An Ordinary Chat [closed]

[Allied Sapients]

Rirten grew up in a small community of some 30 people, and in school had closely associated with only about 50 teachers, professionals, and fellow students. Even just the Stranger’s Bar was a crowded and exciting place compared to back home. Which was nice! Crowds, even alien ones, helped their pheromone bath feel less disconnected from reality, and excitement was always fun.

The problem was that this kind of background made it hard to truly appreciate the scale of things. The largest conflict Rirten had ever seen had been a dispute between two villages over fishing rights, and that had been over before it had even began- about a dozen from each side had squared off, and the side with the least physically-imposing members had surrendered. Northerners were not made for fighting and prefered to resolve conflicts by avoiding them in the first place.

The idea of a space empire with space battles was hard to understand in that context. The idea of a space empire with space battles deliberately wiping out other civilizations... well, that was just unfathomable. They just didn’t have the sense of scale for it, or the context needed for an appropriate reaction.

Rirten had to just think of it as an especially large and violent village conflict for now, and get the appropriate sense of scale later. Olsh probably had footage of the fight with the last space empire- they would have to talk her into showing it to them. “We don’t have any tech to loot, and we don’t use the same resources you do. Why would you attack us?”

[Tinfect]

And there went that. She'd hoped not to have to explain any of that in this particular conversation, she didn't quite imagine that aliens would take the idea of genocide very well. Rirten, however, seemed rather less concerned than she'd expected; she hadn't quite been prepared to handle that. Ikiti's warning would make it into her report on all this, certainly.

Ikiti's talk about her own species was, in a word, disturbing. She was talking the culling of the uncivilized elements of the population, reminiscent of the darker periods of the Imperium's history during the collapse. A grim similarity, and one that seemed founded on entirely different conditions.

Rirten's question still wasn't the one she had expected, but it was easier to answer.
"We don't... loot, for one, and, it isn't really about you," she said. There was a pause; she realized that she should probably qualify that. "Not about the Northerners, I mean. It would be the Coalition, if anything. The... people we're at war with, they're a lot like the Coalition."

[Giant Bats]

"The Aeravahn," said a voice. It was using Ikiti's cybernetic gear's speakers, but was fairly clearly not meant to be speaking as her. The voice was deeper and less... alive, really. "I will let Ikiti speak again soon, but Rirten, imagine an archipelago, a group of islands. Some of them are better suited for life than others. And imagine that different beings had risen to the level of thinking mind on some of them. Some small and unthreatening, like the voleo, some amphibious like yourself, some arthropod, like insects and crustacean, some even stranger, and then humans. The humans of Tinfect nearly destroyed their own island and had to look for other islands to colonize. Some of the other species had also started to spread to other islands. Conflict for living space was as inevitable as it was unfortunate, and a war broke out. I am sure Jasot can tell you the details, but the end result was that the humans completely destroyed not only several species of minds, but also several islands. They destroyed entire worlds rather than let other species live on them. And then they put up a wall, a net, to trap anyone wanting to cross that border, to keep a large number of the islands all to themselves. Now the remnants of those they drove from their own islands, have banded together to strike back, and a new war has begun. I hope that you, Rirten, will never need to know what war is like, just like I hope the same for Ikiti's people. I return the communications back to her now."

"I really dislike them doing that," Ikiti said in her usual voice again. "I can't communicate with you without the system, and they know it..."

If anyone was monitoring the local radiowaves, they would have noticed a marked increase in the frequency of directed pulses from the WAHQ to the shuttle, when the unknown voice was speaking.

[Allied Sapients]

Rirten’s translator had not done a good job with the tone difference between Ikiti and the who or what that was speaking through Ikiti’s speakers, and if the entity had not specifically mentioned Ikiti as a separate unit, it was likely they wouldn’t have noticed the switch at all. They didn’t like the idea of someone just taking over equipment like that. It seemed very rude.

“So you were feuding with someone,” they said to Jasot. “And you destroyed a lot of good living space. I assume the islands are a metaphor for planets and colonies? And now that someone’s come back and started the feud again, and maybe things are getting destroyed again. And the Coalition is similar enough to them that you would feud with us too? That is the part I do not understand.” It was one of several parts, actually, but this was the one Rirten felt they wouldn’t be able to figure out on their own. “The Coalition is not the- I don’t think I can say it in a way that the translator would be able to figure out...”

“I’ll adjust the translators,” said Hordt. “Use “other-alliance” as a substitute for now. We’ll come up with a better word later.” They could have easily just adjusted the translators based on whatever Rirten would eventually settle on, but this served as a tacit reminder that a representative of the Coalition was in fact listening in on all of this.

“Thank you,” said Rirten. “The Coalition is not the Aeravahn. They do not share territory or former territory with you, and while they have, uh, as many reasons to be upset with you as “species of minds” you’ve destroyed, I don’t think you have any reason to be upset with them yet.” They looked up at Ikiti. “Or Ikiti’s uplifters. Wait, have your uplifters done anything to upset Jasot’s people?”

[Giant Bats]

"Not as far as I know," said Ikiti, utterly unaware of two such occasions, "and I hope they won't either, but unless the humans came into our space, they likely wouldn't bother. Unless it looked like the species in Aeravahn were in a serious danger of going extinct. They tend to meddle with advanced species only when they have to. And they stay away from anyone else's uplifting projects when possible."

[Tinfect]

Jasot shook off a collection of mysterious dust - a phenomenon that seemed endemic to the World Assembly's grounds. Quite a bit had transpired in the space of about a minute; Ikiti's translator had been hijacked by an entity that very promptly, and rather undiplomatically, explained the Aeravahn genocide and Exterior Purge. It seemed like a lot, anyway. Again, this should have presented a problem, but Rirten seemed steadfastly unconcerned. Either that, or she really didn't understand alien body language. Or pheromone language, but she wasn't about to get into the water to find out whether or not Rirten was scared of her now.

"Feuding, is... one way to put it, yeah. War lasted a good few hundred years, somebody had to lose." She paused a moment, trying, and ultimately failing, to suppress the urge to digress. "And, really, we couldn't use half the Aeravahn's planets; other things in system were more valuable, it's, frankly, disturbing, the disparity in habitable planets between the cluster and... everywhere else. You know there were eight species capable of spaceflight in the cluster? Back when we still sent expeditions out, we didn't find anything outside the Cluster. Literally nothing living."

She paused again. She was getting much too off topic.

"But, uh, yeah, yeah, your Coalition; I'll be honest, I don't know much about you people, but Military Oversight's going to see you as a likely Aeravahn ally. Same sort of goals, same sort of practice, is what I'm seeing here. That's what I have to write in my report."

[Giant Bats]

"I do not have to write a report," Ikiti said and yawned. Or at least it looked like a yawn; she opened her jaws wide briefly, breathing in deeply. Unknown - hopefully, because otherwise they would be briefly deafened - to the others, it also enabled her to use her more powerful hunting sonar to scan Rirten's strange aquatic habitat. The VTA was fine for more constant observation, but she got uneasy in the presence of strange things, if she didn't get to use her natural vocal abilities every now and then at least. "The entity that spoke briefly, records everything. My interactions with aliens are all used to train future members of Diplomatic Wing, but of course they are also accessed by those members of Scientific and Military Wings, who might need to be in contact with aliens." She didn't mention that the records would be accessible for every adult Tikrr, because for her that went without saying. Anything that wasn't internal Roost business, was everyone's business.

[Allied Sapients]

Of course someone had to lose a feud. But that didn’t mean the loser had to be destroyed. It was both rude and wasteful! How could you ally with someone later on if you killed them now? Why not let the Aeravahn have their planets, but put them on lockdown and just not let them leave said planets until they agreed to play nice, or the originators of the conflict had died of old age? The Coalition did that occasionally, if someone was being too aggressive for everyone else’s good.

Mentioning that might not be a good idea right now, though. It could sound like a threat.

“If I have to write a report, it’s only because Ambassador Olsh wants to make sure I’m paying attention.” said Rirten, admiring Ikiti’s teeth. They were so big! Northerner teeth were little things, good for holding fish and not much else. They didn’t notice the hunting sonar (which, incidentally, would have shown off exactly how makeshift Rirten’s pool was- the filter and circulation pumps were all external in the pool itself) at all. If Ikiti had been using it in the water, their gills would have easily felt it. In air? Not so much. “Olsh probably already has one out, though, since she knows enough to tell my suit to tell me not to talk to you.”

“Can you put in your report that the Northerners, at least, really don’t want to fight you? We’ll do our own thing, you do yours, no one has to feud with each other. And Ikiti- if your entity wants to train more people to talk to aliens, they can practice on me.”

[Giant Bats]

"I practised in simulations a lot before ever coming here," Ikiti explained, "they even had talking robots made to look like various aliens, but still the first actual meeting with meaty creatures was difficult. Hearing the heartbeats, smelling them, sonar showing juicy flesh and bodyfat... It was difficult not to drool, and anything small moving fast, like the things they call cats, really appears to be a prey animal to me. Having to fight the desire to have a taste makes it difficult to concentrate on what they're saying. The Rehlan female here is actually easier for me to deal with, because she reminds me of the robots I trained with. But robots aren't people. As far as the official definition goes, I don't know if either your species would count as people, but with the green mind we had to bend the rules already, because it does not fit but is clearly a person."

[Allied Sapients]

Rirten let out a high pitched buzzing sound. “I’m definitely a person,” they said. “I am alive and can talk and haven’t killed any other person.” That was an important distinction, and it made for a very different defintion than the one the Coalition used. “I don’t know if your culture can eat people, but I wouldn’t try it on me even if you can. The Jarans told me that most aliens taste terrible to each other, because of the different biochemistries.”

[Giant Bats]

"Different people define personhood differently," Ikiti said. "Our definition involves passing a ritual. So far two aliens have passed it, so the Spiritual Wing is currently debating changing the label on other sapients from "food unless proven otherwise" to "people unless proven otherwise", but it is going to take a lot of time. I would be surprised if they were done by the next Tikilikrr breeding season. In the meanwhile, however, we won't know if something is food, unless we taste it." Her ears briefly folded back as a Tikrr bodylanguage sign of amusement.