Disoriented and confused, Neil blinked a few times. It was dark and silent, but she definitely still was resting in the chair on Nyar’s ship and she had just woken up. A mix of embarrassment and anger at herself pushed hot blood into her cheeks when the realization set it.
Neil must have drifted off to sleep while Nyar had been showing off her ability to sing. And since she even switched off the lights, it had been very clear that there was no way she had not noticed. It was ridiculously unprofessional for an ambassador to just nod off during a meeting.
Holding her voice at bay, Neil spoke out into the darkness: “Hello? Are you still there, Nyar?”
The room’s illumination slowly rose from total darkness back to the comfortable level of light it had before, revealing the huge alien head behind the transparent barrier that - as Neil imagined - displayed a very judgemental expression through both pairs of its black eyes.
Before she could even begin to turn into full diplomacy mode, the translator spoke up: “Again, I have to apologize for my inattentiveness towards your presence. The mechanism my species possesses to instigate a calm mental state in offspring is used by mature individuals to the same effect.
“I had been unable to stop myself from entering meditation and could only regain full consciousness after thirty-seven minutes. Though I had then unexpectedly found you in a state of meditation as well. Please accept another apology if my assumption is correct that I had been the cause of this.”
Luckily, first the blood rush and now her bewilderment following this development pushed every last bit of weariness right out of her mind. Taking this newfound energy, she jumped out of the chair and went a few steps along the large window to sort her thoughts. If she had understood correctly, Nyar had basically fallen asleep too.
“You don’t have to apologize for this, you did warn me. As for me,” she trailed off as her cheeks felt hot again, “that was not really your fault. I misjudged and - I guess - also overlooked my current need for rest and had fallen asleep. That was inappropriate and I am sincerely sorry.”
“It seems we have both come to a point of exhaustion without addressing the apparent need for proper rest. This meeting and the exceptional knowledge I am taking in has as well continually taken a considerable and unanticipated strain on my body and mind. If you are in need for a pause to continue your meditation or to return to your ship, I would offer my full compliance.”
“That’s very accomodating of you, though I will definitely have to sleep in a bed if I want to rest properly,” Neil said while she massaged the back of her head. “Also, just to clarify, I did not meditate. I was actually fully asleep.”
Nyar pointedly turned her head and took some time to reply, which made Neil’s somewhat burned out mind stumble through her previous words and evaluate if she said something wrong or mistakenly slipped too far into non-diplomatic language.
“Does meditation not describe the state of mental recharge through self imposed sensory isolation and sleeping is a form of biological hibernation?”
A moment went by until she completely understood the question and could answer: “Yeah, that’s correct. We-”
“But you put emphasis on the distinction that you had been asleep previously.”
It wasn’t the best moment to try to follow the thought process of a ten ton immortal alien being. Neil tried nonetheless and made an effort to remember what she had been told about the non-sapient species on the exoplanets with ecosystems. It had been noteworthy that only on one other planet’s evolution had brought forth animals that had something resembling a distinct sleep/wake rhythm.
“Pretty much all of Earth's species have their biology closely tied to the day and night cycle. Part of that is a pattern of alternating activity and rest. During that period of rest, energy is conserved by not moving and also minimizing mental activity. In humans, and other species too, that’s what we call sleep.”
That had been part of what she could recall from the text books and part horrible mess. So she quickly continued. “Let’s just look at humans for now - biologically, we are designed to be active during the day, with our eyes working best in those light levels. For better efficiency, certain biological processes are slowed or even paused during that time.
“These are still necessary for our well-being though, so after a daytime of high activity, we get an increasingly stronger desire for sleep. We call it being tired, but it’s more than just mental or physical exhaustion since it will also happen if we don’t actually engage in any activities during the day. Sleep is usually initiated voluntarily, but it can also overwhelm us if the state of high activity has gone on too long or the previous sleep periods were insufficient.”
Somehow, she successfully pushed the memory of just that happening to her away and continued with barely a pause.
“During that time of rest we are not conscious and have little awareness of our surroundings. It’s actually dangerous because of that and in the past humans lived in groups in part to protect each other during sleep by alternating sleep patterns.
“Now, meditation is a deliberate mental state that we can enter to relax or recharge. The main distinction to sleep is the biological necessity. While some humans do meditate regularly, not all do. On the other hand - if a human doesn’t sleep for too long, they die.”
Neil felt the sudden sub-base pulse again that would have made her flinch reflexively if she hadn’t already taken a stunned step back in reaction to the surprisingly quick movement of Nyar as she leaned in against the glass while somehow also rising up - making Neil acutely aware of her massive presence.
The translator spoke loudly, quickly and messily: “Are you in danger of dying?”
---
There was a wave of panic coming from Sam that wasn’t unlike Nyar’s state after hearing that humans would die if they didn’t get to sleep. She never imagined that Sam could have been in danger on her ship after being so careful to replicate the optimal environment for humans down to the specific attraction field strength.
Only after Sam had hastily answered that she was perfectly fine and only tired, Nyar somewhat relaxed. Sam went on to explain that sleep deprivation could only become deadly after more than five consecutive sleepless days, and humans would show severe and noticeable negative mental effects long before that.
“I was highly worried for your safety after receiving this piece of information as you had omitted any mention of your necessity for sleep in the preparation for this meeting. In my species there is no biological need for hibernation in these highly condensed intervals. I would like to know which biological processes are relegated to happen during sleep periods.”
Though it seemed Nyar would not get a full answer to her question, as Sam excused herself to not know the processes in detail. She did mention that among those were certain biochemical processes of the brain that were relevant in memorization and learning. There still were a number of unfamiliar words and seemingly nonsensical expressions in the explanation.
Strangest of those were the mention of short-term and long-term memory. So Nyar put together the appropriate question: “I was unable to follow your explanation as you have mentioned several expressions that are meaningless to me. Could you please elaborate especially on the connection between memory and timeframe?”
Nyar noticed how Sam remained in a forced emotionally neutral state through her explanation. To her dismay, there were only more nonsensical expressions and seemingly disjointed pieces of information about the human brain.
For Nyar, it threw up more questions than it had answered. Especially the bits about memories apparently moving about, and also the brain being made up of parts? She could only put it down to her failing to properly grasp the human language in matters of biology but she still desired clarification, because this appeared to be a very wrong conclusion.
“Is your physical brain not a unit?”
But then Sam actually stated that humans had the brains of two other non-sapient species alongside their own. Nyar was too stunned to comprehend anything following that.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
---
“You have three brains?”
Neil blinked wordlessly in surprise after having been interrupted by that question. How bad had her explained been? Or was her exhaustion now too much and she actually talked nonsense?
“We actually don’t”, was all she had managed to come up with while she fleetingly waved her hands, forming meaningless gestures.
Nyar remained silent and -what she imagined - awaiting a proper explanation. Neil eyed the chair, but quickly brushed away the thought of sitting down as she still held a bit of resentment towards it. So she remained standing, took a deep breath, and tried her best to somewhat set it straight.
“The human brain is an interconnected single entity. It is just loosely built upon different brain designs we had found in other species on Earth that share those with evolutionary ancestors of ours. Calling these parts ‘primate brain’, ‘lizard brain’ and ‘mouse brain’ we just do for comparison.
“It essentially means that we can trace back the development of the brain through our evolutionary tree because there are recognizably different architectures that are layered upon each other and those can be tied to different development stages observable in other animals. Though I am now not sure I am properly explaining this.”
The information she had provided was what she had remembered from learning biology in some class. It had not been a priority for her to read up on the brain specifically. How nice would it be to just be able to recall everything she had ever read and heard?
“The structure of your brain is highly fascinating and I can say with certainty that my species has not come upon lifeforms that would compare. How does the signal prioritization and self-governance through those layers function if they are structurally divided?”
Neil’s fingers had been tied up with each other already, but at this moment she became aware of her fidgeting. Why was it possible to be restless and tired at the same time? She put her hands on top of her head and took a few steps along the transparent barrier to get the blood moving. It did not help to make clear what Nyar had actually wanted to know.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand your question. Could you explain differently what you want to know?”
Even though the actual movement was tiny, it was very noticeable that the black eyes followed her slow pace. For some reason Neil suddenly became very aware of the fact that the other room had a floor that was much lower. A revelation popped into her mind that since it was at least ten meters below where she was standing, she was basically looking out a fourth story window.
This made Nyar appear ridiculously big again. Her size seemed to be relative to how conscious Neil was of it. And there had been moments where she had nearly forgotten that she was speaking to a lifeform ten times bigger than she was.
From the top of the white cube, the translator’s voice easily filled the whole room as it spoke in the fittingly booming voice: “I am asking about the mechanism with which you dedicate focus of the scattering signal cascade on the mental activity that is most relevant to the current moment while filtering diverging branches and fractal pathways across your different layers. I also desire to know if having distinct architecture types necessitates the maintenance of individual process direction orbits in each layer.”
“What?”, was all that slipped out as she utterly failed to process what seemingly had just been a jumbled mess of words. It must have been a strong enough reaction, because Nyar didn’t wait for more.
“I am unable to find the correct words to further elaborate and see that I have already failed to put them together correctly on my previous attempt to do so.” Letting that sit for a moment, the translator continued: ”I desire to know more about the evolutionary pathways that led to the development of the human brain instead.”
Could she confidently answer that at least? Neil wasn’t too sure about anything at the moment, and maybe it was a good point to instigate that break. Especially because she noticed that her own thirst for knowledge had been all but buried under a dense blanket of mental fatigue. She was pretty sure that she would normally be absolutely fired to learn about the physiology of Nyar’s brain.
So she pulled herself together and said: “I would like to take you up on your offer and take a long rest on my ship now.”
The white pressure suit chest piece came down onto the console with all its inconsiderable weight and barely a noise. Ambassador Neil made a far heavier impact onto the swivel chair, where she then sat unmoving for half a minute.
Somehow she mustered up enough concentration to plug the connection cable from the console into the only port on the chest piece. Though she did internally complain about the no-emission standard that all of her equipment had to adhere to because of this first contact meeting. Using connector cables was something straight from the last century.
The right hand screen on the console showed the ongoing data transfer and the left one turned on to display the anonymized approximation of the face of her contact after she touched the appropriate buttons.
“Hello ambassador Neil. I hope you are well?”
“Yeah, I think so. Here’s some more stuff for analysis. See if you can get some good answers to the questions I had left open.”
“Okay. What is the current status?”
“I-”, she began and then trailed off. Taking a second attempt, she said: “It’s fine. Nyar is open to questions and eager to learn about us, I would leave the score at eight. I did fall asleep half an hour ago though - when we were talking about music.”
Unusually, a short pause followed.
“I had strongly suggested resting during the last break. How much time do you have now?”
“I asked for six hours, it’s fine. I’ll go and sleep for five.”
“I suggest utilizing an approved sleeping aid.”
“Yeah, thanks. I’m off then.”
After hearing the reply, she tapped the screen and disconnected. This would be one hell of a report in the end. Unfortunately, her involuntary nap would definitely become part of history.
Shrugging off that thought, she got up and stumbled out of the cramped communications room and made a bee-line through the adjacent central commons area to the automatic door in the far corner which slid away to reveal the most basic bedroom possible.
In her current state, the narrow room with barely any furniture besides the simple bunk looked as inviting as the best hotel bedrooms she had stayed in. With automatic movements she took off the rest of her suit and put the parts neatly in an unsorted pile on a random spot on the floor. Then she crashed into the bed and commanded the lights off.
In this sensory isolation her thoughts were exceptionally loud. Lying still for a few minutes just revealed that her mind again seemed to be unable to pause even in this tired state. Besides the thousands of little things that were swirling around, the most important question just continuously burned in front of her closed eyes.
How could she lie here and sleep while there was an intelligent alien being nearby that she could ask literally any question? An alien with a breathtakingly different culture and society of which it literally carried all the knowledge? And Neil hadn’t even scratched the surface.
Still, without proper rest she would not be able to form coherent questions anyway. Blindly she grabbed at the headboard and found a portable screen she dismounted and held in front of her. It switched on, dimly lit, and offered her a selection of things to choose from.
“Open up the latest recording I brought.”
It complied.
“Jump to the timestamp where I had asked to hear a lullaby and play.”
It again complied and Neil listened to her own voice before the first tones of Nyar’s music began a few moments later.
“Save this timestamp and stop playing when I’m asleep.”
She put the screen back to its place and rolled to the side. This time she didn’t even remain awake long enough to hear the pings from the middle range join.
---
Pushing off her rest was probably not a good idea, but Nyar could not let go of Sam’s revelation that the human brain was made of distinct pieces that somehow worked together to produce intelligence. How could such a thing develop in stages? What kind of species survived with an incomplete version of it?
The lizard - did it really miss two types of the human brain instead of just having a smaller version? It still remained incomprehensible for her and she tried to find a reason why evolution would not just cause brain size and, in tandem, the mental capacity to increase.
She worked through how the natural selection process could create a functioning mind most efficiently. Several iterations of designs later she stumbled upon a concept that disrupted her thought process with an epiphany. The human brain must have a split architecture because its functionality was split across those different parts.
A biologically simple life form could survive with little mental power as there didn’t need to be much dedicated to bodily functions. It could only become more complex if the brain size increased - or a new organ developed that would take on these new processes. So, instead of gradually increasing the size, new functions would just be taken on by more additions, letting biology keep the most efficient iterations that had worked before.
Now if humans were born barely developed and, as Sam had claimed, without knowledge - how were their bodies able to work properly? There had to be an organ responsible for it, something they apparently had no direct control over. And it must be one of these layers. Consequently, it did mean that humans indeed were able to teach their dependent offspring.
Because the very first thing Nyar had learned from her ancestor and the first thing she automatically taught her offspring was control over the other organs of the body. It was something she was barely conscious of, even if a tiny part of her mind was always dedicated to that. What if she had an organ taking over that function instead? Would she even consider it being part of her brain if it was not physically part of it?
The energy cost of this mental exercise had again been significant and she had to watch herself not to overdo it. Though before she could now finally let go and stop all those runaway thoughts, a second epiphany hit her.
That shared functionality also explained the human’s obvious intelligence and impressive technological capabilities despite their small size. They had expanded upon their own brain by abstracting knowledge into concepts that could be stored externally.
They had actually created another layer onto their biological brain.