outer_divide | (no subject)

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[Private to Dylan | Audio]*

[Sent as soon as he returns, though he's not sure when Dylan will get it or what the range of the communicators is.]

I've returned. The Southern City didn't have many resources. The construction of the dome damaged its economy. I suspect most of the fishermen left are generational. The people there were notably friendlier to outsiders than the ones here, but of course their homes are at less risk from air raids from the domes.

[And sent a bit later.]

If you hear reports of fog, stay way until it's cleared. Or purchase the first gas mask you can manage.

[Private to Sma | Audio]

I want to speak with you. In person. [Where the conversation can't be recorded.]

*OOC: Slightly backdated to fog times.

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Sounds like a mindset I can appreciate. [And now she can't help dropping another bit of Culture information on him.] Culture humans can switch gender. It's a slow process—once initiated, it takes about a year for the transformation to complete. Most people do it at least once in their lifetimes—even if it's for no other reason than to see what sex is like on the other side. [A smirk.] I spent a few years as a man some time ago. Not bad, but I think I just prefer being female, in the end.

[And his eyebrows shoot right up.]

Like some types of fish.

[He's known it for the purposes of breeding- biologically it makes sense.] Something we're incapable of. Though I've mostly enjoyed being male so I think I would prefer it.

It would make it difficult to tighten current gender roles in my society.

The ability to change gender tends to expose quite a bit about a society. If more people find themselves wanting to be one or the other to the point where there's an imbalance, that usually indicates one is more advantageous somehow, and so the immediate follow-up question is: why? Not to say we've always gotten it right over the millennia, but we've been around long enough that things have evened out amongst the sexes by now.

[She looks at him curiously.] What's your society like?

We're breeders.

[To put it simply.] We function in large family groups called Prides. We're matriarchal. Men are more competitive than women because they choose who they want to breed with, and they propose. Marriages are entirely based in the union of cells and the raising of children- no land or property is shared and either party can leave when they like. We're individualists with only the most rudimentary sense of government.

Our family is our family. Our people share our genes. And when we compete, we compete to grow. Not to undermine or hate or shame one another. [He looks down at his hands, rubs his thumb along his palm.] I miss it, too.

[He can tell she misses hers.]

[She listens, intrigued.]

I admit, I like the sound of it. Most societies with that much emphasis on offspring and reproduction don't afford so much agency to the women.

Most Culture citizens will have one child in their lifetime—child-rearing tends to be a communal sort of effort, so you grow up with a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins, both blood-related and honorary. I ... never quite got around to it. I suppose I still could, but my current—well, the assignment I was on before I came here doesn't lend itself to raising a family. Someday, maybe.

It's best done as a family. They survive longer. I had three mothers, twenty some siblings. [Some, not a specific number because more were born after he left home and he doesn't actually know how many he has.]

Honorary aunts and uncles?

You know. Mum's best friend to whom she's not related, but who you grow up calling Aunt Alseyn anyway. I had a lot of those.

We don't.

[But, he doesn't sound like he would have minded.]

Customs vary, I guess. [A light shrug, unfazed.] You get the idea, though. Family's more than who contributed your genetic material and all that.

I do. [That much he can get. Though some others of his kind probably couldn't. Even distant "relatives", to them, still had to be Nietzschean.]

I have twelve children back home. I'm currently deployed, so I can't see them all the time. But I should be able to soon. [If they return.]

Twelve? [She can't help keeping the surprise out of her voice; that's extravagant, by Culture standards. Even though he's already made it pretty clear that Nietzschean ways of doing things are, well, different.] That's quite a family. Same mother, or different?

[Under other circumstances that would feel like a rude question, but from what he's said so far, it's probably business as usual where he comes from.]

I have three wives. We're polygynous. The wives choose us. But they typically only choose one man. [He doesn't sound offended, just a little sad. As if he misses them.]

[Sympathetically:] Must be hard, to be without your family like this.

I would prefer that they remained where they are, at least. And aren't in any of those pods.

Do you think we'll be able to repair the ship enough to go back?

I hope so. [Pause, and then with a certain unwonted note of pathos in her voice:] I really, really hope so.

Have you-

[He hates that he's considering this. But he knows it is a possibility.]

-Have you considered, that we might not be the original inhabitants of our respective timelines. We may be facsimiles.

[They may have been recreated within the ship.]

Stand-ins, we call them. [She nods. Maybe she's a little too blasé about that, but she's had Mind-controlled, personality-scanned stand-ins before.] The thought has crossed my mind.

[Blase enough that he holds his tongue. He doesn't like the idea that he's not actually his children's father- that returning would be more difficult than he wants to admit. That he might be Gaheris2 as per clone naming convention dictates.

The only plus? He could kill himself and accuse him as an imposter, and no one would be the wiser.]

What other ideas did you have about the dome? [He goes there. It seems safer.]

[She notes the change of conversation and is annoyed with herself. Obviously not everyone is going to have as relaxed an idea toward stand-ins as she is.]

Just that stealth is the only way we're getting in. And that I'd love to find some way to set up our own surveillance of wherever people make their comings and goings from.

[Its that he might be one, and unwillingly to his knowledge, that is the difficulty.]

It was recommended that we begin surveillance of the dome. If we do, I'll keep you briefed. [Information seems like such a small trade for what it is he needs.]

Thank you. I'd like to help, if I can.

Dare I say it, you might be the most help if they don't specifically know you're helping. I wouldn't mind there being at least one element of surprise waiting in the wings.

[At least one.]

[She taps the side of her nose, smiles.]

I follow. Yes, I think you're quite right about that.

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