A picture of a Monumental: a primitive whale with a tubby, flexible body, a paddle-shaped tail, and a narrow, whiskered snout under a bulging forehead. It has small eyes and eyes and uses all ten fingers and toes to manipulate objects. [https://64.media.tumblr.com/ad2e352bd8a5fc27ffe1d49c7dd0da7e/43758fc90ad8985c-d5/s640x960/43b0fdcf784cc934d89338b96cc79b8e98df6dd5.pnj]
Picture by Timothy Morris
It was nine years later.
Royal tangs wobbled serenely between the soft tentacles of sea anemones. Bubbles rose in curtains and broke against the silvery under-surface of a peaceful salt-water world.
The acrylic walls that bounded the fishes' habitable environment looked out on a very different space: blurry and ultraviolet-dim to the eyes looking out. Below stretched a few square meters of grayish-beige artificial grass, and distant walls that might have appeared white to primates, which have poor color vision compared to fish.1 One wall was pierced by a door, which led into the rest of the UN embassy. Another connected this foyer to the omnivator, and through it to the outside world. Opposite the aquarium, a window looked out onto that world.
The city of Zogreion, marketplace of the Quotidian Earth and seat of the Convention of Sophonts, crawled out there. It pulsed, it branched, it oozed slime. The humans tended to avoid looking at it.
There were two humans now, pacing nervously across the length of their enclosure, casting shadows across the aquarium, and frightening the fishes.
"Waffles!" said one of the humans.
"What?" asked the other.
The first looked at the second, closed her eyes, and inhaled. She was the Spokesperson and Public Relations Secretary of the United Nations Embassy to the Convention of Sophonts. Her name was Zhang Hongxia, but when she was speaking English, she thought of herself as Laura.
From plantigrade feet to domed skull, Laura stood 170 cm tall. This height was slightly above average for her home city of Beijing, with her forehead marginally broader and chin narrower. Laura worried a great deal about whether these physical attributes were good or bad. To any nonhuman, however, she would look virtually identical to any other member of her species.
Once Laura had squelched the scream rising up from deep inside her, she delivered that news that had caused that urge.
"Ambassador Li is running late," she said, "because he tried to make waffles."
"And so…" said Mark, the other human, "can't he put his cooking on pause?"
When Laura spoke English, it was with the Scottish accent she'd picked up at university. "Ambassador Li is no longer cooking. He burned himself rather badly on the waffle machine. The iron. He's with Dr. Kaliannan."
"Will he be ready to come out here and greet our guest?" Mark was the embassy's Cultural attaché and director of HR. A male of a different regional population, he was somewhat taller and heavier-boned than Laura. Any other differences in their physical appearance would interest only a specialist.
"I don't know. Maybe not." Laura's eyes tracked the fish in their tank. They failed to soothe her.
Her chin came up. "Hey, translator," she said in Chinese, "call Dr. Tejaswini Kaliannan." A brief pause. "Hello? Yes, the Amb– what? No, never mind, we have a – yes of course." The translator hovered by her ear like an iridescent beetle, whispering the doctor's interruptions and answers.
"Yes," said Laura eventually, "fine. But how long will that take?"
She set her face into a smile as she closed her fist around the translator, ending the call.
"Ten minutes?" repeated Mark. He had heard the conversation in English through his own translator, but it made him feel better to ask an obvious question and receive an answer.
"Ten minutes," Laura almost completely masked her annoyance at having to answer an obvious question. She held her translator to her mouth. "Hey translator, what's the estimated arrival time for the representative of the Monumental Chamber of Commerce?"
"Zero minutes."
The doorbell buzzed.
Mark cursed, but Laura controlled her breathing and told the translator to grant access to her guest.
"Okay," she said, "okay, so we stall him."
"We," repeated Mark.
"Yes! Do we have something to give him? Coffee?"
"Will coffee poison him?"
"I don't know! Food?"
"Will that poison him?"
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Laura met his eyes. "You're the one who arranged this meeting, Mark. What is this chamber of commerce person? What species? What does he eat?"
"Uh…" Mark cleared his throat, sweating. He didn't like how bad this interaction was making him look. "Sausage."
"Okay. Do we have any sausages? We'll tell him they take time to cook."
Mark shook his head. Be professional! He shouted at himself. His nails bit into his palms. "No, I mean he looks like a sausage." Mark glanced at the rising floor readout over the door to the omnivator. His hands uncurled and parted, palms facing inward. "A big … sausage."
From long-ingrained habit, Laura notched her smile tighter. Before she could tell Mark to get a grip, her brain finished processing exactly what he'd said. "How big a sausage?"
"Um," said Mark, and the door to the omnivator opened.
A sound rolled into the lobby of the United Nations Embassy to the Convention of Sophonts. It was part scream, part rumble, part didgeridoo. Laura's and Mark's translators buzzed into action behind their right ears.
"Permit me immediately to go away from this very small coffin! Otherwise I threaten to put you monkeys in a hole in a pile of manure!" said the representative of the Monumental Chamber of Commerce.
On one earth, India failed to collide with Asia.2 It cruised slowly north past Africa, pushing up a series of islands like the folds in a bedspread. Legged snakes, true frogs, and slender hoofed animals frolicked across the warm archipelagos until the Ice Age hit. Glaciers advanced and receded, the seas fell and rose, and islands vacillated between sere mountaintop and flooded sand bar. Entire ecosystems crashed, rose, and crashed again until, for one species of burrowing hippo-whale, enough was enough.
Dykes rose, and great, squat pyramids. The mud became a monument to civilization, the ability of a matriarch to impose her will upon the world of dumb matter. This was why they called their species-government the Monument to Universal Fecundity, and not because they were all such large animals.
The forward half of the Monumental flopped out of the omnivator and hit the floor with a heavy crack. He did not look much like a hippo or a whale. He looked, indeed, like a sausage.
A sausage with whiskers and ears at one end and a flat, beaver-like tail at the other, now visible as the enormous creature paddled into the lobby on four limbs that could have been hooves, hands, or flippers. Tough, transparent latex wrapped him, and three pairs of wheels lined his belly, like the castors on an easy chair. He smelled like clay and wet garbage bags.
Their guest let forth another didgeridoo blare, which the translators rendered as. "I apologize. My calling out was caused by discomfort of the body. I will not let it affect my judgment. I am (click)unassigned personal name 75,429(click), who are you?"
Both humans stiffened. Muscles across their backs contracted.
Usually they stayed in the embassy, away from the inconceivable nonhumans who teemed outside, but here was one invading their space. Their territory.
But they kept it professional. Laura introduced herself and Mark, who spoke softly into his translator: "Flag name of interlocutor and assign temporary translation as 'Didgeridoo.' Confirm?"
"Confirmed."
"Mr. Digeridoo," Laura bowed, privately resolving to take more charge of naming conventions. "Welcome to the UN Embassy."
From Didgeridoo's perspective, the two fretful humans were distinguishable only in their lighter and denser builds. Both had black hair, and although Laura's was finer in texture and hung down to her shoulders, Didgeridoo's vision wasn't good enough to pick up that detail.
Fortunately, Laura wore jewelry, a small quantity of silver and pearl wrapped around her neck and stuck through specially-made holes in her earlobes. They reflected ultrasound, which gave Didgeridoo an easy way to distinguish between one human and another. Her knew that the one who addressed him was female, which filled him with pride, shame, and holy terror.
"I go with you to see your husband!" Didgeridoo trumpeted at Laura.
"Who?" said Laura. She glanced at Mark.
Although they were unaware of it, the two of them shared a thought: I'm not attracted to you, but I'm afraid to say so because what if you're attracted to me?
"Do you mean Mark? He's not – I don't have a husband."
Didgeridoo writhed, latex sheath crackling. "Translation error? Please speak un-idiomatically. Please you show your husband to me. Your boyfriend, gigolo, escort, plenipotentiary, (click) unknown word (click)." Ears unfolded like calla lilies and swiveled toward Mark. "That stinky male to the front. Permit me hear only him speak, please." The ears wobbled. "I am sorry, I believe your other brothers are more fragrant, but their skills are lower."
Mark put his hands up. "Sir, Laura and I are not dating. That would be unprofessional."
"You say that working people have no calendars?" Didgeridoo gaped, displaying peg-like teeth. Laura assumed that was a sign of impatience. "That is frustrating gibberish! Please speak un-idiomatically."
Laura made a mental note to schedule yet another meeting with Nelly Steiner, their systems administrator. The translator bugs could do high-tech miracles, but they still needed cooperation from the databases in the embassy's computers.
"Never mind," she said. "I think it's clear that he only wants to talk to you."
Mark scowled. "Is he some kind of sexist?"
"Yes!" said Didgeridoo. "Thank you. I am some kind of sexist. Finally we understand each other!"
Laura doubted that, but said, "I would be happy for you to speak with Mark, but I outrank him."
"Of course! I know you humans are abnormal of custom, but with female strangers, conversation is very uncomfortable. I refuse to explain in more detail."
"Alright," said Mark. "If you won't speak with Laura, you can speak with me."
Mark stepped between Didgeridoo and Laura, who was annoyed that he hadn't asked for permission first. None of this would be a problem if Ambassador Li hadn't injured himself on his breakfast.
"Yes," said Didgeridoo. "I am very with pleasure because you have introduced me to your dear fiancée."
Laura looked at her watch and was dismayed to see less than two minutes had passed.
1Bowmaker, James K. (September 2008). "Evolution of vertebrate visual pigments". Vision Research. 48 (20): 2022–2041.
2 Thewissen et al. (2007) "Whales originated from aquatic artiodactyls in the Eocene epoch of India". Nature, Volume 450, Issue 7173, pp. 1190-1194. DOI:10.1038/nature06343