Young Writers Society

~1211

Everen taught the force she was communicating with several more words before she became to exhausted to think straight. She taught it words like “tired” and “sleep” and then closed the connection to get what turned out to be the deepest sleep she’d had since before the murder of Wallen Tallow.

In the morning, she completed her usual routine, including sending messages from the captain to earth. During the time when she was communicating with Kerra, Everen could feel the force pushing on her, trying to get her attention, but she ignored it as much as possible. She had a job to do after all. But when her duties were complete, Everen headed back to her room instead of chatting with different members of the crew as she normally did.

She reopened the connection, and the force was more impatient than ever. Teach me more words. I need communication for understanding.

Yes, yes. I had things I needed to do, though. I couldn’t just talk to you all day. I have other duties. Have you learned enough to tell me who or what you are and how you’re communicating with me?

To answer, tell me, who are you?

Everen groaned. Getting answered with a question was not her favorite thing, but she supposed that she had not given the force the vocabulary it needed to adequately express what it was. I am Everen. I am a female human. I am on a spaceship heading to a planet to colonize it.

There was a lot of garbling. The being had gotten a lot faster at picking up words, but this time it seemed to take slower, as if the concepts were more complicated. Human? It asked at last, sending a feeling of questioning confusion. It sent a complex emotion that seemed to say to Everen, “I think I understand, but I would like you to clarify just in case.”

Yes. I and everyone on my ship are human. We have traveled far. We come from planet Earth in the star system Sol. You probably have a totally different name for that star though. For all the stars.

We have no names for stars. Our star is, and then it sent the most complex emotion that Everen had felt yet. Imbued within it was the essences of a hundred things: warmth and light, blistering heat and drought, life and growth, death and destruction. The emotion wasn’t only mental, it used her senses as well. She could taste something extremely strong but unidentifiable. There was so much more packaged into the emotion that she knew she could never understand.

You have a star then? Was the only thing Everen could think to ask.

Yes, it said simply.

Where is it?

Your spaceship is heading to colonize my planet.

Everen was silent for a moment, shocked. This force, this being lived on her soon-to-be home planet? Your planet? We thought your planet was empty of intelligent life! There are no signals coming off of it!

Signals. You mean to communicate from far off. We do not need signals. You communicate with us without signals. We communicate with us without signals.

Do all of your people communicate like this?

We communicate like this, and it sent another emotion bursting with detail and information. But yes.

Everen tried to parse the emotion, but it was too complicated. It felt as if she were trying to use senses that she didn’t have, or trying to see ultra-violet light. It just didn’t work in her brain. I can’t understand your language. Your emotion-language is too complex. How did you learn mine so quickly?

Your words are all emotions. Short, quick emotions. Some words are more complex. Like human. You seemed… It sent a simple emotion that Everen understood.

Conflicted? she sent.

Yes! It sent a feeling of pleasure. Human is a conflicted word. Complex. There are many emotions in it, but we can understand. Our language is emotion on emotion. More and more into one.

Like layering emotions?

Yes. But it is like how you have a word and then a word and then a word and many words.

Sentences?

Sentences. Our emotions are sentences. Each layer like a word. So your words are just slow communication to us. We can understand. We can learn quickly. But we don’t know what words you have, so we need more words for better communication. So you ask who we are. You are human. You have a name. We have no name, only a complex emotion you can’t understand. You name us. Give us a word.

Everen felt a chill. I can’t, she sent, I don’t know enough about you. Names are important. I’m not qualified to just give you one. Tell me more about your people.

And through a sometimes halting and confusing conversation, Everen eventually grew to learn about the people she was communicating with. At first, she’d thought of them as a single, god-like entity floating in space. Then of course she’d learned that they lived on a planet. She learned that she had been speaking to multiple people, a team in fact, that had formed to communicate with this strange ship heading toward them. Everen hadn’t noticed because all of the words sounded the same, since they all used her voice as the base.

So there was a whole team of people down on the planet they were headed to that had been gathered just to talk to her. She sent a visual of what a human looked like, and they were silent for a while. She learned that they never used visuals in their communications, so she had stunned them a bit. They eventually sent back that their people looked visually very similar, which they thought was strange. So did Everen, but eventually she rationalized that in conditions similar to earth, it might make sense that a similar animal would come out on top to attain sentience.

She learned about their society, that they valued peace and knowledge. They had a rich history that they said was too complicated to explain. There were a lot of inessential things that were too complicated to explain in cumbersome words.

Everen did her best explaining humanity to them. It was difficult, and when she explained about all the wars, and especially the final war that had made the earth practically uninhabitable, they sent her feelings of revulsion, horror, and fear. She attempted to placate them by saying that she believed things would be different. Humanity had come a long way and had hopefully learned its lesson. She also tried to stress all the good things humanity had done, like create amazing art and music and technological advances.

She felt guilty because she knew that she should probably be telling everything to the captain and letting her talk to them while Everen was just a conduit, like she was for communicating with earth. But for some reason, she just felt like she couldn’t do that. Everen was the only human who knew these creatures existed, and for now, she wanted to keep it that way. She knew she couldn’t keep them a secret for long: she’d have to tell the captain soon. But for now, she had a whole planet’s attention

A/N: Hey, what would be a good name to call these aliens lol I’m in the same boat as Everen with not knowing what to call them :p