Going Bold

In the morning Andrea woke up and saw the biohazard alert notification in her implants. “Good morning Lin. What’s up with the biohazard alert from last night?” Lin whipped one of her mini-drones around next to Andrea’s bed in the hab dome and waggled it in greeting. “Good morning Andrea. You’re not going to believe the crazy things I’m finding in the bio samples I’ve been looking over. I’m going to need your permission to gather some blood and tissue samples from you, as well as permission to partially clone you and reproduce your immune system implants. Just a bit of muscle and a partial organ or two. I need to test how your body and implants might handle the truly exotic microorganisms on this planet. I found an amoeba that can make other cells near it rupture by boiling part of their cytoplasm at range! So far the viruses I’ve found haven’t seemed to exhibit any unusual abilities but several varieties of bacteria and mold have been capable of extraordinary actions. I want to be sure your systems will be able to suppress these threats even with their exotic abilities.”

This speech rushed out of Lin ‘s chat avatar while Andrea grabbed a breakfast of peanut butter and bacon meal bars, listening with a bemused expression. “Sample and clone away Lin, I’ve been feeling fine, and I can see my systems are reading all green, but it would be foolish to ignore the threat. I can always fab a fully contained hazardous environment suit to wear if needed.” Having answered Lin's immediate question Andrea began to chow down on her breakfast while strolling over to the laboratory dome where one of lab tech drones collected the blood and tissue samples and began prepping cloning and growth media under Lin's direction. As Lin got that process started she also added a copy of Andrea’s immune system implants to the fabricator queue.

Andrea finished up her breakfast bars before shrugging and chewing up the wrappers as well. "There we go, breakfast is finished, and I've already donated a medical specimen. That's what I call a proper start to the day." As Andrea chuckled to herself and got up to stretch, Lin grumbled. "Ugh, I still think it's kind of off-putting. The way you just chow down on the food packaging like that. There's a recycling system input port literally within arms reach." As she said this one of her mini-drones zipped over to the aforementioned opening and managed the singular feat of flying a loop de loop with an exasperated flourish. Andrea shrugged and began to make her way back to the hab dome. "Eh, The texture doesn't bother me, in fact I kind of like that crunch to it, besides it's not like my digestive system isn't just a miniaturized version of that recycling system so I don't really see the difference ultimately." Lin sent a shrug in their chat. “Whatever you say Andrea, I know when I have a bio body I prefer to feed it real food as much as possible, when I want to feel like a waste disposal I inhabit one. Alright, I’ll let you get to work prepping for the meeting later. I’ll keep an eye on Unla-Ela’s team for you and let you know when it’s time to head out.” Andrea entered the hab dome again and made her way over to her bed. “Thanks Lin, I appreciate the help, it’s so much easier to focus on studying a new language and culture when I don’t need to worry as much about multi-tasking.”

While Lin continued her work studying the anomalous phenomena that they’d been encountering, Andrea lounged back on her bed and began to review and practice the language she’d begun learning from Unla-Ela. While the curious being had been keen on learning Andrea’s language as well, Andrea was fairly confident that she would become fluent in Unla-Ela’s language much faster than the reverse. Andrea wasn’t condescending to Unla-Ela, rather she was acknowledging the advantages of being able to devote more time in the short term to learning the language, having access to complete recordings of every exchange, and automated language analysis systems. From everything Andrea had seen Unla-Ela had a broad range of tasks and responsibilities calling for their attention, no recognizable audio-visual recording equipment beyond drawings, and while Andrea recognized that she was working in an unknown paradigm technology wise, she hadn’t noted anything that appeared to function like her computing systems that allowed for language analysis.

After about 4 hours, Lin pinged Andrea to get her attention. “The group with Unla-Ela looks to be about half an hour out from the meeting point, you should start heading over.” Andrea hopped to her feet and stretched before jogging out and leaping onto the Donkey that Lin had designated as her ride for the day. “Thanks Lin, anything else I should know?” After pausing for a moment to consider, Lin reported “The partial clone and implant are making good progress, I should be able to test them sometime in the next few days, I’d recommend limiting close physical contact with Unla-Ela and the others as much as possible until I confirm your immune systems are sufficient, their relatively sophisticated society is likely to be partly based on a high population and thus a significant source of epidemic diseases. Speaking of which it looks like their group is even larger today, is that going to be an issue?” Andrea shook her head, knowing Lin would see the gesture from dozens of different perspectives from the escorting combat drones and the Donkey’s sensors. "I'm not worried, from what I could gather during our discussion yesterday, Unla-Ela and a smaller group are going to work with me, while most of the extra people are going to fulfill their original sample collection goals in the area.”

After an uneventful trip to the meeting location, Andrea disembarked before watching the Donkey lope quickly out of sight in the tree line. Lin reported. “The high-altitude surveillance drones don’t show any of those rock shattering herd animals near your location and I don’t think you’ll have any weather issues, though we need a lot more data for proper meteorological prognostication. I’ve got the combat drones within about 10 seconds flight of your location and the Donkey can get to you in about a minute and a half. The surveillance drones hiding in the field will be keeping an eye out and I’ve arranged the system to pull my attention if any potential threats show up. I’ll be focused on my own work in the lab, but that should be enough to keep you safe.” Andrea chuckled “I’m sure that will be plenty Lin, thanks for being so thorough about this. Now stop worrying about me and go enjoy your lab time.” As she spoke Andrea recalled her own mini-drones to their shoulder housings and set up her folding seat as well as four more that she’d fabricated the night before, as both a gift to Unla-Ela and as a way to make everyone more comfortable as they learned to communicate.

The meeting with Unla-Ela that followed went well, and both of them made noticeable progress learning the other’s language. The trio of Baluk-Nual, Trophirte, and Ela-Nu began to participate a bit more in the conversation as well, though they readily deferred to Unla-Ela. It seemed that the term Ilsoph they had all been introduced with was an honorific for a position that sounded like a combination of apprentice and grad-student. It became apparent that Unla-Ela’s formal name would be Soph Unla-Ela, with Soph being a recognized master of their field. Apparently Unla-Ela was fairly new to the title and felt uncomfortable introducing themselves with the formal title included, an attitude that Andrea gathered to be unusual, but Unla-Ela’s students seemed to find their shyness about their achievement endearing. Andrea commiserated with Unla-Ela informing them that her full name would be Doctor Andrea Marie-Ahn but she never introduced herself that way. This naturally led to an attempt to explain what a doctorate was, for the moment they settled on considering it the equivalent of a soph. The more challenging explanation as it turned out was the idea of a family name. The closest translation Andrea and Unla-Ela managed to reach was: progeny origin label, which was not terribly helpful. After nearly an hour trying to get something better, they both decided to drop the topic for the time being, and continue improving their ability to communicate abstract ideas. As mid-day waned another meeting for the following day was scheduled and Unla-Ela’s smaller group rendezvoused with the sample collection team and together they began the hours-long hike to their camp. After watching them leave, Andrea met up with the Donkey and rode back to base camp.

The rest of that afternoon and evening passed in a similar manner to the day before with the exception of the aperture disappearing as expected, the duo received one last message from Jorge and the team on the other side congratulating them on their success at first contact and wishing them luck. "Well, That's it then… I know we'd already committed to this but having the aperture finally close makes it feel real." Lin told Andrea, exposing a vulnerability that she usually kept buried with her experience and professional competence. Andrea reached out and patted the nearest drone under Lin's control. "Hey, we've got this! We're seeing and learning things that no one back home has before, and I know you wouldn't miss that opportunity for anything. Being cut off makes me a little nervous too, but I know with the two of us here we're gonna do great!" Lin sent a mini-drone over to nudge Andrea's shoulder and sent her a smiley face in their chat. That night Lin decided to sleep as well, it always helped her de-stress. Wishing an already half asleep Andrea goodnight, Lin let the automated security systems fully take over patrolling the base camp area and switched her consciousness into sleep mode.

The next three days passed in a similar manner as the preceding couple. Lin spent most of her time and attention examining the exotic behaviors and abilities exhibited by many of the organisms they were encountering, while Andrea continued to meet with Unla-Ela who after the sample collection was completed attended the meetings with a smaller party composed of themself, the trio of apprentice-students, and a detachment of six guards to help them fend off aggressive wildlife. By this point Andrea could hold solid conversations with Unla-Ela, though so far she’d avoided talking too much about her origins and society. When Unla-Ela pressed, Andrea had directly stated that she wanted to be able to communicate very clearly before sharing much about where she was from and how she got to the valley. She did briefly explain that she was there purely to explore for the sake of exploring and wasn’t interested in acquiring territory or goods, but rather sought to gather and exchange knowledge. Unla-Ela was obviously dissatisfied with not knowing more, but agreed to wait until they could communicate fluently.

It was on the fifth day after they'd made first contact with Unla-Ela, and were meeting once again in the rocky boulder strewn field that their peaceful attempts at conversation were interrupted and the location of their meeting spot was shown to be a dangerous mistake.