Elise is a crewmember who, as an aid to the exiled Agronomy scientist, is the only non-exile allowed out onto the planet surface. The others stay on the main ship in orbit or on the transport ship that delivered the exiles to do the studies.
Elise’s chip says she’s Marta from Germany but her management decided she’s just another ‘Soggy’ and shun her. This allies her with the exiles even more strongly. ‘Soggy’ is a likely phrase as humans have a history of making caricatures of ‘lesser’ folk with such derogatory language.
Elise’s plan was to make enough money to go home and pay tuition to finish her degree. She is flayed when she hears of the plan to destroy the trees planted and the horticultural bounty the wrecked Dutch ship carried. My mentor told me that such heartrending issues affect people now, the world over, and that it will doubtless occur more often when times get tougher. They really do care about us.
When Elise takes a walk though the planted trees, she finds one she does not recognize and is affronted, that was her major in college! She realizes this is not a tree but an alien. And there are more hiding among the trees. I was told life comes in trillions of forms, most that formed by evolution in their home environments. They have a wide span of development, some simple and some highly advanced.
Elise’s Paraguayan friend dubs the aliens Amigos. As life is in many forms, so are the attitudes and emotions of that life. Tehuti said peace and cooperation is most natural, and there is a strong tendency for civilized folk to recognize peace as beneficial. He’s from the Lyran area of the galaxy and there were folk like him there as well as a civilization that thought the weaker or more self-serving beings should be thinned out. For the Amigos I chose smart, peaceful and honest as attributes. Later, other aliens that threatened Earth for example, were more mechanical and unconcerned about others if there was a technical concern.
Elise convinces the other exiles to help her smuggle the aliens to the next Colony planet instead of allowing them to be destroyed with the trees. Tehuti’s major concern was that we show the poorly treated illegal with mental issues from trauma can lead and make pivotal changes for humanity. She sacrificed her future to save the Amigos and bravely introduced this alien species to the humans of Tenembras. This was my way of stating that real heroes don’t let anything stop them.
How Would You Do It? 