1. Be patient with each other
Ms Anaria is not a United Earth government official. She was not informed of the tri-system parliament meeting to address United Earth trade overreach. She does not know why your docking instructions mysteriously sent you to the public education ship (the one farthest from the government’s parliament ship), nor is she completely fluent in both Hechian and Theloss. Confusion over what is happening, frustration with the lack of information, even outrage that your government is attempting to bully the tri-system via a clandestine meeting against voter approval — all are natural responses to the situation, but we must still be patient and calm with each other.
2. Keep your appendages to yourself
Ms Anaria’s classroom was designed to hold 25 human children with only four limbs each, not 16 adult Hechians with 7 tentacles apiece and 17 fully assembled Thels of 220-centimetre average height. To respect each other’s space and boundaries, everyone must remain on their assigned colour square of the Rainbow Story Rug. If you cannot perceive the colours on this light spectrum, please raise your prominent tentacle and/or robotic interactive piece and Ms Anaria will help you locate it. As surely everyone here has learnt during their own childhood, or from what has apparently been several months of their cease-and-desist orders being ignored, moving outside your borders and into someone else’s without permission is very rude and should not be tolerated.
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3. Only one being speaks at a time
Unlike the government ships, Ms Anaria’s classroom has only one inter-ship communicator, and poor Ms Anaria quite suddenly cannot remember how to use the video call feature that would alert the United Earth government to the fact that we are all here in the same room at the same time. Therefore, each group will have to select ONE representative to speak ONE AT A TIME to the government liaison on the communicator. When one being has the communicator, the others must be quiet, respecting the speaker’s time on the communicator by not letting their own voice, or any other auditory evidence, indicate their presence in this room. Once each representative has had a chance to speak individually to the liaison and the communicator is turned off, they are then free — and encouraged — to speak, using inside voices/voice boxes dialled down to 50 decibels. If anyone finds they need to express some sentiment or emotion or primal scream of frustration in the face of government bureaucracy that exceeds the limit of inside voices/50 dB, they can make use of the pillows in the screened-off Quiet Corner.
4. Share the classroom resources
As we wait the four hours for the transfer ship, some of us might grow bored and want a distraction. There is a limited amount of carbon-based-lifeform-friendly snacks, a single-occupant bathroom, two high-powered charging stations, and various markers and colouring pages available. Together, we will work out a system to share these resources, dividing them up fairly, negotiating access and working out disputes calmly and respectfully, with Ms Anaria as the tiebreaker should an agreement be unable to be reached. To make it fair, whatever Ms Anaria has to make a decision on will be unavailable for her use, either in totality or for a specific duration of time, depending on the resource in question, because, as the self-declared leader of this room, she has had unrestricted access to it for a very long time and really doesn’t need this many resources. If anyone sees how this practice might be particularly relevant and potentially applicable to future discussions with other friends and/or tri-system leaders, they can have a gold star sticker.
(Ms Anaria is aware that stars do not actually look like these stickers.)
5. Respect each other’s feelings
Because she is not a government official, Ms Anaria does not have the clearance to listen to discussions on the topics of the parliament meeting today, and hearing them might make her sad or anxious or filled with righteous fury. She therefore does not want to talk about how the tri-system charter clearly outlines border lines and protocol for crossing, or how the resource-rich planet Bargio is technically in Theloss space and subject to full tri-system approval for mining, or anything about how the United Earth’s spurious overpopulation of Bargio’s orbit with its own mining ships can be legally interpreted as an intimidation tactic in violation of the tri-system charter. All such topics would greatly upset Ms Anaria and are off limits. However, Ms Anaria is more than happy to discuss the soundproofing qualities of the adjacent music room.
6. Clean up after yourself
The transfer ship has arrived! We had a lot of enlightening discussions here in the classroom and generated many notes and recordings we now need to clean up. Before anyone leaves, everyone is to form an orderly line at the data station to upload today’s information to your personal, preferably encrypted, device. Once uploaded, please return to your assigned colour square to await the Earth liaison. Ms Anaria will then delete the files off the ship system, for privacy, of course.
7. Be kind to each other
Remember: the tri-system area of space is a community, and communities are kind and helpful to each other. We need each other so we can all thrive. Selfish behaviour should be gently, but firmly, discouraged and corrected, perhaps by a two-thirds majority.
Thank you for following Ms Anaria’s Classroom Rules!