its relevance to whether amenta is better than expected for its tech level

<zatar> Correct.

<convallaria> Okay. The things I like about Amenta are the space they made to criticize the prevailing viewpoints and the fact that some of them explicitly try not to conflate your worth with your caste. Like, I think we also undervalued farmers, because of course more people are capable of learning to do that than some other things. Since they didn’t allow anyone too good for their caste to do something else, it got to be really obvious that they’re not the same thing. But that’s still true even in better places. It’s really important to recognize that farmers can be very impressive people. It’s better to honor that by getting them the opportunity to be something else, but that starts with noticing it in the first place. And I think similarly, debate is good for society sometimes. It lets us notice when we’re being idiots. I know sometimes I’ve needed someone to tell me I was being stupid, and it’s easier to tell someone they’re being an idiot about something after you’ve heard them talk. Obviously, the general level of courtesy in Amentan internet discourse is really unimpressive, but I still broadly appreciate that it exists.
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<ashes> That has nothing to do with cleanliness
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<z> that has nothing to do with cleanliness

<meadow> sir, do you think that might have more to do with their focus on education? earth societies are like that once they have mass literacy too
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<ashes> Mass literacy is a tech thing slash a productive farmers thing which is also a tech thing

<ashes> It’s tech twice over
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<z> yeahhhhh

<convallaria> It’s really good to be clean, though.

<ashes> Nobody likes how cities smelled but five hour showers are unnecessary
✅4

<meadow> it’s very good to be clean and not very good to waste time pretending things aren’t clean to have an excuse to clean them extra
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<convallaria> What’s the exact optimal amount of cleanliness?

<ashes> The one that smells the best and kills the fewest people

<convallaria> Amentans have lower rates of disease spread than Earth humans controlling for tech level, don’t they?

<ashes> Oh even controlling for tech level? Okay that’s something

<ashes> Still true even if you only look at them after they know about germ theory?

<convallaria> I think so. I need a minute to find the link.

<symbols-and-sorrows> But isn’t that really weird? What causes it?

<convallaria> I think they’re more likely to wear masks that somehow prevent contagion or wash things more often.

<symbols-and-sorrows> So, it’s explained by germ theory just fine, but Earth people are lazy?

<convallaria> Maybe, yeah.

<symbols-and-sorrows> So, an argument for caring as much as they do, but not an argument for caring about the specific things they do.
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<convallaria> Yeah, okay. But they’re trying really hard at something really important.

<ashes> They’re trying really hard at something kind of related to something important
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So anyway, that's where they're discussing the new world right now.

Kindly come by the Imperial office and find yourself on my schedule for 3pm Tuesday under the name "Redacted".

Relu goes to the Imperial office on Tuesday.

Ling Wen receives her. "Please, have a seat. Tea?"

She has a seat. "You honor me by so offering, but I'm afraid I never learned to like tea."

"Water? Juice?"

Relu will accept water and not actually drink it. "So, about what I wrote. The end of witches would just be a side effect of being able to improve gem clarity without grief seeds."

"Wow! Have you tested this? Who with?"

"With singing elves from the planet Arda but if there's anyone around here with a gem that's at all darkened I can confirm it works on humans from Earth right now."

"With... singing elves. From the planet Arda."

Relu smiles blandly.

"I don't really appreciate having my time wasted."

"I would not presume to tell you what might be worth your time to test. It’s a real place I’ve really been. I approached you immediately rather than begin selling my services to the highest bidder but I can do that if you prefer."

"I'm going to turn you over to one of my colleagues for the time being, thanks!" And she whisks herself out of the room to be replaced with a nonmagical clerk with a clipboard.

She has done less research on how to politely greet this person but she tries.

The person would like to be told in chronological order what happened such that they are now having this meeting please.

"I visited other planets. I learned about something that can be used to maintain gem clarity indefinitely without grief seeds. I came here and said so."

"In more detail, please."

Relu can quote most of their conversation.