Week 7 - Hands
Our advance scout met in theirs in the space beyond the Kuiper belt.
First contact.
It was recorded for history as a crazy dance of sorts, the ships posturing and moving around each other, jockeying for position without firing a shot, waiting for the other guy to act first. We were ready to, of course, and they must have been as well - but somehow, first contact didn't end in bloodshed and warfare, despite the many stories of science fiction and many plans of our generals.
Of course, after we had settled that we weren't going to immediately kill each other, it got rougher. After some time fruitlessly trying to decipher their communications, we set up a meeting on Eros, one of our more outermost (and thus disposable) space stations. Since we had no real way of talking to them, we ended up miming what we wanted, by bringing our initial scout ship towards them and then slowly going back and forth to the station, getting closer to Eros each time.
It looked a bit like a dog trying to get his master to fetch a bone, but it worked.
Eventually, they started to maneuver their fleet towards our station. We learned a lot in the movement of their ships and the fact that they brought a shuttle from one of their larger ones to dock at the station instead of using the scout ship - convergent evolution was the phrase of the hour, as the scientists and generals agreed that they had very similar technological and social structures as us.
And then they came out of their ships, and it was really first contact.
-
My xenobiology students often ask me what it was like, being in the room when they came in.
The first thing I say is that there was no way to dodge the fact that, well, they were crabs, essentially. Giant, monstrous crabs that stood on one end, vaguely bilaterally symmetrical, with eye stalks. And, of course, the claws. Those immediately drew your attention, and drew uncomfortable parallels in being able to crush things in the same way that we use nut crackers one might find at, say, Red Lobster, on their much smaller cousins.
They had an unsettling habit of slowly clicking them together, but in a way that always made you wonder if they were imagining you in between those claws as they brought them together. Even their guards, with guns wrapped around their claws, did that too, in a way that seemed ripe for accidental discharge. It didn't happen, though, at least not in the hour that we spent together.
After everyone was arranged correctly - soldiers to the back, diplomats and linguists to the front - the 'talks' started.
And they started out cordial, but inevitably grew more and more tense as time passed. It should've been expected, in retrospect, given that it was essentially teaching a baby language, except that the baby might, at any time, snap and kill you. We would try and demonstrate an action and then put words to it, and they did the same with a repetoire of clicks, but it didn't seem like we had enough commonalities of experience to establish any breakthroughs. We didn't get any clear repetitions, and none of our reproduced clicks seemed to trigger any of them.
Greg, one of the Stanford linguists, slammed the table at something, and then threw his hands in the air in frustration.
And quick as a shot, before we could respond, one of the aliens - 'Clickers', we termed them - reached across the table with his claw and took off Greg's arm.
Greg stared down at his stump, blinked, said oh shit, and everything went to hell.
-
No one really asks about the months of war that followed. Even though it's quite well documented, it just doesn't seem like people care to explore the aftermath. We had to respond, of course, and our marines opened fire, and then theirs did. There was plenty of death that day, though most of us got away from the room, and Eros, before the fleets started exchanging blows. The weeks that followed were filled with more than enough casualties, though, as their counteroffensive swept across the Earth, costing us Bordeaux, Denver, and Venice, among others.
The students all skip over that - some because they were too young, some because they lived through it and don't care to see it from my point of view. Instead, they ask about the 'E.T. Moment', as many now call it, though it smacks of a cultural centrism that I strongly try and discourage. And yet, it's a useful lens to see through and evaluate what happened.
Five months and a day after first contact, one of their ships came from Neptune, where they had set up positions, towards our airspace. Our military trained our weapons on it, of course, but it did something curious.
It started self-destructing, module at a time. First the weapons, then the engines, then the maneuvering thrusters, until it became no more than a metal-box, albeit with life-support.
Instead of firing on it, the brass decided that was curious enough to send a team to board, and I got the honor, as one of the academics that had been in the original party, to try and figure out what it was meant at. We approached the ship, now drifting in orbit around the moon, and latched on. The marines cut open our own entrance (instead of using theirs, fearing it trapped) and found a group of the clickers inside.
They were unarmed, and with what we thought was a curious mutation, at first - each one of their right arms was somewhat smaller than their left, though all were different sizes.
Some of the students get it right as I say that. I didn't, though, until they demonstrated.
You see, one of them clicked briefly and took one claw in the other. And then, slowly, crushingly, it severed its own arm. And then they lined up, slowly - the one that had just performed this act of mutilation was on the left, while the other ones beside him each had a right claw that got bigger as we looked down the line.
I'm sure you all see it now. There was no 'touch', as the media likes to make allusions to, and no one falling on their knees and crying or cursing, as the movie that came out portrays. There was just a quiet understanding of what they meant when they had acted those months ago, and a demonstration of why.
We understood, and provided them passage back to their ships as we started trying to learn their language again. It wouldn't bring back those who had died, but it meant that no one else would die.
-
The lesson that I try and teach my students is that there will be more of those events in the future: we're not alone in the universe, and if we respond to every misunderstanding as an act of war, we will be driven to extinction, sooner or later. We must defend ourselves, yes, but we must first try and understand what is an attack, and what is not.
First contact.
It was recorded for history as a crazy dance of sorts, the ships posturing and moving around each other, jockeying for position without firing a shot, waiting for the other guy to act first. We were ready to, of course, and they must have been as well - but somehow, first contact didn't end in bloodshed and warfare, despite the many stories of science fiction and many plans of our generals.
Of course, after we had settled that we weren't going to immediately kill each other, it got rougher. After some time fruitlessly trying to decipher their communications, we set up a meeting on Eros, one of our more outermost (and thus disposable) space stations. Since we had no real way of talking to them, we ended up miming what we wanted, by bringing our initial scout ship towards them and then slowly going back and forth to the station, getting closer to Eros each time.
It looked a bit like a dog trying to get his master to fetch a bone, but it worked.
Eventually, they started to maneuver their fleet towards our station. We learned a lot in the movement of their ships and the fact that they brought a shuttle from one of their larger ones to dock at the station instead of using the scout ship - convergent evolution was the phrase of the hour, as the scientists and generals agreed that they had very similar technological and social structures as us.
And then they came out of their ships, and it was really first contact.
-
My xenobiology students often ask me what it was like, being in the room when they came in.
The first thing I say is that there was no way to dodge the fact that, well, they were crabs, essentially. Giant, monstrous crabs that stood on one end, vaguely bilaterally symmetrical, with eye stalks. And, of course, the claws. Those immediately drew your attention, and drew uncomfortable parallels in being able to crush things in the same way that we use nut crackers one might find at, say, Red Lobster, on their much smaller cousins.
They had an unsettling habit of slowly clicking them together, but in a way that always made you wonder if they were imagining you in between those claws as they brought them together. Even their guards, with guns wrapped around their claws, did that too, in a way that seemed ripe for accidental discharge. It didn't happen, though, at least not in the hour that we spent together.
After everyone was arranged correctly - soldiers to the back, diplomats and linguists to the front - the 'talks' started.
And they started out cordial, but inevitably grew more and more tense as time passed. It should've been expected, in retrospect, given that it was essentially teaching a baby language, except that the baby might, at any time, snap and kill you. We would try and demonstrate an action and then put words to it, and they did the same with a repetoire of clicks, but it didn't seem like we had enough commonalities of experience to establish any breakthroughs. We didn't get any clear repetitions, and none of our reproduced clicks seemed to trigger any of them.
Greg, one of the Stanford linguists, slammed the table at something, and then threw his hands in the air in frustration.
And quick as a shot, before we could respond, one of the aliens - 'Clickers', we termed them - reached across the table with his claw and took off Greg's arm.
Greg stared down at his stump, blinked, said oh shit, and everything went to hell.
-
No one really asks about the months of war that followed. Even though it's quite well documented, it just doesn't seem like people care to explore the aftermath. We had to respond, of course, and our marines opened fire, and then theirs did. There was plenty of death that day, though most of us got away from the room, and Eros, before the fleets started exchanging blows. The weeks that followed were filled with more than enough casualties, though, as their counteroffensive swept across the Earth, costing us Bordeaux, Denver, and Venice, among others.
The students all skip over that - some because they were too young, some because they lived through it and don't care to see it from my point of view. Instead, they ask about the 'E.T. Moment', as many now call it, though it smacks of a cultural centrism that I strongly try and discourage. And yet, it's a useful lens to see through and evaluate what happened.
Five months and a day after first contact, one of their ships came from Neptune, where they had set up positions, towards our airspace. Our military trained our weapons on it, of course, but it did something curious.
It started self-destructing, module at a time. First the weapons, then the engines, then the maneuvering thrusters, until it became no more than a metal-box, albeit with life-support.
Instead of firing on it, the brass decided that was curious enough to send a team to board, and I got the honor, as one of the academics that had been in the original party, to try and figure out what it was meant at. We approached the ship, now drifting in orbit around the moon, and latched on. The marines cut open our own entrance (instead of using theirs, fearing it trapped) and found a group of the clickers inside.
They were unarmed, and with what we thought was a curious mutation, at first - each one of their right arms was somewhat smaller than their left, though all were different sizes.
Some of the students get it right as I say that. I didn't, though, until they demonstrated.
You see, one of them clicked briefly and took one claw in the other. And then, slowly, crushingly, it severed its own arm. And then they lined up, slowly - the one that had just performed this act of mutilation was on the left, while the other ones beside him each had a right claw that got bigger as we looked down the line.
I'm sure you all see it now. There was no 'touch', as the media likes to make allusions to, and no one falling on their knees and crying or cursing, as the movie that came out portrays. There was just a quiet understanding of what they meant when they had acted those months ago, and a demonstration of why.
We understood, and provided them passage back to their ships as we started trying to learn their language again. It wouldn't bring back those who had died, but it meant that no one else would die.
-
The lesson that I try and teach my students is that there will be more of those events in the future: we're not alone in the universe, and if we respond to every misunderstanding as an act of war, we will be driven to extinction, sooner or later. We must defend ourselves, yes, but we must first try and understand what is an attack, and what is not.