FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The data seemed infinite. Every type of rock, every tiny plant, was something a scientist might eventually spend years, even decades studying. But I didn't know if or when something unexpected or catastrophic would happen to my mission, so I had to prioritize.

I used data from the orbiter to help me plan my first route over the surface, investigating a key location first: the nearby forest. The forest, if you can call such an alien conglomeration a forest, was packed with species unlike anything back home. Most of the organic chemical cycles here were completely different from on Earth, except for possibly the water cycle. I was starting to find evidence of a complete nickel cycle, as well as an iron-manganese cycle. The plants seemed to be capable of extracting these minerals from the ground rich in them and incorporating it into their structures, often in much more meaningful ways than on Earth. Some used the elements to more easily strengthen and support themselves. Others used it externally on their yellow leaf-like structures, perhaps as a defensive mechanism.

Many of the animals showed signs of being able to use these metals for their own advantage too, either for a stronger version of a skeletal system or for features like scales and spines. And that's only what I've been able to detect from a distance.

I was ordered to generally not examine animals too intrusively, poking or prodding them with instruments. They might not take well to that kind of treatment. I had to be "hands-off," minimizing my damage to their environment and keeping myself from dangerous situations.

To clarify, I don't exactly have hands. To more easily walk on my four legs, I have something closely resembling paws, taking cues from terran evolution. But my paws still had transformational properties. By modifying them a bit when needed, I could achieve excellent grip strength and fine motor control--no pun intended.

Day turned to night quickly on the equator, just as it did on Earth, and I was now exploring the forest in the dark. I would have to return to the lander to recharge soon. During the day, the solar cells embedded in my composite skin easily met my needs. But at night I had to rely on a compact americium generator, with battery power making up the difference.

The darkness was not complete, of course. My night vision was very good, and I could generate my own light with simple LEDs. Animals also gave off minute amounts of light in the form of infrared radiation, though I used this mostly for initially spotting them. Many of my attempts to get in close proximity to these creatures had been unsuccessful. This possibly suggested a lower level of territorialism, but I suspected they were mostly just frightened of me.

I was currently shaped much like a canine on Earth, though significantly larger at just under two meters tall from head to toe. I had considered shrinking my form to be less imposing, but currently I was more interested in avoiding conflict through sheer appearance, rather than having to back it up. There were animals larger than me here, though not by much, and of those I had imaged, they appeared to be more interested in grazing and, again, avoiding me.

Along with plant tissue samples and cataloging, I started analyzing mineral composition of the ground. The easiest way I could do this is with a simple aimable laser attached to my midsection, letting me vaporize rock samples and measure their composition. All this data collecting, sample analyzing, and model building meant I was making frequent stops. I only traveled a couple meters during any given minute.

One such stop left me in a clear, rocky part of the forest. I was vaporizing a rather unique mineral sample when I heard a sound. It was low, just within the human range of hearing, and very quiet. Still distinctly animalistic. Within a few milliseconds I pinpointed its origin. I determined it was one of the building creatures, it's thermal radiation distinct among the plant life. I would call them, collectively, Builders, until I came up with a better name--or they gave me one.

But this was unusual considering we had only imaged them in orbit in groups. Considering my options for a few long seconds, I decided to approach it. If these Builders were truly intelligent enough to construct such dwellings, attempting to communicate with one individually might be my best chance of starting to understand them.

I scrambled over the rocks with all the grace I could afford and stopped only a meter in front of it. It stood at just under half a meter tall but twice as long. This Builder appeared to be unreactive, staring into my LEDs. I knew it was alive, still filled internally with heat.

I wanted to communicate with it, but my options were extremely limited. Although I knew it emitted sound, I could not know to what capacity it used sounds to communicate. It could just as easily use pheromones, light, body language, or something else entirely, to transmit information, if it did at all. I was forced to make several assumptions and go from there.

Many of the creatures on this planet certainly used sound. Completely alien biology made it difficult to detect something like ears externally, but they appeared to react to noise. So, I could make a huge range of sounds with my speakers, but what could I possibly say that would be meaningful? I had one data point, the sound that attracted my attention in the first place. I had to use it.

With no possible way to deconstruct the meaning from what it may or may not have said, I couldn't do anything novel. Perhaps, by repeating it, I could establish if it responded to noise that sounded like it. Of course, there could easily be unintended consequences. If the noise emitted was some kind of threat or warning, it definitely wouldn't come back as peaceful. I was willing to take that chance. The potential scientific rewards outweighed the risks.

I repeated the noise the Builder made, near-perfectly mimicking it.

Then I waited for a response. But for an uncomfortable time, it only stared back, its eyes shifting over me.

At least up close, I could investigate its appearance more accurately. For a Terran equivalence, it looked to have characteristics of both mammalian and reptilian animals. Most of its body was covered in red fur, breaking into the light-brown fur on its belly. Its limbs had much less fur, with scaly, tan skin. On the top of its head it had something resembling a set of stubby ears, as well as flat spikes trailing halfway down the length of its body and around its neck. The triangular spikes were partially metallic--iron and manganese again--and many showed significant evidence of damage. Following down its back the rest of the way, it had a long, tapered tail, ending with a final flat spike. It possessed large eyes, eyes that were still staring at me.

It spoke again but did not move. Two data points wasn't much better.

Without getting too much in the weeds of linguistics, human children only learn to speak by hearing spoken word first. They learn what sounds they can make, and slowly attach meaning to those sounds, before finally expressing complex thoughts and sentences. In many ways, I was the child here. But without any way to generate a monologue, I couldn't easily form a basis for communication. So, assuming this creature did use speaking as a primary method of conveying information, I had to get it to talk. A lot. Or else I'd be forced to try and approach one of their settlements to hear more of them speak, which could be very intrusive and even dangerous.

I had one trick immediately available to me: video. More specifically, holographic animation.

When I was being designed, researchers knew first contact was a possibility, and they knew it would be one of the hardest problems I would have to solve. My intelligence alone would only get me so far. The video lets me talk without language, show them where I came from and where humans originated.

Taking a cautious step back, I loaded the video onto memory. My head was filled with sensors and tools, this being one of them. Locking my head in place, I was able to start projecting it on the air between us. It only took a second for the image to focus, layering on light, sound, color, and depth. Through some peripheral cameras, I watched the Builder try to touch the light with a forepaw. The creature was standing up on its bent tail almost like a tripod, now half as tall as me.

For whatever reason, it stopped, though its large eyes were still fixed on the image.

The video started with life on earth. Brief snippets of a huge range of plants and animals, most of them macroscopic. One of these animals were the early humans, showing them chase down their food over marathon distances. From there, it told the 12,300-year history from the first agricultural revolution.

I thought it would be important to include the story mainly through their dwellings, since if there were one thing the Builders and humans shared, it would be that.

When it got to 55 years ago, it finally slowed. I showed him my construction, from a handful of some of Earth's best robotics engineers.

It spoke again--one more data point.

54 years ago, I was put aboard an Elevator in Brazil, the final piece in a trillion-dollar, international puzzle. I showed me docking to the rest of ARROW in orbit. The Sail unfurled, catching sunlight and petawatts of laser light, propelling me with the gentle photon pressure.

Accelerating the half-century journey into only a few moments, I focused the animation on my entry, orbit, and landing. I decided to render in the mishap with the wind and parachutes, including the part where I jumped out--no idea what they would think about that.

The Builder, still standing on its tail, stuck out a claw at the image and spoke shortly. Perhaps these creatures used pointing like humans did. I quickly showed my journey to this forest, where I found this creature, and cut the display. Turning my head toward it, I decided to repeat back the few things it had said to me. Hopefully now, it would pick up on the mimicry.

It spoke longer in response, but my infrared sensor picked up an interesting anomaly in the creature's readings. Its head had rapidly cooled and warmed on its surface, but not uniformly. There were definite warm and cold regions on its skin. A pattern emerged, filled with curved lines and irregular shapes. Was this a different way it communicated, or some sort of metabolic process?

While I was processing this, the Builder moved away from me, not in any particular hurry. I couldn't let it leave, not until I better understood how it used this heat. A few strides carried me in front of the creature again, thankfully stopping them.

Much like I had done with vocal mimicry, I needed to recreate its facial heat pattern to see how it responded. But first, I needed a way to generate heat like it was doing. I wouldn't be able to use my lights. There weren't many I could use, not enough to recreate the complex shapes it was making, and the heat generated by LEDs was almost negligible. Another option presented itself: by redirecting waste heat from the generator, I could certainly move heat to my face instead. But I wouldn't be able to be sure how accurate this translated to the actual infrared light until I tried. So, I tried.

Bending my front legs and neck till I was eye level with the Builder, I brought a small amount of the exhaust heat to my head. The effect was fairly slow, but I was able to sense the temperature making its way to the surface. Checking my own heat pattern, the result was mediocre. I might have to work on this later.

But now the creature responded. Its body looking tense, it spoke and changed its heat pattern. For some reason, this didn't look good to me.

Taking a gamble, I tried to deconstruct some of the sounds it had made over the last few minutes. There were definite breaks in its speaking, so I decided to start cataloguing these as potential words with the context they appeared in. The result didn't leave me with much of a translation guide, but it was a start.

Rashly testing out some of these on the creature, emphasizing the pauses between the possible words. It spoke again, significantly lower than any time previously, then darted around me with remarkable speed. Now I'd done it.

I could have reacted, chasing after the creature, maybe even temporarily subdue it, but decided against. It clearly wanted to be left alone.

---

As I returned to the lander, analyzing rocks and plants along the way, I mulled over the data. The lone Builder I found was certainly anomalous. Not a single picture taken by the orbiter showed a Builder more than a kilometer or so from a member of its own species. The one I encountered wasn't even running toward the nearest of their settlements. It just didn't match the rest of the data.

What else didn't match the data?

Looking back at the first sighting of the loner from space, I noticed it was consuming some sort of animal, though it was much larger than itself. Judging from other incidents of predation by the Builders, it seemed very unlikely it would have been able to bring it down by itself. On top of that, its skeletal system was mostly picked clean already. This seemed to match the behavior of a scavenger, but on an alien world I shouldn't assume much. Regardless, it seemed to have a taste for meat.

A fact I decided to exploit.

I was at the lander, recharging. I looked through the orbiter data for recently deceased animals similar to the one I spotted it eating. Only one was close, a dead grazer.

Just before the daylight came, I plotted a route for the carrion. Unlike yesterday, I didn't spend time scanning every rock and plant. Just a few of them. I couldn't help myself. As I arrived, a few animals of the same species had surrounded the carcass. They were small, their bodies covered in organic metal shells and tall, almost comically large ears. They scattered as soon as I got close. Sorry, critters.

I had a problem though: carrying a mutilated carcass two kilometers or more without ripping it apart. One drastic option was to change my form enough to be able to walk on two legs and then just carry it in my arms, but that took a lot of time and energy. Instead I opted to give myself a mouth.

I don't have one already for because I normally had no need for one. Breathing and eating aren't something I really do.

It took a few moments for my nanoparticles to rearrange enough to let my jaws form and a few more be able to open and close, but soon I was good to go.

I grabbed as much of the carcass as I could near its abdomen, squishing its meat and snapping its metal bones. The rest of it hung limp, like a wet, rotting cloth in my mouth. In retrospect, this wasn't exactly the most elegant solution.

But it did work. Twenty minutes later I was back in the forest searching for the Builder. I spotted it from orbit not far from where we met, not moving at all. Hopefully it was just resting.

The Builder was exactly where it was last seen. If not for a faint infrared signature, it would have been nearly invisible in the surrounding plants. Forgoing subtlety, I dropped the carcass only a few meters in front of it.

It's an interesting thing, watching an alien wake up. With a human, they open your eyes, yawn, stretch. This Builder didn't do that. Its nose woke up first, sniffing the air. Going from tail tip to snout, its muscles tensed and relaxed. Even the spikes on its head, neck, and back stood more upright. With that, its whole body turned toward me and the rotting animal. Eyes just opening, it first looked at the carrion, then, with a jolt, me standing over it.

The Builder stood up on shaky limbs. To me, it looked like it wanted to run, but it didn't. It even spoke for a few seconds. I recognized some of the vocal patterns, not that I knew what they meant. Its infrared image was very active.

I backed away from the carrion, still facing the loner. This seemed like a good time to try to use some basic body language. I took my paw and pointed at the Builder for a moment, then at the meat. Then I used my snout to push it toward them a few inches.

Again, it spoke. I recognized the thermal pattern this time, almost perfectly matching the one it used right before it ran away from me the previous night. Did I scare it away already?

No, it was walking toward me. I maintained my distance as it neared the carrion. Lowering its head, it kept its eyes on me as it took a sizable bite of the flesh. It didn't chew. Throwing its head back, it swallowed everything in its mouth in one motion. Interesting.

Once it got that first cautious bite, it didn't stop. I watched it eat at a frantic pace. In all the previous orbital observations, they never ate anywhere near this fast. If I was going to assume one thing right now, it would be that this Builder was very hungry. An hour passed like this, slowing as it ran out of meat. By the end, all that remained was skin and some ferric bone, though it did gnaw on one or two of them for a while.

The Builder rolled onto its back, its belly noticeably larger. It spoke again, though it wasn't looking at me like all the other times.

I could work with this.