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Practical Philosophy, Monday

There was no sun to speak of, but it was also pleasantly warm out here on this planetoid - so Ender decided to brave the dorm lawn. He'd packed more than his fair share of water bottles and sandwiches today.

He greeted the arriving students with a, "Sit down in a circle, please." He smiled. "You may well be the biggest class I've had in some time, actually. This way, we keep things fair."

He shoved his sandwiches to the center of the circle, so everyone could access it.

"Welcome," he said. "My name is Andrew Skywalker. I'm an alumnus of this school; I graduated several years ago." That was all they needed to know, as far as he was concerned. "And you might be wondering what you signed on for. I'll give you the spiel I give my students every year I'm here - but this is the only class that is prepared or rehearsed to any capacity. That, after all, is the point of it."

"While 'philosophy' is in my class's title, we're not here primarily to talk about the philosophers of old or the specifics of particular lines of thought in philosophy. In this class, we try to put our own experiences into a greater perspective through conversation and debate. Above all, philosophy is about asking questions about everything in the world around us - and about everything we feel about it. That means I expect some level of participation from all of you."

He smiled wryly. "That doesn't mean you always need to speak up about yourself," he said. "No topics are everything to everyone. If that week's subject veers too close to something you want to keep private, be my guest - just try and pitch in when someone else speaks. Ask questions."

"You can even ask questions of me, if you feel the need. And maybe together we can get to the core of our joint and individual experiences." His mouth quirked a bit more. "That doesn't mean we're always going to be lingering on the existential questions - or staring at our belly buttons. It just means we're going to try and dig and come to some understanding about each other, ourselves, and the world."

He picked up a bottle of water. "As for today, let's open a dialogue," he said. "Even the new among you have been here for half a semester. So I have to ask: how do you feel about where you are now? Is the island speaking to you, in a metaphorical sense? What kind of experience has it been for you? As for the rest of you, how has the past year treated you? Has there been anything that made you cry or made you think or made you wonder?"

"We can talk about that. Or you can bring up something else you feel is worth questioning. I consider most topics fair game, as long as they're brought up with regard for your fellow students. I can't claim knowledge on most, but I can claim an ability to annoy you with questions about just about anything."

He grabbed a sandwich from the bag. "Every week, we'll reflect on something that happened since we last met, but I'm always open to talking about anything that comes to mind." He nodded at one of the students. "Anyway, I've talked for long enough. It's your turn."

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Peridot looked thoughtful for a moment, and then, finally, settled on saying, "I'm Peridot, and since coming here I've learned that humans find the 'Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG' part of my designation to be cumbersome, that they don't fly," sorry, Tip, "they get just as angry if you hold up the line to their coffee, they value fun over practicality, and that... I don't think I'll ever understand them at all. It has been a... frustrating experience."

To say the least.

"And what," Ender said, after a moment of studying Peridot (because god help him, he'd never find an alien he wouldn't nerd out about), "Do you find so hard to comprehend about them? In the essence, I mean, not the incidence."

Peridot paused to consider that, and then settled on, "It doesn't make sense to me how a species whose members live for such a short amount of time, entirely negligible by our standards, can put such a strong emphasis on frivolity and mindless amusements. I don't... don't understand why the first thing most humans ask me is whether I even know what fun is."

She hesitated, and then added, "Or why, as members of a species that claims to be so diverse, many seem to assume that my personal difficulty grasping these concepts is indicative of how every Gem must feel about things like fun and beauty."

"Because many of us have been conditioned by years of exposure to particular kinds of fun, to believe that others - especially others not of our species - are fundamentally a cultural monolith," Ender said. "That each species outside of ourselves must, in being different, be different in the exact same way. It's a process called 'otherization', which is also often used to marginalize subgroups in humanity itself."

He took a sip of his water. "You value efficiency?"

That was what he got from the rest of it.

"Efficiency and logic," Peridot agreed, thankful, at least, that somebody here seemed to have an explanation for her that made sense. "I'm a Peridot, we're homeworld's engineers and technicians, but there are other Gems with other functions, and even between other Peridots, for all that we're the same, there are... differences. Ones who are compassionate, or aggressive. We're not all me, even if we're all... kind of me."

It was difficult to explain in human terms, she'd found.

"Each individual is still an individual," Ender parsed, "Even if they're cast from the same mold, the cast always... fluctuates somewhat in comparison to the mold."

He was trying to mold his word usage to what Peridot was using.

"Have you studied human biology at all?"

That was actually more accurate than perhaps Ender realized. Peridot nodded, pleased.

"We aren't cast and molded in quite that sense, but we are made," she agreed, "and there are variations to each Gem, even if we are all created to fill specific purposes."

She tilted her head a bit.

"I don't understand human biology very well yet," she admitted. "I know you live short lives, and you need fuel almost constantly in order to survive. You begin your lives relatively undeveloped and you grow and then deteriorate and then die. But I haven't studied the particulars yet. Organic physiology has never really been a priority for Gem studies."

"A great deal of human behavior is based in chemical... transactions, so to speak," Ender said, after a pause. "So you could see it like this: certain chemicals must be at certain levels for us to be able to perform optimally, and those levels usually drop when we are under the strain of performing. 'Fun', as much as it's usually treated as an end in and of itself, triggers the flow of chemicals like dopamine which help us replenish our reserves and return to behaving optimally."

He studied Peridot closely. "Your chemistry isn't organic?"

Chemicals. Chemicals, Peridot understood. Her eyes widened a little in understanding, her mouth forming a little, silent 'o.'

Oh! That made sense!

"Organic? No," she said, leaning back and making herself comfortable, wearing a satisfied little smile. "I'm a Gem. Literally, a Gem. Even the body I use isn't real. This," and she gestured with her free-floating fingers to the large green peridot stone in the center of her forehead, "is me."

Ender looked distinctly intrigued as she talked. "So how does your body form?" he asked. "How much do you control it?"

"It's a hard-light projection created by my Gem," Peridot replied, shrugging. Because, really, this much was just the way things were, for her. "It adjusts to most environments I'm subjected to, changes in gravity and factors like that, without my direct control. But I could change my body's shape if I wanted to, though it takes focus. We'd consider that a waste of energy, on Homeworld."

"Your people are not particularly concerned with appearances?" Ender asked.

"Except for the purpose of being able to tell one another apart?" Peridot shrugged. "We have aesthetic preferences. We understand and appreciate beauty, and art. But we don't place as much worth on physical attractiveness as humans seem to. Strength, sure. Size, absolutely. They can be applied to more practical uses. But human standards of beauty aren't the same as ours."

She had a triangle for hair. She clearly wasn't vain, per se.

"I suspect that this is in part because we don't have a biological urge to impress and secure a mate. But, of course, that's simply speculation at this point. I haven't had a chance to explore that hypothesis, yet."

"The way species reproduce does tend to have an incredible impact on the shape of their culture," Ender noted, thinking of the Formics and their inability to communicate with humanity - because they'd assumed most humans were worker drones, the same as their own people. "Humans in this time haven't had the chance to come to that understanding yet."

Peridot nodded a little. A lot of what drove Gem society was a similar need. After all, the creation of new Gems tended to destroy the biological components of the planets that they touched.

"In order to create new Gems, we need to expand, through the universe," she explained. "It takes hundreds of your Earth years for a new Gem to form in the ground, and when we're... born, I suppose, we're fully-formed. There's nothing, and then there's us. It has nothing to do with physical attractiveness and everything to do with resources. So we spread out, and we colonize."

Ender looked thoughtful, sitting back for a moment. "Are there other sentient species in your universe?"

"There are," Peridot agreed. "Though humans are the only ones I've encountered personally, so far."

And they were maddening, okay? Maddening.

"And how do your people communicate with them?" Ender asked.

He was not going to be rude and flat-out ask her if they colonized populated worlds, but...

"We're doing it right now," Peridot replied, raising an eyebrow. "We talk. Like this. If we bother communicating with them at all."

Yeah, yeah they did.

"I meant that your people no doubt run across such species while they're scouting for colonizable worlds," Ender said easily. "I was merely curious as to that process. It's not terribly relevant to today's class, either way."

Peridot tilted her head a little, looking at Ender curiously.

"Not many planets that we colonize already have a population on them," she settled on, finally. "We can live almost anywhere, and most planets that are useful to Gems are uninhabited. I haven't personally been involved in any scouting missions to inhabited planets that we intend to colonize, however. And communicating with other sentient species is... outisde of my skill set. I build things. I research. I'm not exactly a diplomat."

Meaning she was woefully unprepared for Fandom. It did explain why it frustrated her so much.

Ender parsed that, and filed it away at the back of his mind to bring up some day when they weren't simply having an intro class.

"How did you come to be here, if you don't mind me asking?" he said. "You're clearly not an envoy of any kind."

"It was a scientific expedition," Peridot replied, sighing. "Homeworld had left some experiments behind on their last trip to Earth, thousands of years ago. "I was just supposed to check up on the progress of those experiments. In and out. I wound up stranded, instead."

... Yeah, there was more to it than 'some experiments.' Somebody was conveniently leaving out the traitors still on Earth and the ship crashing and the Cluster.

Peridot gave Rufus a skeptical look at that.

"Isn't it? Explain?"

Rude, Peri.

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Practical Philosophy, Monday

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