I watch the two of them move through the misty streets from my seat in the café, while I wait for the thin rain to stop. The one, tall, pale and dark in the manner of the eseldrae – and clad in rather a nice set of blue-black formal robes, too
Clone Degeneration: Averted. Mind-states (when the clones are forks) are stored as digital information. Much of the time, so are genomes, but even when using tissue samples, the recovered DNA is run through a verify-and-repair process before being used specifically to avoid things like this.
Calria Adae-ith-Adae: Depressurizing… pump-down complete. Pressurization amber. Opening outer door. Wow. Sky’s foamy with stars out here. Are they getting the picture groundside, Airin? Airin Muetry-ith-Mirari: Communications check, video and audio; blue and blue. Opscon has us 8/12. Calria Adae-ith-Adae: Attaching tether. Moving to the ladder… Surface is
OPSCON: Silverfall Four, confirm your intent to land this orbit? Over. Pilot (Calria Adae-ith-Adae): The window’s not broadening just sitting here, and this periseléne’s still in the band, even at the high side for burn. We’ll take this window, Opscon. Over. OPSCON: Communications check. Over. Pilot: Do
Always Chaotic Evil: Averted. Partially, I suppose, because it’s hard to get this degree of uniformity out of a species without stripping out volition, and non-sophonts can’t be evil. They just are. But, by and large, every species and polity, even the ones that are generally thought of
Alien Non-Interference Clause: “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha no… wait, you were serious?” The Associated Worlds in general think they have a good handle on precisely what this sort of “Prime Directive” would mean in practice. Namely, it would mean that the first time one of those
Andreth Prime Allatrian-ith-Ancalyx Vallasélan, currently of Suite 141, Gildedrest, Starbridge City, Gáling (Ring Nebula), to Technical Services, Artificial Immunity Division, Riverside Eubiosis Foundation, greetings and many thanks for your prior assistance. I have never been so sick in my life. Well, obviously. I’ve never been sick in my life.
This is actually something I finished and published on an old, non-dedicated blog some time ago (October 2010) concerning this particular piece of my worldbuilding, and for the sake of completeness – and because it ties into some of those issues and attitudes mentioned under Blue and Orange Morality – I’m
Alien Kudzu: The unfortunate result, all too often, of importing things across ecosystems, and the reason why absolutely every ship comes with a Decontamination Chamber.
It must be a good writing day; I’ve just polished up another piece for submission to “Miscellanea: a transdimensional library“, a collection of excepts from fictional/unwritten books being assembled by Eggplant Literary Productions.  Very much my cup of tea, I think, as I’ve always been particularly fond
The fires always burn brightest on the Darkest Night. It’s not actually any darker than any other night in the bottom half of the year, but when Lumenna occults Sunaris – when the night is winter-black and there’s only one sun in the sky – for all reason and logic
…well, not drabble.  I’m, as it turns out, not very good at keeping strictly to 100 words in length, and, well, since the point of this exercise is to help develop my writing muscles/fluidity/ability to just sit down and write, dammit, applying such an artificial constraint to