high-energy physics

[warpfairy]

Federation political prisons are not particularly uncomfortable. She's not going anywhere, but she can read, she's considering taking up an instrument, the only really awkward thing is that she doesn't particularly want to be supervised while she's sweating her way through her next pon farr one way or another but that's years off. That and she wishes she'd taken longer to get caught. But she was running out of the really low-hanging fruit anyway.

This is what she signed up for. She makes up imaginary profiles of people on the planets she got to, people who can live longer fuller lives with the stars in reach, one per day. One per day and she'll have loads of estimated impact left unused when she dies. Perfectly reasonable tradeoff and she can still read books.

Someone wants to interview her about Vulcan; they don't want to lose anything that anybody remembers; she gives the interview and then picks up some poetry.

Comments

[lintamande]

"All right. Materia humans first."

[subtly_artistic]

"But uh you should be ready for people from Materia to be weird about sex things in a wide variety of ways."

[lintamande]

"...okay. I'm not Mandos, Bella, I'm not going to propose correcting people..."

[subtly_artistic]

"I don't just mean there are gay people! I can explain gay people without spluttering!"

[lintamande]

"I am very curious what you can't explain without spluttering!"

[subtly_artistic]

She takes a deep breath.

"Nymphs and satyrs are sort of literally powered by sex, they don't actually have to eat although they do it anyway, they just have to - have lots of sex. Which is why we need a population of other kinds of people around because I'm pretty sure it doesn't count nutritionally amongst themselves."

[lintamande]

"...ah. That is very unusual, and would not work well with the Quendi, yes. Okay. Humans - enjoy having sex with them? Do they force anyone if they're starving?"

[subtly_artistic]

"No! - I am positive that nymphs don't, anyway, and have never heard of a satyr getting more than mildly pushy. And they are quite popular among a subset of humans and other species."

[lintamande]

"In that case it seems like your solution is perfectly adequate - Bella, do you think the Enemy stuck with Quendi monogamy laws? I am sorry if we're embarrassing you, but you're not going to shock me..."

[subtly_artistic]

"I have just never had to explain this before! It's common knowledge on Materia, I don't even remember how I learned it, and it never came up in Valinor." Sigh. "As far as forcing people goes I'd worry more about elves, who don't need it as food but have a cultural - thing - that doesn't work that well in contact with anybody else with different needs and is kind of unpleasant even amongst themselves. This is surface elves, I'm less sure about subterranean ones."

[lintamande]

"Hmm. We - can't have Quendi on a planet with significant sexual violence, under the wrong circumstances it's literally fatal to us. Though we could have separate continents."

[subtly_artistic]

"...didn't know that, noted, should I know what circumstances? And elves don't age, so they're not on so much of a ticking clock as humans and stuff, they can still die of violence but it's not inevitable."

[lintamande]

"If the event would force a soul bond, and is unwanted, you die. The parameters on both 'would force a soul bond' and 'is sufficiently unwanted' are unclear to me - it might just be that you can die if you prefer that to being soul bonded, might be involuntary - and there are things I would prosecute as unlawful that result in a soul bond but don't count as unwilling enough to kill you."

[subtly_artistic]

Nod.

[lintamande]

"Hasn't come up since the Enemy was defeated. We're a peaceful people."

[subtly_artistic]

"It's nice. Materia's kinda full of unpeaceful people."

[lintamande]

"I'm realizing that. They still deserve to be rescued but designing a paradise for them is going to be even harder than designing one for Quendi, and that surely went badly wrong enough."

[subtly_artistic]

"Yyyyyeah. Serious culture design challenge."

[lintamande]

He shrugs. "We'll figure it out."

[subtly_artistic]

"We probably want to start with people known to someone who's already integrated. My parents can vouch for some people, say."

[lintamande]

"Good idea. And then they will hopefully adopt the norms of the surrounding society - if a single elf came through, maybe one who didn't like their system, would they have to adopt it here? Could they have a different attitude?"

[subtly_artistic]

"Oh, yeah, they vary plenty - and most of my exposure was to college-age elves, they seem to mellow out a lot after they hit their hundredth birthdays, there's a thing where stuff they do before that doesn't 'count' as far as other elves are concerned anyway. I think that's purely cultural and some of them start acting like serious adults when they're in their twenties same as humans."

[lintamande]

"Then doing it by recommendation of others seems wise."

[subtly_artistic]

"And then all we have to worry about is the people who keep their unsavory habits secret from their friends, which I'm sure nobody does, ever," she sighs.

[lintamande]

"We can read minds."