[D31] Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids

[stillwinningthehardway]

[Blue is Scout talking, gray is 9S]

So you’ve probably noticed that this stop has a higher technological level and is more diverse than most places we go to. Finally! Now, I need to explain space and aliens.

[From the background comes a disgusted groan that sounds suspiciously like, “Ugh, aliens.” Scout sounds annoyed when she goes on.]

You’re all used to different worlds being sort of isolated, and often they’re different versions of the same planet. But it doesn’t always work like that. In most realities, the stars are very distant suns, and some of those have planets warmed by them, and some of those have life, even people. These worlds can be very different but the fundamental rules of the reality will be the same, and sometimes people can build ships to cross the distance between them. It’s like the different planets are islands in a great sea, and you can’t go into the water unprotected.

[Now she sounds nostalgic.]

The definition gets all complicated when travel’s been relatively easy for a long time, but whatever your species, you call life that originated in a different world from you “alien”, the same term a lot of one-worlders use for people from a different enough part of their world. There are a lot of different species here for this event, and whatever you are, if you leave the Carnival now you become some form of alien. Don’t go out of your way to antagonize anyone and don’t go outside of the domes without an environment suit and it seems safe enough.

Safe? Sure, if the aliens don’t start trouble first. But they will. They always do.

They’re just people, Neens. Don’t be such a provincialist.

Comments

[stillwinningthehardway]

Yes? Usually there's some excitement but it's not always a big deal. I think Greysol left everyone too busy talking to themselves.

[whattaprick]

Let’s hear the report, then.

[ Less for his benefit, more for the rest of the Carnival, though he’s also curious about the concept in general. It’s a weird one to wrap his head around. ]

[stillwinningthehardway]

It's just the Galactic Games, only it's more poorly run and called the Space Olympics, and there's even more different species here. Peace through sport, interplanetary community, that kind of thing.

Every few years different regions send their champions and teams of athletes to big sites hosted by different worlds and they compete against each other, and it's extremely commercialized. We can enter into some of these and try to get into the top three of whatever. ...I would, maybe, but it wouldn't work out.

[whattaprick]

Why not? I thought you liked competing.

[ Someone hasn't seen what Scout turns into yet. ]

[kingsroads]

It left most of the adults talking to themselves. I've a feeling the children all went to that odd island place, the one where it hurt our daemons to come near.

[motivenotfound]

Wouldn't they?

[Mari smiles into the receiver, where 9S can't see.]

How do you know?

[everybodypanic]

Woah, hang on! I wasn't ready for all this science crap.

[u g h]

[dressedtothe]

Because aliens and humans are completely different!

[Nevermind that he knows Steven is literally both.]

[dressedtothe]

[Guess who's gonna be rude?]

It's because she can't control her stupid alien legs.

[chronosynthesis]

That sounds very complicated. [It's probably for the best no one in Tyria can cross-procreate, then.]

[motivenotfound]

[Boy. How long has he been holding onto that one?]

How? You can't just say that kind of thing, you know. You gotta convince me. Otherwise it's just hot air!

[Like a fart.]

[stillwinningthehardway]

[She pointedly doesn't answer, this long dragony body not giving things away quite as obviously as her usual self]

It's your basic fascist corruption of old laws and systems but on a really large scale. You'd love it.

[stillwinningthehardway]

I went there. [With some difficulty.] It wasn't dangerous to kids, really, except for that boy who was really in denial about growing up. We had to rescue his mom and drag them both off the island before they could get eaten.

There were some hostile animals but since that little kid who was in Acquisitions brought one back, they couldn't have been that big a deal.

[stillwinningthehardway]

It... gets that way, yes. Usually mixed species couples just adopt if they want kids, that's a lot simpler.

[If a little academic to Scout. If things had gone better, she would have reached her late twenties or so and taken an adolescent Padawan to guide and nurture, with the advice and presence of others but largely at her own discretion.]

Syr, do your people have the whole... uh, the strategy of people bonded together raising a new person?

[stillwinningthehardway]

It's because I can, but anything I enter into that was designed with Duinuoguin or Kadri'Ra in mind is going to have people who were born myriapoformed, and are better at it.

And I think last stop was enough excitement for now.

[stillwinningthehardway]

[...]

There's space. There are aliens. Treat the aliens like people, because they are, and don't go into space or out onto the planet surface without protective gear.

[chronosynthesis]

If you mean do I know how parenting works in general, yes. Although childrearing is uncommon for my people when we do not have any of our own.

[He supposes on a much wider scale that's what they're doing with Aurene, now, but he wouldn't call him or the Exalted... or Caithe... her surrogate parents.]

[kingsroads]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, you're not a child. How could you get there in the first place?

[stillwinningthehardway]

The things that made it dangerous for adults are dangerous because they fed on dæmons and had a long reach, but they couldn't fly themselves. Anyone with a flying dæmon that could stay up high enough for the whole time could go there, it was just painful and unpleasant.

And I was a witch apparently, so Tràka could manage that. Staying wouldn't have been a good idea, though.

[stillwinningthehardway]

Hmm. [She's surprised it happens at all.] Do you still couple up?

[Scout are you asking if they fuck or pair-bond here]

...Tell me off if I'm getting intrusive, I'm not going anywhere with this. Just curious. Different people have different things wired in but we defy that sometimes. As a human I'm 'supposed' to possibly bond closely to a mate and definitely invest very strongly in a few progeny, but that doesn't mean I do or will.

[chronosynthesis]

It's fine. [As long as she doesn't start getting weird about it.] Our biology is different, but many of the feelings we experience are the same other races. We can fall in love and form unions of two, or more. I suppose if there is any difference, it is that the bonds we form have no predetermination based on our physical relation, as we do not have lineages.

[stillwinningthehardway]

Huh. Things work out like that sometimes, I guess.

[And that's about it. She's mildly curious, not needs-to-know-the-whole-thing curious.]

Well, anyway. Gone out yet? Are you anything interesting?

[whattaprick]

You know nobody knows what those are, you show-off.

[kingsroads]

Mine was a seal. [ said as if that's explanation enough. Yup, Strange couldn't really do anything, daemon right there couldn't do much.

besides, he can do a bit of gentle teasing instead ]

First a witch, then a magical guardian? I think the universe is trying to tell you something!

[chronosynthesis]

I intend to shortly, at least. You just might know more about whatever glamour it will put over me than myself.

[He says, casually, until he realizes it isn't just a glamour.]