There will be a man eating breakfast on a dining table. There's about six separate dishes on the table, enough to feed three or four humans. Presumably this is their Master. Their Master looks very handsome, if you go by Earth standards – most people would say so – and he is also wearing a gorgeous blue and yellow pattern dyed wrapped-garment-dress, like a sari, but it probably wouldn't meet Vivai's expectation of 'Awesomeness-that-transcends-Awesomeness', unless Vivai is specifically looking for attractive aliens. His head plate looks like pearl, or nacre, and is similarly iridescent.

Rend will kneel, looking up, and speak. Las does the same, with a barely imperceptible delay. It looks like they're thoroughly practiced in it.

"Master, these drones found an alien wandering the edges of the farm. These drones brought him to You, as they believed that You might be interested in speaking to him. Further, he has said that he is in need of help, specifically, that he wishes to find work."

The Imperium has no laws mandating people help strangers, but there is a strong social norm to help them, with an accompanying strong social norm that the person helped will recompense the other when or if they are able. Many lost-drone insurance policies will pay out to people who help convey the lost drone to their Owner, for example. 

Vivai turns around and starts to leave when it turns out the guy is eating, but they don't follow him. Instead, he hears Rend start talking business with the Master like nothing unexpected or prohibitive has happened.

Reality breaks through Vivai's thick skull and wakes him up to how he's not dealing with anything even basically human as he knows it.

His sympathetic nervous system kicks in; he has no emotional bandwidth left over to be angry at how the alien is characterizing him to its boss as 'wandering' and 'in need'. Vivai's brain fires up.

Is the Master still audibly eating?

"Rise," Damin says, and the drones do so.

Damin will stop eating immediately after Rend starts talking about the alien. He does the same tentacle thing and tongue thing that the drones did earlier, and then he's going to look very shocked!

"Wow – I – you really are an alien! Amazing!" He covers his mouth. 

"What can I do for you? Sit down [purely optional]. Do you want to eat [purely optional]? Ah, our food might be poisonous to you, though. Do you want me to get the drones to bring something for you [purely optional]?"

The food might not necessarily look like Bywayean food, but it does look food-like. Approximating, there appears to be bacon and ham, bread, rice pudding, red berries of some sort, some sort of jam or fruit preserve, pound cake, milk, and water.

Damin is kind of confused over Vivai turning to leave, but ignores it.

"Report [order]," he says to Rend.

Rend will summarize what has occurred so far. They found Vivai near the edge of the farm, where Vivai said that he 'died', and was also an alien, so they brought him here.

"Wow, that did not clear things up at all. Would you like to explain instead [strongly recommended; not mandatory]? Regardless of how you came here, it is clear that you are one. Not just because of your scent, but you have hair!" He laughs, and makes a sort of flicking away gesture with his hand. 

The two drones respond to this cue and stand aside, moving closer to the wall to make themselves unobtrusive, but won't leave the room.

The interior's aesthetic is very similar to the exterior's. Much thought has also similarly been put into the decor and ambiance of it.

Vivai sits.

"Thanks for asking, I do not want to eat, in my home culture eating is" - he flounders - "really a private thing.

I suppose I will have to figure out whether the food here is poisonous to me at some point, and I guess since I'm not an expert organic chemist the way I'll do that is by eating something - it is really shocking to me how similar the food, as well as your body plans, is to what I'm used to at home - and dying again if it's fatally toxic, and living if it's not. I guess there is some chance it's a non-immediately-fatal neurotoxin, so I'll want to have a quick suicide method ready . . . sorry, that's really gruesome. I am ζ6% [tendozen-six pergross, ~90% in decimal] sure that if I die again I'll just go somewhere else again, and anyway I'll have to eat something here pretty soon, and unless your world's civilization is way more medically advanced than it looks to me, there's no way to guess ahead of time what might be safest.

I want to clarify right at the bottom, I am not presently in need of help - Las told me Kosfor City is only an hour and a half's walk away, and I am perfectly able to walk and in fact would prefer walking to incurring implicit debt to you. Strongly.

I do have hair!" He smiles. Those plates remind him of ram dinosaurs, and he wonders if their evolutionary source was ever used for mating rights contests - the aliens' facial bone structures and builds are comically skewed toward masculinity in a way that suggests a relatively aggressive prehistory - martyrs, why should there be any correspondence - but he's not about to escalate and start openly objectifying the boss's "hair", which after all is normal here.

"I . . . " where to start. "well, it's really just like Rend said. Sorry I can't be more illuminating. If you have speculation, I would love to hear it. I was just working - I was a line operator/maintainer at a factory making food for animal test subjects, mostly mice - that's where my middle name comes from, my full name is Vivai Alith Latitude* Sareksal, the feed company's name was Alith Latitude and the factory was located in the city of Sareksal - I suppose I'll need new trailing names soon - anyway, I was working and made some mistake and the machine I was responsible for, chewed up my arm, down through the shoulder" - he holds up his right arm - "and I bled out. And then I woke up here. Presumably you don't have cryonic preservation here, which I would be freaking out about if I still believed in subjective death, but I'll explain anyway: I think I would have woken up at home, sometime in the far future, if I hadn't been an idiot and procrastinated on making arrangements for my brain to be preserved, so it could be thawed out later. But I was that idiot. And so someone may have tried to charitably assist me, but it wasn't fast enough, and ultimately my brain was incinerated, and I woke up here, and I have no idea why here in particular, and not somewhere else.

. . . Do you have any idea? Or further questions, I would be happy to answer." Vivai has his own further questions, but with some people you have to lead with your gives or you'll leave the conversation in a mountain of implicit debt with your head spinning, and he hasn't ruled out the Master being one of those people.

*translated

Damin will listen intently. His facial expressions are quite animated, totally unlike the drones.

He makes a motion with his tentacles to eat, but stops when Vivai says that 'eating is a private thing'. What does that mean, exactly? Probably just a cultural difference.

"Yes, I was surprised at the similarity of our body plans too. Not that I have any other aliens to observe with which to calibrate."

He frowns when Vivai mentions suicide. "You can do whatever you want, but I will not help you kill yourself until you write a suicide intent letter and have it notarized at an Imperial or regional office. Of course, there is virtually no chance that I would be charged with murder even if you do, but it's better to be safe.

Implicit debt...? Oh, no, no! I am helping you purely as a-gift-which-requires-no-reciprocation-not-even-the-reciprocation-of-expressing-gratitude*! You are an alien! Of course I want to be hospitable, even if I have no obligation to. I, and my drones, can accompany you to Kosfor and get you the things you need, or connect you to other people, such as scientists and chemists and biologists who can see whether our food is suitable for you. I'm a planter and a therapist – these things are totally outside my expertise. Or would you prefer to have your existence be secret? Many, many people would want to meet with you, simply by virtue of being an alien, and I imagine having to deal with that amount of public exposure and interest would be tiring. At least, it would be to me.

You can even ride on my carriage – I wouldn't want you to suffer the indignity of having to walk, well, unless you want to. My drones can carry two people just fine – you're definitely lighter than Konrad. Ah, Konrad is my husband."

Not mating rights exactly, but having colorful and pearlescent plates is considered a very attractive trait among remna.

Vivai is named after the company he works for??? Right, cultural differences. He knows of people who have a gross drones or more, who simply call some of them by their roles.

"Apologies, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Damin Bales Sertes. Damin is my birth name, and Bales and Sertes are my birthing-parent and impregnating-parent's names respectively. Call me Damin. No, I have no idea what to make of that. There are stories here about people being transported to other worlds, but those stories are fiction. 

We don't have cryonic preservation here. Or, hm, maybe? The Imperator arranged for his body to be transported to the cold tundra in the south, near the poles, where the ground is frozen year round. In his last days, when he was dying of illness, he ordered the navy to take him there, just before his death. I suppose you could call that 'cryonic preservation'. Certainly, his body won't decompose there. Er, why do you think that getting your body frozen would lead to you waking up in the far future?"

He starts tapping his foot.

"Questions I have. Hm. How are you talking in Imperial, if you're an alien? Nevermind, that probably has something to do with your inexplicable means of travel, doesn't it?

Rend said you don't have drones in your world, which tracks with you having to operate machines in an assembly line. We have drones do that kind of work, here. Hm. Questions about biology seem most salient to me, now. How does your species reproduce? We are hermaphroditic – are you familiar with that term? Does that translate? We can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Asexual reproduction always results in drones – dear Las here is a product of that; I gave birth to it. Sexual reproduction is the only way to produce Keepers, although most of the time it also results in drones. Only Keepers can reproduce – drones are entirely sterile. I believe the term for that would be 'eusocial' – is that familiar to you?"

* Two syllable word in Standard Imperial.

Aaaaah that's so cool. 

". . . Aaaaah that's so cool!"

He's still on that adrenaline high. Cough.

"Yeah, we have two non-hermaphroditic sexes that reproduce sexually and that's it. I'm assuming you guessed that, seeing as how you defined remna as eusocial to me. Um, and with regards to cryonics, nobody knows exactly how to thaw 'frozen' people without killing them yet, but it seems in principle possible, and certain if humanity* - that's my species, human is the singular word - keeps on trucking for long enough."

Vivai thinks quickly. What predictions does this reproductive pattern make about remna psychology? Drones, being themselves sterile - shit. Unambiguous worker ants. And the queens are the Keepers. Everything Rend said about drone obedience to the Master - Damin - clicks into place. (Are the drones haploid? They must be, or similar. Las doesn't look like a near-clone of Damin, to Vivai's eyes. Whatever the drone genetic transformation is, anyway, it has significant effects. The particulars don't matter at the moment.)

What about the Keepers? They'd be genetically incentivized to keep their drones in working condition, but it'd be a lopsided relationship - both parties emotionally recognizing the drone only as an extension of the Keeper. Like a limb.

He's read science fiction with eusocial aliens, but . . . sapient ants giving their lives for a colony - that's alien, but romantic. At this modest scale, the fate of the drones just feels - sad. Or maybe the difference is just that they're flesh-and-blood and right in front of him. Everything's different when it happens to someone you know.

He searches, hits on the right first question.

"Socially, are there any contexts in which it doesn't matter whether a person is a Keeper or a drone, you treat them the same?"

*Vivai uses the Byway word here.

"I see! So you don't have drones, then, everyone is a prenu in your system. That explains why you were willing to do farm work. You reproduce exclusively sexually, and are dioecious. I guessed only that you weren't eusocial, not that you were dioecious."

Damin wants to press more on the cryonics question – it seems interesting – but it can wait until later.

Damin instinctively wants to take another bite of food with his tentacles, but again stops himself. 

"Socially, hmm. Ah. Er...let's see...I suppose if you were unsure about whether the remna you were talking to were a Keeper or a drone – perhaps because the drone is very tall or the Keeper very short, or because it's raining heavily and you can't distinguish by scent – you'd assume them to be a Keeper. If you wrongly refer to a drone with Keeper-language, it'll just correct you, but it would be terribly insulting to address a Keeper as an 'it'. 

But I think that isn't the answer you're looking for...thinking deeper on it," and from his facial expressions, it does seem like he is, "I don't think there are. Drones are not prenu, so how you would talk to them would be entirely different from how you would talk to Keepers.

Your scent is very different from remna. If you are concerned about being mistaken for a drone, or an organism similar to a drone – one that lacks ontologically-basic-capacity-for-desire – you can just say you aren't."

". . . Ontologically-basic-capacity-for-desire?" He doesn't want to tread on any toes here, but - "Don't drones have that? I mean, maybe not directed primarily toward their own survival, psychologically, but." He looks back at Rend and Las, meeting their eyes straight-on like he does with lower-downs whose trust he wants to gain. It doesn't feel right, he didn't earn higher status than them, but it's the best he's got here. Back to Damin. "Rend and Las seem possessed of cognitive volition, to me. What am I missing?"

Rend and Las are not going to look him back in the eye. Instead they seem to just be staring into the distance, unmoving. It's mildly eerie.

"Ugh, how do I explain this. This is a fish-in-water moment – this fact is so basic to us that it's difficult to explain it to others. Hm. Drones have very simple desires, the chief of which is to obey their Master. This desire remains stable, unlike with Keepers, who are not...hm...coherent-agents. People can change in what they want – drones don't. Does that make sense*? They are capable of thinking, of planning and executing such plans to achieve the orders they've been given, and they also feel emotions and sensory qualia. But they don't like – get urges to eat ice cream, or something like that. Does that make sense?

The traditional conception of this is that animals have body and spirit, drones have body and mind, but only prenu have all three. 'Spirit' here being an older word for ontologically-basic-capacity-for-desire. An older synonym is also free-will. Do you have that concept in your world? Drones do not have free-will – all they want is to serve their Master."

"Isn't that right?" he asks, and turns towards the drones.

* One syllable interjection in Standard Imperial.

"Yes, Master," they reply in unison. Again, their movements are very synchronized and practiced. "All we want is to serve You."

Okay then.

Vivai is pretty disturbed. Like the majority of philosophers (the gamemakers among whom are admittedly much smarter than Vivai of the solidly average tested g, and whose word he must thus partially trust), he had thought of free will as probably inextricable from sapience. Technologically primitive cultures have ever been wrong in their basic ontological categories, but he gets the feeling there's something more going on here than just pure error on the remnas' part.

". . . Sorry if this is a baby confusion for babies, but I can hardly see how drones could literally have less 'capacity-for-desire' than the worker classes of eusocial nonsapients." He might be marking himself a heretic target for who knows what kind of alien violence here, but YALFFF (you actually live forever, for free.) "Does the three-category system for minds" - he struggles to find the right words in this tongue; it doesn't feel horribly philosophically ill-equipped for a society at this tech level, just ill-fitting for Vivai, like an unfamiliar but not inelegant programming language - "strongly mirror physical-logical reality, or is it more of a free-floating cultural motif at this point?"

Damin sighs.

"It may be a productive analogy to think of drones as very complex machines, such as those large computing machines that take punched paper tape. You put in particular inputs and you get particular outputs – and this is deterministic. Of course, drones are not exactly like that – they are still biological and not mathematical – but it points in the right direction. Prenu have desires...outside of themselves, which come and go unbidden. Drones have near perfect self-insight into their desires because their desires are few and stable. Drones want to obey their Masters – they want their Masters to be happy and fulfilled. 

Mmmm, ah, another potentially clarifying point: There are terminal-desires and instrumental-desires. For example, suppose I want to eat ice cream from a creamery. To do that, I need money. Suppose I do not have money. Then, I instrumentally-want money, because it will help me to achieve my terminal-desire, even though I do not desire that money for its own sake. Keepers may change in their terminal-desires, and may have many of them. The terminal-desires of drones are few and stable. Drones and Keepers both can have instrumental-desires just fine. If I order Las to get ice cream from the creamery for me, then it'll instrumentally-desire that it has money, even though it would not terminally-desire the money.

Both? It is the way the world creation myth categorized things. We now know – for a long time now – that this passed-down myth is merely metaphorical, but the way it modeled things continues to be useful and emotionally-resonant to the modern day."

He will push away the mild upsettedness over not eating the breakfast in front of him – talking to the alien is clearly the more important thing right now.

Aaaaaaaaaagh he's clearly said something to miff the boss fuck fuck fuck.

At least his confusion is resolved now.

"That makes total sense and I was being thickheaded for not seeing it before. Thanks for clarifying. I have lots more basic questions about drone psychology that would probably be best answered by a library. Anything else you want to know from me? Otherwise I really will be on my way, feel free to get in touch if you want to ask me anything more, I would have been so much more lost if I had not landed in your field, but if you'll excuse me I'd prefer to tread with absolute caution when it comes to incurring debt."

(Seriously, the alien's insistence earlier was bordering on implying coercive intent, which Vivai is thrilled he doesn't have to pay the slightest attention to, because YALFFF.)

"It's a pretty big thing with my people. And I like walking!" He really does.

"Library? Oh, I have one. Hm, although I haven't had it trained specifically on drone psychology – I do therapy on Keepers, not drones. It's Konrad that does drone training. Do you want me to call for the librarian regardless? It can also read books to you, in the case the mechanism by which you are managing to speak Imperial now does not give you literacy. Ders, the librarian, has a lovely voice. Absolutely delightful to listen to – that's why I bought it. And it is also a computer besides.

I have lots of things I want to know about you, of course, you're an alien. 

I feel like...it would also be good for you to have someone who can help you navigate our society, so that you don't waste other people's time. It seems like imposing on others is a big thing in your culture. Other people may not be so patient, alien or not, especially if you walk onto land or buildings they own. We may mutually-satisfy-each-other's-desires* by having me convey you to the city, so that we can talk more on the way. I'll have to eat first though. I was planning to eat while talking to you, but you said that your culture interpreted eating to be something you do in private. 

Does your culture do gift-giving? I hope I've made it clear that I expect no reciprocation for the things I do for you. If I want you to repay something I did, I would make it clear what the price was before giving to you."

* Three syllables in Standard Imperial.

Yeah he doesn't buy a word of that not for a second. It's not that he has experience with such blatant attempts at gaslighting, in reality or in fiction, people at home aren't dumb enough let alone evil enough to conceive of let alone try this shit, it's just that he has better interpersonal instincts than a rock. But fine. Damin clearly isn't letting him go without a fight, at this point Damin has run out of plausible deniability that he isn't knowingly imposing on Vivai, there are no guarantees that the other boss aliens will be any less difficult, and he'd like to avoid dying again at least long enough to confirm that he can't get this world up to speed on immortality tech within his lifetime. And if you're planning to stick around somewhere, you fundamentally don't make enemies.

When in Crazytown.

He seethes. He hides it pretty well, although he's not particularly practiced at poker-face among the people he knows.

"You're very persuasive." In a manner.

"I would love to speak with Ders while you eat. Thank you for your patience."

Damin notices the subtle shift in facial expression, but he isn't sure how to interpret it.

"Of course. Rend, take Vivai to see Ders."

Rend bows. "Yes, Master. Right this way, Sir."

Rend will lead Vivai to go to the library, which looks pretty standard for a library at an industrial tech level. There's a typewriter, writing materials, some of which look very fancy, and several bookshelves. There's a man sitting on the desk, reading. Presumably that's Ders. This is confirmed when Rend conveys Master Damin's instructions to 'answer Sir Vivai's questions and furnish relevant materials when necessary. Assume very low context. Adopt high proactivity.'.

Ders is wearing a white button down with black pants. Ders stands, also bows, similar to Rend, vacating its chair, and standing well away from it, seemingly to indicate that Vivai can sit if he likes. There are couches elsewhere, although they won't have the correct angle or height to write on.

"What answers may this drone provide you, Sir?" The drone's voice is indeed lovely. It's low, whispery, and calming. Very soothing to listen to.