The curiosity and desire for more was intense, as Sam had asked to hear more. Nyar was surprised by this reaction. The memories of the first one were important for her species, but how could they be anything but disconnected remnants from the past of another world for a human?
Putting herself back into a mindset to express an outside summary of her ancestors life, she strung along more words, sending them to the translator in succession: "The first one felt the formation of an offspring inside her and roamed the forest with a strong hunger. In her desire to protect my ancestor species, she also searched for them, hoping to share the knowledge she had gained and that had helped herself. But whenever she found live individuals, they fled from her, anxious to stay hidden and to not draw the predators by breaking their solitude. She also came upon many remains, they could not benefit from her knowledge any more.
"When the fourth time of abundance was at its midpoint, she conceded and stopped her search. They would not listen to her, neither her warnings nor her advice. And the time had come where her offspring was beginning to form its own thoughts, so she concentrated on teaching it everything. All of her observations, all that she learned and all she had lived through.
"She had also made contact with the fast breeders thrice. Two times she had been hunted and had to flee. Suppressing her panic, she was successful both times. And one time she encountered a fast breeder nest, well hidden in dense foliage but protected by only a few of them. Going against her instincts, she attacked the nest. The defenders were swift to move onto her, but the first one crushed one by one until there were none left. She then pushed on and trampled the nest until nothing living remained.
"I have to add a piece of information to the explanation on the creation of offspring I have not yet given you. I did not mention it as it had not been relevant, but it has become relevant now. Because the process of creating offspring is highly demanding in energy and mental capacity, it may impact the ability of an individual to survive other energy-intensive efforts like the evasion of pursuit or even the sheltering during the time of the storms. In the same way the process of creation of offspring is initiated by my species' biology through intake of nutrients and environmental influence of the time of abundance, the process may also be halted or terminated."
The gravity of what Nyar had described made her remember the times this had happened to others of her species. These losses she had not even counted amongst the seven-hundred and thirteen. She had also felt a wisp of dismay from Sam and waited a moment for her to speak, but she remained silent.
"It is what happened to the first one, after she had been hurt and exhausted by the attack on the nest. The development of the offspring was painfully halted, and she had to endure a time when it was questionable that it would resume. Through her knowledge of the forest, she could replenish her nutrient stores quickly and so averted losing her offspring.
"When it became independent near the end of the fourth time of abundance, she found it to be similarly uncommunicative as my ancestral species. Though it had her knowledge and stayed with her because of it, her offspring did not go beyond passive observation and repeating what she had taught. They stayed together through the cooling period and then reunited after the time of the great storms.
"Then the fifth time of abundance broke and for the first time she built something that was different from the sand storm shelter. Utilizing the knowledge she had learned by observing nature, she built protection for her own body, and her offspring mimicked her to do the same. The armor she now carried made her slower, but gave her protection of the fast breeder's claws.
"The first one encountered two hunting groups of the fast breeders. Together with her offspring she fought off the first. It proved to her that her knowledge and building ability was what could keep herself and her species safe. The second group she met was larger and actually consisted of two groups. The first one was split up from her offspring in the struggle to survive. She succeeded in driving the attackers away, but failed in reuniting with her offspring."
Nyar thought about the memories after that incident and noticed how they again were fragmented and hazy. It was strange to go through the first one's life point by point as she was doing it now and equally strange to summarize a life into the impactful moments. If she were talking to her species, she would have already shared all of these memories in full.
This following period was again a very tumultuous one and hard to describe. The memories as well carried the feelings of loss that were as strong now in Nyar as they had been back then in the first one.
"The first one searched for her offspring through the remaining time of abundance and the following cooling period. In her wanderings, she had crossed with the fast breeders often. These encounters had vastly expanded her knowledge on them and she became able to evade hunting groups reliably while finding several more nests.
"And still she had not found others of my ancestral species that she could teach what she knew and learned. This inability to communicate made her deduce that the only way she could save them was through culling the predators. And that she could only do through becoming stronger.”
Sam had chosen that moment to interrupt her, and surprisingly, displayed similar emotions when she asked the question on whether the first one had found her child again. Nyar was stunned for a moment. This human did not have the memories of the first one, how could she come to feel her loss and desperation?
---
“I am sorry to ask a question in return, but you are mirroring the emotions I am feeling through these memories. I don’t understand how this is possible, I was under the impression that humans were not able to sense the emotional state of another being?”
That was not the strangest question Nyar had asked so far, but Neil was still taken aback. Yes, she did feel compassionately about this individual she had just learned about, but it was because the first one literally was just that - the first one of a species. How could she not get lost in this fantastic story? It did throw up the question how Nyar had so easily understood her emotional state, since she thought she had spoken neutrally.
“No, humans cannot sense emotions of others - not directly. Usually vocal inflection and nonverbal body language will let us judge another human’s feelings. But that can be deceptive and could even be deliberately manipulated. Right now, I am just listening to your story and imagining what the first one must have felt, not more.”
The translator remained silent for a moment before speaking: “But why then, do you feel these emotions? What I am telling you happened in the past and you are not even concerned with any of these events in the slightest.”
Just now she became very aware of the two large black eyes that were fixed on her and the feeling of standing in a stadium spotlight returned. Quickly, she rose from the chair to think better.
“Look, we humans are compassionate. Some more, some less. Personally, I tend to put myself into the position of the character in a story I hear or read about. And this will make me feel sad with them, or happy if the story was different - doubly so if it is real. It does mean I may also get worked up over some fictional death in some book, but on the other hand, that’s what a good story is about, right?”
“I am unsure I understand. Why do you mention the distinction of empathy towards real stories and also sadness coming from a fictional death? Does the expression fictional not mean that it is untrue?”
Something clicked in Neils mind - Nyars species never developed storytelling. And they subsequently did not have fictional stories. Her mind raced. With that seemingly perfect generational memory, there had never been a need to turn events into tales. It’s also why she had mentioned the difficulties of telling the story of the first one.
She already had her hands buried in her hair again when she tried to imagine a world without fiction. How could she even explain this concept?
Carefully, she began: “That’s correct, if something is fictional, it means it is untrue. In the context of stories and tales however, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Humans do not have the memories of their ancestors and have to learn indirectly about events not involving them. From the tradition of re-telling what had truly happened, also came a way to create entertainment by exaggerating factual details of these past situations. And from that, humans came to develop telling completely untrue stories by straight out creating fictional circumstances with characters that do not exist encountering situations that never happened. This is also done for purposes of enjoyment and learning.”
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Again a shift to the other pair of eyes. Neil pondered if she had failed to explain it comprehensively.
---
They lied about past events? And also created untrue scenarios for the purpose of entertainment? But if they were limited by the language they used to communicate with, there could be no way to distinguish them. Nyar had gathered that humans were unable to share full memories across individuals. This new information made her think of it being an even bigger disadvantage.
She put the words together to send them to the translator: “If you only learn of the experiences of other humans through language, are you not failing to learn a large part of that memory? And if your knowledge of the past is based on retellings, how do you ascertain that the past is true?”
Unfortunately Sam went off into another long explanation that included words about technology and machines Nyar did not understand. She did get from all this that humans had developed methods to externally store records of events and to fact-check the validity of stories about the past, which they apparently utilized often.
“I am sorry, I was unable to follow your explanation fully as you had used words of which I do not know the meaning. Having to verify the truth of information on past events is a concept that does not exist for my species and I cannot fathom how it impacts your ability to communicate between individuals.”
It took a moment before another explanation came from Sam, who inexplicably radiated discomfort. She told Nyar about what humans called lying, which was purposeful and deliberate telling of untruths and she explained that it could be used maliciously to falsely present a situation to other humans for a selfish gain. But she also claimed that this happened rarely and lying was actually most often used in daily superficial communication to change presented information in order to soften the emotional pain another human might feel from the truth.
No, this still did not make sense. So lying was something humans did maliciously, kindly, for entertainment purposes, and apparently, very often.
One question did push itself to the front of Nyars mind and she quickly put it together to pose it: “Have you lied during this meeting?”
A sharp sincerity swung with Sam's reply that she had not. She added that she would also never attempt to deceive Nyar.
Nyar followed with the logical next question: “Would you please tell me about an untrue event so I may experience a lie?”
When Sam began to speak of the type of food she had before the last pause, it was immediately clear to Nyar that it was untrue whatever it was that she was talking about. Sam’s mannerisms had changed and her emotional state was superficial and clearly forced.
---
“You are not telling the truth.”
It was not a question. Neil could not understand Nyar’s desire to see a lying human in action and now she had given what seemed her deductive analysis on a statement that was set up to be untrue. This did smell of a challenge to Neil, even though she was a terrible liar.
“Well okay. To put you in the position of a human in a conversation like this, I will tell you something that might or might not be a lie. And you can tell me what you think.”
Nyar shifted slightly, but remained silent. So after a moment of thinking Neil began: “Where I come from there is this small lake. One day there was a get-together of around twenty people, me included, and we planned on making a bonfire. The plan was-”
Neil could not even get to the actual core of the story before the translator interrupted her with the words: “You are not telling the truth.”
And she was baffled. That could not have been obvious, she had barely set it up. Also Neil was pretty sure that whatever she would tell from events on Earth would be cryptic nonsense for Nyar anyway.
“Ok, another story then. One day, I went out to a playground with my nephew and he got stuck on top of the monkey bars. Real high ones, old school style. Now this happened to be a day that I had been to a formal event, so I was wearing nice clothes and dress shoes. But I had to get him down nonetheless. So I tried to climb up to him and right before I was on the top, my feet slipped, I lost my grip, and I crashed all the way back down.”
As if to demonstrate, Neil stroked her right arm while continuing: “My whole right sleeve ripped off because my cuff got stuck somehow and I think I nearly broke my tailbone. When I was rolling on the ground in pain, my nephew magically appeared on the ground right besides me, trying to console me.”
“I do not understand details about the situation you have described, but I know that you are talking about a real event from your past.”
Was Nyar a living lie detector? How could she possibly discern that it had indeed been a true story that Neil liked to tell in relaxed company?
“You are correct, that was a true story. How are you doing this?”
“I can see that you are different when you attempt to tell of an untrue event.”
Neil slapped her hands together, pausing diplomacy for a minute to test the limits of this ability. She knew that it was a mastery to either lie convincingly or reliably detect others lying, so there was just no way for a being from another species to be just able to tell truth from lie.
“So you can tell when I fabricate a story?”
“It appears so.”
“So if I tell you I have only slept six hours in the last thirty six hours, is that the truth?”
“Yes.”
“My birthday was two weeks ago. It was my twenty-fifth one. What about that?”
“You do tell the truth only with the first part of your statement. However, I cannot put this information in any context.”
“What about the fact that my father’s name is Grombloncus Tartuncle the Third, you can tell that it is true?”
“It is indeed true. But I am confused, is there any merit to this information you are providing me? I am unable to understand the reason why you are sharing these personal details about you.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just-”, Neil stretched her arms and then set her hands on top of her own head, “It’s absolutely fascinating. Usually humans cannot tell if another human is not telling the truth except in cases where the lie is unconvincing. And on the other hand the truth could be so strange, that other humans may think it to be fiction. You are even missing all that framework of human experience to properly put it into context.”
---
But it had been very straightforward to tell if Sam was lying. Maybe humans concentrated more on the basic statement of language and were so more easily deceived. For Nyar the question remained how this could ever be entertaining.
“I am not interpreting the validity of your statements through the information contained within, so I do not need to compare it to previous knowledge. But I am very surprised by what you have revealed, since you did mention that creating fictional events with fictional characters was used for entertainment and I am unable to see how this is possible.”
This was apparently a very old human tradition, as Sam stated that the origin of storytelling came from the very distant past when humans had nothing else but information shared through told language. Events of interest or experiences that had a learning effect were turned into stories that were shared between all humans, but especially told to children. She pointed out that the aim was to keep their attention or to enhance the learning effect, so those stories were eventually changed, simplified or made more complex, or just exaggerated to point out the valuable bits. The children eventually grew up to tell their children the same stories. And after many retellings these stories would then become unrecognizable, thus they were fictional even if they had been based on a true story at some point.
Learning through untruths. That sounded like a very strange concept. Why would they not just retell the closest approximation to the real memory they had wanted to share? Would that not be the strongest evidence of importance - something noteworthy that had really happened and could so happen again?
“I do not see the value of sharing an untrue retelling of an event. Does it not cause the children to distrust the adults when they learn that they have been told stories that are fictional?”
Amusement and also a sliver of guilt came from Sam as she replied that children’s stories may indeed cause distrust, but they were nonetheless important. If adult humans handled the reveal correctly, children could even learn from the fact that the stories were fictitious and the reasoning behind it.
So at least at some point these lies stopped? For her it still defied the value of knowledge if it was based upon an experience that had never happened.
“From what you have told me I can see that mechanisms are necessary to enhance the speed of learning for your offspring. I also understand that the significance of storytelling is noteworthy for the maturity process and I would be happy to be provided with examples of such stories.”
Sam quickly offered to gladly share portions of their vast collection of children’s stories. Then she flatly added that adults also enjoyed fiction and even had a distinct type of it that was unsuitable for children, and Nyar was right back to being confused.
---
“Humans that have reached maturity still need to be told untrue events to learn from the past?”
Yeah, she could definitely hear that bewilderment in the voice coming from the translator. Or did her ears just strained to apply more humanity to Nyar the more she learned about her?
“No, it’s not exactly like that. There are many historical events that did get retold in a slightly changed form because of their significance. But a lot of stories for adults and for children as well are not only untrue, but impossible. It’s more of a what-if-scenario. And that can be set in the past, or in a true location, or nestled within a true event. It may contain real people, or it could draw from real experiences. It could even be set in the possible but imaginative future.
“There are no limits, that is the entertainment value of it. We can hear or tell stories that could never happen and still learn from them. It’s a way to derive amazement, practice compassion and see characters experience things that then provoke us to reflect and think.”
Neil hadn’t noticed that Nyar had slowly moved her head very close to the transparent barrier, before the translator spoke up: “Have you ever created a fictional scenario about encountering a sapient species not originating on Earth?”