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One unfortunate precedent in the membership rolls of the Interstellar Alliance of Sentient Species was that every race that applied was required to have a species anthem. “An anthem,” the bylaws specified, “that clarifies the principles of its culture and summarizes the species ethos.” And so some examples were provided, some quite pleasant and some sufficiently discordant to send human listeners fleeing out the back of the auditorium. Some species had anthems that sounded like glass shattering. Others had anthems that sounded like viscous fluids landing on floor tiles. Some were beautiful narratives about heroes fighting off a threat to