Office of Alien Affairs
Public Statement, May 12, 2440
Movement of V’ren families from the fleet to Earth continues.
Today several members of W’ren Th’ron’s extended household are preparing to relocate to central Missouri, including families with children. Additional personal and cultural exchanges between V’ren children and children from the Freehold are also underway.
These are not Amazon diplomatic missions.
Amazon did not select the participants, does not approve their clothing, gifts, friendships or family arrangements, and has no intention of turning ordinary contact between people into a corporate program.
Our responsibility is to maintain the portions of the communications and logistical network for which Amazon has accepted responsibility and to provide accurate information when corporate resources are involved.
Medical cooperation continues as well. Early experience indicates that human and V’ren medicine are proving substantially more compatible than either population had reason to assume before contact. Specialists on both sides continue evaluating drugs, allergens and treatment protocols rather than making assumptions from species origin alone.
There have been no developments today requiring a change in the general public safety posture.
Matthew J. B. Marmaduke
Director of Alien Affairs
Amazon Earth Division
Amazon refuses to turn ordinary V’ren contact into a corporate program
People
The Best First-Contact Policy Yet: Leave the Kids Alone
Amazon issued a remarkably sensible announcement today.
It does not intend to manage who V’ren children become friends with.
Director Matthew Marmaduke confirmed that V’ren families are continuing to move into central Missouri and that children from both populations are already spending time together. He then made clear that Amazon did not choose the participants, approve their clothing, select their gifts or organize their friendships.
In other words, first contact has reached the revolutionary stage where children meet other children and adults try not to ruin it.
There are scientific exchanges, diplomatic questions and enormous political consequences still ahead.
But perhaps the first genuinely normal thing humanity can give the V’ren is permission to be boring.
Europa Civic Journal
“Not an Amazon Program” Is Becoming Marmaduke’s Favorite Escape Hatch
Matthew Marmaduke’s latest statement insists that family exchanges, friendships and cultural contact between humans and V’ren are not Amazon programs.
That is convenient.
Amazon provides communications systems. Amazon provides settlement money. Amazon employs Marmaduke as Director of Alien Affairs. Marmaduke’s Freehold provides the principal landing environment. His household and associates have extraordinary personal access to senior V’ren families.
Yet whenever accountability becomes complicated, another line appears between “Amazon,” “the Freehold” and “ordinary personal contact.”
Those distinctions may be legally valid.
They may also create a system in which immense influence exists without any institution accepting full responsibility for exercising it.
Marmaduke cannot indefinitely be everywhere when something succeeds and nowhere when someone asks who authorized it.
Response to Europa Civic Journal
“‘Not an Amazon Program’ Is Becoming Marmaduke’s Favorite Escape Hatch”
Office of Alien Affairs
It is not an escape hatch.
It is an organizational chart.
I am the Freeholder.
I am Amazon’s Director of Alien Affairs.
I have also been retained by the V’ren as a commercial liaison.
All three parties know this.
Amazon does not appear confused about which duties I perform for Amazon.
The V’ren do not appear confused about which duties I perform for them.
The Freehold certainly knows when I am acting as Freeholder.
The confusion appears primarily among commentators who have decided that because one person performs several related functions, all of the institutions involved must secretly be the same institution.
Amazon and the V’ren have reached the opposite conclusion.
They consider it efficient.
If Amazon needs something discussed with the V’ren, I already know whom to call.
If the V’ren need something from Amazon, they do not need another six-person liaison office to communicate with the liaison office I already run.
If the Freehold is involved, I already know its laws, resources and limitations.
You may call that a conflict of interest.
The people employing me call it avoiding unnecessary meetings.
