“Ordinarily,” Proteus said, “visiting dignitaries would be received with more… fanfare.” Hasan and Cathérine looked at each other, then at Proteus, and then at the emptied boulevard around them. People of truly all shapes and sizes were looking at them as they rode an open-topped carriage slowly down the road. There was a band and everything.
“This isn’t fanfare?” Hasan asked, clearly uncomfortable with being displayed in public.
“Could be worse, Mister Prakoso,” Doctor Riel said. “They could have your face up on a banner somewhere.” Cathérine chuckled, but she was glad she had the two officers with her. She would’ve hated to do this on her own. She was getting more attention than she was comfortable with as it was. For a brief moment, she envied Clinton. Her First Officer would be on the ground and reporting on the less… staged parts of their visit. That was partially because she trusted him to give her a good overview of what the Core World was like on a day-to-day basis, but also because she had the distinct feeling that a parade like this would be murder on the poor guy’s nerves.
“Well…” Proteus said, and Cathérine could see Prakoso’s face fall, “if you’ll look behind you…” The alien waved a slender arm, and indeed, a ways behind them they could see a giant floating screen showing their faces on it.
“Great.” Hasan forced a smile on his face and gave a little wave. Several aliens in the gathered crowds returned the gesture with practiced precision. Just how long had Earth customs been observed, or even taught here?
“Hasan,” Cathérine said, “if you didn’t want to be famous, you probably shouldn’t have joined the most important expedition in human history.”
“I figured I’d leave that up to, you know, the important people,” he mumbled through gritted teeth.
“You are important people,” Proteus said, and Francesca Riel and Cathérine both suppressed another laugh at Hasan’s dismay. “If it is any consolation, as I said, if you had intended to truly come here to represent your species in a more official capacity, your arrival would be met with a lot more… sound and colour.”
There had been a lot of sound and colour to begin with. When they’d first landed, Cathérine had expected a degree of officious nonsense, sure, but she hadn’t really been ready for what being the first humans in an alien civilization would really entail. The Core World was a marvel of engineering, cultures, music, smells… no amount of video footage could prepare someone for that. But she felt she was holding her own quite well, all things considered. And the possibility of alien life had always been there. There had always been protocols for first contact. She just hadn’t expected the aliens to be so ready for them.
“So the intent is for this to still be a sort of tour, correct?” she asked. Proteus nodded, a little awkwardly. It was clear he knew what nodding was, but it didn’t seem to come very naturally to him.
“Yes,” he said. “You are, after all, explorers, diplomatically capable though you might be.” Cathérine couldn’t help but smile. Proteus’ capacity for subtlety was a delight. “My superiors are already in contact with your governments, and an official invite, I’m sure, has already been sent.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “You won’t have to sit through the meetings,” he said quietly. For the first time, Hasan seemed to relax a little, and laughed.
“Thank you, Proteus.” The alien, in turn, bowed his head graciously.
“We’ll take in some of the sights,” he said, “but I’m sorry to say it’s all been very…”
“Curated,” Francesca offered. Proteus simply smiled at her. A lot wasn’t being said, of course, and Cathérine was trying to listen to the words that didn’t come out of the alien’s mouth as much as what did. If there were things they weren’t showing, she had to wonder what those were. Were things being kept hidden? Was it a matter of national security, or one of pride? Maybe both? Did the Core World have dirty laundry it didn’t want to air and, if so, would her crew run into any of it?
“Precisely. We wish to show you our best and brightest. Humanity sent us… well, you, and we wish to respond in kind,” Proteus said. The implication that she and the rest of her crew had been sent out here with the intent of making some kind of statement made her uncomfortable, but she couldn’t really deny it, either. Of course the Sollipsis wouldn’t have been sent out with anyone less than the best in their field, but that didn’t mean an element of optics hadn’t been considered. Troubling but, again, not an unreasonable assumption.
The procession went down the boulevard at a frustratingly slow pace, but it did allow her to marvel at the Core World’s fascinating architecture, its ever-present but always out-of-reach autumnal plant life, and, of course, the wide variety of alien species on display. Every once in a while, one of them would nudge another to draw their attention at something or other that stuck out to them, avoiding pointing directly so as to avoid causing offense.
Proteus pointed out a large dome-like structure at the end of the boulevard, which they wouldn’t be visiting, but nevertheless was worth pointing out. Apparently, that’s where future envoys would be sent to meet with other galactic governments. Not her circus, Cathérine thought, not her monkeys. And she was happier for it. But it really was a gorgeous structure, reminding her vaguely of old Byzantine architecture, although it did have a lot more landing pads than, say, the Hagia Sophia. It was also several magnitudes larger.
“Ambassador Proteus,” Francesca asked, “how do people move around?” Proteus blinked at her a few times with his big grey eyes, seemed to take a moment to properly formulate an answer. “I sort of expected more… air-traffic,” Doctor Riel added.
“Ah. While there are worlds where travel by individual aerial carriage is more common,” he said, “it is kept to a minimum on the Core World. While your crew was taken around the city in those, such traffic would quickly become untenable. Every megalopolis here holds millions, if not billions of individuals. It would quickly become an unmanageable chaos, even for sophisticated computerized models. And a single mid-air collision could cause a great deal of damage on the streets below.”
Cathérine nodded. That made sense, of course, but science fiction had conditioned her to expect a degree of small ships buzzing around overhead, skylanes full of flying cabs and trucks. The Core World’s skies had been remarkably devoid of that kind of thing, being mostly the domain, it seemed, of the small flying creatures she’d spotted a few times. She wondered quietly if those were a kind of vermin or a sentient resident species of the planet.
“No,” Proteus continued, “most travel is done through public transportation. There is an extensive underground network where most species commute where possible, with various different modes of transportation to account for different physiological needs.”
Francesca had a few more technical questions, which Proteus answered to the best of his abilities. The planet seemed to be built with accessibility in mind, which Cathérine appreciated, although it was probably inevitable if there were that many species of such wildly different biological makeups. A gaseous life-form had different ways of traversing the environment than creatures that used wheeled vessels to move around.
“You seem to be in thought, Cathérine,” Proteus asked after they rode through an arch. On the other side, the crowds hadn’t thinned, but the actual literal fanfare had at least stopped. “What do you think so far?” Cathérine mulled that over in her head for a moment.
“I quite like it,” she said. “It seems to be very…” She struggled to find the right word. “Egalitarian. From what I understand, with this many species, this many different approaches to living together in large spaces, you’ve done a terrific job.”
“I feel you’re not done,” Proteus noted.
“But,” Cathérine said with a smile, “I’d like to see a bit more of things that are less…”
“Staged?” Hasan offered.
“Festive. There’s crowds gathered to watch the new species,” Cathérine continued, “and that’s all very well and understandable, but I’d like to see how all of them interact on a daily basis. What life here is like. What people do, how commerce happens on the individual level.” She held up her hand, and in the crowd, several people clearly misunderstood it and waved back. “I understand that that isn’t really a possibility, of course. I know you can’t risk us getting hurt or anything of the like, but I would have still liked seeing things at a slightly more… personal level.”
“Entirely fair,” Proteus said. “Today is going to be mostly driving around, showing you things, and meeting with one or two dignitaries.” There was another groan from Hasan. “But we’ve studied your dietary requirements and you’re invited for both lunch and dinner at my residence. Tomorrow I’ll see what I can do to get you somewhere a bit more… out of the way.” Cathérine nodded gratefully.
“Thank you, Ambassador Proteus,” Doctor Riel said. “I’m interested to sample the kind of cuisine you might think we’d enjoy.” Proteus clasped his hands together, seemingly very excited all of a sudden.
“Well!” he said, “originally, when the galactic community was only just starting to come together, there was a lot of debate over this. After all, when one receives guests, it is important to make them as comfortable as possible, after all. Hospitality is something of a… near-universal concept. So how does one do that in a universe where some species do not even share a molecular structure?”
“An interesting conundrum indeed,” Doctor Riel said, amused by his enthusiasm.
“Well, it isn’t possible to present an alien guest with your own nutrition if there is no certainty of, say, poisoning, which would cause something of a diplomatic incident, obviously. But, conversely, presenting someone with a dish popular in their own culture could be considered, well, bland.”
“So what did you end up going for?” Hasan asked.
“We do our due diligence, look up recipes of food from your species, and then try to replicate those with nutrition that approximates it best in atomic and molecular consistency.”
“I’m curious,” Cathérine asked. “What kind of recipes come up for us? Rice? Pasta?”
“Well,” Proteus said, seemingly a little more nervous now, “while those are certainly the most common foodstuffs on your planet, we did want to be a little bit more experimental. I personally oversaw an attempt at…” He took a breath, a distinctly human and personable movement that was clearly more for their benefit than his. “Pizza,” he concluded, holding on to the ‘z’ just a little longer than was necessary. Cathérine couldn’t help but laugh, and it took them a moment to reassure Proteus that there was no offense. For a little while, they simply talked about food and food cultures, until Hasan’s face suddenly grew a bit more serious.
“I did have one more question, Proteus,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
“Of course.”
“Forgive me if this… impolite or offensive. There was mention of ‘locked off’ members of the Unity, and that us humans shouldn’t interact with them. Now, I’m not one to make accusations, and maybe this really is a matter of translation, but the phrasing implies some sort of… stratification. Could I ask you to elaborate?”
“Ah,” Proteus said solemnly. “It’s not a matter of great shame. Well, not for the Unity as a collective. It is simply not easy to describe those unfortunates without a deal of… tact.” Cathérine leaned forward, paying close attention. “You see, we are able to… change shape at will,” Proteus said, and his skin rippled gently to prove his point. “We are also connected to the Unity. Both of these physiological traits have evolved over millennia, and both organs that allow this are located within our nervous system.” He sighed. “It is possible to shift our shape into one whose nervous system does not have the capacity for one, or, indeed, both.”
Cathérine sat back for a moment and tried to wrap her head around the implications of this. “For a species with a collective mind, that would be…”
“Devastating,” Proteus said. “We do our best to care for those who have locked themselves off accidentally, but as of yet, attempts at surgically reintegrating them are as yet both experimental and ineffective. Someone who locks themselves out of the Unity can find their way back through a sort of… blueprint, which would take some time to explain, but someone who has lost agency over their form and their connection… there are a lot of ways we, as a culture, try to solve that problem, but so far, we’ve not found many. We try to give them comfort.”
“That’s… not what I expected,” Hasan said. “It sounds unpleasant.”
“There are some,” Proteus continued with another performative sigh, “who choose to disconnect themselves voluntarily. It is rare and something of a controversial subject and decision, but there are very few who give up their ability to change back on purpose. Contact with those of us who are locked off is discouraged simply because not many species know what exactly it is they are missing, and we try not to cause those already unfortunate any more discomfort.”
Cathérine Durand mulled all this over in her head, from Proteus’ almost apologetic tone to the implications of what he’d said. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, although she would like to speak to someone like that face-to-face at some point. How would it feel? She couldn’t help but wonder. Proteus had clearly already made up his mind.
“Thank you, Proteus,” she said. “I sincerely hope a solution is found for those that want and need it.”
“So do I, Captain,” Proteus said. “So do I.”
I love that super advanced alien species ideal solution to transportation is just... accessible public transit. Clearly they know what up
I can't wait to see the attempts at food. Maybe a disastrous omake where they tried that pizza with poor results?