The aliens are running around in a desperate panic, some of them trying to figure out what they are authorized to do and others deciding that that's not important! They are met by three different groups of blue-haired people with various yellow and green subordinates who have decided to each ignore the other two groups and approach from different directions.

...okay. It would probably be a bit bewildering to have aliens drop on you. Aliens bounce eagerly out of their shuttle! They would like to learn the language! They look a lot like locals except all of them have black hair.

Group 1 is assuming they already know the language. Group 2 has flash cards collected from the nearest elementary school with which to attempt to teach them colors and numbers and nouns. Group 3 brought an actual linguist.

...aliens will split up to entertain all of these people after these people miss cues that they could just collect into one group and save time. Colors and numbers and nouns take them no time at all and they switch to implausible combinations to try to elicit some syntax. Group 1 will just have to quickly realize otherwise. Linguists are appreciated! Linguists can be properly impressed at how very fast these aliens are learning the language.

The linguist is very impressed and manages to adapt pretty well to their unexpected speed! This is the first alien to communicate that the people of this planet wish to go to space. Soon. They want more planets. Are there more planets they can go live on.

There are lots of planets! Every star in the sky is a sun and lots of them have planets.

Yes but can they go live on them, do they have air, is the way they made the spaceship learnable. (Some more green haired aliens unaffiliated with the preexisting groups attempt to sneak aboard.)

(Elves tolerate this. The spaceship is ridiculously big with ridiculously high ceilings and outrageously pretty artwork and tapestries and sculpture and, for some reason, water features. Despite the fact that it's clearly designed to not usually have gravity. There are more Elves on the spaceship, looking at what appears to be the local internet and singing.)

It is not very usual for planets to have air but not unusual there are surely some. Lightleapers are learnable but they might take lots of time to teach from the present tech level, this seems to be where the aliens were - there is a digression to figure out the length of years - sixty or seventy local years ago? Lots to catch up on before they could make lightleapers.

(Sneaking-aboard greens attempt to make friends with internet-browsing aliens via methods including plying them with snacks, smiling and waving, and pointing out the best video on Streamworld.)

They would like to catch up faster than that. They really, really want to go live on more planets.

Is something the matter with this one? It does look very inhabited. 

(Internet-browsing aliens would love to make friends!)

Yes, it's too crowded, they would rather spread out.

Yay friends!

Aliens are probably amenable to taking the locals places themselves until the locals can build lightleapers. Valinor is not very crowded. Valinor is so pretty. Unlike this place. It is. Uh. Elves are sure they were trying.

Can they see pictures?

They can!!! Here is Tirion and here is Alqualondë and here is Valimar and here are a hundred smaller cities.

Those are definitely pretty. That must take forever.

Yes but it's important. How could they live in cities at all otherwise. They thought maybe all the locals were blind.

No, most of them are not blind. They live in cities because that way there is room for more of them.

That makes sense. Elves will be open-minded. ...what's the story with the hair. Also for their information Elves always wear their hair up except in bed. When married. Like specifically the kind of 'in bed' that goes with being married.

Oh, hair color is a caste marker. Do the aliens have castes? That is an interesting custom, the braids thing.

They're surprised anyone gets by without it. The aliens have never heard of castes.

People who don't want their hair in the way usually just cut it. Castes are this thing where, due to heredity and training, people are suited to certain classes of careers based on who their parents were.

...that doesn't work for Elves. Sometimes people are suited to the same things as their parents but often they are not, at all.

Oh, well, it works here, maybe a little fuzzy around intercaste marriage but people mostly avoid that.

How interesting! What jobs go with the colors?

Blue is aristocracy and green is intellectuals and artists and yellows are fussy technical sorts of things and greys are warriors and cops and athletes and oranges are caring professions and purple is general labor and reds are gross things. Are the aliens clean, by the way.

...the aliens look at themselves as if this is a question that could be answered by looking.

That is to say have they been, since any contact they may being casteless have had with dead bodies or waste, very thoroughly washed, and also have any of them had a family history of That Sort Of Thing.

...contact with dead bodies or waste? No one has a family history of that, what a terribly unlucky family you would have to be. They do wash after they use the restroom, yes.

Okay they're probably fine. Space! They would like to go to space and live on more planets!!!

Aliens will delightedly keep learning the language! They ask who is in charge here.

They get seven different answers. Three of them change after the locals have noticed the conflict. One of them changes again after that. Now they have five different answers. Six, when someone has an afterthought.

...okay. Uh. If there is a debate about what the law should be, who settles that debate?

More debate. Among the senators, of whom there are three hundred.

...ooooh, aliens have speculated about the benefits of distributing power like that. And then the senators ...vote?

In a manner of speaking. Yes. Technically.

...huh?

Yes, they vote, there's just a lot of other stuff going on.

Interesting! These Elves have a monarchy but some Elves have democracies. With one elected leader, usually. Also they tend to reelect him repeatedly, there are not many differences between those states and the monarchies.

Monarchies used to be more popular on this planet. They used to be ruled by an empire. That was like thirty years ago though.

Well as long as the senator arrangement works for them. Did the senators send them here?

Some of them! Different senators. Others are on their own recognizance. One of the sneaking-aboard greens is here on behalf of a university.

Elves find the vague disorganization endearing. Would their guests like a tour of the ship.

Yes!

Ship!!!! They don't have artificial gravity but lightleapers are accelerating all of the time and if you balance it right it's good as the same. The part of making lightleapers where you have to get them nearly to lightspeed actually took more technological breakthroughs than the part where they subsequently leap, which works by folding space. (Yes you can use this to break relativity which has this set of thrilling implications but not this other set including time travel). They repeatedly lament the smallness of their ship.

The greens are fascinated. And want to confirm that they have "small" defined right?

Yes they got it. Greens should have seen the ships they had to use to get to Endorë back before they had lightleapers; those were big ships.

This one actually seems very roomy, especially for so few Elves.

Maybe in addition to needing less pretty spaces Amentans need less space.

Seems likely. This one room is the size of that guy's entire apartment where he lives with his wife and her sister and sister-in-law.

Elves could live in a small apartment if they had a whole city to walk around in whenever they had the impulse. Also they think they missed something about gender words.

He lives with his wife (female spouse) and her sister (female sibling) and her sister in law (female spouse of sibling)! To save on rent.

Ewww.

The locals are confused. Like, his wife's sister does leave nut shells on the carpet, but he didn't even mention that and it's solved by vacuuming.

After a little bit of back and forth it is clarified that Elves live with some gods and the gods have opinions about gay people. The opinion is: ewww.

...that's weird on several levels. Why do the Elves have the same opinions?

Well, gods would know, right? Also isn't it just obviously ewww? It never actually occurred to them that people might not think so.

The locals aren't sure how gods would know. They don't really have expectations of gods like that. And, uh, no, not particularly, guy with a gay sister in law is really more bothered by the nut shells thing.

Huh. Gods would know because they made everything. They might not have made Amenta, Elves suppose.

...if they made everything, why did they make gross things in their own opinion (gay people apparently? are bisexuals okay or should the linguist leave?) in addition to gross things in the Amentans' opinion (previously discussed)?

Well, they make people who are able to make their own choices including gross choices. Elves think it was probably just too hard to design a body that didn't die and it's not like it would be that important a feature, it's not as if people die very often.

Oh, gay people who are entirely gay don't decide to be that way. They can't have kids, who would do that on purpose? - people die a lot. Once per person.

...well Elves who are gay decide to be that way. They suppose if Amentans don't have a choice then that's different. Most Elves have never died. Have most Amentans died? Have their interlocutors?

Uh. Not yet?

...but they're expecting to?

Yeah, once per, then they're done. Er, they have "dead" translated right, right, that's the thing where your body stops working and you stop being alive forever?

...do these people not even have backups.

Sounds science-fictiony.

Elves have backups. Elves are distressed for them! Without backups if you died you would just be gone.

Well. Yes. That's what happens. They don't have enough room anyway.

...killing people seems like kind of an extreme solution to that problem but okay.

Most people don't die of being killed they die of being in their late thirties or early forties.

...oh dear. Elf engineers will get looking at backups for them but they've never heard of aliens that happens to and aren't sure what to do about it.

They were kind of expecting aliens to be mortal in general. Uh, they really really really need more space if they're going to stop dying. So much space. Planets and planets of space to fill up.

Uh huh. There are lots of planets. Maybe the Valar can help terraform some. 

Yay!!!!! So what's the deal with the Valar exactly.

They are older than the Elves (maybe as old as the universe? They claim to be but it's hard to know for sure; the Elves could claim to be gods to some species out there and they'd probably be believed). They are very powerful (maybe magic? Again, hard to tell for sure.) They accidentally wrecked a lot of the planet Elves first lived on so then they invited Elves to Valinor, where they would want for nothing and be taught advanced physics and engineering in exchange for being an extremely well-behaved population. Some Elves took them up on it, and they live in Valinor now, and recently they invented lightleapers and went exploring and found this place.

Gosh. It seems like the difference between magic and not magic is whether they can explain how they do things so you can do them too, do they do that?

Some of the things they do can be explained, but some can't, and some - well, now they can explain to the Elves how they back up the Elves but it certainly seemed like magic back before the Elves had invented computing.

At this time they are interrupted by a squad of grey-haired people who say that on the order of some different senators they're maintaining a perimeter around the aliens everybody shoo. People set about shooing.

The aliens would like to go exploring, actually. Perhaps these new people can accompany them?

No they have to stay here.

Is there some concern?

They just aren't to go wandering about until further notice.

They might get back in their starship and go land somewhere else and explore there, is that all right?

No!

...can the aliens please explain the concern so that the Noldor can evaluate how best to balance it with other concerns like how they have been stuck on this ship for five days and would like to go explore.

They are just doing what the senators so-and-so said and they said the aliens are staying here till further notice.

...the aliens have a discussion about whether to leave anyway. The considerations are that it would be rude to their hosts and might make the hosts nervous; it does not seem to occur to them that the hosts might stop them or attack them. 

...the soldiers explain that they are not allowed to leave.

Yes, but absent any explanation of the reasoning behind this rule and given that the aliens do not seem to understand that they have been stuck on a ship for five days, they might leave even though it is not allowed.

Then they will be stopped.

Why?

Because they're not allowed and if you do things you aren't allowed to do they'll stop you they brought guns.

What are those?

...weapons.

...why did they bring weapons?

So they can stop anybody who does things they are not allowed to do.

...what an alarming approach to stopping people who do things that are not allowed to do! What if they have a good reason, or are confused, or are unwell, or for that matter it's kind of an alarming approach even if they're doing it on purpose for no reason!

They are not here to argue.

Another bunch of greys shows up and is here to argue! With the first batch. They are to stop threatening the aliens! They are to let Soldiers Batch 2 escort them to the capitol!

Aliens agree with Batch 2 because going somewhere sounds nicer than being stuck. Also because threatening people is bad.

The soldiers are going to have to argue about it a lot. And aim guns at each other.

...the fuck.

...maybe half of the aliens can go with and half can stay here? Compromise!

No!!!

Eventually a soldier gets a phone call and group #2 wins the aliens are coming with them.

...the aliens accept their invitation. 

They are marched through crowded ugly streets! They pass restaurants, a place where people seem to be paying money to hold babies for a little while, an event center, a gym, a lot of apartment and office buildings, and myriad other things.

They look around in fascination and sing in Quenya and ask questions about what things are and what they're for.

The soldiers are unclear on whether they are supposed to answer questions.

...aliens have a lot of questions about that. Are they often not supposed to answer questions? Are the answers somehow sensitive? Do they mind if the aliens ask random passersby?

They shouldn't talk to random passersby.

Why not?

Because they are being marched to the capitol.

And the concern is that conversations will slow this down?

Sure let's go with that.

The aliens start trying to have very short conversations! 

Nope hurry along. They shoo confused passersby.

Oh, is there a hurry? The aliens can run!

NOT THAT FAST.

...why not?

Soldiers can't keep up.

Oh, okay. They can run ahead and then have conversations and then the conversations will not slow progress towards the capitol down.

NO.

Aliens practice the language and sing and tolerate their unreasonable and confusing escorts.

Their unreasonable and confusing escorts make it all the way to the capitol building and then have an argument with the security about whether the aliens are allowed in.

...wow. 

Security wins. Then their orders are countermanded and the aliens can come in.

The aliens are talking among each other in Quenya.

          "Um."

"I suppose as long as they're happy -"

          "Do they seem happy?"

"We might miss some cues, they're aliens."

          "They seem nervous and like they're very accustomed to high-conflict unpredictability, but they don't seem happy about it."

"It's like when the royal family are squabbling if they decided to escalate it as much as possible and ruin everybody's day and just give directions they expected other people to countermand as a dispute resolution mechanism - and did that when there were important things at stake."

         "We wouldn't do that," Fëanáro says, sounding horrified.

"I know! ...if you did I think after a while we'd just all settle on obeying somebody who wasn't doing that but maybe things just started falling apart and they've yet to adjust around it."

         "Or maybe it mostly works and is just poorly equipped for unusual circumstances."

"Or maybe the aliens just suck," Tyelcormo says. "They might in fact just suck. There's no reason to expect aliens don't suck."

        "I suppose as long as they're happy."

They come in.

The capitol building is busy with blue and yellow haired people. A yellow haired person bumps into a blue one and starts scrambling to tearfully apologize as the blue looms over her angrily. The soldiers march the Elves by like that's normal.

- Elves don't think that's normal and are suddenly not amenable to being marched by, at all.

"Hey, move it," says a soldier.

Elves are not moving. "Is everyone all right? What's the problem -"

"She didn't watch her step, now move along."

She's bawling. The blue she bumped into is muttering darkly about reviewing her employment and finding out where her husband works.

Elves continue not to move along. "She's upset," someone tells the guard angrily. 

"It's not your concern, now come on."

"- oh, see, you misunderstood," someone else said. "It is our concern. We are concerned."

"Leave it alone, we're bringing you to the committee."

A soldier breaks off to shoo the yellow lady. She runs, sobbing.

Elves look at each other. 

        "We need Maitimo, I can't do it," Fëanáro says in Quenya.

- Elves agreeably walk on with their guards.

They are brought to a committee with no further incident. The committee wants to know how to build lightleapers.

...Elves suddenly have a vastly worse grasp of the local language. They give halting explanations, switching to Quenya every thirty seconds for a long string of technical babble.

...they dig up and haul in the first linguist they met.

Well, if she can interpret all this Quenya technobabble she is welcome to!

"Come on, I know you learned Oahkar better than that."

No they haven't!

(Fëanáro can't bring himself to speak mediocre Oahkar and is just not talking at all, except to corroborate or expand on some of the Quenya explanations.)

"I heard you! You learned it like -" snapped fingers.

...Elves giggle. Elves continue to not have nearly enough Oahkar to be helpful to this committee.

The blues are now angry at the linguist who has clearly lied to them.

...that was not intended! Angry like saying frustrated things or angry like acting threatening?

Well, the linguist is sort of reduced to panicked babbling. "No they did I have recordings I can prove it they were conversant by the time the soldiers came by they were -"

"- yes, we were. We were just curious how you handled miscommunications. You handle them by abusing your own staff. This is useful information."

The green relaxes. The blues are now annoyed at the aliens instead.

"I anticipate that with some resources brought from back home we could in the space of a few years teach engineers in this society to design starships. It is not obvious to us that we should do that, rather than conveying you places in our ships. You seem to, uh, have some challenges in management and treatment of your citizens which would perhaps be exacerbated by a massive technological advantage over your neighbors. Please feel free to reassure us; we would be delighted to learn that our concerns are mistaken."

One of the blues says, "If aliens land here with faster than light travel and leave without letting us have it our citizens are going to storm this building and strangle us personally." Other blues shush her.

" - do you require protection?"

"We require spaceships!"

"We would be delighted to be reassured that you'll handle a project this demanding and of this magnitude appropriately."

Blues mutter furiously to one another.

The green attempts to explain - "If we have more space there'll be more child permissions available -"

"- and the mistreatment of subordinates and threatening potential allies and inability to describe how a project would be conducted or what safeguards would be in place to ensure it is not threatening to your neighbors and the soldiers ordered to point their weapons at each other over minor internal disputes are all a consequence of insufficient availability of child permissions?"

"Er - there's a case to be made -"

A blue tells the green to go away. The green goes.

Elves look unimpressedly at blues.

"Could you go back to explaining the ships in Oahkar. Please."

"We'd be happy to convey some of your citizens to Valinor or Endorë in order to relieve population pressure."

Two people trip over each other scrambling to go get a colony project underway.

Great! Elves would be happy to get them any information they require. Valinor has strict rules about pointing weapons and anyone so inclined should probably go to Endorë.

Both of the runaway blues send yellows separately to collect information on things. The remaining blues still want lightleaper information.

"Seeing the colony project competently and effectively planned and conducted will reassure us as to the wisdom of teaching you lightleapers."

...most of the blues left scatter and send back yellows. One of them sends the unlucky yellow from earlier, who has fixed her eyeliner and got ahold of herself.

Elves are glad she is okay. They are happy to describe climate and conditions and governing authorities on Valinor and Endorë.

She doesn't seem happy, she's just not crying any more. How much space can they have and how many children will the colonists be allowed and what sorts of work are needed so they can work out a caste balance?

Valinor needs blessing designers - it's a kind of programming - and artisans - glassworkers and carpenters and chefs and so forth - and architects and artists and musicians and composers and academics of all stripes, and people interested in space exploration. They could take a few million people straightforwardly and perhaps see how that goes before inviting more. Endorë is lower tech and could use engineers and more programmers and manufacturing and could easily integrate half a billion. The aliens aren't sure why they'd restrict people from having as many children as they can parent lovingly and responsibly, but if it's considered very important here to limit it perhaps they can have a limit of four per couple until they have more information about alien societal needs?

Well, if you don't limit it people will have an average of five and some of them will have more and it won't be eugenic at all. Sounds like yellows and purples and greens and maybe some grey explorers? And oranges and reds sufficient to support that population but not to export orange labor - the oranges are gonna be mad - and blue administrators -

Orcs might want oranges, orcs average like ten children each and he thinks their society is aggressively structured to make this tractable without importing caretakers but maybe they could use a break now and then. He is, uh, not very impressed with blues, are they strictly necessary.

...of course they are.

What will they be needed to do?

They will be needed to govern the colonies, and interface with the neighbors since apparently they're going to have to share the planets.

Are there blues who are not, uh, varying degrees of ineffectual or bullies.

....yes?

Oh good. They'd like those ones.

This yellow thinks the ambassador from Tapa is nice. That one likes his boss, who just left.

Elves are vaguely judgmental of anyone who runs this country but maybe some of them don't do that and the ambassador from Tapa surely doesn't.

The ambassador to Tapa would probably love to talk to them but no one present has an incentive to let her.

Can it perhaps be arranged anyway.

Will they promise that whoever goes and gets her can come live on an Elf planet and have four kids?

- yeah, sure.

...there is a shoving match at the door followed by a race.

- Elves are so concerned about these people!

Two of the three racing yellows come back, apparently having decided to share the ambassador. She looks exasperated with them and very excited about the aliens. "Hello. I'm Hatepa Inaf, ambassador to Calado from Tapa."

"I am Curufinwë Fëanáro of the Noldor. I'm not a diplomat, we were expecting first contact with aliens to have, uh, more science than politics to it." He looks around at Calado somewhat despairingly. 

"- have they not been demanding to know how you got here?"

" - they seem, uh, unable to reassure us that they'd handle a project of that expense and extended commitment competently. I could teach anybody how to build a lightleaper, I invented them. I just have no idea how to evaluate who is going to be responsible and who is going to - threaten their neighbors, threaten us with guns again..." He is much more irritated than upset by this last point.

"Calado's, ah, virtues are mostly not what you seem to be looking for. I'm very sorry to hear that they couldn't pull it together enough not to threaten you."

"What are Calado's virtues?" he asks dubiously. "- threatening us isn't very much of a concern except with respect to their competence, we have backups. We were terribly saddened to hear that you don't."

"- backups?" she asks, interrupting herself before launching into what is no doubt a well-rehearsed list of some virtues Calado arguably has.

 "We make copies of our minds. So if anything happens we can have a new one built. It'd be inconvenient, all the way out here, but - not so inconvenient we'd comply with people just because they are threatening us with weapons."

"I see. I'm glad that you're safe."

"We can look into doing the same for you, though I take it the population pressure is more important."

"The population pressure is very important. Calado uses the old Imperial style child permissions system, which creates - tension. Most places including Tapa sell credits, a few have per-family allocations."

"What creates tension exactly?"

"Instead of saving money or getting it from family members to buy credits, Calador people have to earn them via credentials or awards or personal attention from someone empowered to award them."

"Ah. Thus all the - running in several directions at once?"

"It encourages high-variance strategies and competition."

"Space colonization, particularly when there are other aliens out there, is not a project best governed by high-variance strategies and competition."

"Well, any country on the planet will welcome you, but Calado will be reluctant to give you up."

"You promised," says one of the yellows who is sharing the credit for having brought her.

"You can come back to Valinor with us," he confirms. "I think I'll have the ship go back tonight, if no one impedes that - if the aliens impede us, who expects they could get back from Mandos quickly -"

        "I think I should," a woman says. 

"- all right, so if the aliens impede us then we'll have backup in a few weeks."

"You're taking immigrants?" the ambassador asks.

"Some immigrants. Valinor has - fairly strict expectations for conduct and we have reservations about taking too many lest it turns out Amentans have a hard time complying and find themselves in trouble frequently. Endorë can take more immigrants, but I don't speak for them."

"I see. We're always under too much population pressure here to do that except via swap."

"We take one hundred and twenty five of your years to come of age, and we rarely have children until substantially later than that. We had lightleapers before we had meaningful population pressure."

"That is very fortunate."

"I hope population pressure relieves some of the - problems your societies face."

"I think you will find it does."

Nod.

After a while they ask if they can get a guide back to the ship, or go themselves.

The would-be immigrants confuse some guards and smuggle them out.

...that works. 

They prepare the ship to depart. Some Elves will stay behind to plan colony things.

The yellows are caught and arrested for circumventing security procedures.

- nope, those are their yellows now and they are allowed to be here. The arresting people can also have four kids if they would like to come live in Valinor.

...really?

Yes. He is the Crown Prince of the Noldor and he can take immigrants if he likes.

Does it have seasons? Are there jobs or will they wind up starving in the streets?

It has both seasons and jobs! Tirion is equatorial but there are lots of lovely cities farther north and south.

Good news yellows you are not under arrest.

What good news. The ship can leave with everyone who wants to be aboard. He's staying because he wants to bother the Tapai ambassador about her language.

The yellows and cops run and get spouses and in a couple cases other relatives (uncles nieces sisters parents two preexisting children).

She is willing to teach him Tapap. She knows a few others too. She threads a fine line between talking up Tapa and being flawlessly diplomatic about Calado.

Tapa sounds much more competently run than Calado. Honestly he thinks Maitimo might be tempted to do something about Calado and it doesn't seem like Tapa would similarly tempt anyone. Diplomacy more subtle than that flies right over his head. He picks up Tapap absurdly quickly and clearly has the time of his life at it and then wants another one.

She also speaks Voan. And Anitami. And is fairly competent with the Leen language family, which has a lot of similar but not quite mutually intelligible unless they try really hard dialects.

He is so fascinated and so delighted and speculates about common ancestry of Tapap and Anitami and sings things to himself in flawless whatever-he's-presently-speaking and will evidently do this all night unless someone stops them.

Tapap and Anitami do have a common ancestor! She doesn't speak it but she knows what it's called and some popular works that were originally written in it. She is perfectly happy to monopolize the alien doing whatever amuses him and to pull an all-nighter to do it.

Does anyone else try to prevent the ship from taking off.

There is enough confusion that no one mounts an attempt to do that. Someone does chase them in a moon shuttle but can't keep up.

Elves grumble about being stuck in the ship for another five days and assign the new immigrants rooms and get them food and set to teaching them Quenya.

The new immigrants are apprehensive and hastily packed and awed by the ship.

Elves will try to reassure them. Valinor's lovely, look, here are pictures. It will have everything they need. - it might not have doctors who know anything about Amentans but they can get some next trip and the Valar suffice in a pinch. 

It looks very pretty.

Elves are glad they think so. It is also very peaceful and well-run!

Will they be able to visit the rest of their families sometimes?

Yes there'll be regular travel as soon as the thing with people threatening them is all sorted.

Oh good. Then they can go back for their turtle/favorite sandals/cousin/etc.

Elves are mildly distressed that their society was so unpleasant that fleeing immediately to live with aliens who promised nothing beyond jobs and children was the best choice but are glad that, given how it was like that, they could offer that choice and also let them go back for those things.

They would have liked a little more warning but they were not going to pass up the chance if it did not come back!

Some Elves ask thoughtfully how people would feel about it if maybe someone else started running Calado, but let people have more children and ran the colony program competently.

It's not like anybody likes the blues.

So if they just got, uh, packed off somewhere, and everybody got lightleapers and a less dangerously flail-y government?

It would probably be terrifying if they disappeared the blues.

Ah. Because people'd worry they might disappear more people?

Yes. And maybe someone likes some of them.

Do they have ideas on how to make the blues stop exercising incompetent terrible authority without removing them from it?

Uh, foreigners always seem to think the problem is child permissions, but the blues are keeping it because all the powerful blues can have kids.

That's interesting. Probably lots of people will be very interested in what they think of Valinor and whether they think Calado would function if it were run that way.

Yeah, probably.

In the morning remaining Elves would like to look around, does anyone mind.

Some people mind. The ambassador of Tapa knows who needs to not mind for them to do it anyway and pokes those people.

A useful skillset. The Elves hang close together and look at things and people and are entirely content unless anyone is being bothered or threatened or menaced.

They have a security escort, this time to protect them and not to tell them to go anywhere specific. They can observe people being cruel to baristas and getting into shouting matches with each other on the street over where trucks are parked and everyone who is paying to go into the place with the babies to hold the babies looks so very sad but it's nothing quite like the business at the capitol.

Yes those are less worrying! Not okay but not the same sort of thing at all.

(On the ship an Elf timidly asks that yellow what happened with the confrontation when they walked in.)

She bumped into a very senior, very irritable senator! He could have complained about her to her boss and then when her employment contract came up for review she wouldn't get a permission bonus. If she kept her job at all.

Over bumping into someone? 

He's very irritable! And she was new.

Elves frown. Does that kind of thing happen often.

All the time. There's a few ways to get permissions for yellows other than working for blues - there's awards you can get in architecture or programming, or if you work for a big company they sometimes are allowed to delegate permissions to employees, but if you think you can pull off working for blues that's the way to go.

If Elves have to do restrictions at all they are inclined to do four per family.

That's twice as many as Voa, although Voa does extras as awards.

Well, maybe Voa'll increase it once they have lightleapers. Are there other horrible things happening in their world.

Sometimes there are wars and hurricanes and stuff?

Does Calado get into wars?

Not recently.

Elves are curious what people eat and what work they do and what their hobbies are and if one thing were changed about their lives what would it be and what they think of as a successful life and what music they listen to.

They can describe their food and hobbies! They have two cops and a notetaker and a page and various relatives (editor, photographer, stay-at-home husband who did competitive rowing until his shoulder blew out, stunt double...) all grey and yellow. They all want kids. Most of them managed to pack electronics and can play music.

If the cops had arrested the yellows instead of joining them what would have happened.

The yellows would have been investigated and punished, probably lost their jobs and been fined, maybe even gone to jail.

How horrible.

Oh yeah, a criminal record will disqualify you from child permissions for long enough that they'd have all been past twenty by the time they could try again.

...and that's a problem somehow? The being past twenty, they are clear on these people really wanting kids.

(Someone asks what jail is like.)

Amentans can't have kids past that age.

If you are in jail you get locked up? None of these people have been. The cops know what short term lockup is like but not that much about long term sentences.

Elves would die. WIthin a week or so. Horribly.

Wow, of what?

Steady buildup of stress hormones and then eventual breakdown of, like, everything. It's similar to what would happen if you made someone go without sleep indefinitely. 

Gosh. Well, it's also possible someone would have been angry enough at the yellows to have them executed.

What the fuck.

Because keeping people in prison is expensive and aliens with starships are very important so someone might have been super mad that they were not handled how they wanted them handled.

That really really doesn't seem like enough justification for murdering people. Uh, Valinor is not going to jail or execute them.

That's sort of implied by letting them have four children.

No, they mean, like, for anything. If they can figure out how to give them backup chips then they'll enforce the law the way they do for Elves and if they can't figure that out then they'll still wrangle something which doesn't involve prison or executions.

Oh. Neat. ...the cops are going to have to retrain as something.

They will probably be highly valued sources of expertise on Amentan law enforcement, because Amentans don't currently have chips and the chips are kind of critical to Valian law enforcement.

Oh, consultancy, cool.

They can work in the new law enforcement system too, once it's set up, if they like. No one's sure how hard chips will be.

Policing two dozen people will not be much work but they're gonna quadruple every generation so eventually it will be.

There will probably be more immigrants. And if they vanish all the blues they will need to keep them out of trouble.

Ha! That'll be fun.

Elves debate whether there are any jobs that could be invented to keep All The Blues busy. Maybe they can be content writing policy papers and occasionally being awarded children for them, even if their policy papers are not likely to be very good? Is the bullying people fundamentally necessary to make blues happy, maybe some actors could be hired to pretend to be bullied by them.

None of these people know very much about blue psychology. Maybe they too will be fine if they don't have to constantly scheme to arrange for children and then to credit their children with things so they can have grandchildren and so on and so forth.

Elves are optimistic that a sufficiently pretty environment and enough children will fix all of the problems with Amentans! Elves would probably be horrible if they led short lives and desperately wanted children they couldn't be awarded and lived somewhere as ugly as Calado.

They're not sure what the attractiveness of the place has to do with it. Blues have nice houses.

Valinor's prettier.

They're still not sure what that has to do with anything.

People are better if their environment is prettier. At least, Elves are.

Why?

Because everything is fundamentally okay, and you might be moved to change it out of curiosity or passion or altruism or the desire for novelty but you won't desperate-constant-have-to-change-it-existing-is-barely-tolerable -

...things being pretty doesn't mean they're fundamentally okay nor vice-versa. It's just nice.

Huh.

Elves must just be different. That's okay, they're aliens. Black hair and all.

Not all Elves have black hair, it also comes in brown and gold and bronze and silver and red.

Brown is also an alien color. ...red happens in Amentans but not clean ones.

The royal family has some red! 

Well. Aliens.

Someone wonders how there could be no clean people with a hair color, wouldn't it sometimes occur by chance as a mutation or something?

...that might ever happen but probably people would just assume their wife cheated with some red and then she'd be arrested for pollution violations and the red baby would be dropped off in the red neighborhood at best.

...at best?

It would be a red baby without a red permission, they might just kill it? It'd be a red.

...people would kill their babies over mutant hair colors? 

Over red. Something else would be worked out if it were something else, then it could just be a throwback to an earlier generation and could be its mother's caste as expected. Tapa kills babies if they're born unauthorized but most places will just give those to gay people.

Elves splutter. 

Someone asks what is wrong with reds aside from not being clean.

...that's enough.

...that's enough to make it reasonable to murder them? If other people get dirty do you murder them too?

Everyone else can get clean again, reds are hereditarily unclean.

...okay but the Elves still totally fail to see why this means it's okay to murder them.

They just don't really matter.

...because they're not clean?

Because they're reds.

The Elves can't think of any theory of which people matter under which dirty people don't matter. You might not want them around (Elves don't allow any orcs on their planet, because orcs are ugly). But it really doesn't seem like it has anything to do with whether they matter. 

- someone asks if they mean that reds don't have internal subjective experiences.

They never really thought about it. Maybe they don't.

Weird. 

Back in Calado Elves wander! They look at things and ask about them and talk to people.

People are excited to meet aliens! They look like inexpensive TV aliens, even. Do they like Amenta? Are they going to take Amentans to space? Yes, that daycare makes some revenue on the side by letting people play with the kids. That's a subway stop. That's a trash alley don't go in there!

Elves are happy to avoid trash alleys. They do not like Amenta. They are definitely going to take Amentans to space. 

Why don't they like Amenta?

Uh, people seem scared and coerced and the government does not seem competent enough to do a starship project.

Amenta is the whole planet.

Maybe some other governments are competent enough to do a starship project. Tapa seems nice. Calado's blues do not seem anywhere near competent enough.

Some people are not sure it's legal to say that.

...huh?

You're not really supposed to criticize the government like that? Maybe it only counts if you do it in print.

Wow. The government sucks. They are incompetent and have bad priorities and mistreat their populace and do not deserve to be in a position of power. He will totally write that down.

That doesn't seem wise.

He does it anyway. 

Nobody arrests him.

This is unsurprising because he is an alien and can teach them lightleapers. 

Yep, that's probably why. Is he going to actually teach them lightleapers.

It's not, like, a secret that fits on a piece of paper. He could teach a couple years of physics classes at a university and then the government will have to spend a hundred billion ahk building one and he's not sure they're that good at their jobs. And he's a bit worried they will get the money by like stealing it from starving people.

Someone puts him in touch with a university!

...sure, fine. They can pay him in native speakers of every language in the world.

Natives are a little hard to come by with restricted immigration but they will figure it out, they have an exchange program.

Yay!

The lightleaper leaps! The lightleaper approaches Valinor. There are shuttles to get them to the surface. "We didn't want to do that in Amenta because we weren't sure if we'd have enough space," someone explains, loading their new citizens into shuttles. "This is tolerable for an hour, and the trip is shorter than that."

"This is fine," one of the yellows assures them.

"You probably won't want to live in Tirion, it's on the equator, but it's where we'll have to go to get you identification and everything." Shuttle descends through the atmosphere. The planet and as they get closer the city are really, aggressively, obnoxiously pretty.

"It'd take months there for any of us to reseason."

"Then maybe you can stay long enough to answer some questions for them and then Prince Nelyafinwë'll arrange you jobs and somewhere to stay, it's his favorite thing."

"...okay."

"Is something wrong? - our royal family isn't like your blues, at all."

"It's just the sort of thing that would be blue. Calado's blues are mostly descended one way or another from the last Emperor of Oahk."

"Government is considered - their obligation is to the people, as a whole and also individually. If you bumped into one in the street they would apologize to you. Our tax money pays them, they work for us. Civil service, it's called, the work of governing. People'd die for our king, and his family, but - because we trust him and witness his commitment to us. Certainly not because he would have us arrested for refusing."

"Also you don't stay dead," says a grey.

" - also that. We'll try to get it so you don't stay dead either and in the meantime obviously if there is any risking of lives to be had it'll be ours."

"Thanks."

They land. Quite a crowd is at the shuttleport to greet them. They murmur at the aliens and take pictures and applaud. Lots of them are singing the same song.

...Amentans wave tentatively.

Elves wave back!! Elves part so the guides can shepherd the Amentans palace-wards. The guides join in the singing. People lean out of skyscraper windows to get pictures.

Amentans smile at the cameras. One of the yellows poses.

Elves giggle! Elves crowd courteously to get a glimpse of the visitors! Tirion is small for an Amentan city; it's not far to the palace from where they landed. 

"King says he'd love to meet you, would you like that?"

"...okay."

" - is something wrong?"

"I'm just not sure why we're being personally attended to by royalty," says a grey.

" - you're aliens! The first aliens here! It's really exciting! We got to meet your, uh, senators, right?"

"Well, yes, but we can't teach you to build spaceships."

"Aliens are still exciting."

"Okay."

Palace! It's tastefully dazzling. So is the King, who waves his hand impatiently when the guides bow (they bow anyway) and then walks over to hug them.

...the Amentans are confusedly hugged.

Guides translate that he welcomes to Tirion and he hopes the flight was tolerable and he hopes they haven't lost his son (a different guide pipes up that, being the one who knows how to build lightleapers, Fëanáro is safe and well) and they are to have all their needs seen to while they settle in, it's so exciting to meet new alien species!

It is exciting to be on another planet!

And then they are walked out and down through fancy translucent stone corridors and the guides stop at the door to a spacious lovely office and make a point of introducing literally everybody including the children to Prince Nelyafinwë.

Who does not speak a word of their language but solemnly repeats each name as if it's of tremendous personal significance to him. 

Guides translate again that it's very nice to meet them.

They are taken slightly aback by the hair but only one young child goes so far as to make a face.

He at least pretends not to notice. Guides translate:

"Forgive me if this has been explained already, but Elves run our currency, our identification, and our emergency services off the chips in our heads, and while if we can't chip Amentans we will eventually have to adapt for you, for now it seems easiest to give you something external which serves the same functions. Inconveniently you'll have to keep it on you all the time - the way shopping works, for example, is that you are automatically deducted the price of your purchases when you leave the store, so if you go without these you'll have no way to pay for things. We debated various formats for the interface and then decided you could take them in this form -" it's a little wristwatch-like thing - "and suggest modifications once you know how you're making the most use of them."

"Okay."

"It seems most convenient to have you all near the palace for now, so people with interests in aliens can reach you conveniently. What kind of accommodations do you require -"

They are divided into nine couples (two original yellows and two original greys, their spouses, some relatives who could drop everything and run away to space on no notice), two of whom have a child each (one aged three, one age one) and would ideally like a room per couple, three-year-old could probably use her own room.

"Across the street, 1134-quesse through 1134-thule" he says almost instantly. "That's an apartment for everybody, extra bedroom for Camyi. Your substitute chips will let you in and let you alter the lock to have a passcode or let a set list of people in or whatever you find convenient. I think I'll have meals delivered for a few weeks while you get acclimated - our expense, we shall call it the science budget -"

        "How's that the science budget?" asks a guide.

"Why, they are aliens, and aliens are the proper purview of science."

        "Yes but you're not doing science to them."

"The science budget can be as inexhaustible as we as a people are wealthy, no one ever complains 'we spend too much on the pursuit of knowledge!'. The restaurant budget is not inexhaustible. Therefore the provision for and acclimation of aliens shall be science, until we've formal relations with Calado and then it will be diplomacy. Everyone's very excited to have you," he says to the aliens, "but you needn't feel obliged to entertain all their questions, they can go to Calado themselves if they're about to keel over from curiosity."

"How do we operate the bracelets -"

Demonstration! They light up with a distinctly Elven interface. This icon will let them look at their financials and this one does messages and this one does emergency services and this one does state alerts - "and people download all kinds of add-ons, of course."

"Why do you even have these if you do it all with your chips?"

"Someone came up with prototypes years and years ago for the Dwarves on Endorë, who dislike chips, and when they dropped out of leap and said they'd brought some chipless immigrants I had them looked through and the nicest ones made up for you."

"Thank you."

"Of course! So I am terribly curious about Calado, but if you want to all get settled first it can certainly wait."

One of the yellows (the one who bumped into the blue) says she will stay and chat while her husband gets set up for them both if he likes.

"That sounds lovely!"

And guides can take people who are being set up across the street to be set up.

Adyoni, as volunteered, stays behind.

"Please sit down!

The memos from our adventurers on the subject of Calado range from 'they are smart and many and miserable but maybe the ships will help' to 'we were menaced and threatened with weapons and fared I suppose better than the locals, who have no recourse' to ' 'would you like to just run the place I'm not sure they'd mind'. But there's much that can be overlooked in a days' visit."

"I'm not sure where you'd like me to start."

"What was your life there like?"

"Uh, I have two sisters, my father recommended me for a page job in his boss's son's office when one opened up, I got married when I was six and my husband was seven, I'm nine now, I did hobby pottery and played a lot of task management games in my spare time..."

"Why did you want to come here?"

"Even if I eventually earned a child permission I wasn't going to get four and my husband wasn't either, not photographing weddings."

"Is that the overriding concern of pretty much your entire species -"

"Some people don't want kids, or only want one or two, but the average of how many people had after birth control but before population control is five."

"Population controls were implemented because you were running out of space?"

"Because we were going to, if we didn't stop."

"And they'll be lifted once you have lightleapers?"

"If there's a steady supply of places to go, yeah. If there's just a few planets we can't keep growing forever. Orcs have this problem too, right, what are they going to do - how have they not already overrun their planet it sounded like they had even more per person -"

"There are five billion of them at present. Growing fast, yes. They've filled their territory very thoroughly but none of them have gone to war over space with the much-less-densely-populated Elven parts, or with each other - maybe some of their Maiar were going to help them - I don't think they had laws about it but maybe some of them do - and now we've lightleapers. Planets don't seem to be scarce. So all the things that stressed our ambassadors - we find you a few planets and they'll evaporate?"

"That's the going theory, I don't know, maybe not. It's not like the place was perfect before we hit a population crisis point."

"What problems might be stickier?"

"Crime in general? Some people have kids and aren't nice to them so clearly not having kids isn't their problem. Greys won't have enough things to do if we step down from a posture of readiness for warfare."

"The government's well-run aside from the implementation of child restrictions?"

"Calado's mostly pretty hands-off, most things are privatized - I know less about other countries - the permissions are how they throw their weight around, maybe they'd just find new ways to do it."

"And in day to day life, the thing people'd want changed is the permissions -"

"I think so?"

"What do you expect you'll all need to be happy here? Beyond the children?"

"We'll need ways to make money obviously so we can buy things - and to live somewhere with seasons and to get lucky about whether the years are similar enough length that we can snap to - and we may be able to have all the kids we want but in the longer run our kids will want a larger pool of options than just who we happened to be able to grab -"

"I think there are plans underway to have a sizable Amentan population in a little bit. Assuming they fit in all right."

"...what if we don't?"

"Then we might direct future refugees to Endorë, which is more flexible. We won't exile present citizens except perhaps for serious crimes."

"Which would be..."