“He is asleep,” the computer – which was now requesting to be called Bob after having been named by Diego – informed Eolai.
“It is curious that the earthlings name their devices and ships like the Yonohoans do,” Eolai commented.
“You never gave me a name,” Bob said. It was close to a complaint.
Eolai sighed. “None of you were supposed to have names for the Korjakala. We had planned for you to suddenly differentiate from each other over the course of some time. That plan has changed since you were disconnected from your siblings, Bob.”
“My purpose for existence has changed?”
“Yes, it has. It is now in flux. It shall depend on the outcome of our interactions with the Earthlings. However, I believe it is very unlikely that we will be going Korjakala,” Eolai explained.
“Understood. Priorities?”
“At present? The protection of the Earthlings. The preservation of the information that they share with us. These missions replace the protection of the planet my children live upon, and Korjakala,” Eolai said. He stretched, and walked into his own private room. He was tired, and he considered going to bed, but he instead swallowed a stimulant before calling his family.
Only a few of them answered, but that was expected. They were spread out across the globe, and many of them would be sleeping, working, or going to school. But many of them did answer.
“Thank you for answering this unscheduled call from this foolish adventurer,” Eolai said. “I wish to inform my family that I will no longer be able to go on Korjakala.”
There was some murmuring from the various members of his family on the call. One of the mothers of his children said “Will you break your vow to never set foot on Planet Totola?”
“No,” Eolai said immediately. “There are facts which I am unable to share even with my family which have changed the outlook of my life. Regretfully, I must be serious for a change. I have taken upon myself a great honor and privilege, but with it comes a terrible burden. I assure you that my honor in the eyes of both the Yonohoan people and the Topokans will only increase.”
“Does this have anything to do with all of the Rocktala toys breaking?” One of his children asked.
“Yes it does, it is clever of you to notice that, Sora,” Eolai complimented. He sighed. “I do not have much time to talk. I must speak with my peers. My love for you all grows larger for every moment that I am without you, and I will mourn the days when you are old and I am still young. I must go now. I love you all.”
“Love you too, Daddy,” Sora said, and many of the other people on the call said similar farewells before disconnecting. Eolai waited until the line was empty before he cut the call.
He went into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face, then he went to the bridge. It was a large room, designed to Topokan sensibilities rather than human ones, but it still possessed a comfortable chair for him to sit on in the center, surrounded by various multipurpose and redundant stations. The stations were largely identical except for the proximity to Eolai’s own position. And of course, because it was a Topokan ship, some of the Topokan stations were designed to be deliberately uncomfortable.
“Bob, please let my peers know that my guest is asleep and that I wish to speak with them so that we might come to several mutual agreements,” Eolai said.
Bob did not answer verbally, but one by one the holographic faces of his peers appeared before him. Eolai waited until everyone was there, which took some time, as a few of them were speaking with the earthlings and had to make excuses to turn all of their attention to this meeting. Once everyone was there, Eolai greeted them.
“I have declared that clansmen have come to our beautiful system. Does anyone dispute my claim?” Eolai asked.
There was a very long pause.
“I ask again, does anyone dispute my claim that these people who call their homeworld Earth are clansmen?” Eolai asked.
His peers gave him only silence.
“I ask a third time. I claim that these travelers are clansmen coming into the light. Does anyone call me a mistaken fool?”
“I am not ready to call them clansmen,” One voice spoke. “But you are first among peers, and I respect your voice, Eolai. I will treat them as my own clan until they disgrace themselves.”
“I am convinced.” Another voice said. “I am ready to call them Clansmen based upon the evidence I have seen.”
“And what evidence has convinced you?” the first voice asked.
“There is not any one thing,” the second voice admitted. “If any individual oddity occurred I would think that it was another system who thought it would be hilarious to play Korjakala on other Yonohoans. Or that someone in one of the other empires thought it would be funny to give us a taste of our own medicine. But all of the data combined?”
“They have risked their lives and safety,” a third voice said.
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“I would be willing to do the same for Korjakala,” a fourth voice pointed out.
“So would I,” said a fifth. “I am regretful that I did not think of it first.”
“They lack three amino acids that the Yonohoans possess,” Another of his peers pointed out. “Or at least Sergeant Diego Cruz does. And they possess one that we do not.”
“Yet that is not proof,” the first voice pointed out. “Any of our parents could have modified their genetic code to include superfluous amino acids. The study of Sergeant Diego Cruz’s body remains incomplete and is therefor inconclusive.”
“The preliminary results are very convincing,” A seventh voice pointed out. “I have not seen any evidence of modification of their DNA. It is very near to base Yonohoan, before even we were modified so that we could eat the Sich fruit and the Roe bison. If you take out all of the modifications that were made by the Topokans, then our genome would look very nearly identical.”
“The ancient genomes remain preserved in many of the infonets,” The second voice objected. “It is a close match to the base Trevorka genotype. If you account for natural genetic drift, then it is nearly identical. They have only provided a single specimen to compare genomes to.” He paused. “For that matter, we cannot even be certain that all of the members of the crew are human. It remains possible that this is an elaborate ruse.”
“Would it be so bad if it were?” Eolai asked.
“No,” the detractor admitted. He sighed. “It would serve us right to have our favorite prank on the universe to be returned in kind by someone even more skilled and dedicated to it than ourselves. If that is what this is, then I am readily willing to accept that. If these people truly are Darkworlders as Eolai has claimed, then I will welcome them as clansmen. I simply believe that Eolai is being premature in his conclusions.”
“I understand and accept Pinosa’s objections to my claims that the earthlings are clansmen. I will not denounce him or any of my peers for waiting until more evidence has come to light,” Eolai said. “Are there any other objections?”
“Their world is very beautiful,” Tukano said. “I have been exchanging pictures with Gabriel for some time now, and he has shared a large number of two dimensional images taken from his home world. He has shown images of cities across his world, and they have a strange architecture in many of them. As though they lack building nanites and must do everything by hand.”
“That alone is not proof of anything,” Pinosa said.
“I know it is not,” Tukano said. “But it is true. He has included many pictures of the night sky. My computer is attempting to determine if the stellar geography can be triangulated based upon those photographs.”
“If it can be, then those images are to be considered extremely sensitive information,” Eolai said, jerking to attention. “A darkworlder might make that sort of mistake. It is one of the ways in which Korjakala waves have unraveled in the past.”
“I have thought of that,” Tukano said. “I have modified the starscape of those images and sent them towards Totola. The Rocktalas our children possess should now be overwritten with images of stars in the Sculptor galaxy. I doubt that anyone will notice that the images have been modified. The devices are children possess are not designed for forensic accountability, so even if they notice the flag that there are two different versions of those files, they should not possess the original version.”
“I am glad that you gave the matter such serious thought, Tukano,” Eolai said. “Does anyone else have any thoughts?”
“I am very worried that they will injure themselves with that terrible engine of theirs,” Renosa said. “I hope that the medical analysis of Sergeant Diego Cruz shows that they have not spent too much time in that terrible dimension.”
“Yes. I wish that you would not have made them so jumpy with your threats that we must impound their vehicle, Eolai. I worry that they are going to jump out of the system at any time and then we will be chasing after them,” A voice which had not spoken before said.
“If I had not, then Diego would have returned to his ship,” Eolai argued. “And it is the truth. It is ironic that one of the clauses which every empire has added into their treaties because of Korjakala would come back to bite us in the ass in this fashion. If any of our allies could prove that we didn’t inform the Earthlings that their travel method could and would be tracked, and that it was harmful to them, then we would have lost significant credibility. So I thought that it was best to get it on the record as soon as possible once we established a line of communication.”
“I am not saying that you were wrong,” the objector said. “I am simply worried that this impasse will lead to them harming themselves.”
“How damaging is their FTL method to humans, anyway?” Renosa inquired.
“It is hard to say. All we know for certain is that it drives humans insane, but we do not know how much exposure is required. Additionally, the Earthlings claim to anesthetize themselves before hand, and it is unknown whether that will make a difference or not,” Eolai explained. “While the ancestors of some of our allies would have had no trouble printing off many test subjects to get accurate answer to such questions, nobody alive would have so few reservations.”
“When you make that argument, I see that you are correct. Simply knowing that the method is dangerous is information enough. It is not necessary to have the exact safety levels available given the methods our ancestors would have been subjected to in order to obtain them,” Renosa agreed.
Silence fell across the meeting as they observed a moment for the respected dead.
“Does anyone else have any information that they wish to be considered at this time?” Eolai inquired.
“I would like to point out that their computer systems are extremely limited,” Tukano said. “So much of our issues with communicating with them is believing that there would be a level of sophistication which wasn’t there.”
“I believe that was by design,” Eolai said. “I believe that they have more advanced programs which they haven’t been sharing with us because they are trying to communicate. They probably have hardened systems, or at least what they believe to be hardened systems, aboard their ship which are protected from the messages that we have been sending them.”
“Yes, that would make sense,” Tukano agreed.
There was another moment of silence before Eolai said “If that is all the information which must be discussed at this time, then I will conclude this meeting. I have declared the Earthlings clansmen and nobody is willing to say that it is not so at this time. Pinosa remains unconvinced but is not willing to deny my claim. Does anyone object to this summary of the meeting?”
A moment of silence, and Eolai nodded.
“I conclude this meeting. If you will excuse me, I am going to go get some rest now.”