Darkworld: Earth

“Hello? Is anyone listening to this frequency? Can anyone hear me?” Gabriel asked. He had requested, and received permission from the captain, to take a handheld radio with him to his workstation and attempt to use it to establish a connection to the Yonohoans.

“I repeat, hello? Is anyone listening to this frequency? Can anyone hear me?”

He repeated himself twice more before he got a reply.

“Hello. I am Tukano of the Yonohoah. May I ask who I am speaking with?” the radio crackled.

“I am Gabriel Nguyen,” Gabriel answered. “I am a data analyst on the Seeker.”

“Do you have a military rank, Gabriel?”

“I’m a civilian contractor,” Gabriel answered.

“There are civilians aboard The Seeker of New Discoveries?” Tukano asked.

“Yes. The mission is a joint venture between several of our governments and corporations,” Gabriel explained. “The ship’s command structure is pretty much exclusively military from the Combined Earth Space Force, but on the other hand the scientific team is almost exclusively civilians.”

“Understood. And the civilians are willing participants of the mission?” Tukano asked.

“We all fought tooth and nail to be here, Tukano. This mission was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and we had to compete with millions applicants. So, yes, we’re willing participants. Most of us would have done it for free,” Gabriel said.

“Understood. This is not a distress call. How may I assist you, Gabriel Nguyen?”

“You can just call me Gabriel. You don’t have to say the whole thing. I’m one of the guys who’s trying to establish a way to get our computers to talk to you guys better. I figured, since we’re actually able to talk to you with a radio now, that things might go faster if I actually explained what sort of data I’m sending to you to help your data analysis.”

“I agree. I should be able to help you with this endeavor, Gabriel,” Tukano agreed.

“Right. Well, I’m going to send one hundred images to you. They’re all in the same file format. We call it a .gif. It produces a 2D image and it’s one of the simplest file formats we have. They’re all about one hundred kilobytes.”

A slight pause. “Files received. I believe we have identified the hundred files you have tagged. We are analyzing them now.”

Another pause. “We have found patterns and I believe we have identified the parts of the files which are used for identification, as well as the parts used for the actual image itself. It would help if we had descriptions of what the images represent.”

“Right, I thought as much. That first batch was just to show you file architecture. Okay, so, this next batch I had to get permission from the captain for. I’m sending you the headshot of everyone onboard the Seeker right now. Standardized pictures of our faces. This is what we look like.”

Another slight pause. “I believe we have been successful, Gabriel. The computer is currently searching for other files of this time in the data you have been sending and has found a significant number of them. I, and many of my peers, are currently looking through those images. It appears that many of them are pictures of Earth, as well as of the people and animals that live there. It appears to be a wonderful world.”

“Thanks, Tukano. You’re computers must be pretty smart if they’ve already figured it out,” Gabriel said.

“It’s a very simple codex, really. Once you told us what the files contained it was very easy to unlock it.”

“Okay. Next, I’m going to send you a few notes I’ve made while reading the legal documents you sent. Not about the laws themselves, but about the grammar and syntax differences I’ve noticed between English and whatever languages those documents were translated from.”

“Our computer would greatly appreciate such notes,” Tukano agreed. “In fact, it has just made a suggestion which would help us come to mutual understanding. It suggests that I send you a document, and that we read the words together and you point out any grammatical or syntax issues that you notice.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Gabriel agreed. “Say, do you mind if I put on some music? I work better when I’m listening to something.”

“I would be honored to hear the music of your world. May I share it with my peers?” Tukano asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

~~~~~~~

Diego wasn’t certain what he was being served, but it tasted much, much better than Turkey Butthole Surprise. It was gelatinous, and it tasted something like imitation crab meat flavored with lemon and some sort of spice. Eolai had made a point of taking a small portion of the serving and eating it himself, apparently to prove that it wasn’t poisonous. He had also assured Diego that if it wasn’t to his taste, there were other options available, but Diego was content with crab jello.

“It’s a lot better than the rations we have on the Seeker. Is it a common meal on your world?” Diego asked.

“Not exactly. The analysis of your digestive enzymes isn’t complete, so I’m serving you something which is almost universally palatable to humans,” Eolai explained. “I assure you that our next meal together will be much better.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it then,” Diego said.

Eolai abruptly touched the device on his ear, and, after a moment, an expression of bliss crossed his face.

“Hear some good news?” Diego asked.

“One of your shipmates has decided to share some of the music of your world with me and my peers,” Eolai explained. “I am listening to a choir of earthling children sing, and it is beautiful.”

“Yeah? Hey Bob, can I tune into that?” Diego asked, and immediately the song began from the beginning. “Let me guess, that’s coming from Gabriel? I think that’s the Vienna Boys’ Choir, although I can’t be completely sure on that.”

“I am very pleased that your world has beautiful music,” Eolai said. “Not every culture believes that it is important. In many cases, the ability to enjoy music was something that our oppressors took from us. Music is something to be cherished.”

“Bob, put me in contact with the Seeker please,” Diego said.

“One moment. I am hailing The Seeker of New Discoveries for you.”

A slight pause. “Diego, this is Radio, do you read me?”

“I read you Radio. This is Sergeant Diego Cruz. I have a report for the captain. Eolai has just informed me that the Yonohoans place a lot of value on music. He just about broke down in tears listening to the Vienna Boys’ Choir song that I guess Gabriel shared with the fleet. I think it would be a good idea to have everyone throw their playlists together and do a bit of cultural exchange,” Diego said.

“Message received,” Radio said. “I will let the captain know. Is there anything else?”

“Eolai served me Crab Jello. I haven’t died from poisoning yet. Diego out.”

“Radio out.”

“Do you have many recordings of the music of your world aboard your ship?” Eolai inquired.

“I’m really not sure,” Diego answered, taking another bight of the crustacean flavored goop. “If I had to guess, I’d say that we have a few hundred hours of music?”

“Hundreds of hours?” Eolai said, surprised. “And you would share it with us?”

“Not my call, that’s up to the captain,” Diego admitted. “My guess? She’ll have everyone compile all of their songs and then go through them one by one, then approve a bunch to share. But I’m not the captain, so don’t take that as a promise.”

“I understand. I do have one more question. The children do not seem to be singing words in the language that you speak. Are there many languages on your world?”

“Hundreds or thousands, I think. I speak English and Spanish, which are two of the most common. Mi nombre es Diego Cruz. Tengo veintisiete años. Me gusta el Gelat de Cangrejo y espero que no me dé diarrea,” Diego said.

Eolai blinked in surprise. “It is common to speak more than one language on Earth?”

“Not that common. It depends. Most people only speak one language, some speak two or three,” Diego answered. “But there’s a lot of different cultures, and some of them have been isolated from the rest of the world for a very long time. Is that a big deal?”

Eolai shook his head. “No, although it does make me much more curious about your planet. To have so many communities isolated from each other long enough for a language differentiation to occur is not a frequent occurrence. Usually we have factors which unify the spoken and written languages.”

“What sort of factors?”

“The fact that, usually, the progenitors of a world all speak the same language, for one,” Eolai explained. “It is common to develop regional accents, I suppose, but the mother language of a planet is usually understandable universally. Many worlds have systems in place to help counteract phonetic drift, so that everyone may understand each other no matter where they go.”

“We’ve only been in the information age for a century or two,” Diego explained. “Before we invented the radio, you usually only spoke with your local community, and people didn’t travel very far from where they were born. We often divided our nations and tribes based on the language that we spoke.”

“I see,” Eolai said. He sighed. “If your world speaks so many languages, then I fear that I might not be able to fulfill my goal of being the Yonohoan diplomat afterall.”

“Why not?”

“While I believe that it will be easy for me to learn a new language, I despair at learning thousands of them,” Eolai answered.

“Oh. Yeah, if the diplomat has to speak all of the languages on Earth, that would be a problem,” Diego agreed. “You can’t have the computer translate for you, like we’re doing now?”

“As a diplomat I would be expected to go without computer translation, so that I may be entrusted with information without an intermediary,” Eolai explained.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Diego said. “Although I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Most of the nations would be thrilled to have their own translators learn Yonohoan, I’ll bet. Is Yonohoan a common language in human worlds?”

Eolai began laughing. “It is widely known but only Yonohoans speak Yonohoah. Nobody else has the courage.”

“It takes bravery to speak your language?” Diego asked, confused.

“Not if you were born Yonohoan,” Eolai said. “If you were born Yonohoan, then it is a point of pride to speak it. In many parts of the universe it is illegal to speak the common or the high tongue unless you were born on one of the worlds that were gifted to Yonohoans by the people you are calling the Sulivans.”

“Why is that?”

“It is complicated to explain. It has to do with several of the heroes from the Liberation Wars. Yonohoans are proud of the role that we played in bringing those times of tragedy to an end, which is why we will never be intimidated into refusing to speak our native tongue. And it is very funny to see some of the reactions others have to us when we do.”

“I suppose I have a lot to learn about the past,” Diego said. “One hundred thousand years ago, my people were living in caves and hunting mammoths with with flint spears. We only entered the iron age about three thousand years ago, I think.”

“You truly had no relics to help your people advance their understanding of their world?” Eolai asked. “It was not a decision of your society’s progenitors to deliberately stunt itself?”

“Our system of writing only goes back five thousand years, Eolai,” Diego explained. “And there are other factors to consider. There’s a fossil record on earth that goes back a very, very long time. Longer than one hundred thousand years. The truth is that my people thought that we evolved on Earth, which is why we’re so surprised to find out that there are humans among the stars.”

“If you have no records of your creation by outside hands, then the belief that you evolved naturally is a logical conclusion,” Eolai said. “However, I am not surprised that your world has an ancient fossil record. That is actually very common. Humans were used by many species in order to tame worlds which had life for billions of years. We were very useful in xenoforming. And, unfortunately, we were often used to exterminate existing ecologies and species.”

“Is that so?” Diego asked.

“Yes. It is the primary reason that the Yonohoan people were created.”