"Welcome back to Good Morning Nations, I'm Janet Tillsdale and today we have someone very exciting on the program," Janet beamed at the camera, offering a smile she'd practised so meticulously Harold said she did it in her sleep, "today on Good Morning we have an exclusive interview with Rebel Ovishir Scientist, Dalia Kinderith, who is making the claim that humans are, in fact, sapient."

Some people in the audience laughed, others scoffed, it was a contentious topic.

The camera pulled back from its close up of Janet and revealed the guest, a pearl skinned feminine alien covered in thousands of fish-like scales; a powerful tail was tucked behind her on her chair and she was wearing both a tight space suit and a small mask that covered her mouth.

"Welcome Delia," Janet greeted.

There was silence for a moment, longer than was allowed in an interview in most cases. The network had added support for the alien translation devices to the studio, but it was still far from real-time. Dalia waited as English was translated into something she could understand. Then she opened her mouth and a moment later, over the speakers, a simulated voice spoke up "Thanks for having me Janet, I've found your program very interesting over the past week."

"Is that how long you've been on Earth?"

"Ten days now," Dalia's fake voice corrected. To the audience the whole thing looked like a poorly dubbed movie from the 90s with Dalia clearly making her point before any words came out, "I do love the planet. You've been very welcoming to the Ovishir."

Janet nodded along and her producer shout-whispered something in her ear about steering away from the 'welcome' that the Aliens had gotten. After the first contact skirmishes just beyond Pluto the United Nations had welcomed Aliens to see the planet with open arms. It was a hot button issue and not something she was supposed to bring up on an all audiences program. "If you've been here that long, what's so interesting about our program?"

"Well," Dalia started, "it's actually quite similar to the programming we have back on Ovilatia, almost shockingly so."

Usually Janet would have made a joke there, but she'd been trained on the alien translation technology and how poorly it dealt with English sarcasm at the moment. "Well I'm glad you like the show."

"I never said I liked it," Dalia shot back with a proper humorous tone. The audience laughed. For some reason she was able to joke through the translation. Must have come with practice.

"Fair enough, I guess we'll have to look for other fans in the stars," Janet responded, "I haven't had a galactic audience before."

Dalia offered a sharp exhale, which Janet had been told was the Ovishir equivalent of a polite chuckle.

"Speaking of the galaxy at large," Janet pivoted, "would you mind telling us a little bit about your theory regarding humans compared to the other species?"

"Certainly," Dalia shifted a little in her chair, giving her tail space to unwind behind her for a moment, "so the general galactic opinion at the moment is that humans have been exempt from Galactic Integration Procedures because they aren't a properly sapient specie due to the lack of Keeneeta but that view seems myopic by my study."

'"We-" Janet went to start but noticed that Dalia was still speaking, the translator was just buffering.

"There is a lot of evidence to point to humans being a Sapient species, and the fact that you aren't be treated within Galactic Integration Procedures could be disastrous for your species, should you ever keeneetaa."

There was the word again. Nobody quite understood what it meant, but she'd been told not to ask about it because it mostly got a reaction of 'see, they're obviously not sapient, they don't even know what it is.'

Janet nodded along with Dalia's conclusions and then, once she was confident that she was finished her piece, spoke up, "So these Galactic Integration Procedures, they're important in your mind?"

Dalia thumped her tail twice, which was the Ovishir equivalent of nodding, "Absolutely, it's about regulation, and right now the lack of regulation around human-galactic integration could be disastrous for your species."

Janet understood that she wasn't allowed to ask the specifics of GIP rules, but she could at least prod a little, "Disastrous how?"

"The Galactic Integration Procedures are the outlines for how we're supposed to interact in the early days. I don't know much about human history, but if there were any instances of Colonialis-"

"There were," Janet cut in.

"ism," the translator caught up.

Dalia thumped again and then continued, "right, so most instances of Colonialism result in cultural decay. Galactic Integration Procedures are set up to promote the flow of human cultural traditions into the Galactic Sphere as opposed to having the arrival of other species erode the human cultures by having off-world species be economically dominant on your home planet."

Janet frowned at the statement 'home planet' she understood that Dalia was being kind there. Humans had a single colony, but they were a single planet species, which was apparently well behind the usual curve for galactic integration. "So you're worried about the lack of regulation surrounding Alien arrival on Earth?"

"Exactly, Janet," Dalia confirmed, "even the fact that I'm allowed on a program like this speaks to the complete lack of GCA oversight regarding humans, and considering the fact that humans have most other markings of PAS, Planetary Advanced Species, it's reckless."

"The other markings?" Janet prodded. Her producer told her to be careful.

"Things like an advanced economy, space flight, abstractions," Dalia explained, "it's all very baseline requirements but they've been solid in the past. The suggestion that brought me here is that your language system obviously isn't inhibiting you as much as the GCA wants to suggest and you should be under Galactic Integration Protocol."

There was a moment in people's careers where they needed to make a choice between playing it safe and risking their job to do it well. Janet had always told herself that she was going to take the hard-hitting path, which was likely why she instinctively asked, "so keeneeta is a linguistic concept?"

"No, pivot," her producer growled in her ear.

"It's difficult to explain because it doesn't translate to your personal language but yes," Dalia said, "and you deserve to understand what's holding you back so that you can argue your case. Whether they will judge your species for it or not."

"Do not be the reason I get calls from the fucking Press Secretary," the producer hissed.

"Perfect," Janet said, brushing her hair back in a practised motion and pulling our her earpiece alongside it.

"Keeneeta is the," Dalia considered for a moment, "it's a base tongue. A unified language that your species inherently understands."

"Like a universal language?" Janet asked.

"Not quite, my species has two main languages alongside our keeneeta," she explained, "but it seems like there are many humans who, without a shared language, have no way of understanding one another."

"So if everyone learned the same language?"

"No because you would need to learn it," Dalia pointed out, "a keeneeta is an inherent thing to the birth of a sapient species," she paused and a moment later her 'voice' did, "or at least-"

The translator cut out and Janet shot her eyes over to the side of the stage and was met with glared from producers and the sight of one yelling into a phone.

Dalia turned to look at the chaos unfolding, she said something but without the wider translation there was no way for Janet to understand her, that said, her eyes showed something close to apology.

A pit gnawed its way into Janet's stomach. She didn't have the context of the future texts that would outline this was one of the most critical interviews of the 2110's. Right now she just understood that she was in deep shit.

​

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This is somewhat a prequel / world building for my ongoing series Six Orbits over on /r/Jacksonwrites :)