Going Bold

The first of the aliens to approach Andrea, after a quiet but obviously heated debate between the leader of the armed guard detachment and Professor, was Professor them-self.

As they approached where Andrea was seated on the ridge Lin pinged Andrea with overhead shots from the observation drones highlighting several of the armed guards circling to Andrea's flanks. Andrea silently and motionlessly sent an acknowledgment to Lin. “Thanks Lin, I spotted those flankers moving around too, I think they're just being cautious it seems like the person coming close is fairly important and if they want a clear line of fire to cover them for safety they do need to come around to the flanks I think it's all right to assume that things aren't escalating yet, besides I can also see the stealth drones you have lurking within easy leaping distance of the flankers so I'm not overly concerned.”

Lin once again resorted to using her avatar to shake her head disapprovingly for Andrea's benefit. “While I appreciate your faith in my ability to protect you Andrea I would be more comfortable if you seemed a little more concerned about being flanked by obviously armed unknown sentients. On the other hand of the two of us you are definitely the expert on diplomacy and general handling people skills, so I'll turn your confidence in me by trusting that you are correct about their intentions.”

Professor, as Andrea had been calling them, stopped within easy speaking distance but well out of arm's reach and began speaking. “ΓHεaιlαl oσdαeςz, eαbυeτgόrςo eχtαeιeρnεmτeάd eέvνrαeνe mσdυeνlάiνnθgρiωnπdοe zσeεa fαgυeτlέeςg eτnιlςa nαdπeοnμακρυσμένες χώρες.” Andrea's time spent listening to the speech samples gathered by the probe had not yet allowed her to learn much of the language but in conjunction with the language learning and translation models, she had managed to decipher what seemed to be a few common phrases and from what she could pick up and the automated systems agreed part of Professor’s speech was a greeting. Granted this wasn’t a great surprise but it did begin to give her more material to work with and more material for the computers to chew on Andrea slowly and carefully raised her hand again in greeting and repeated the part of the phrase that she was sure was a greeting before gesturing towards herself in manner that she had witnessed them using and said her name “ΓHεaιlάl oσου… Andrea.” A look of pleased comprehension seemed to cross Professor’s face. Gesturing towards them-self in the same manner as Andrea, Professor gave her a new name to use: “Unla-Ela”

While Andrea began the first fumbling steps towards communication. Lin continued to keep a close eye on the actions of the other alien beings. She was ready to spring into action should any threat to Andrea materialize. Lin was relieved to find that after an initial tensing when Andrea first moved to introduce herself, the guards and other members of Unla-Ela's party seemed to relax a little and shift their gazes more outwards as they kept watch, seemingly content to allow their leader to satisfy their curiosity chatting with this strange being.

The trio of aliens who seemed to be direct subordinates or assistants of some kind for Unla-Ela seemed to share their leader's passion for learning about Andrea and attempting to communicate with her. They began to scooch closer and closer to the ongoing discussion/game of charades between Andrea and Unla-Ela. It was fairly obvious they were trying to listen in and observe everything that was happening. Detecting no obviously threatening body language and not noting any tools or potential weapons that appeared to constitute a viable threat, Lin contented herself for the moment with merely gently drawing Andrea's attention to the behavior of Unla-Ela's subordinates. This allowed Andrea to take the initiative, repeating her gesture of greeting then pointing at herself and repeating her name before gesturing at the trio of obvious eavesdroppers trying to elicit their names.

Unla-Ela huffed in apparent amusement mixed with exasperation before turning to the trio and gesturing them closer holding her hand up to stop them a bit farther back than she had approached it was clear that Unla-Ela was conscious of not making themselves or their group feel threatening or aggressive towards Andrea, which Lin chose to interpret as a positive sign that Andrea's charm had yet again managed to prevail even through a species barrier.

Meanwhile Unla-Ela gestured towards each of the three in turn Ilsoph Baluk-Nual, Ilsoph Trophirte, and Ilsoph Ela-Nu

It appeared that Ilsoph might be a title of some kind or else a family or clan name, the last and smallest of the trio also seemed to share part of the name that Unla-Ela had given. It wasn’t clear if this indicated they were related in some way, some other cultural artifact perhaps Ela was a part of a job title that also served as a name, or was a coincidence, it was too early to tell. The following minutes consisted of a gradually smoother conversation between Andrea, Unla-Ela and the trio. Though calling it conversation was perhaps over selling the level of communication, noticeable progress was being made.

After an hour or so Unla-Ela perked up as if suddenly remembering something and pulled their backpack close before rummaging around and pulling out a parcel wrapped up in some sort of waxy looking material that seemed to be printed with text. Andrea nudged Lin when she saw this, silently messaging “Well it looks like they’ve got both written language and probably printing, those symbols look far too uniform to be anything else.” Unwrapping the cover Unla-Ela revealed a block of material that looked to be various edible materials pressed into a portable brick, a quick search of her visual database turned up pemmican as a similar looking type of portable food. Unla-Ela broke a corner off of the brick and popped it in their mouth while offering the rest to Andrea. This sharing of food at the first meeting echoed practices in some human cultures that Andrea had studied and she knew that reciprocating with a gift of her own food was usually the correct response. Unfortunately Andrea was not sure if their digestive systems were similar enough to safely share food yet. While Andrea’s implants and modified organs would be unlikely to have trouble processing anything in Unla-Ela’s gift, Andrea was less sure about how one of her meal bars might affect them.

Thinking quickly Andrea took a bite of the offered food, it certainly tasted rich and filling, kind of like a chunky slightly sweet protein bar with a bit too much salt to taste genuinely good, perfect trail food. Aside from experiencing the alien food, Andrea directed her implants to expedite a chemical analysis of the mouthful she’d bitten off. To buy time Andrea smiled at Unla-Ela then mimed for them to wait and reached for her own pack and began pretending to search through it. Soon enough the analysis came back showing a mix of caffeine, fats, sugars, and amino acids that matched up with human food, one of the meal bars Andrea had brought along was fortunately composed only of chemicals that she’d detected in Unla-Ela’s food, it wouldn’t do to find out the hard way that they were allergic to certain amino acids or other chemicals that were in the other food bars. Andrea was just glad that being able to fabricate her food on demand meant it didn’t need to be loaded with exotic preservative chemicals, she was reasonably confident that it would be safe, she pulled out a chocolate peanut swirl meal bar and unwrapped it, before breaking off a corner and eating it and passing the rest of the bar to Unla-Ela. Taking a bite of the bar they then passed it to the trio who passed it around each taking a bite. Andrea noted with some amusement that Unla-Ela looked a bit disappointed when the bar came back to them mostly gone, apparently the flavor was a hit even across species lines.

After several more hours of gradually improving communication, enough progress had been made that Andrea was able to arrange a meeting in the same spot, for the next day. It was well past midday and the Unla-Ela’s expedition would need to leave promptly in order to make it back to their camp before dark.

With a last wave goodbye Andrea turned and began hiking out of the field on a heading that led away from the base camp and away from the alien encampment. With Andrea’s sensor implants, Lin’s stealth drones, and the high altitude observation drones it was easy to justify showing her back to these people she’d just met, a gesture that she hoped, if noticed, would help foster mutual trust in the future. Even if she didn’t have the equivalent of eyes in the back of her head, Andrea would still have made the gesture, she had gotten a positive first impression of Unla-Ela, they appeared to be intellectually curious, while being both respected and well liked by their immediate subordinates.

“That went well. Nice job Andrea!” Lin congratulated her partner as she hopped on the Donkey now that they were out of sight of Unla-Ela’s party. “No one was hurt and I think we’ll both get along well with Unla-Ela especially once the language barrier is fully surmounted. I’ll send a positive report through the portal along with all of the recording data of the meeting. It's supposed to close sometime in the next couple of days, and I think we’re justified in committing to the expedition now that first contact has gone smoothly.” Andrea matched actions to words and began to write up a report of her impressions of the first contact while the Donkey strode with eerie mechanical grace through the trees.