---Sociology---

---Jae’s perspective---

I mount the hydraulically raised stage at the head of the central hall (currently serving as a lecture theatre), in the ambassadorial habitat, and turn to look out at the sea of seated people.

The only ones not here for the presentation I’m about to deliver are the Twigg, Khr’kowan and the security team (who’re babysitting them to stop them from literally killing eachother)!

I’ll have to fill Victor, Samus, Tuun and Thran in, later.

Oh, almost forgot about Sam, Fluffy and Qīnglóng… likely receiving many scritches and much playtime while they serve as entertainment to the Twigg(!)

“Hello everyone…” I smile and wave at the audience, making eyecontact with Tymie, looking up at me with his cute, blank mask face, as I do “…I’ll just introduce myself for anyone who doesn’t know me. My name is Dr Jae ‘Peach’ Stone and I am the sociologist on this expedition. This means that it’s my job to study societies and social interplay… and, as I’m sure you could have guessed if you didn’t already know, today I’m going to be briefing you on everything we know about these two species so far, ahead of the planetside excursion to return those aboard home… Though, the entire presentation comes with the caveat of being subject to reinterpretation at a later date and is in no way to be taken as the gospel truth!… We only have a sample size of 24 of one species and just a single member of the other… None of them will be without bias, none of them will be without gaps in their knowledge and there may be things that they’ve chosen to mislead us about for whatever reason, so you will hear me use qualifiers like ‘it seems’, ‘as far as we can tell’, ‘apparently’, ‘they tell us’ and ‘we infer’ a lot during this presentation(!)… If you later see, hear or in any other way experience something that’s inconsistent with anything I’m about to tell you, please trust to your own judgement in the moment and bring it to my attention afterward… If you have already come across anything which you can’t reconcile with something I tell you, please let me know about it in the questions and comments section at the end, I will thank you!”

I look around, silently imploring people to understand that science is a process… not a doctrine!

I gesture vaguely over the crowd and say “I would like to start by thanking everyone who I’ve interviewed for their insights on the new species, both professional and personal, with particular thanks due to my friend Dr Soltani for her linguistic analysis and Drs Phan, Hatathli, Gato, Shing, Aerlyght, Lamark and Sknz’h for helping me to come to grips with their anatomy…”

I bring up the first slide.

A picture of Grriv and Viig (the de facto leaders of those aboard) and a picture of Gen. Khr’kowan are displayed “These are our species: a male and female example of the Twigg are on the left and, on the right, a female of the Vrakhand… At this time, we have encountered no males of that species, though both sides corroborate that there exists significant sexual dimorphism, the males being smaller and hairier than the females but with the sexes sharing a basic body plan… The Twigg tell us it is much rarer for them to see males, since they don’t leave Vrakhand settlements with anywhere near the regularity that females do… The Twigg are bilaterally symmetrical vertebrates with mostly hairless, endothermic bodies. They are gracile (weighing only 9-12kg fully grown), stand around 80-95cm tall with an orthograde posture and four limbs (five if we include their prehensile tails) and are true omnivores, happily eating almost anything offered to them… The ones we treated all had medium green skin and hair and eye colours in various shades from teal, through green, to yellow… though, they tell us that they are aware of regional variations in phenotype and that not all Twigg look exactly like them.”

I point to the General’s picture, circling her face with the laser dot, emanating from my holo “The Vrakhand on the other hand are a lot more difficult to get a solid baseline on, for the simple reason that this woman (in her own estimation and confirmed by the Twigg we’ve interviewed) is an exceptional specimen!… She is the Vishhanx (literally ‘First Woman’ but meaning something closer to ‘General’ or ‘Military Leader’) of what we infer to be her species’ hegemonic polity and tells us that ‘if there is a woman in the world larger or stronger than her, she is not aware of her’. Therefore, her weight of significantly over half a tonne and her length of nearly 5m shouldn’t be treated as if it were typical… What we can say however, is that her species are bilaterally symmetrical, mesothermic invertebrates with mainly bluish-black shells of a highly durable organic compound and barbs, feet, claws, fangs, toothplates and teeth of a miraculously tough substance that they refer to with the term ‘whohake’shkhen’, literally ‘death stone’ or ‘death mineral’, which Dr Soltani has chosen to christen ‘thanatite’, at least for translations meant for Terrans. She tells us that she is aware of regional variations in phenotype in her species but that it is something that mainly effects males’ fur colour, it being much more difficult to get a sense of a female’s locality only from biological indicators… They are much more robust than the Twigg, even if most are not as much more as the General is(!)… They are true carnivores, rarely eating anything other than meat and never in significant quantities…”

I turn to the next slide with the single word ‘Sapience?’ written across it.

“Now that I’ve given you a basic description of the two species, I just want to briefly put to rest any question of their sapience…”

My eyes rest briefly on the saboteur R’qali woman which the expedition was politically strongarmed into taking on as our Compliance Officer… but I look away before it can seem too pointed.

“…There is no question that they are both sapient and sentient… and, regarding the five anatomical prerequisites for technologicality, they can be easily seen to possess all five! First…”

I bring up the next slide with the word ‘Locomotion’ at the top.

“Locomotion;…”

I pause for a second before revealing two pictures beneath, in a top down wipe.

There is a moderate chuckle from the audience at the pictures of Twigg and Vrakhand legs that have just been unveiled.

“I think that’s a pretty safe ‘check’ on that(!)” I smirk, bringing up two green checkmarks under the pictures “The Twigg are mainly bipedal and digitigrade, with an erect posture, but are more than capable of switching to quadrupedality in a way that my own species would be thoroughly incapable of… though they do state that doing so too much or too often is liable to cause them injuries to their arms… The Vrakhand are octopedal and arthrograde with a sprawling posture, though they are capable of partially erecting their legs beneath their bodies to gain height, when necessary… There is no question that they are both mobile, not sessile…”

I bring up the next slide.

“Manipulation;…” I smile, bringing up the pictures of hands, tails and pedipalps “…this is another fairly safe ‘check’ to both species. The Twigg possess bimanous, pentadactyl hands in a 1-4-0 arrangement… much like a Terran’s…” I hold up my own hand to demonstrate “…they also possess a prehensile tale that I have personally seen them dangle their entire bodyweight from… The Vrakhand possess tridactyl hands in a 1-2-0 arrangement, fully capable of gripping and carrying objects… The palms of their hands are the two largest areas of their bodies that completely lack any dermal armour (their mobile faces being closely arranged compositions of dermal scutes, overlaid on top of a ‘skull’ of their regular armour and, so, being pseudoendoskeletal as opposed to exoskeletal)… The relative lack of dexterity and articulation that results from each of their hands only having three fingers is somewhat compensated for by a second set of pronged, pedipalpal limbs, below their arms, with which they appear to be capable of holding objects in place while they work on them with their hands… Both species were brought aboard with numerous examples of craftsmanship on their persons, including dyed clothing, weapons, tools and trinkets, so there is no reason at all to suppose that they lack the dexterity to truly take their place in galactic society the way, for instance, Terran Cetaceans do… Next…”

I change the slide “…Perception; both species are equipped with photoreceptive eyes (two in the Twigg’s case, 8 in the case of the Vrakhand), audioceptive organs (mobile ears in the Twigg’s case, rigid earhorns for the Vrakhand), olfactory noses, gustaoceptive mouths, senses of mechanoreception, equilibrioception, nociception, proprioception, thermoception and may have other senses, besides, that we are yet to learn of… there is no question that they are sensate… Next…”

I change the slide, revealing renderings of Twigg and Vrakhand brains “…Cognition; both species have centralised nervous systems and demonstrate the ability to understand highly complex and complicated notions… They can think critically, perform abstract problem solving, ponder counterfactual scenarios, consider the world from others’ perspectives, plan for the future, remember the past, introspect and ponder their own mortality… They are both intelligent species with rich inner lives!… The final feature of sapience enabling anatomy (before we get to topics I am personally much more comfortable with(!)) is…”

I change the slide.

“…Communication;… both species, like most others, make use of a sound medium language, supported by informalised gestures and facial expressions… Here is an example of Twigg speech in the language common to all those aboard…”

I play the sound clip.

“Mrag da do klar?… Gwan mro din do klar?… Wek ip mak!” comes the high, gravelly voice of the one called Yor, sounding rather similar to Lilith’s voice in its tone and timbre.

“Dr Soltani informs me that words in this language are almost invariably monosyllabic and monomorphemic, that is to say, each word contains only a single parcel of meaning, with words that compound multiple morphemes being nearly nonexistent… This means no plural forms of nouns, no noun cases and no verb conjugation… She did, however, wish to impress upon me that low inflectional morphology is not a mark of linguistic simplicity or primitivity and that needing more words to express the same information is not any kind of barrier to communication… It also bears mentioning that this is just one language from just one region of the planet. The ones we have spoken to seem to be aware of the phenomenon that, the further a Twigg travels from the lands they typically inhabit, the harder it is for them to understand the speech of the other Twigg they encounter, suggesting that this language forms part of a dialect continuum, though it is not at all clear that this dialect continuum encompasses the entire species’ range with no, more dramatic, linguistic discontinuities anywhere… If you will now listen to the sample of Vrakhandic speech…”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I play the clip.

“Ainh, Khr’kowan, Khawekhhor Wakh Vishhanx, hhi’imvorh whekh amheniakh ess.” states a deep, guttural, powerful voice that verges on sounding Demonic!

“…you’ll definitely hear the difference(!)… Multisyllabic and multimorphemic words are more common than not… Unlike with the Twigg, this woman tells us there is relatively little dialectic distinction between different wakh, or ‘realms’, of her species and that she has almost no problem making herself understood when visiting what she calls her father’s khangh, or ‘vassals’… This is inferred to be due to a relatively low overall population (estimated at <100,000 in total) and high level of political and social interconnectedness between the realms… One feature of this language Dr Soltani brought to my attention is the genitive ‘-hor’ suffix, a marker of possession… They use this suffix a lot when they speak or, at least, Gen. Khr’kowan does… The Twigg have no equivalent word or grammatical structure in their language… Absolutely no way of expressing the notion that someone or something belongs to someone or something else… Even body parts!”

I hold up my hand.

“Where I would quite happily call this ‘my hand’, this would not be possible in the Twigg language, according to Dr Soltani… I would have to call it ‘the hand’, ‘this hand’ or, if I were having trouble making someone understand which hand exactly, I might have to circumlocute ‘the left hand that is attached to me’, though formations like that don’t seem to be necessary too often… The Twigg’s complete lack of any linguistic expression of possession segues nicely into what I believe to be the most important difference between them and the Vrakhand to understand!”

I advance the slide to one titled ‘Possession & Ownership’.

Rather than launching straight in, I address the elephant in the room “The Twigg and the Vrakhand seem to utterly despise one another as a matter of course… This is to the extent that not one of the Twigg aboard were capable of producing a single word of genuine Vrakhandic when prompted and neither was Gen. Khr’kowan able to offer a single word of Twigg… Stories of Twigg and Vrakhand who have learned to speak the other’s language are distant and of questionable authenticity, seeming more like exaggerated rumours and legends than genuine accounts… The 'Twigg' is how the Twigg refer to their own species, specifically. They do have a word, Lok, that’s closer in meaning to ‘person’ more generally, in which the Twigg, Vrakhand and all of our species are all encompassed but their word specifically for Vrakhand is ‘Mwit’… the meaning is something like ‘Monster’… It carries the implicit understanding of them as being inherently destructive and evil… In Vrakhandic, ‘Vrakhand’ is just the nonpluralising word for ‘person/people’… Khr’kowan at least considers us to be ‘Vrakhand’ as well… the Twigg are not considered to be included… her name for them is ‘Aamveour’ or, in plural, ‘Aamveourgh’… this has the sense of ‘Vermin’ or ‘Pest’… When probed, she recognises them as intelligent, but has no sense that that fact ought to convey with it any rights or dignities… I believe the two species differing understandings of possession and ownership are at the root of this animosity!”

I pause here to collect my thoughts before starting “From what we understand of the Twigg, the best way of explaining their relationship to ownership… is that they simply lack one!… They are extraordinary in the sheer scale of their communitarianism!… Food, water, tools, weapons, medicine and land are all things which they regard to be held in common… both within and (to a slightly lesser extent) between communities. Twigg have no word for 'spouse' or 'partner', since they are completely nonmonogamous, freely pursuing sexual encounters with any adult to whom they do not know themselves to be closely related… They have no words for ‘heterosexual’ or ‘homosexual’, with bisexuality being regarded as the default and Twigg who eschew sexual encounters with either sex being regarded as unusual… Likewise, their language has no words for ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’ etc., needing to circumlocute with constructions such as ‘the woman who birthed me’, ‘the man who probably put me into the belly I was born from’, ‘the man/woman who was born from the same woman as me’… This is possible because offspring are considered to be the joint responsibility of the entire community and there is no particular burden of care incumbent on their progenitors specifically… One consequence of which is that they seem to have completely avoided patriarchy or matriarchy… In fact, they seem to have little concept of social hierarchy at all, each Twigg apparently having an equal voice in the affairs of their community… They… also lack any kind of delineation of private and public space as… some of you may have already experienced(!)”

I pause to let the chuckles subside before continuing “To the Twigg, all space is public… they have no concept of nudity or sex being anything at all to be ashamed or embarrassed of, nor that there is anywhere they or anyone else should expect to be safe from being suddenly walked in on… A major consequence of this radically propertyless society… is that the Twigg have no word for ‘thief’ or ‘theft’… everything belongs to everyone so everyone has just as much right to it… They do, however, have a roughly analogous concept… ‘rog’… it translates to something like ‘greedy’ and can be used as an adjective or a verb but is mainly used as a noun… a rog is one who hoards or hides resources like food or high quality tools in an attempt to be the only one able to benefit from their use… To the Twigg, there is as much social stigma attached to being a rog as most of us would attach to the concept of thief!… This was brought to our attention a few days ago, when our security chief, Mr Taylor, entered his room to find the triplets, Yor, Mor and Lor, unsuccessfully attempting to gain access to his gun locker, before he chased them away… When Dr Miyazaki, Dr Soltani and I went to broach the subject with the girls, they seemed to have no feeling that they had done anything unacceptable and appeared to believe that Mr Taylor simply needed to be less of a greedy…(!)”

I hold a moment, to let my words be digested before…

“…All of this stands in stark contrast to the Vrakhand who, from what Gen. Khr’kowan tells us, have strict and rigid ideas surrounding ownership, most notably around land and thanatite… I shall address land first…”

I progress to the next slide.

“…For context, it is not thought that the Vrakhand are native to the regions they currently inhabit. From what we’re told, they seem to have an absolute horror of the cold and be quite poorly adapted both to a frigid climate and to the relative poverty of prey animals they are able to acquire there. These facts, together with the archaeological survey of an ancient city (much larger than any that apparently exist today) on the much warmer Southern Peninsula suggest that the surviving population are the descendants of refugees, fleeing the desertification that took place in that region around 10,000-20,000 years ago… This is corroborated by Gen. Khr’kowan’s account of the Kvalashkort’aan, or ‘Warm Lands’, a paradisial afterlife which Drs Taan and Morningstar infer to be a folk memory echo of a time when they did indeed inhabit warmer lands than now… I bring this up to say, the Vrakhand’s maladaption to their current environment requires them to control vast swathes of productive territory in order to be able to hunt sufficient quantities of game… The Twigg (who seem to be native to their current climes) practice a form of nomadic itinerance which the Vrakhand often see as infringement on their rightful territory!… According to the General, while they do their best not to needlessly cause suffering to any creature, they regard it as tantamount to an invasion whenever Twigg communities ‘trespass’… The Vrakhand seem to take the view that, since they are intelligent, they ought to know better, but, since they have no concept of land as something that can be owned, they do not… As a sidenote, you will be relieved to know that in both species, eating the other is viewed as being almost as taboo as cannibalism, though, in the Vrakhand’s case, that unfortunately seems to be more to do with hygiene than respect…”

I move on to show a picture of the knife, wielded by Viig, made of the severed foot of a Vrakhand warrior.

“Thanatite is a substance of immense importance to both species… and it’s not hard to see why… Though both species are in their respective Iron Ages, thanatite is significantly more durable, more hard-wearing than iron and comes conveniently preshaped into blades, requiring very little actual working… It is, thus far, the single most durable organic compound known to science, a fact that caused our Captain to rather humorously lament that ‘she wished she’d found it attached to a nonsentient creature on a nonsentience bearing world, since the money such a discovery would have earned would have easily allowed her and her entire crew to take the next half a century off of work(!)’…”

The audience erupts in laughter and Tcakqaal performs a humorous, mock bow.

Once they’ve quieted back down I continue “…Unfortunately, the Vrakhand regard thanatite to be almost sacred… Since it can only be harvested from deceased Vrakhand (not shedding with the rest of their skin) it is slow to replace and always in lower than ideal supply… It is never willingly traded between or within communities and, when Vrakhand realms war with one another, the victor demanding thanatite from the vanquished is seen as the ultimate humiliating insult… The Twigg refer to thanatite as ‘nlok maf’, literally ‘blood metal’, for its resemblance to the colour of their blood (though it bares no resemblance to Vrakhand blood, which is blue)… They are unaware of the reverence that the Vrakhand have for it but do recognise its desirable material qualities for tool and weapon design, so seek after it rather voraciously… The Vrakhand view every piece of thanatite in Twigg hands (regardless of how they acquired it) as equal parts theft and desecration of the dead!… The return of all thanatite in Twigg hands to those of the Vrakhand is likely to be a major sticking point in any peace negotiations that occur!”

I advance the slide.

“Next; Societal Organisation… we’ve already touched on Twigg societal structure so I’ll start with the Vrakhand. Their, apparently pronounced, sexual dimorphism has lead to their society bifurcating into two, quite distinctly gender segregated, domains. Women, being the larger and stronger sex, form the military arm of Vrakhand society. Their duties include hunting, guarding, warfare and any hard physical labour. It is apparently quite shameful for a woman to be deemed unfit for soldiery. Men, being smaller and weaker, form the civilian/domestic sphere, with duties such as cooking, cleaning, crafting and anything else seen as beneath women’s dignity. However, contrary to what you might perhaps expect, all realms are lead by a male Hinkhhornakh, or ‘Broodfather’, who will be the biological father to a large proportion of his citizens… When we asked the General why it was that men ruled in her society, she informed us that this is due to the fact that males have a life expectancy ×4-5 that of females… thus, older males are seen as repositories of knowledge and wisdom over generations of women… As of yet, it is unknown to us what exactly the cause of this discrepancy in lifespan is…”

---later---

“Alright… if there are no more questions or comments…?” I ask, looking around the crowd.

No one else makes to speak.

“…then I think that concludes this lecture! Thank you very much for your attendance, everyone!”

I shut off the slideshow and hop down from the stage.

My boyfriend is stood, awkwardly facing me, as everyone else begins filing out to return to the Bright Plume.

I give him a hearty grin as I approach, then pull him into a hug.

Both hands halfway between his shoulderblades and his arse, I squeeze him against my front while turning my face up, just a tiny bit, to kiss him.

“How was it, Tymie?” I smile, wryly.

He considers for a few seconds before answering “…For many of the words, I needed my translator to explain to me… so it was a little hard for me to follow… but I mostly understood it… I think…” he says with complete honesty.

I’m guessing he thinks that finding it difficult to follow reflects worse on him than me(!)

I chuckle, and am just about to go in for another kiss, when…

“Excuse me… Dr Stone…?” comes a translated voice from my left.

Mildly surprised, I let go of Tymie and turn to face the one addressing me.

At around the height of my midriff, around 4m away, is a blemishless, four eyed, avian face below a flattened set of crown plumes.

“Oh… hello, Officer Waqa’arc…” I say, surprised.

I spend a moment deciding whether to add ‘15th Daughter of Highspire Peak’ before deciding against it and simply asking “…What can I help you with?”

“Nothing, Doctor… I just wished to… congratulate you… That was a very well put together and well delivered lecture… I found it helpful and informative… Thank you for your hard work.”

“Oh… You’re… welcome?” I answer, uncertainly.

She gives an awkward bob of her head and turns to go.

Once she’s out of earshot, I turn to Tymie and observe “That was weird!”