Two worlds meet and have to work around language barriers. Time is against them and one will have to choose when, not if, to let go.
Hey, Hive!
The story is almost done and in part 3 Sheldon makes a breakthrough. But the two, aliens to each other, are running out of time. Is this first contact going to be successful?
“What do you think you’re doing?” Clamence floated over Shelley.
“You do not talk to new creatures without an ambassador. Do you want us all to die?” Sandy inflated her siphon more than necessary.
“I’m sorry.” Shelley lowered her head and sat on the sand. “She seemed curious. I thought we could find a way to talk, then get back home.”
“Talk? She doesn’t speak.” Clamence lifted an arm.
Shelley flinched, bringing her limbs up to brace for the slap. Hearing it but not feeling it, she peeled open her lids. The alien’s tentacle threads had locked together between her and Clamence. It moved under her and lifted her out from the pocket into space.
Gravity pressed against her gills, weighing down her limbs. She gasped and panted, her lungs stinging and fighting for breath. The alien moved her mouth and loud sounds vibrated from inside her neck. Her tentacles were hot and dry and Shelley’s skin clung to it, a heart beat in a slow pulse beneath. Then it was cold again.
The alien slid Shelley off her tentacle into another air pocket, far away from Clamence and Sandy. They inflated and pushed from the ground, but she couldn’t hear them. The alien leaned closer and pointed a tentacle to her chest. Her mouth moved again. Shelley pointed to the alien and copied the movement, unsure what she was trying to do. Her mouth stretched sideways as she pointed a tentacle to Shelley.
She wanted to know her name?
“Shelley.”
The hair above her eyes lowered.
Sheldon scrounged through his equipment, looking for the sonic recorder and a marine life textbook with pictures. The new animal seemed smarter than the others, interested in establishing some form of communication. He placed the recorder against the glass of the tank and held up the book to the animal.
He pressed ‘record’.
“Water.”
The animal tilted its head to the side then back upright and made an echo. He turned the page and pointed. “Whale.”
The animal echoed again, a different pitch than before. Pages upon pages, he pointed and spoke and the animal echoed in return. He closed the book and switched the recorder off. The strange creature puffed and floated up and down in a dance, letting one of its tentacles drag across the sand. It floated away from the glass and stared at him. Sheldon looked at the sand once the dust settled. It had drawn a shell. The animal pressed a tentacle against its chest.
“Shell?” He frowned. “Your name is Shell?” He pointed to the drawing, then to the animal. It echoed a sharp tune. Sheldon reached for a pen and pad, and sketched.
The alien seemed delighted by the exercise of naming drawings that looked real, etched on a flat, white leaf which she held it up against the barrier. Shelley floated back from the new image, trying to figure out what she wanted to say with a drawing of a shell and a pointer facing down.
“Shell down?” She pointed an arm at the alien. The alien’s mouth stretched and she nodded her head. “You’re called Shelldown? What a strange name.” Shelley floated closer to the wall again. “Well, if you have a name, you have language.” Tracing a tentacle through the sand, Shelley wrote the first language symbol, just as her mother had shown her. She floated back and pointed to the leaf collection with realistic drawings.
Shell danced over the sand again, drawing a strange symbol in it. Sheldon grabbed the pencil and scribbled the symbol on the corner of the page. It pointed a tentacle at the marine life book. He picked it up and held it up to the creature, flipping through the pages until it echoed.
“Coral?”
Shell echoed then shook its body over the drawing and danced again. Sheldon wrote the word under the symbol then closed the book and flipped through from the beginning. Shell echoed.
“Shark?” He drew the new symbol and scratched his head, “C and S. S for shark? Your alphabet?”
Shelldown jumped up and bounced around space, flapping the leaves over her head and pointing a tentacle to Shelley and back to the drawings collection. Shelley laughed at the behaviour.
“Do you understand now?” She mimicked the dance. The alien sat on the chair again and flipped through leaves once Shelley wrote the third symbol in the sand. The alien pointed to an image of an anemone. “Yes.”
Shelldown waited each time Shelley wrote another letter, with her face close to the air pocket wall. She made her own sound into the large device against the invisible wall. After writing the last symbol, Shelldown pointed at the pictures. Her tentacle landed on an image of a whale.
“Yes!” Shelley cleared the sand, writing her name as well as Shelldown’s. The alien cocked her head back and created a booming sound from her throat. The vibrations rippled the top of the air pocket and coursed through Shelley’s body. It tickled. Shelldown shook her head, wrapped a tentacle around the pad of leaves, and etched into it. She held the drawing up.
“Sheldon? Oh, not Shelldown at all.”
Sheldon paced around his quarters, studying the markings Shelley — not Shell, a girl then? — had made and the images she associated with them. C through to W, he translated her language into English, at least a basic enough grasp to establish communication. It wasn’t hard to do. Shell was spelt the same in her language. Sheldon paused, staring at the symbols.
“I wonder…” he whispered as he scratched his head.
He sketched a message on his pad, hoping his words were understandable, ‘pleased to meet you Shelley’, and held it up against the glass.
The animal danced over the sand, writing her reply. It took him a minute or so to figure out the message.
‘And you, Sheldon.’ Shelley didn’t use spaces between words. And no punctuation he could make out. But it was the same. Their alphabet was different, but not the concepts.
‘Is my writing correct?’
Shelley echoed and wrote again. ‘Needs some improvement on the angles.’ So the structure was loose?
‘Teach me?’
Echoing, she danced again. ‘Bring me something to write with.’
Sheldon looked around his quarters. Plenty of stationary but nothing that would work under water.
‘What do you usually write with?’ His reply took a couple of minutes longer than usual, not knowing how to phrase a question or if it were any different from a statement.
Shelley rubbed a tentacle on her head before dancing once more. ‘Clay and something sharp.’
The Sheldon alien escaped the white walls, running out the house and disappearing around the corner. Shelley inflated and floated to her shelter, resting her head on a smooth bed. A mild ache formed in her belly, bulging more now than before, making her head feel lighter. Was it the fourth moon already? Genesis wasn’t supposed to happen yet. Not like this.
She watched the light balls floating over the deck, humming her lullaby. Her mother’s memories were lost in space. Alone and unheard. Like her.
A commotion of movement caught her attention and she sat up. Clamence and Sandy floated up and down, waving their tentacles. Shelley drifted to the wall, pressing her face against it. A faint whisper of their echoes reached her ear. She looked up at them.
“I can’t hear you.” Her throat burned from the shouting. They pressed their ears against their air pocket’s wall then shook their heads. Shelley floated to her writing spot and cleared the sand.
“Jane?” Sheldon climbed down to the deck below his. “You in here?”
“Here, doc. What’s up?” Jane stepped out from the research room.
“Do you have some clay?” Sheldon rubbed the back of his neck. “And, maybe, a needle?”
Jane furrowed her brows. “Uh, yeah. Why?”
He shied away. “They’re for Shelley.”
“Shelley?” Her left brow arched up.
“The new creature from the pod a couple of weeks ago, she, um, needs it. I can’t really explain it all, sort of in a hurry.”
Jane glared at him as she turned into the room and retrieved the items. “Here.” She placed them in Sheldon’s hand and grabbed his wrist. “But I want to know everything when you do have the time to explain it.”
Sheldon nodded. “I promise. Thanks, Jane.” He rushed up the stairs to his quarters, slowing to catch his breath at the threshold, then walked over to the tank. He searched for Shelley and found a message scribbled in the sand. Sheldon set the clay and needle on the table and picked up his pad, deciphering the symbols.
‘We need food.’
He slapped his hand against his forehead, groaned, and opened the cooler box. He broke off pieces from the fish then dropped them into the large tank. The two animals puffed and floated toward their meal. Shelley remained hidden in hers.
“Shelley?” He lifted the lid from her tank and lowered the clay and needle along with a piece of fish. She floated out from the castle and ate her food. Her movement was slower and less graceful. Sheldon wrote on his pad and held it up. ‘Are you alright?’
Shelley echoed then curled a tentacle around the needle, etching the symbols into the clay. She stabbed the needle through the base of the clay once she finished and held it up.
Reaching into the water, he took it from her. He searched through his drawers for a magnifying glass and held it to the clay, staring at the small alphabet, marvelling at her precision.
‘Thank you’ he wrote on his pad, careful to copy the angles the way she wrote them, and held it against the glass. Shelley floated back, tilting her head to the left and right. Sheldon pulled it away and wrote under the symbols ‘Do you know what it means?’ He held it up.
Shelley echoed and stared.
‘It means I am happy for what you gave me.’
She twirled in a circle.
