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Of course, there’s a whole story behind Scavina’s struggle to bring the Jump Tech experiment to TerSA, in which Darvin was very much involved. Some of the details have emerged here and there, and I may have an opportunity to tell more of it in the next couple of chapters, cross your fingers!
It would certainly be nice to get some more backstory about Scavina and Darvin fighting their way through the IP and TerSA bureaucracies.
Frankly speaking,Tara, I love the way you tell backstory by-the-by instead of frontloading. People may criticize Galaxion for meandering plot and glacial pace, and argue about whether the former is a bug or a feature, but no one can ever deny that you did immediately jump into the thick of it.
I find it interesting that Zandarin is attempting to present them in a positive light, while Aria can only view them in a negative one. The major difference is that Aria could understand them.
Aria: “You break into my brain without my consent, that makes you the villain of everyone’s life story!”
Well, we certainly wouldn’t find it unusual for the victim of a burglary or an assault to feel that way, would we?
The Miesti have really stepped in it. Aria is the only person (so far) able to actually directly comprehend them, and arguably was one of those most motivated to make a full First Contact. She could have been their strongest ally among the Galaxion crew – but now her journey to understanding and mutual accord is going to be particularly fraught.
Yeah, they messed that one up pretty bad. Question is, do they care? They’re probably used to getting whatever they want from humans through their little mind-control stings. Treating humans as allies rather than slaves might not interest the Miesti even if they did get the idea to try it.
Let’s not forget Patty’s death. I suspect Aria lays the blame for that solidly at the Miesti’s wings.
But Patty killing eheyal and Patty’s own death were both accidents. So it’s one-all for inter-species mis-understanding caused by accidental death.
Just because they were accidents doesn’t mean that there aren’t hard feelings.
But how well can Aria understand them? We can read what Aria heard the Miesti think, and frankly I don’t think, based on the text the author actually wrote, that Aria’s assumption that the Miesti’s original symbiots were “slaves” or ‘victims” is particularly justified. At most, it is just one possible interpretation. To believe that she really understands the Miesti well enough to justify her absolute conviction that they are monsters, you have to assume that Aria gained a whole lot of information about them that we, the readers, did not. And why would Tara not show the readers all the data Arai received? She could, if she had wanted to, have added a few more words to the scenes where the Miesti were thinking. She could have added words like “LIE” or “Twisted Truth”, or something to show the subtext Aria was receiving. Or she could have just had the Miesti, who had no idea that an alien was listening to them, and therefore no reason to shade the truth, just call the aliens they used to be associated with their ‘slaves’ or their ‘tools” or their “servants”, rather than their symbiots.. But Tara didn’t do that. Instead she showed the Miesti as individuals, with differing opinions about how to treat the local humans.
If we assume for the sake of argument that the Miesti need symbiots in order to survive, and that they weren’t responsible for the nuclear war that destroyed that world’s civilization, then I don’t find the Miesti’s treatment of the local humans that reprehensible. The humans they were associated with at least seem healthy. It would of course be easier for everyone if they could communicate more effectively, but I don’t think the failure to do so is necessarily the Miesti’s fault. So I think Aria’s extreme hatred of the Mieti may say more about her than about them.
A thought: the original symbionts may have evolved and also bred/engineered to be symbionts to the Miesti. She probably didn’t see that detail.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if Aria isn’t (intentionally or otherwise) pushing Fusellla’s buttons a bit by bringing up the Miesti doing harm to Patty.
It’s trivial to them because the Miesti are a parallel world away unreachable except by a jump engine that they cannot get to work properly.
Davin’s comment is odd though. He seems to imply that the Myradians are not an intelligent life form even though they have developed at least language and evidence has been found that they had space-faring ability. (or should it be their “symbionts” had space-faring ability?)
Hang in there Galaxion. We have all experienced debriefings that make us feel as through months have passed.
Hey, it looks like none other than David Brin is a fan!
Oh, wow! Fangirl squeeeee!