Notes from ISPV Rumoth Continued:
There was only one further stand-out interview among the other humans, but I shall detail that after a moment’s reflection based on the rest of the humans I’ve encountered.
To date, very few of the humans have indicated any substantial degree of xenophobia or xenophilia. However, most have indicated that on their homeworld, xenophobia is still quite rampant and to that effect, I have no plans to entertain getting the necessary medical implants to allow me to enter their homeworld environment.
That said, humans seem to be an inventive species, although I will have to explain that term.
As with Simon, he is taking old math, combining with the right assembly of technologies, and managing to make something sufficiently exceptional that the royal family may weigh in on its use.
As with Jennifer, she is able to tell a detailed story and even speak of the invented stories of her people and be very much at ease with both. Taking into consideration the details and the invented mechanics.
Carter of the Mining Cooperative was very much an inventor, but perhaps not as successful as one might expect, given the costs incurred.
Human’s younglings are encouraged to construct and build and to learn new ways of doing particular actions, whether while at play, in some manner of instruction, or even simply speaking with a member of another species.
I can’t readily think of another species, even new (new being within the last 300 imperial years) which has indicated such a focus on changing perspectives and providing fresh ideas. This isn’t to say that the Empire is stagnant, but rather that the flow of ideas has been rather steady and while the Empire has been good for allowing various species to work together, many species tend to be species-centric with their inventions.
However, this human-inventiveness was perhaps most brought to light in this final interview.
The crew of the vessel, having seen me visiting with various groups of humans and having been informed of my presence and reason, lest they think me a being intent on bothering others, brought me to the brig. Naturally I was confused by this until I saw the seat for myself outside one of the cells and the human within.
The human within almost leapt at the bars.
“Who’s this? Hi, how are you? What species are you? Can you fly? What’s your homeworld like? Lots of trees I’ll bet, right?” came the flurry of questions in a very peculiarly accented form of Imperial Standard.
I wanted to try and speak, but the flurry of questions seemed to continue before dipping a bit as the human appeared to start conversing with themselves rather than with myself and the crew member.
The crew member explained.
“This human was placed here for their own protection. As you can see, they were bothering the guests of other species with all manner of questions and several guests complained, including other humans. The reasons for that are unclear, but we opted for safety and have kept them here. We only have their basic identity information.”
The crew member handed over a card and I tapped it on my tablet.
[Imperial Profile on one Myrithian Stone]
Myrithian Stone [pronunciation guide]
Age: 64 Imperial years [native years calculator]
Species: Human/Terran
Homeworld: Sol 3 (Native Name) – Ixetun-251 Planet 3.1
Profession: None Listed
Travel Visa: Unlimited-Civilian
Family: Parents [Link], Siblings [Link]
Medical history quality: Error – None found [Medical History Link]
I could have delved a bit, but most telling part of this was the combination of the lack of profession and the lack of a medical history. Since a medical physical was part of even getting offworld in the empire, it seemed unusual. And it was similarly unusual for being to not have a profession to allow themselves to go into space.
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I decided to sit down and talk with this Myrithian.
Due to the rapid fire nature of their questions and the back and forth, the actual interview recording was nearly useless compared with how well it worked for Jennifer. To that end, I will hopefully be able to adequately summarize what was said.
[Interview recording – Duration: 4.34518 Imperial Hours]
Myrithian was born to a wealthy (by human standards) family, who had taken the opportunity of the Empire arriving to enrich themselves. While this is not an unusual happening, the Empire does, oddly enough, typically take the opportunity of incorporating a new species to enforce a more egalitarian form of society. At least for all beings who aren’t members of the royal family.
So it is not entirely surprising that Myrithian was raised in the spirit of accepting the Empire, attending private academies oriented towards Imperial technology, languages, and histories, along with experiencing many of the same ‘anti-imperial’ prejudices in their own home, despite it being the reason for her family’s ascension.
What’s further, despite the academies themselves having a comparatively pro-Empire stance, the feelings of anti-imperial and even anti-xenos thoughts and opinions was/is still very strong.
Myrithian herself was even involved with a group for a time of anti-xeno advocates, until such time as they required her to ‘prove herself’. She didn’t elaborate the meaning behind that, but I have reason to believe that it would have involved killing a non-human/being not of the human homeworld.
The spell having been broken because Myrithian swung to the complete other end of the spectrum, becoming a xenophile to such a degree that her family became concerned for her and her future.
Myrithian explained that this sometimes happens among humans – being trapped into a certain mentality because of having it surround you and be constantly pressed upon you as being the proper way of thinking/behaving, only to break out of that and find the complete opposite to being key to ones happiness. Part of this had to do with how certain groups of humans define their social groups and their interactions with other beings. In this case, many of these social groups define themselves by intense dislikes or disagreements.
While such a group definition isn’t uncommon within the Empire, it is strange that a species would immediately adopt such a mentality.
When I mentioned this to Myrithian, she indicated that it had always been that way on the human homeworld. Nation-states, social groups, tribes (a kind of semi-nesting social group), and many other subsection/divisions within human society in their pre-imperial history were centered around an intense dislike of ‘the other’.
Leaving this diversion, Myrithian continued, indicating that she’d finished her academy work, gone to the counterweight station schools, and even done higher learning on the homeworld’s single moon (Ixetun-251 Planet 3.2).
It was here that she spent time working with leading human scientists in proposing the largest particle accelerator that the Empire will have seen to date.
Pre-contact, this was considered little more than a pipe-dream, humans having focused on planet-side particle accelerators. However, with the introduction of imperial technology and the space elevators to homeworld-side, the humans have apparently been focusing on all manner of scientific endeavors that were, until now, deemed impossible due to material and funding constraints.
The funding constraints bothered me, and so I asked about it.
Per Myrithian, pre-contact, scientific advancements were commonly the result of nation-state warfare or commercial endeavors. To that effect, certain areas of science were heavily advanced while others languished and so funding was allocated accordingly.
As Myrithian was maturing, with the unification of the human homeworld (an apparent misnomer, but one that I’ll have to research later), scientific advancement all but halted as the humans focused on learning what imperial technologies were capable of and what answers to old human questions had been answered.
While many scientific answers have been found, even since my people joined the Empire, the humans apparently have asked many more for which the Empire writ large has had no immediate answer (or perhaps there is one, but it’s making its way from the far side of the empire).
And so the humans decided to look at megastructures, such as a ‘full body particle accelerator’.
Normally the process for funding such a request would take imperial years. But that’s where Myrithian came in.
Myrithian was so enamoured with the idea of contributing to the body of Imperial scientific evidence and in being able to travel out and meet new (to her) species that she personally funded, via her family, the initial planning, mapping, and even licensing of the necessary zones on Planet 3.2 to allow the imperial funding, when it would arrive, to focus on actual construction, speeding up the process by years if not an imperial decade or more.
However, in the process of doing this, Myrithian was ‘instructed’ by her family to ‘get some perspective’ and so she’d gotten an express sponsored Travel-Visa and a bypass of the usual physical. The reasons for this weren’t known to Myrithian, but she suspected it was on the basis that she would go out into the Empire, see a need to be more wise with the family fortune (now that they had one), and come home and be more responsible.
Myrithian had no intention of ever going back though. This brief jaunt to Alpha Centaur (Centauri according to Myrithian, need to check human designations later) was mostly just a matter of heading in the other direction from where she had just been.
She’s just spent the last imperial year visiting stations across the 318q region and learning all manner of stories, histories, and experiences from the species passing through those stations.
Now she’s headed towards the 817n region and planning to continue to do the same.
In a fashion, she’s acting as a kind of diplomat for her species and I remarked as such.
She laughed (a strange motion for someone without a beak), but seemed pleased at the idea.
We spoke for some time about my species, my homeworld, our entrance to the Empire, and even some of the different places I’d been (included within the recording). I am by no means an expert on any of these areas, but Myrithian seemed interested in knowing it all.
Not necessarily as a ‘knowing’, but in a kind of understanding that can only come from a being who has experienced a kind of epiphany and is trying to make full talon grip of it.
As time went on, Myrithian seemed to calm down considerably from her initial reaction, as though the input of information was what she needed. In the end, I provided her my contact information so that we could remain in touch.
Before I was back in my temporary nest, I had received three message pings from her.
[End interview]
I will be disembarking at Alpha Centaur and mingling with the humans aboard the station there for some time. Depending on my success, I may attempt to close this out or may see about traveling onward.
----------------------------------------
** Imperial Attachment – ISB notice **
Myrithian Stone – Artificial being, created and constructed by Humans (native sapients of Ixetun-251 Planet 3.1). Third generation artificial being constructed by Humans, first generation artificial being constructed by Humans using Imperial Technology.
Being used to evaluate human thought processes in non-human centric environments.
Close observation maintained by human creators in order to avoid any accidental exposure.
Recommend controlled distribution of this interview until further notice.
** Notice Ends **