A series of interviews over lunch
Elena Moretti – La Repubblica Futura (Italy)
To Angelina: Your domestic operations blend tradition with administration. How do you keep community life humane while scaling systems that now include an alien population?
Angelina: Matt insists almost everyone that works in the building learn project management skills. Some of us are better at it than others, but in then end we have two hundred plus project managers who can be given a task and the people to do it with then turn in deliverables on time.
To L’tani: In your view, what part of V’ren hospitality translates best across species?
L’tani: None of it. As a culture we just don’t do things like this. While you might go to a café with your friends or co-workers gatherings like this where we are meeting strangers are unknown. Even large family gatherings with people who don’t live with you are rare.
To Matt: The gardens feel curated but unpretentious. Were they designed with cultural symbolism or simply for pleasure?
Matt: I am glad you like it. There are actually more than 200 of these tiny parks packs in among the orchards all between an eighth and a quarter acre in size. They were all designed by different people over the last 300 years and not all of them are as refined as this one. Some of them are still nothing but grass between the trees.
To Julia: As someone trained in corporate culture, what surprised you most about the rhythm of life here compared to the boardrooms of Earth?
Julia: How poorly the corporate world manages their aesthetics. Lord Marmaduke once you see how he operates is every bit as much of a power player as anyone in the corporate world I have ever met, but instead of trying to create an edifice that says I am dominant he creates spaces where people feel welcome. The corporate world could do this, but they don.t”
To All: Meals here seem informal yet orderly—does etiquette emerge naturally, or is it quietly taught?
Matt: When you grow up around this it is just natural. Ange?
Angelina: I agree, it is what I love about just living over yonder. My kids have grown up with this and there are days where you know they have been taught right because they just fit.
Rafiq Al-Karim – The Doha Ledger (Qatar)
- To Matt: Many economists call your Freehold a functioning micro-state without taxation. How do you prevent privilege from replacing participation?
- Matt: I am an autocrat that picks my citizens, after the other citizens have nominated them. These are all people who want to be here with each other.
- To T’Monn: Integration of health systems between species must be complex. How did you decide what to share and what to shield?
- T’Monn: “If we believe the knowledge might be misused, we will not share it freely. Matthew helped me understand that.”
- Matt: “It’s not that I want them to hold anything back. I just don’t trust humans not to weaponize what they learn, or to do something stupid trying to prove they can. Last time we did that, we lost seventy percent of the planet. A handful of tired grad students forgot to seal a door, and an engineered virus got loose. A century ago, we wiped out an entire people because someone thought they could design a retrovirus to target a haplogroup. No, there’s knowledge the V’ren are right to guard.”
- To Angelina: You oversee logistics at a national scale. What lessons could other territories learn from your cost-sharing model?
- Angelina: Matt has always been more interested in results than profit margins. In many ways this would make most bean counters have heart attacks or start drinking heavily but for him it works. We have a phrase in the Marmaduke Organizations, “Get Shit Done!” He sees a bigger picture than most of us can imagine and that is what has helped him earn more than most of us can ever imagine in the last twenty years or so.
- To Julia: Do younger professionals from corporate backgrounds adapt easily, or do they struggle with the Freehold’s informality?
- Julia: I think they would mostly be confused by it always looking for the hidden treachery around the corner and in every coffee mug.
- To Matt: Do you see a future where this model could coexist with traditional governments rather than replace them?
- Matt: The Marmaduke Freehold, The Marmaduke Family Trust, Ozark Power, The Columbia Collective, The University of Missouri – Columbia, Fulton Territorial Authority, Center Cooperative, and the Doniphan Development Group are all local governments I play a significant role in and were recognized under the CCA of 2123. All of them run differently and there is no one right model. Simply because the world has not heard of these places doesn’t mean we don’t coexist just fine side by side with other governments.
Mina Takano – Kyoto Daily Science and Culture (Japan)
- To T’Monn: From a scientific perspective, what surprised you most about human physiology or emotion since living among them?
- T’monn: Your physiology is not special. Unique in its own way, yes, but not that special. We like so many other species are children of the progenitors. Emotionally what is truly unique about humans among species I have met is how willing some of you are to welcome outsiders.
- To L’tani: Your background is in genetics, how will humans handle v’ren foods? How soon before we start seeing them available for human markets?
- L’tani: Matthew and I have talked about this and are both of one mind that we should move cautiously. Some of our plants could cause ecological harm by overwhelming the local environment. Matthew?
- Matt: I am a botanist by training and farmer by trade so I have put a lock down on removing anything that might take root on earth soil until a team of human and V’ren biologists and ecologists can thoroughly examine each and every one of those plants I would really like to get keft products on the market as it is easy to tailor to a variety of biological needs and could supplement the grains we already grow, but I shudder at what could happen if it established itself by seed.
We are planning on limited testing where the keft is processed into flour in strict bio-containment settings, but that still makes me nervous.
- To Matt: You often reference music and sport when discussing peace. Do you think culture evolves faster than politics?
- Matt: Pop Culture is what has always brought the world together and politics is always what has divided it.
- To Angelina: As someone who has seen Matt through triumph and grief, what personal habits keep this entire household grounded?
- Angelina: He makes a conscious effort to make people feel welcome in his house.
- To All: If visitors from our nations were to sit at this table next year, what would you want them to understand by the time they leave?
- Matt: That If you can’t sit down and enjoy a meal together, then there is no way to sit down across a table and work together.
