Chapter Text
Hello Earth friends. I have the honour of a name in your language, Averroes, bestowed on me by Dr. Ryland Grace himself. I am a linguist and translator, one of the few who have specialized in writing in one your Earth languages, English, and am part of a team of Eridians designated to translate texts and messages for a future probe or delegation (it has not yet been decided as of this writing) that will head in the direction of Sol. As we learn how to replicate the high-density digital media from the laptops on the Hail Mary, I am allowed to use some of the space for my own scientific work. I am in the process of collecting Eridian impressions of humans in both popular culture and academic discourse and am sending translations of it to you in the hope that you will send back Earth culture about Eridians when our delegation returns with a reply. I am hoping to collect this into a masterwork about interspecies mutual cultural perception for a future promotion to special scientific honours.
As you might already know when reading this, because our world has a much thicker atmosphere than yours, we did not have any means even to understand that there were stars out there, that one of those was "our" star, and than the rest may be similar to our star -- at least, not until we pushed through the atmosphere into space. Even then, because we do not perceive the world as you do with light, the study of the stars was an abstract, niche scientific pursuit. Only due to the very lucky discovery of the astrophage threat did the stars come to the widespread attention of Eridian society. It was a major discovery and while it presaged a potential catastrophe, it also captured the Eridian public's imagination, including wondering as to whether there was intelligent life out there among stars that were clearly like ours, and whether it was anything we could ever get to know.
Erid has a population of billions, like Earth. The return of Rocky with an alien in tow was, as you can probably imagine, a galvanizing event in Eridian society. The question was answered: there were other intelligent beings, they were very different from us, but we could still talk to them. We could make friends with them. One of them even decided to sacrifice his entire future for us, and for friendship with us.
At the same time, as you would expect with any large population with varying levels of education, lots of rumours and speculation abounded, not all of them favorable to Dr. Grace or to cooperation with our new neighbours. Other opinions were just strange and even a little ridiculous. The governing entities on Erid, which are mainly just loose organizations of interest groups -- imagine your own world governed by professional societies, but not quite -- decided to establish a program of public education about Dr. Grace, humans, and life in space, as well as to set the record straight about the astrophage crisis and its aftermath. Erid has public museums just like Earth does -- tourism as a learning opportunity is probably universal -- and so the new Museum of Xenobiology was born, built in an area between a popular tourist resort region and one of the Cities of Science. The museum was wildly popular at its inception, although as the realization that Eridians are not alone in the universe has gradually "sunk in", the novelty has worn off a little bit and admission tapered slightly.
One of the first permanent exhibitions was titled "Leaky Space Blob" as a fun, accessible way of using the affectionate joke epithet Rocky used for Dr. Grace in their serendipitously joint mission. (I suspect a similar exhibition on Earth would probably not use "Scary Space Monster" though.) Since rumours, myths, and stereotypes about humans had already started to spread, the exhibition focuses on the seemingly exotic aspects of humans in comparison to familiar biologies on Erid, aimed at moderately educated Eridian families with children, with a focus on engaging activities similar to designs I understand are used for science museums on Earth. Unavoidably, the exhibits drastically oversimplify humans and human diversity particularly where it touches on culture and behaviour, which itself risks perpetuating stereotypes, but the museum designers decided that it was a lesser evil than not educating the Eridian public at this level.
If some of the exhibits and their focus appears strange to humans, it is because they unsurprisingly emphasize the things that provoke emotion in Eridians of wonder, humor, or mild disgust. For my own part, the human sense of sight is utterly strange, wonderful, and unimaginable to me -- and I have to attempt to imagine it, because of how deeply it is embedded in your languages (I just used the word "focus"). For Eridians, it is hard to put words to the idea that there is an entire people out there with "direct" access to the very frequencies of the universe, who navigate and experience the world mostly through the emanations of faraway stars, something like experiencing the world in five dimensions. Amaze amaze amaze, to use an Eridian triplication expression. Similarly, the role of food in practically all human cultures, while very explainable from basic knowledge about human biology, is disgusting to Eridians in a way that can at least be played for humour, with a large vocabulary available to describe it. For this reason, the exhibit on sight is fairly short while the exhibit on eating is fairly long.
A note on translation
The exhibits are written in what is tentatively to be called "Monochord B" in English, a widely-used script for text intended for the moderately well-educated to read scientific and literary texts. Some aspects of the texts cannot be rendered in English at all, such as texture and what I would term "tactility" which is an important feature in Eridian writing. Some text is also written non-linearly or diagrammatically in a way which it would make no sense to render in English.
I have mostly used conventional English language, but have resorted to portmanteaux and other strategies to render situations where Eridian has no chord for a human experience and had to coin a polychord or chord sequence. So "sight" is rendered as "light-hearing", and choking (something impossible for an Eridian) is rendered as "gas-exchange-nutrient-block". In other cases, I have decided to use an English word where a "literal" translation of Eridian would detract from the point, and I have enclosed these in square brackets, such as the polychords for "[human]". An accepted standard for referring to the human species has not yet been achieved due to aesthetic indecision -- a desire for a term that is both poetic and respectful by Eridian standards. Popular epithets are "vertical-star-listener" and "cold-water-neighbour" -- the museum uses several of these. (There are some mildly derogatory epithets such as "corrosion-dweller" and some from a tiny paranoid minority such as "continuous-consumer-threat", none of which appear in the museum.) Similarly, the English term "Eridian" is a reference to "40 Eridani", which has nothing to do with any Eridian-language chord for our own species, so I write "[Eridian]" to indicate that. As a reminder that the text comes from something that is nothing like English, I occasionally repeat three words to indicate emphatic triplication which is frequent in the most common Eridian languages.
Images and activities
The Museum also contained models, textured relief images (obviously flat color images are useless to the Eridian population), and hands-on activities, which are also typical of science museums on Earth, but of particular importance in Eridian public education and even in high-level scientific meetings. Unfortunately, I could not book time on the prototype high-definition cameras that convert to any quality worthy of human eyes, nor did I obtain sufficient data space for this project unless human-density storage media is finally reverse-engineered and manufactured by the time a mission to Earth takes place. I have attempted to describe their gist briefly in the text as well as to transcribe and translate audio recording content.
Last remarks before the content
Once again, I hope that this work contributes to goodwill and understanding between humans and Eridians and that you send back your feelings and impressions, and content and impressions about Eridians that you may be studying. We have some idea of the reaction from Dr. Grace, but I also realize that he may not be representative of humans in all things in the manner that the best and brightest never are.
Yours most sincerely,
Averroes