Going Bold

The next few days were exciting but also loaded with anxious anticipation, both Andrea and Lin observed the activities of the small camp of alien beings. Expeditions would routinely leave, nearly always headed by the same being that had grabbed their probe, Professor. These groups wandered throughout the valley, sometimes digging in a particular location and pulling out a variety of objects that seemed to have been buried for a very long time, before hauling them back to the tent that contained the probe. Professor and several of the other beings seemed to spend a great deal of time sketching and taking notes as pieces were found and packaged up, while others tended to do most of the actual physical labor. Other times Professor led a group through a stretch of the forest, from what the high altitude drones could make out, those expeditions seemed to focus on hunting for both live and dead specimens of flora and fauna. Most of which seemed to be brought back to the camp at the end of each day.

Andrea and Lin found themselves settling into a rhythm. Andrea would spend a large portion of the daylight hours monitoring the activities and behavioral habits of the aliens in the camp then during the night Andrea would get some rest while Lin, for whom sleep was largely optional, spread out a number of her drones and began taking samples of the flora and fauna in the region. It quickly struck the duo that they were engaging in the same practices as the beings they were observing, leading Andrea to speculate that the party they were observing were not themselves local to this region of the planet and were in fact explorers at least somewhat in the same vein as themselves.

"Hopefully this will help when it comes time to make contact, they may already be in the frame of mind to encounter strange things and we will definitely qualify. Well I will definitely qualify to begin with since we're going to let you remain hidden for the immediate future like we discussed. What we've observed about their level of technological sophistication is confusing when it is compared to what historical precedence I have available to measure against and the fact that they're aliens only adds to the uncertainty about how they might process meeting a disembodied intelligence.”

Lin understood, despite her frustration at being relegated to a background role during opening talks, she agreed that it was probably for the best to not come across as too alien to these beings at first meeting. Indeed considering the shocking and completely improbable, to the degree that it was impossible, similarity in appearance between the traditional human body and those of the aliens they had been observing it was entirely possible that Andrea would be observed and taken to be a particularly strange specimen of their species that they had simply not encountered before. Indeed both Andrea and Lin were beginning to suspect that that could even very well be true at some extremely distant point in the past. Perhaps during the Displacement that had cast Andrea and Lin's distant ancestors into the unknown, these beings had also been cast here or perhaps similar events had recurred and they were encountering distant relatives of theirs evolved from traditional humans over thousands or tens of thousands of years. It was uncertain if their ancestors had been the first such people to be cast into the far reaches of the universe, and there was no way of knowing if it had happened again after. The Displacement had done a remarkably thorough job of shattering historical records as much of the relevant databases were fragmented or outright destroyed during the event and it's aftermath.

After nearly a week had passed, Andrea and Lin had begun to develop a bit more of a picture of a patterns that they've been seeing and decided that they could either wait and observe for months to eke out what details they could gather without direct interaction while constantly being at risk of discovery, or they could be proactive and make contact now while the aperture would be open for another few days. Considering the group appeared to be on a mission of exploration and that they seemed to be sweeping the valley, starting at the lower end and working their way up, they would eventually come across the base camp. Andrea pushed for going ahead and making the meeting with them, this was if she was honest with herself largely because she was impatient and wanted to do it sooner rather than later. She did not feel like sitting around and making an extraordinarily careful analysis before getting to get to know these interesting people and learning more directly from them, Andrea really wanted to sink her teeth into getting to know and interact with them. Lin always the more cautious of the duo, though admittedly not by all that much, was convinced to agree after some discussion with a fair degree of cajoling on Andrea's part. Lin grudgingly conceded that they may as well go ahead and meet with the aliens before their camp was discovered so that they could at least engage in first contact on their own terms. "Very well Andrea you've convinced me against my better judgment, I will agree to moving up the meeting to within the next couple of days when weather looks like it'll be clear and conducive to allowing them to spot us at a distance. We'll have to pick our site carefully based on the patterns of their expeditions out into the valley. There's a few possible locations they might be going to next and I think that the one on this hill over here…" At this Lin brought up a three-dimensional terrain map, that had been generated by the high altitude surveillance drones, she indicated an open and fairly rocky region that seemed like a boulder rich grassland stretching over a region with thin poor soil where the forest seemed unable to thrive. " This area will have massive sight lines and you will be able to show yourself silhouetted against the sky by waiting for them on this ridge, I'll leave the details on handling opening communications to you, but I think silhouetting ourselves there on that ridge mid-morning when the party would most likely reach that location should allow us to take the initiative in choosing the location but then give them the option to decline contact and proceed cautiously hopefully making them more comfortable and reducing the likelihood of an armed confrontation. " Andrea examined the indicated location and noted the simulated silhouetting and movements of the parties and agreed that this seemed like a good position. "I think you're right Lin this will be an excellent way to start. I think we'll need to keep a pretty close eye on what the group at the camp is doing since, like you said, there are several places they may go in the next few days we're not sure which excursion will take them in this direction so let's keep ourselves alert and be ready to get there first.”

Lin was quick to respond, having already considered the need to arrive first at short notice. “I plan on prepositioning some stealth drones along path from here to the proposed meeting point in that field along a relatively circuitous route that we can take to minimize traces while the stealth drones can ensure that nothing obvious moves into place along the proposed course over those couple of days and keeps the path fairly clear as well as covering our tracks before and after the meeting. You can hop on a Donkey as soon as we see them moving out in the direction of that open area. The Donkey should get you there well before them considering the spot is only a bit closer to them than it is to us. Based on how fast we've seen them moving as a group on their investigative missions we can easily outpace them without even pushing ourselves all that hard."

Ultimately Andrea wound up going with Lin's plan deciding that sounded far more preferable than potentially roughing it in a field shelter at the meeting location for two or three nights and more importantly far safer. The next couple of days consisted of Lin continuing her biological and mineralogical studies of the area near the base camp while Andrea reviewed and analyzed all of the audio, visual, and other sensor readings of the aliens and their behavior both from the probe in the tent and from the long range observation drones who could provide quite clear and useful visuals though were not able to pick up audio from the distances at which they were working. Both Andrea and Lin had agreed that slipping any kind of stealth drones along the ground into the camp at this point was an unnecessary risk that might cause problems during first contact and taking any actions that might set these people them on edge in general would not help with the first contact. The partial translations that the audio recordings from the probe in the tent were able to facilitate via the auto translation program were going to be nearly useless for the first meeting and would almost certainly not catch up as fast as Andrea’s ability to just learn the language herself but they would be a helpful tool for future endeavors and particularly for future representatives who might come to interact with the people living here. Despite her somewhat limited information Andrea was able to get at least a bit of a feel for some of the gestures and body language that the aliens seemed to utilize and based on context she thought she had at a bit of an idea about how to conduct herself during the beginning of contact with them in order to convey peaceful and friendly intentions. She couldn't know for sure of course, not until after meeting with them and learning more but she had what she felt was a pretty good guess at how best to comport herself.