[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

[dressedtothe]

[His tail swishes irritably behind him.]

Hey! It'd be fine if they didn't keep invading other peoples' homelands! Have you had your homeland torn away from you?

[stillwinningthehardway]

[She snorts forcefully out of those large forwards-facing nostrils.]

Yes, and it was entirely humans who did it and hold it and defile it now. You have a point?

[dressedtothe]

[9S waves his hands as she snorts at him. Someone has gross alien breath!]

That's just part of humanity.

[Someone not human doing the same thing to humans is just wrong.]

And could you not do that? It smells weird!

[To him, anyway.]

[stillwinningthehardway]

[Scout looks disdainfully at him.]

You smell weird. Are you just programmed to be like this? The Empire would love you - and by the way, that's a bad thing. That's a really bad thing.

[dressedtothe]

[Rude! 9S bristles at the implication his thoughts are all pre-programmed... even though he's had his doubts about his own free will on more than one occasion.]

I have free will!

[He has to insist on it, otherwise... it would mean he isn't a person, is he?]

What's the Empire, anyway?

[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.

[dressedtothe]

[It really is difficult to read the mood of a human in an alien body. 9S' tail swishes behind him.]

And what's that supposed to mean?

[Though to which part, it's unclear.]

[stillwinningthehardway]

They program their droids and their people to only care about oppression or murder when the parameters are very specific, and to support and cheer it under other parameters. You were made to look human, and if you went there and they found you out they'd hate you, but they'd use you, and you'd be happy.

[dressedtothe]

[9S' expression twists into one of disgust.]

I'm not some tool!

[Except he is, isn't he? Was. He's leaving that life.]

We have free will. Our human creators wouldn't program us to be like that.