Meta Conversations: Your Questions (3? 4?) (Patreon)

“Someone wants to ask how people who work on things segregated from normal life have a normal life.” I pause, frowning. “I didn’t say that right. When people’s work involves exposed technology which normal Ai-Naidar have no congress with, how is that handled?”

“There are protocols,” he says, but he is watching me carefully in a way that makes me think he’s not paying as much attention to the question as to something under it. “One observes qilijz.”

“Hygiene,” I say, automatically translating before I realize what I’m doing. Then, frowning, “Wait, qil is pure or unstained, and qilt is the verb form, ‘to make clean’. Why is the noun form of ‘to make pure’ hanging out there with a weird ending, instead of having something to do with that ‘t’?”

He spreads his hands, the heavy folds of his sleeves hissing as they slide off his lap. “You are the linguist, datyani.”

I mutter and note that as something to watch in the future; maybe it’ll come up. “So… hygiene?”

“I believe you have similar protocols. ‘Leave work at work.’”

That startles me into laughing. “We observe that more in the breach than in the keeping, but I guess you wouldn’t.”

He has refolded his hands in his lap, and I wonder about the perfect posture and the stillness. Is that trained? Then again, he has a literal board strapped to his midriff. I wonder idly how strong my core muscles would look if I had to sit perfectly straight through every conversation. “It helps that those in segregated work often form families with others in the same sphere. Not always, but often. That can be easier on them—or harder, if it makes it difficult for them to observe qilijz. But you recall that we do not live to work, datyani. We work to feel useful, and our work fulfills us, but it does not define us, which is something I think you poorly understand and is the source of your questions about how we puzzle out where to place specific individuals. I think there is some image in your head, that we are presented with six calligraphers, an ornithologist, and a carpenter and we are asked to find them places. But what we are actually presented with is eight Ai-Naidar with the ishas to apply themselves in certain ways, and the way need not be so specific. A calligrapher might also enjoy painting silks. Or copying books or records. Or organizing boxes in a warehouse—”

“Wait, what? That’s oddly specific. Was that an actual person?” I say, too surprised to keep from interrupting.

He chuckles. “Yes, if you would believe. She enjoyed the mathematic precision of calligraphy, the part that involved the mapping of letters to quandrants of the page, and deciding how to best utilize the spaces available with the words she was planning to write. Deciding how to stack things so that they were efficiently stored energized her in the same way.”

I boggle. “How long did you talk to her to figure out why she liked calligraphy, rather than the fact that she did like calligraphy?”

“Not very.” At my expression, he says, “This is something we value as a people, and must do if we are to prosper, and our system to operate… so we are accustomed to evaluating the motivations and needs that drive people to enjoy certain activities. It doesn’t puzzle us for long precisely because we’re so used to seeking those motivations that we already know many of the common impetuses for people’s selections.”

I shake my head. “All right. So rather than six calligraphers, what you see is two people who are into geometry, one person who likes poetry, another who finds writing and words fascinating and another who likes sitting at a desk at the same time every day and doing the same meticulous task for a few hours at a time. Right?”

“Now you have the sense of it.”

I go back to trying to imagine what it’s like to, say, be a maker of rifles when you can’t show your rifles to people, or talk about rifle-making with other people who aren’t already making rifles and then I think ‘then again, humans who are into stuff that other people aren’t into often find themselves… gathering with people who are into it to talk about it, because otherwise they’ll bore the people they’re with.” I scratch my head. “But you force these people—the ones doing tasks that are not observed by the majority populace—to be part of normal society because otherwise they’d become some other species, without common values or experiences with Ai-Naidar who don’t work with exposed things.”

“Also correct. Unless the individual in question is better served by solitude, as some are.”

“This is complicated.”

“If it were easy, datyani, Kherishdar would not need those above the Wall of Birth to concern themselves with it, and so many of us.”

I snort. Looking at the paper with the question, I continue, hesitant, “I feel like I’m only scratching the surface of this, though.”

“Perhaps that is why you sense that there is an Observer involved with your next story?” I look up, and he’s waiting for it. “And perhaps, a Regal.”

“I feel like I’m not getting the core of that story yet,” I complain.

“You aren’t.”

I wrinkle my nose.

“Not prophecy,” he says, smiling. “If you felt you understood what you wanted to say, you would have begun already.”

“I… yes, well. True.” I shake my head, remembering how badly I missed the structure of the fourth novel, thinking it was about the Trysts alone when it was actually about the Exception. “Maybe this is really about some historical figure or important role again.”

“Is it?”

I eye him, and unlike one of the others he doesn’t give me an enigmatic smile, or a knowing look. He’s honestly curious. 

“I don’t know how the mind of an artist works,” he explains. “Even after all my years watching them, they remain mysteries.”

“I don’t feel very mysterious. But I do feel confused.” I set aside the concerns about Book 5—it’ll come when it comes—and move on to the next paper.