The modigram was instrumental in giving humans a better understanding of what was going on in the world around them, emboldening ties between their different communities and fermenting distrust against the Apiary. In the attempt to counter this, a significant part of the Apiary’s efforts focused on the proliferation of propaganda. They had limited success on this front at first, since the Anuh-Kaj evolved the inability to lie. They could utilize other forms of trickery – like by playing with the semantics of what they said, or making statements in the form of a question – but they cannot knowingly fabricate something that did not happen or do not believe in.

The Humans nor Cetaceans had this limitation, but humans appeared to be more predisposed. This led to the creation of a special designated status in Apiary Colonial Law known as ‘assimilated domestic foreign’ to entice collaboration. This designation gave humans much of the privileges and rights not granted to them originally, however certain anti-human prejudices prevented them from attaining the status; one of which, was how their faces were not meeting societal standards. To break through that particular social obstacle, some of the most avid human collaborators had parts of their own face removed to become more tolerable to the Anuh-Kaj’s sensibilities. From the point of view of other humans, the results resembled a surgery gone wrong, hence the application of the derogatory term ‘botch’ to any assimilated domestic foreign.

While a significant number of assimilated individuals collaborated with the Apiary by supporting its top supervisors across many means of production, most assimilated were vital in their services to the Apiary’s propaganda campaignsI. They were employed to convince impressionable humans into submitting their loyalty to Eas-Enerang. This was achieved through various promotions of what was deemed acceptable according to the Apiary’s imperial interests, standards of exemplary visage, and colonial caste ethics, while vilifying all that opposed such or could not be exploited. This all required the assimilated to always be willing to coach their Anuh-Kaj partners when they needed help in avoiding the truth or lie for them when needed.

I The assimilated also introduced the Apiary to the idea of using transmission receptacle monitors for broadcasting different formats of propaganda.