The light from the airlock fell into the hallway, making Neil’s frame draw an elongated shadow onto the smooth pale grey floor. She was a bit early as she took the last few steps to reach the meeting room. The flat dividing wall also was still just that - a wall.
Nothing had visibly changed while they had their longest break yet. The waist-high white cube sat besides the armchair, propping up the translator and the mechanical watch that gave off a soft gleam from the little light that fell onto it. Just for completion’s sake, she verified that the golden plaque, the vase and the painting were also still there.
She did bring a new item to add to the collection. Something she had been careful to have printed as close as possible to the original, because despite the fact that only the real thing would do in this situation, there was not a single sheet of paper in the whole ship. They had been so insistent on filling the exploration ship with as much storage and fallback systems as possible, there was no space for books or anything to write on.
This meant that this white paper marked with two dozen lines of jet black text was actually made from completely synthetic materials. Its components had not been extracted from wood and then brought together in a top-down approach, but were instead extruded from the nozzles of a matter printer which had created this sheet from the molecular level bottom-up. It was probably the most inefficient way possible to get a couple sentences onto a piece of paper and had undoubtedly been a massive waste of printing time.
When the lighting of the room finally turned on a couple minutes later and the barrier became transparent, Neil cheerily exclaimed: “Good morning, Nyar. I slept really well and I hope you’re refreshed and energized too.”
“I am joyful to see your return and equally elated that you have had a pleasant rest. I have replenished my nutrient stores and prepared my body to reliably support me in this endeavour to learn ever more about your fascinating species.”
Standing again in the gaze of those black eyes had slowly turned from unnerving to normal and right now it even felt somewhat pleasant. Neil smiled broadly, it seemed like Nyar was as ready to go as she was after a good breakfast and some coffee.
“I have brought you this”, she said while raising the sheet of artificial paper that lazily flapped about from the movement, “to answer some questions from yesterday and also show you something I had mentioned before but not been able to demonstrate.”
“Is this object another knowledge cache?”, came Nyar’s ridiculously accurate deduction from the translator.
“It is indeed - one of the oldest kinds of stored knowledge. This is written language, spoken words put into symbols that can be read by basically any human. It is a universal code based on twenty-six unique symbols we call letters.
“Just using those, we can densely store knowledge and information simply on marked surfaces like this paper. There are ten more symbols, called numbers, to represent natural numeric values.”
While she explained that, she pointed out the first line of text on the paper which was the alphabet and the numbers zero to nine. Neil knew that Nyar’s eyes were focused on the paper, even though there was nothing to indicate that fact, and that this massive being would have no problems reading the tiny symbols written on the square that probably had a relative size of less than a postage stamp held ten meters away.
Neil kept explaining: “These sheets can have text or drawings on the front- and backside, with additional sheets holding more as needed. A number of those can be organized into a stack and bound together on one long side to create a codex that can be read by flipping through the pages. For a long time of our history, this was the best method we had to reliably store all kinds of information, like - for example - science, historic events, or fictional stories.”
“Can you read the knowledge stored on this paper?”
---
Sam’s words were not that important as Nyar did not understand them fully anyway. She was much more concentrated on the movement of her eyes that glided across that paper, presumably along those lines of written language. Their meaning was apparently effortlessly deciphered by Sam as she spoke with normal tempo, adding more explanations to the topics of their last conversation.
So this was the actual power of language. Thoughts abstracted first into words and then into those symbols, to put them onto a carrier material so thin that it could be stacked together and collected into vast repositories of information. These could then probably be easily replicated, to be used as storage and means of communication at the same time.
What a brilliant way to compensate for a memory that could not be shared directly and was tied to a being that would eventually die. It had probably been quite a change in their society when this way of storing their language had been found, possibly forcing a massive evolutionary shift where only those remained that had the ability to utilize it.
Nyar did already know that the direct translation of their language into electromagnetic waves must have been what followed next. Because that had been the way she was given the encyclopedia of their language which had made it so easy for her to learn to speak it. She wondered briefly what would have happened if she had been only provided those symbols instead.
“I have observed neither this storage system nor the encoded language when I had been given preliminary information, did humans develop technology that replaced it?”
Sam replied in the negative and told her that written language was still utilized daily by nearly every human and that machines were now used to show and store text instead of paper. At the same time, apparently these machines could efficiently store vast amounts of information.
Despite Sam apparently simplifying this explanation, as she claimed at least, large blocks were incomprehensible technobabble for Nyar.
Maybe that was why she had misunderstood, because if the humans had the means to store and access actual knowledge through machines, why hadn’t Sam done just that? Or was that the way she had during the break retrieved those answers that remained open from the last meeting?
Nyar put together a short question: “Why did you not bring such a machine?”
She replied that because of how human technology was heavily adapted only to themselves, it would be near impossible for anyone non-human to properly utilize these machines and then successfully navigate the stored information. Adding to that, Sam mentioned something called ‘first contact protocol’ that had been created in the beginning times of human space exploration and dictated clear rules about how to stand before another sapient species during the first encounter.
One important rule apparently forbade the utilization of any machine or device that would emit signals through any medium on frequencies or amplitudes outside of narrowly defined safe bands. The rough basis had been the naturally created noise of flora, fauna and environment of Earth, starkly excluding anything to do with humans of course.
Sam explained that all the equipment she used and the items she had brought were totally emission-free and even her spaceship had only single line pin-point quantum entanglement communication and no broadcasting capabilities. She then even specified that for the same reason she had held her body entirely without device integration.
For one thing, it did make the full spectrum communication blockage field generator that Nyar had built entirely without purpose. For another, it threw up a host of questions about the last part of Sam’s statement. Nyar must have misunderstood, because if she hadn’t, it would imply that humans had interconnected their biology with machines.
“Please explain the context of your statement about not having machines connected to your biology.”
A steady uneasiness overlaid Sam’s explanation that also seemed to be rather careful. From it, Nyar had gotten the confirmation that humans indeed put non-biological additions onto their own bodies. Sam explained that the first of those had been mechanical replacements of limbs and organs. But the technology developed to the point that most humans added special devices to their brains. Nyar had to quickly stop herself imagining how this would supposedly work, it seemed too gruesome.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
She sent the simple question to the translator: “Why are humans doing this?”
---
“Communication”, Neil answered. She elaborated on it a moment later: “A large part of our technological development was driven by the desire to stay connected to others. Throughout our inhabited space there is a vast communication network nearly everyone wants to stay connected to at all times. I guess implanting the necessary devices into the head is actually only the logical next step after developing those devices to the point where they could be always carried around with us.”
The translator quickly replied with a question: “I do not see how harming the brain can be a benefit in any way.”
It appeared as though Nyar severely misunderstood bionic implants. And it was totally Neil’s fault - how could she expect an alien that had literally never used electronic computers to not misunderstand her offhand mention of them being attached to brains?
Neil leaned against the chair and crossed her arms. She had already gone too much into detail, how much more would make sense?
“Okay, I see that I have explained it poorly. Let me first say that cranial implants do not harm the brain in any way. They are actually very tiny and sit on the outer skin of it. And they only send weak electrical impulses to affect it.”
She reflexively pointed at her own head, as if that would help in any way, and said: “There is no physical change to the brain itself and the process to implant or remove them is very simple.”
There was a pause before Nyar shifted slightly and then another minute went by before the translator spoke up: “I can see that using machines to overcome biological limitations is what you do, but I could not imagine transcending utilization for integration. I want to ask the question why you had foregone these implants if communication is valued so highly?”
Neil stood up straight to answer: “I wanted to always be ready to become a first contact ambassador.”
---
The wave of sincerity that Sam emanated was as strong as when she had successfully convinced Nyar not to prematurely break off the meeting. It was strange - Sam had expressed the desire of the humans to find other sapient species to befriend them and they had prepared for the scenario apparently since they first left their solar system. And now even Sam herself had displayed an extraordinary eagerness to be the individual to initiate first contact.
Why were they so keen to find intelligent life outside their own planet? Nyar had only explored space to find live planets and catalogue those and the stars she came across. All the first contact preparation she had done had happened after those initial messages from the humans.
Once again Nyar posed a simple question: “Why do you desire to find sapient life?”
Strangely, what came from Sam was a sense of deep loneliness so intense that Nyar could only find one memory that somewhat came close - it was the moment when the first one had learned that she was different from her ancestors, and found herself to be unable to communicate properly with any other being.
Sam pulled her out of that memory, as she mentioned how in the past humans had always longed to find that they were not alone as a sapient species. She explained that in fiction these encounters with beings from outer space were only a small part of a highly popular theme that encompassed a large part of storytelling in general, where other sapient beings existed besides humans.
This longing had also been a part of Sam herself and she next told of the time when she was a child and how in the vastness of the night sky she saw the possibility of life cradling on those near-infinite other worlds orbiting distant stars, hoping somewhere life would grow into a form that was not only intelligent, but able and willing to communicate.
Those past decades of space exploration had been very disappointing in that regard as the only lifeforms they did find were as far from intelligent as life could be. It had only reinforced their will to find someone to talk to. Sam closed with saying that humans had simply felt lonely.
How strange to find a whole species to mirror the feelings of an individual. It seemed the humans had felt as the first one had felt when she was alone. Did Nyar’s species overcome this somehow? She could not find this longing in herself or in any other memories.
But quickly she pushed that thought away with an important question that had arisen earlier, when they were still talking about written language - since when had humans been able to store language, and with it, history?
“This is fascinating and while I do not find a similar desire inherent in my species, I can understand the feeling. I want to know more about your species’ history, please tell me since when this paper based knowledge storage system is in use by your species.”
Sam was hopping through a few different emotions when she replied to not know the exact year and guessed it to be sometime around five-thousand years in the past.
After a brief calculation Nyar was able to contextualize that time frame and was actually mildly surprised by it’s length. From how Sam had complained about knowing very little about past humans, this would cover a significant part of their species’ history and billions of humans’ lives.
It also very much awakened her desire to learn from this wealth of information.
---
“I would like to receive copies of the stored language describing the non-fictional events happening through those five-thousand years to learn about your species’ history.”
Neil was a bit surprised, but it was actually about the total lack of her surprise about what Nyar had just requested. Though it was likely that she did vastly overestimate the worth and amount of knowledge that was to be obtained from the humans’ past.
Not holding back on the gestures, she explained: “I can provide you with contextualized historical records, but those early writings themselves won’t be very useful to get a good look at the past. They are at best a spotty recollection and at worst full on lies.
“I did mention the printing press, which is about two centuries younger than you, that changed our world by enabling the mass reproduction of written text. From then on records became abundant and there is more we know about the eight centuries since the printing press than we know about all the millenia before.”
Nyar gave her no time to explain further by throwing in the request: “Please elaborate on the historic timeline as I have misunderstood your species’ development history. Since when does the human species exist and how long ago have you begun using machines?”
Did the translator sound impatient or had that been a fluke?
“Finding a clear distinction between the latest pre-humans and the earliest humans remains impossible, but the transition had happened around two-hundred thousand years ago. The time leading up to the first written records is called prehistory, a time where we could only pierce together the development of our ancestors through the larger impacts they had made on the world and the artefacts that could withstand so many seasons to then be found, recorded and contextualized by historians.
“What we call modern times, the age of complex machines, began nearly six-hundred years ago and was followed by the space age, which we call the current times - though personally I’d say we have moved into the stellar age by now. Anyway, the space age started when the first humans visited another planetary body two-hundred and fifty years ago.”
A long silence followed. So long, that Neil actually became slightly worried. It was also because Nyar remained unmoving and her stadium spotlight gaze became unnerving.
Carefully she asked: “Is everything okay?”
---
So humans were simultaneously older and younger than Nyar’s species. The first of those billions of beings came into existence two-hundred millennia ago, they only properly knew what happened for five of them, then began developing technology just in the last millennium, and on that peak somehow made it from the first of their machines to interplanetary spaceships in less than four centuries. How was that even possible?
It had taken Nyar’s species nearly two centuries to master the mathematics of atmospheric flight alone. Being able to leave their own planet had taken ten times that, which did not include learning to understand the complex physical environment of deep space.
Just when she thought she could somewhat understand and even relate to humans, Sam had shared this barely believable information. How could their society even work during the times of these incredibly rapid changes? Was this possible because they exchanged all individuals on a regular basis because of death by age, making it easier to adapt? Evolutionary changes could not be responsible for it, as those would take significantly longer than the few centuries that were their complete history.
This timeline, coupled with their vast population number made it completely impossible for Nyar to imagine their world at any point in their past. She had assumed that the humans must have vaguely followed a similar development path as her species, probably slowed by their limited lifespans and their inefficient method of sharing knowledge. She had imagined them unfolding their potential over tens of thousands of years instead of basically exploding into their space-age within centuries of finding an efficient way to overcome one of those limitations.
If the first ones of their species had been able to store all their knowledge and build as Nyar could do, what would they have accomplished in those two-hundred millennia? Or just taking the current state of the humans, how different would they be a century in the future? Her mind reeled from the multitude of scenarios that unfolded themselves.
Pulling herself back into the present, she noticed that - once again - she had frozen up before Sam. In an attempt to explain herself, she put together a few words and sent them to the translator.
“The first one became independent seven-thousand, three-hundred and forty-two years ago, so that is also the total age of my species. And it had taken us five-thousand years to leave our world of origin.”