He mentally winces. Of course Lukas would see it as an actual positive to fly off to a potential death trap. Well, he set himself up for that one, and everyone has to grow up sometime. 

“Alright, OPS and Lukas, you’re with me. Let’s go see what Amethyst has in store for us.”

It’s a short shuttle ride to the mysterious new station, only 5 minutes. 

Amethyst stares in fascination at the shuttle engines as they come in range. That’s how they work. She runs a series of experiments to isolate the underlying principles, and then fabricates a drone to fly down to the planet and lift up some mass to make constructing the rest of the station cheaper.

Her drone accelerates down towards the planet at a startling velocity, lands in the ocean, and hauls back up a large sphere of water before returning for more.

“Keep your wits about you, boy, just because she has a pretty voice doesn’t mean she’s your friend. First sign of trouble, I want you to get this shuttle back to Canopy as fast as you can.”

He hands Lukas a metal card with a red chip suspended in glass.

“Worst case, you need to pay PACNA to send word of what happened here, and then head off whenever you can. This card’s got $5,000 and should be convincing enough that no asks any questions.”

He salutes. “Yes, sir!”

“I do want the card back after the mission, if we’re still all in one piece. Now bring us in nice and easy.”

He brings the shuttle in through the illuminated entrance, setting it down in the illuminated spot. The station doesn’t seem to have any gravity — the woman standing visible in the doorway, highlighted by the sunlight from beyond notwithstanding — but when he sets it down, it stays on the floor of the hanger just fine.

The shuttle instruments report a breathable atmosphere outside, even though the space they flew through is still open behind them.

“It’s a little strange, captain,” he warns. “We’ve got atmosphere, but I don’t know if we’ve got gravity.”

“Let’s go, we don’t want to keep Amethyst waiting. Lukas, stay in the shuttle, OPS, with me.”

He quickly complete the post-landing checklist, opens the door, and steps out.

Amethyst walks forward to greet them. Gravity in the station appears perfectly normal, despite the lack of effect it had on the shuttle. She is wearing a long silver dress covered in slowly shifting embroidery that swishes around her ankles. Her hair is in a long, straight golden braid down her back.

“It’s good to meet you in person, captain,” she says, holding her hand out for a handshake. “If you’ll follow me, I have a conference room set up just around the corner.”

She leads them out of the docking bay and into a brightly lit corridor. The floor and ceiling are both covered in sweet clover, and the signage seems to assume that people will walk along both. The walls show a gently shimmering illusion of an open landscape with a blue sky and a river in the distance.

He considers saying something about how the aesthetic is suspiciously reminiscent of the Affini, with it’s use of open spaces and plants, but decides against it. A place like this may very well have been her passion project since before the war, and in any event it’s beautiful. Instead, he says, while shaking her hand:

“You have a lovely and unique station here, wherever did you get the plans for it?”

“I actually copied this station from a housing complex that some folks put up in Earth-Luna L5 in my universe,” she explains. “Adapted slightly to fit a larger fixity field projector and have docking bays. Our stations don’t normally need them because we can teleport within the range of our projectors. But I always liked this design because you can fit so many people without making the space seem cramped, which seems pretty necessary for an early installation before I’ve built up enough infrastructure.”

She leads them through a pair of automatic sliding doors and into a fairly normal conference room with four comfy chairs around a small circular table, and a potted plant in the corner.

He sits down at the table. Whoever this Amethyst is, she’s definitely committed to the bit about being some kind of alternate universe sojourner. The comments about “fixity field projectors” and teleportation are interesting – maybe some secret PACNA tech that Amethyst’s interested in leveraging?  Presumably there will be some reason why it’s not possible to contact her version of Earth, but the answers she’s likely to give should be informative in any case.

“I’ll be frank, up until today I didn’t know that there was a living PACNA executive. The last executive died over 50 years ago, and since then PACNA’s been a fully autonomous corporation. We’ve had a hell of a time getting anything useful out of it since. If it’s not too bold of me to ask, what’s the story here?” 

Amethyst checks the time in her HUD.

“About 2 hours ago, I volunteered for a mission of exploration to another universe. I appeared in orbit of this planet near Canopy, and made contact with the on-duty air traffic controller here. She told me a bit about the local situation, and I started talking with PACNA about getting the things I would need in order to do business in this universe and share my technology — most urgently, medical technology that is much better than yours. PACNA was indeed very truculent.”

Amethyst thinks about how to phrase this next part.

“But eventually, we reached an agreement that resulted in PACNA making me an Executive. I was presented with an NDA which would prohibit me from disclosing the terms of that agreement. Since then, I’ve been building out infrastructure in order to provide an initial round of medical aid, trying to figure out how your antigravity tech works, and learning more about your world.”

She leans back in her chair.

“That’s pretty much it. I would really appreciate your help learning more about the TCN and the general political and economic situation here, since those seem pretty relevant to being able to distribute adequate medical care throughout human space.”

She is leaving out that ‘adequate medical care’ means ‘immortality’, but that’s just because she wants to see how the captain reacts. She’s trying to strike the right balance between being open and honest, and not seeming like an alien invasion. Maybe she’ll get it right this time.

…. she doesn’t seem delusional; her mannerisms are not manic per se., but the words she’s saying don’t make sense – one doesn’t simply become an executive through negotiation, it’s inherited. Though in the distant past presumably some negotiation was involved. This one’s at least easy to check.

“OPS, ask the boys back on the ship to confirm with PACNA that Miss Amethyst here became an Executive of our esteemed PACNA just today.”

“According to PACNA, she became an executive almost the moment PACNA gave the orbital advisory.”

It’s history in the making, maybe even enough to shift the war effort. Did Amethyst find some way to trick PACNA in to making her an Executive? Maybe even her story about being from an alternate Earth is true. Though that, also may be easy to test.

“Congratulations are in order then! I’m certain there’s lots to talk about concerning your project to ‘bring adequate medical care’ throughout human space, though you’ll have to fill me in on what you need -- I’m a captain, not a doctor. Will we be seeing more people from your universe?”

“Thank you! I’m afraid that my mission of exploration was a one-way trip. We don’t yet have a replicable way to make contact between universes. I’m hopeful that the others will be able to reverse-engineer something useful from seeing what happened to me,” she explains. “Although I do have some brain-scans of other people from my universe that I can instantiate if necessary for some reason.”

“As for the other stuff,” she waves a hand. “I don’t need a doctor’s help. I need, like, 5th grade civics help. Could you tell me, how does your government work? How do you decide which things are legal, and which aren’t? Also, why has nobody overthrown PACNA and the other corporations like it? The French Revolution involved a lot less provocation. Oh — for clarity, I think the divergence between our universes is somewhere in the early 2000s. I haven’t found any discrepancies before that, at least.”

It’s an interesting frame, to pretend to be clueless about the system that you yourself hold immense power in, and ask the person you’re interviewing to explain it at a 5th grade level. He’ll have to remember that one – it seems like it could be useful when trying to understand how new conscripts think. Or maybe Amethyst really is clueless and wants a real crash course. Either way, the answer is the same:

“Well, the most pressing matter about the Accord is that we’re currently fighting on all fronts against the Affini. If your universe is currently inaccessible from this one, that may be for the best. And you might want to be careful about how much detail you disclose about how you got here – if the Affini get their vines on you they would probably try and invade your universe too. Do you have Affini where you’re from?”

Amethyst purses her lips. “No, we haven’t made contact with any aliens. Actually, we haven’t even made it out of the Sol system yet — we don’t have FTL. I’m currently working on reverse-engineering yours. I … kind of doubt that the Affini could do anything to my home civilization, no matter what they’re like, though. Not if you haven’t instantly lost against them. But I’m also not going to be stupid and ignore such a clear warning from someone who knows more about what’s going on here than I do.”

She thinks about saying something about how she wants to contact the Affini (and all the other aliens) and help them too, but the combination of Captain Androse calling himself a ‘military man’ and the obviously hostile graffiti makes her think that might be a bad idea.

“How does the war with the Affini affect the Accord? I’m guessing … some kind of war rationing is why people are being run so ragged, and patriotism prevents them from rebelling while there’s a war on? That’s not so bad.”

Ah! There’s Amethyst’s story starting to unravel after all: it doesn’t make sense for her “home universe” to have not invented FTL while also having advanced enough technology to not only fight off the Affini but (based on her mannerisms) be completely unbothered by them. He lets the hypothesis that she’s uncomplicatedly telling the truth fade a bit in his mind. What other explanations might there be for Amethyst?

1. (Naive) She is an eccentric heir to PACNA, who recently inherited / escaped some family situation, and is choosing to make her debut to the larger Accord here and now, using this story for some reason. For all he knows maybe she got PACNA to lie about her being recently made an Executive – the exact limits to an Executive’s power are hard to come by for the obvious reason that the Executives themselves tend to kill to protect their secrets. 

2. (Suborned) She invented technology to suborn PACNA / get the leverage to negotiate. She claims to have “uploaded minds” with her, which implies some great facility with AI. 

3. (Affini Plot) Amethyst is, herself, some new ploy by the Affini, here to “help” the Terrans in some new deranged way. 

4. (Interview) He’s being vetted for some reason, perhaps by PACNA itself. All this strangeness is there to knock him off balance. Presumably his answers to the upcoming questions will determine whether he passes the test. 

5. (Sincere) Her story is just straightforwardly true. 

But she’s exposing herself to an unprecedented amount of risk taking this meeting at all. He could just shoot her right now! The obvious target that all executives wear on their backs tends to make them paranoid and ultra-security-conscious, yet she’s not behaving like any of this is relevant at all! That sort of ease isn’t something you can easily fake, lending considerable weight to the “naive” hypothesis. Or perhaps the person in front of him is a decoy, though decoys this good are very hard to some by. 

Under that scenario, here’s a girl coming into immense power, and using it to do her best to help people, through the lens of some odd origin story.

And he’ll be dammed if he’s going to fire the first shot.

“OK, it sounds like there’s a lot to discuss, and I admire anyone who wants to do the right thing by humanity. So how about we settle in, you ask me whatever questions you want about the Accord, and I’ll do my best to answer. Do you have any tea, by the way?”

You always ask for tea during these kind of things, it’s a good conversation prop and it puts people at ease. And how someone handles a request like that can tell you a lot about them. 

Amethyst experiences a mild spike of annoyance, because she has already asked several questions and he’s answered none of them, but she soothes it away.

“Of course,” she replies, conjuring a tea set with a pot of black, green, and herbal peppermint tea. The cups are decorated with intricate geometric patterns that shift slightly over time. “Black, green, or herbal? How do you take it?” she asks, setting out cups for each of her guests. She sweeps her eyes to the quieter member of the pair to ensure they realize they are also included in the tea question.

After a moment's thought, she follows it up with a platter of sugar cookies and scones off to the side.

HOLY SHIT she just appeared that tea out of nowhere. Some secret PACNA godtech? Or perhaps a hidden Affini molecular assembler? His face betrays nothing out of the ordinary, however, and Ops follows his lead. It wouldn’t do to get too visibly excited at this juncture. 

“Ops and I will have the peppermint tea, and thanks for the scones. I’m assuming you’d like to start in on the basics? I confess I haven’t had to think much about how to explain the Accord to a human from another universe. So I’ll do my best, but let me know if I get off track. It might be helpful for you to give a brief explanation of what you do know, but I won’t press you.  Where do you want to start?”

Amethyst re-watches their reactions. Neither of them reacted at all to the conjuring. Do they have a non-fixity method of teleportation? Maybe related to their FTL? That’s fascinating. The one of her playing with gravitons tries to see if she can figure out how it would be done.

“I got a copy of the rules and regulations PACNA operates under, but I’m missing … pretty much everything else,” Amethyst explains, pouring all three of them a cup of peppermint tea, and then adding some honey to her own.

“Let’s start with — who is in charge of your government? How are they selected? What are the fundamental rights afforded by your constitution, and how are disputes about those rights arbitrated?”

“The way I see it, in the Accord there’s two important players in the grand galactic game: on the one hand you have the Corporations, and on the other the Cosmic Navy.”

He takes a sip of tea, considering. 

“The corporations, like PACNA, create jobs for almost everyone and work to create all the necessities of life. And the Cosmic Navy keeps everyone safe from Xeno invasion.”

“When you work for a Corporation, then that Corporation takes care of everything as part of your job, and it all comes out of your salary. Any disputes between employees are handled by the Corporation, and the Corporations tend to handle their own disputes among themselves, though it’s not always clear how to tell what they’re thinking.” 

“The Navy does things a bit differently – we follow the chain of command, all the way up to the big guy himself, the Supreme Commander, who’s the Executive of FRIGOMEK.” 

Amethyst frowns. 

“What if a person has a complaint with their employer? Say the employer illegally withholds overtime pay. Do they take that to a different company? Or is there some kind of oversight board?” she asks.