The Sci-Fi Story of Your Life

0:00Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing, the rush of racing, nothing beats it, but Chumba Casino comes close. Chumba's got fast spins, fun games, daily bonuses, and all the action you can handle. Now that's a ride. Ready to hit the throttle? Get in the driver's seat and head to Chumba Casino.com. Let's Chumba. Sponsored by Chumba Casino, no purchase necessary. VGW Group Voidware prohibited by law, 21 plus turns and conditions apply. Hello, I'm Wilkins, stories all the time. Glad you are here. Let's get into it. Your father is about to ask me the question. This is the most important moment in our lives, and I want to pay attention. Note every detail. Your dad and I have just come back from an evening out dinner in a show. It's after midnight. We came out onto the patio to look at the full moon. Then I told your dad I wanted to dance. So he humors me, and now we're slow dancing.

1:01A pair of 30 something swaying back and forth in the moonlight like kids. I don't feel the night chill at all. And then your dad says, do you want to make a baby? Right now, your dad and I have been married for about two years, living on Ellie's avenue. When we move out, you'll still be too young to remember the house, but we'll show you pictures of it tell you stories about it. I'd love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you're conceived, but the right time to do that would be when you're ready to have children of your own, and we'll never forget the chance. Telling it to you any earlier wouldn't do any good. For most of your life, you won't sit still to hear such a romantic, you'd say sappy story. I remember the scenario of your origin you'll suggest when you're 12. The only reason you had me was so you could get a maid you wouldn't have to pay. You'll say bitterly dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the closet. That's right, I'll say. The teen years ago, I knew the carpets would need vacuuming around now and having a baby seem to be the cheapest and easiest way to get the job done. Now kindly get on with it. If you weren't my mother, this would be illegal. You'll say, see thing as you unmind the power cord and plug it into the

2:02wall outlet. That will be in a house on Belmont Street. I'll live to see strangers occupied both houses, the one you're conceived in and the one you grew up in. Your dad and I will sell the first a couple of years after your arrival. I'll sell the second shortly after your departure. I then, Nelson, and I will have moved into our farmhouse and your dad will be living with what's her name. I know how the story ends. I think about it a lot. I also think a lot about how it began just a few years ago when ships appeared in orbit and our facts appeared in meadows. The government said next to nothing about them while the tabloids said every possible thing. And then, I got a phone call, a request for a meeting. I spotted them waiting in the hallway outside my office. They made an all-couple. One wore a military uniform and a crew-cart and carried an aluminum briefcase. He seemed to be assessing as surroundings with a critical eye. The other one was easily identifiable as an academic, full-beard and mustache, wearing corduroy. He was browsing through the overlapping sheet staple to a bullet in board nearby. Colonel Weber, I presume. I shook hands with the soldier. The Wiesbanks,

3:05Dr. Banks, thank you for taking the time to speak with us, he said. Not at all. Any excuse to avoid the faculty meeting? Colonel Weber indicated his companion. This is Dr. Gary Donnelly, the physicist, and mentioned when we spoke on the phone. Call me Gary. He said as Wiesha Khan's, I'm anxious to hear what you have to say. We enter my office. I moved a couple of stacks of books off the second guest chair and we all sat down. He said, you want me to listen to recording. I presume this for something to do with the aliens. All I can offer is the recording, said Colonel Weber. Okay, let's hear it. Colonel Weber took a tape machine out of his briefcase and press play, the recording sounded vaguely like that of a wet dog shaking the water out of its fur. What do you make of that? He asked. I would help my comparison to a wet dog. What was the context in which this recording was made? I'm not at liberty to say. Well, it would help me interpret those sounds. Could you see the alien while it was speaking? Was it doing anything at the time? The recording is all I can offer. You won't be giving anything away if you tell me that you've seen the aliens. The public assumed you have. Colonel Weber wasn't budging. Do you have any opinion about its linguistic properties? He asked. Well, it's clear that their vocal tract is substantially

4:05different from a human vocal tract. I assume that these aliens don't look like humans. The Colonel was about to say something non-committal when Gary Donnelly asked, can you make any guesses based on the tape? Not really. It doesn't sound like they're using allowings to make those sounds, but that doesn't tell me what they look like. Anything. There's anything else you can tell us. Ask Colonel Weber. I could see he was accustomed to consulting a civilian. Only that establishing communications is going to be really difficult because of the difference in anatomy. They are almost certainly using sounds that the human vocal tract can't reproduce, and maybe sounds that the human ear can't even distinguish. You mean him for ultrasonic frequencies? Ask Gary Donnelly. Not specifically, I just mean that the human auditory system isn't an absolute acoustic instrument. It's optimized to recognize the sounds that human allowings makes with an alien vocal system, all bets are off. I sure do. Maybe we'll be able to hear the difference between alien phonemes given enough practice, but it's possible our ears simply can't recognize the distinctions they consider meaningful. In that case, we'd need a sound spectrograph to know what an alien is saying. Colonel Weber asked, suppose I gave you an iris worth of recordings. How long

5:09would it take you to determine if we need to sound spectrograph or not? I couldn't determine that we're just recording no matter how much time I had. I'd need to talk with the aliens directly. The Colonel shook his head. Not possible. I tried to break it to him gently. That's your call, of course, but the only way to learn an unknown language is to interact with the native speaker and by that I mean asking questions, holding a conversation, that sort of thing, without that, is simply not possible. So if you want to learn the aliens language, someone with training and field linguistics, whether it's me or someone else, will have to talk with an alien. Recording solo non-sufficient Colonel Weber frowned, you seem to be implying that no alien could have learned human language monitoring our broadcasts. I doubt it. They need instructional materials specifically designed to teach human languages to non-humans. Either that or interaction with a human. If they had either of those, they could learn a lot from TV, but otherwise they wouldn't have a starting point. The Colonel clearly found this interesting. Evidently, his philosophy was, the less the aliens knew, the better. Gary Donnelly read the Colonel's expression too, and rolled his eyes. A suppressed smile. Then Colonel Weber asked,

6:13suppose you were learning a new language by talking to its speakers, could you do it without teaching them English, that would depend on how cooperative the native speakers were, they'd almost certainly pick up bits and pieces while I'm learning their language, but it wouldn't have to be much if they were willing to teach, on the other hand, if they'd rather learn English than teach us the language, that would make things far more difficult. The Colonel nodded. I'll get back to you on this matter. The request for that meeting was perhaps the second most moment as phone call in my life. The first, of course, will be the one for mountain rescue. At that point, your dad and I will be speaking to each other maybe once a year tops. After I get that phone call though, the first thing I'll do will be to call your father. He and I will drive out together to perform the identification, along Silent Car ride. I remember the morgue, all tile and stainless steel. The hum of refrigeration and smell of antiseptic. An orderly will pull the sheet back to reveal your face. Your face will look wrong somehow, but I'll note to you. Yes, that's her, I'll say. She's mine, you'll be 25 then. The MP check my badge made a notation on his clipboard and opened the gate.

7:16I drove the off-road vehicle into the encampment, a small village of tents pitched by the army in a farmer's sunscotch pasture. At the center of the encampment was one of the alien devices, nicknamed looking gases. According to the briefings I'd attended, there were nine of these in the United States, 112 in the world. The looking glasses acted as two-way communication devices, presumably with the shits in orbit. No one knew why the aliens wouldn't talk to us in person. A fear of coup d'es, maybe? A team of scientists, including a physicist and a linguist, was assigned to each looking class. Gary Donnelly and I were on this one. Gary was waiting for me in the parking area. We navigated a circular maze of concrete barcades until we reached the large tent that covered the looking glass itself. In front of the tent was an equipment cart loaded with goodies bored from scrolls, phenology lab. I'd sent ahead for inspection by the army. Also outside the tent with three tripod mounted video cameras whose lens is peered through windows and a fabric wall into the main room. Everything Gary and I did would be reviewed by countless others, including military intelligence. In addition, we would each send daily reports of which mine had to include

8:20estimates on how much English I thought the aliens could understand. Gary held open the tent flap and gesture for me to enter. Step right up he said, circus barker style. Marvel creatures the likes of which have never been seen on the gods green earth and all for one slim dime. I murmured, walking through the door. At the moment the looking glass was inactive, resembling a semicircular mirror over 10 feet high and 20 feet across. On the brown grass in front of the looking glass an arc of white spray paint outline the activation area. Currently the area contained only a table two folding chairs and a power strip of the cord leading to a generator outside. The buzzer for essence lamps hung from poles along the edge of the room, commingled with the buzzer flies in the sweltering heat. Gary and I looked at each other and then began pushing the cart of equipment up to the table. As we crossed the paint line the looking glass appeared to grow transparent. It was as if someone had slowly raised the illumination behind into glass. The illusion of depth was uncanny. I felt I could walk right into it. Once the looking glass was fully lit it resembled a life-sizedorama of a semicircular room.

9:20The room contained a few large objects that might have been furniture but no aliens. There was a door in the curve for your wall. We visit ourselves connecting everything together. Microphone, silent spectrograph, portable computer and a speaker. As we worked I frequently gathered the looking glass anticipating the aliens' arrival. Even so I jumped one of them entered. It looked like a barrel suspended at the intersection of seven limbs. It was radially symmetric and any of its limbs could serve as an arm or a leg. The one in front of me was walking around on four legs, three non-adjacent arms culled up at its sides. Gary called them heptopods. I'd been should video tapes but I still gorked. Its limbs had no distinct joints. Anatomists guessed they might be supported by vertebral columns. Whatever their underlying structure the heptopods limbs could spy out to move it in a disconcertingly fluid manner. Its torso rode atop the rippling limbs as smoothly as a hovercraft. Seven, the delusized ringed the top of the heptopods body. It walked back to the doorway from which it entered, made a brief sputtering sound and returned

10:20to the center of the room followed by another heptopod. I no-pointed at a return-around. Heary but logical. With eyes on all sides any direction might as well be forward. Gary had been watching my reaction. Ready? He asked. I took a deep breath. Ready enough. I'd done plenty of fieldwork before in the Amazon but it had always been a balingable procedure. Either my informants knew some Portuguese which I could use or I previously gotten an introduction to their language from the local missionaries. This would be my first attempt at conducting a true monolingual discovery procedure. It was straightforward enough in theory though. I walked up to the looking glass and a heptopod on the other side did the same. The image was so real that my skin crawled. I could see the texture of its gray skin, like cordura ridges arranged in walls and loops. There was no smell at all from the looking glass which somehow made the situation stranger. I pointed to myself and said slowly human. Then I pointed to Gary. Human. Then I pointed at each heptopod and said, what are you? No reaction. I tried again and then again. One of the heptopods pointed to itself

11:24with one limb, a four terminal digits pressed together. That was lucky. In some cultures, a person pointed with his chin. If the heptopods hadn't used one of his limbs, I wouldn't have known what gesture to look for. I heard a brief fluttering sound, then saw a pocadorifist at the top of his body vibrate. It was talking. Then it pointed to its companion and fluttered again. I went back to my computer. On its screen were two virtually identical spectrographs representing the fluttering sounds. I mocked a sample for playback. I pointed to myself and said human again and did the same with Gary. Then I pointed to the heptopod and played back the flutter on the speaker. The heptopod fluttered some more. The second half of the spectrograph for this utterance looked like a repetition. Call the previous utterances flutter one, then this one was flutter two, flutter one. I pointed at something that might have been a heptopod chair. What is that? They heptopod paused and then pointed to the chair and talked some more. The spectrograph for this differed distinctly from that of the Olo sounds. Flutter. Jerry, once again, I pointed to the chair while playing back flutter. Jerry, the heptopod replied. Choging by the spectrograph, it looked like flutter three,

12:30flutter. To optimistic interpretation, the heptopod was confirming my utterances is correct, which imply compatibility between heptopod and human patterns of discourse. Festimistic interpretation, it had a nagging cough. At my computer, I delimited certain sections of the spectrograph and typed in a tentative gloss for each. Heptopod for flutter one, he has for flutter two, and chair for flutter. Three, then I typed language heptopod as a heading for all the utterances. Gary watched what I was typing. What's there for? It just distinguishes this language from any other ones the heptopod might use, I said. He nodded. Now, let's try something just for laughs. I pointed at each heptopod and tried to mimic the sound of flutter one heptopod. After a long pause, a first heptopod said something, and then the second one said something else, neither of whose spectrographs resembled anything said before. I couldn't tell if they were speaking to each other or to me since they had no faces to turn. I tried pronouncing flutter one again, but there was no reaction. Not even close, I grumbled. I'm impressed you can make sounds like that at all, said Gary. You should hear my musical, sends them running. I tried again,

13:35a few more times, but neither heptopod responded with anything I could recognize. Only when I played the recording of the heptopod pronunciation did I get a confirmation. The so was stuck with using recordings, asked Gary. I nodded at least temporarily. So, now what? Now, we make sure it hasn't actually been saying, aren't they cute? Oh, look what they're doing now. Then we see if we can identify any of these words when the other heptopod pronounces them. I gestured for him to have a seat. Get comfortable. This will take a while. In 1770, Captain Cook ship and devour ran aground the coast of Queensland, Australia. While some of his men made repairs, Cook led an exploration party and met the aboriginal people. One of the sailors pointed to the animals that hopped around with their young writing and pouches and asked an aboriginal what they were called. The aboriginal reply, Conguru. From then on, Cook and his sailors referred to the animals by this word. It wasn't until later that they learned it meant. What did you say? I tell that story in my introductory course every year. It's almost certainly untrue, and I explain that afterwards, but it's a classic anecdote. Of course, the anecdotes of my

14:39undergraduates will really want to hear our ones featuring the heptopods. For the rest of my teaching career, that'll be the reason many of them sign up for my courses. So I'll show them all videotapes of my sessions at the looking glass in the sessions that the other linguists conducted. The tapes are instructive, and they'll be useful if we're ever visited by aliens again, but they don't generate many good anecdotes. When it comes to language learning anecdotes, my favourite source is a child language acquisition. I remember one afternoon when you were five years old after you have come home from kindergarten. You'll be colouring with your crowns while I greypapers. Mom, you'll say, using the carefully casual tone reserved for requesting a favour. Can I ask you something? Sure, sweetie. Go ahead. Can I be unhonoured? I look up from the paper I'm grading. What do you mean? At school, Sharon said she got to be honoured. Really? Did she tell you what for? It was when her big sister got married. She said only one person could be un-honoured, and she was it. Ah, I see. You mean Sharon was made of honoured? Yeah, that's it. Can I be made of honoured?

15:40Bubble Wall is here from 2311 Racing. You know what's slower than a pace car? Waiting at the car wash. That's when I fire up Chamba Casino. It turns those slow minutes into fast fun. With new games every week, you'll never get bored. Next time you're stuck in the slow lane, speed up with Chamba. Play now at chambacasino.com. Let's Chamba. Sponsored by Chamba Casino, no purchase necessary. VGW Group Void we're prohibited by law 21 plus terms and conditions apply. Gary and I entered the profile building containing the centre of operations for the looking gas site. Inside it looked like they were planning an invasion or perhaps an evacuation. Crew cut soldiers worked around a large map of the area or sat in front of barely electronic gear while speaking in the headsets. We were shown in Colonel Webb's office a room in the back that was cool from air conditioning. We briefed the Colonel on our first day's results. Doesn't sound like you got very far, he said. I have an idea as to how we can make faster progress, I said, but you'll have to approve the use of more equipment. What more do you need?

16:42Digital camera and a big video screen. I showed him a drawing of the setup I imagined. I want to try conducting the discovery procedure using writing. I display words in the screen and use the camera to record the words they write. I'm hoping the head parts will do the same. Webb looked at the drawing dubiously. What would be the advantage of that? So far, I've been proceeding the way I were the speakers of an unwritten language. Then it occurred to me that the heptopods must have writing to. So, if the heptopods have a mechanical way of producing writing, then the writing ought to be very regular, very consistent, that would make it easier for a straight end for graffins instead of phonined. It's like picking out the letters in a printed sentence instead of trying to hear them when sentences spoken aloud. I take your point, he admitted. And how would you respond to them? Show them the words they display to you, basically. And if they put spaces between words, any sentences we write would be a lot more intelligible than any spoken sentence we might slice together from recordings. He leaned back in his chair. He knew we want to show us about technology as possible. I understand, but we're using machines as intermediaries already. If we can get them to use writing, a belief progress will go much faster than if we restricted to the sound spectrographs.

17:42The kernel turned to gear at your opinion. It sounds like a good one to me. Curious whether the heptopods might have difficulty reading our monitors. The looking glasses are based on a completely different technology than our video screens. As far as we can tell, they don't use pixels or scan lines and they don't refresh on a frame by frame basis. He synced the scan lines on our video screens might render them unreadable to the heptopods. It's possible, said Gary. We'll just have to try it and see. Weber considered it. For me, it wasn't even a question, but from his point of view, it was a difficult one. Like a soldier, though, he made it quickly. Request granted. Talk to the sergeant outside about bringing in what you need. Have it ready for tomorrow. I remember one day during the summer when you're 16 for once. The person waiting for her date to arrive is me. Of course, you'll be waiting around to be curious to see what he looks like. You'll have a friend of yours, a blonde girl with the unlikely name of Roxy hanging out with you. You may feel the urge to make comments about him. I'll say, checking myself and hallway mirror, just restrain yourselves until we leave. Don't worry, mom, he'll say. We'll do it so that he won't know. Roxy, you ask me what I think the weather will be like tonight. Then I'll say what I think of mom's

18:46date. Right, Roxy will say. No, you most definitely will not, I'll say. Relax, mom. He'll never know. We do this all the time. What a comfort that is. A little later on, Nelson will arrive to pick me up. I'll do the introductions. And we'll all engage in a little small talk and the front porch is ruggedly handsome. Do you remember the approval? Just as we're about to leave. Roxy will say to you casually, so what do you think the weather will be like tonight? I think it's going to be really hot. You'll answer. Roxy will nod in agreement. Nelson will say, really, I thought they said it was going to be cool. I have a sixth sense about these things. You'll say, your face will give nothing away. I get the feeling it's going to be a sculpture. Good thing you're dressed for it, mom. I'll go out at you and say goodnight. As I lead Nelson toward his car, he'll ask me amused. I'm missing something here. Aren't I a private joke? I'll murder. Don't ask me to explain it at our next session. At the looking glass, we repeated the procedure we had performed before. This time, this playing-apprinted word on our computer screen at the same time as we spoke, sure and human while saying human and so forth. Eventually, the Heptopods understood what we wanted and set up a flat circular screen mounted on a small pedestal. One Heptopods spoke and then inserted at limit a large socket in the pedestal. A diddle of script vaguely cursive popped onto the screen.

19:50We seen settled into a routine, a compiled to parallel copper, one of spoken utterances, one of writing samples. Based on first impressions, the writing appeared to be logarithmic, which was disappointing. I'd been hoping for enough beddock script to help us learn their speech. Their logograms might include some fanatic information, but finding it would be a lot hotter than with enough beddock script by getting up close to the looking glass. I was able to point to various Heptopod body parts, such as limbs, digits, and eyes. In a list of terms for each, it turned out that they had an orifice on the underside of the body lined with articulated bony ridges, probably used for eating. While the one at the top was for respiration speech, there were no other caspicus orifices, perhaps the mouth was their anus too, the sorts of questions would have to wait. I also tried asking our two informants for terms for addressing each individually. Personal names. If they had such things, their answers were, of course, and pronounceable sofa garries and my purposes. I dubbed them flapper and raspberry. I hoped I'd be able to tell them apart. The next day I conferred with carry before we entered the looking glass tent. I'll need your help with the session. I told Heptopods. What do you want me to do? We need to list at some verbs, and it's easiest with third-person forms. Would you act out a few verbs while I type the written form on the computer? If we're lucky,

20:54the Heptopods will figure out what we're doing and do the same. I've brought a bunch of props for you to use. No problem, said Gary cracking his knuckles, ready when you are. We began with some simple and transitive verbs walking, jumping, speaking, writing, Gary demonstrated each one with a charming lack of self-consciousness. The presence of the video cameras didn't inhibit him at all, for the first few actions he performed. Ask the Heptopods. What do you call that? Before long, the Heptopods caught on to what we were trying to do. Raspberry began mimicking Gary, or at least performing the equivalent Heptopod action, while flapper would work their computer displaying a written description and pronouncing it loud. In the spectrographs of the spoken utterances, I could recognise their word I'd glossed as Heptopod. The rest of each utterance was presumably the verb phrase. It looked like they had analogs of nouns and verbs thank goodness, and the writing, however, things weren't as clear cut. For each action, they had displayed a single logogram instead of two separate ones that first. I thought they had written something like walks with the subject implied, but why would flapper say Heptopod walks while writing walks? Instead of maintaining parallelism, then I noticed that some of the logograms look like the logogram for Heptopod.

21:55With some extra strokes added to one side or another, perhaps the verbs could be written as a fixes to a noun. If so, why was flapper writing the noun in some instances, but not another's, I decided to try a transitive verb, substituting object words, my clarify things. Among the pops I'd bought were an apple and a slice of bread. Okay, I said to Gary, show them the fruit and then eat some. First the apple, then a bread. Dairy pointed at the golden, delicious, and then he took a bite out of it. While I displayed the what do you call that, expression, then we repeated it with a slice of whole wheat. Raspberry left the room and returned with some kind of giant, not a good and a gelatinous ellipsis. Raspberry pointed at the good while flapper said a word and displayed a logogram. Then, raspberry brought the good down between its legs. A crunching sound resulted, and the good re-emerged minus a bite. They were coined like kernels beneath the shell. Flava talked and displayed a large logogram on their screen. This sounds spectrograph for good change when it was used in a sentence, possibly a case marker. The logogram was odd. After some study, I could identify graphic elements that resembled the individual logograms for heptopod and gourd. They looked as if they had been melted together,

22:58with several strokes in the mix that presumably meant eat. Was it a multi-word ligature? Next, we got spoken and written names for the gelatin egg and description of the act of eating it. The sound spectrograph for heptopod eats gelatin egg was analyzable. gelatin egg-bora case marker is expected, though the sentences were it ordered deferred from last time. The written form, another large logogram, was another matter. This time it took much longer for me to recognize anything in it. Not only were the individual loggrams melted to get it again, it looked as if the one for heptopod was laid in its back, while on top of it the logogram for gelatin egg was standing on its head. Oh, oh. I took another look at the writing for the simple noun verb examples. The ones that had seemed inconsistent before. Now I realized all of them actually did contain the logogram for heptopod. Some were rotated and distorted by being combined with the various verbs, so I hadn't recognized them at first. You guys have got to be kidding me. Me, I modded. What's wrong? Ask Gary. This script isn't were divided. A sentence is written by joining the logograms for the constituent words. They join the logograms by rotating and modifying

24:01them. Take a look. I showed him how the logograms were rotated. So they can read a word with E.colise no matter how it's rotated, Gary said. He turned to look at the heptopods impressed. I wonder if it's consequence of their bodice radial symmetry, their bodice radial symmetry, their bodice of no forward direction. So maybe their writing doesn't either. Highly neat it. I was working with someone who modified the word neat with highly. It certainly is interesting. I said, but it also means there's no easy way for us to write our own sentences in the language. We can't simply cut the sentences into individual words and recombine them. We'll have to learn the rules of the script before we can write anything legible. It's the same continuity problem we'd have had splicing together speech fragments, except applied to writing. I looked at flapper and raspberry in the looking glass who were waiting for us to continue and side. You weren't going to make this easy for us. Are you? To be fair, the heptopods were completely cooperative. In the days that followed, they readily taught us their language without requiring us to teach them any more English. Colonel Weber and his cohorts pondered the implications of that, while I and the linguists at the other looking glasses met via video conferencing to share what we learned about

25:04the heptopods language. The video conferencing made for an incongruous working environment. Our video screens were primitive compared to the heptopods looking glasses, so that my colleagues seem more remote than the aliens. The familiar was far away, while the bizarre was close at hand. It would be a while before we'd be ready to ask the heptopods why they would come, or to discuss physics well enough to ask them about their technology. For the time being, we worked in the basics, phonemics, graphemics, vocabulary, syntax. The heptopods at every looking glass were using the same language, so we were able to pull our data and coordinate our efforts. Our biggest source of confusion was the heptopods writing. It didn't appear to be writing at all. It looked more like a bunch of intricate graphic designs. The logograms weren't arranged in razz or spiral or any linear fashion. Instead, flapper or raspberry would write a sentence by sticking together as many logograms as needed into a giant conglomeration. This form of writing was reminiscent of primitive sign systems, which required a reader to know a message context in order to understand it. Sub-systems were considered too limited for systematic recording of information,

26:06yet it was unlikely that the heptopods developed their level of technology with only an oral tradition. That implied one of three possibilities. The first was that the heptopods had a true writing system, but they didn't want to use it in front of us. Colonel Weber would identify with that one. The second was that the heptopods hadn't originated the technology they were using. They were illiterate using someone else's technology. The third, and most interesting to me, was that the heptopods were using a non-linear system of orthography that qualified as true writing. I remember a conversation we'll have when you're in your junior year of high school. It'll be Sunday morning, and I'll be scrambling some eggs while you set the table for brunch. You'll laugh as you tell me about the party you went to last night. Oh man, you'll say. They're not kidding when they say that body weight makes a difference. I didn't drink any more than the guys did, but I got so much drunker. I'll try to maintain a neutral, pleasant expression. I'll really try. Then you'll say, oh, come on, mom, what? You know you did the exact same things when you were my age. I did nothing of the sort, but I know that if I were to admit that you'd lose respect for me completely. You know never to drive or get into a car if,

27:09call out, of course I know that. Do you think I'm an idiot? No, of course not. What I'll think is that you are clearly, manningly, not me. It will remind me again that you won't be a clone of me. You can be wonderful, a daily delight, but you won't be someone I could have created by myself. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Victory Lane? Yeah, it's even better with Chamba by my side. Race to ChambaCasino.com. Let's Chamba. No purchase necessary, VTW Group, voidware prohibited by law, CTNC's, 21 plus, sponsored by ChambaCasino. The military had set up a trailer containing our offices at the looking glass site. I saw Gary walking toward the trailer and ran to catch up with him. It's a Somasio graphic writing system. I said when I reached him, excuse me, said Gary, here, let me show you. I directed Gary into my office. Once we were inside, I went to the chalkboard and drew a circle with a diagonal line by sexting it. What does this mean? Not allowed, right? Next, I printed the words not allowed on the chalkboard, and so does this, but only one is representation of speech. Gary nodded. Okay, linguists describe writing like this. I indicated the printed words as

28:11lot of graphic, because it represents speech. Every human written language is in this category. However, the symbol of Samasio graphic writing, because it conveys meaning without reference to speech, there's no correspondence between its components and any particular sounds, and you think all I've had to put to writing is like this from what I've seen so far. Yes, it's not picture writing. It's far more complex. It does its own system of rules for constructing sentences, like a visual syntax that's unrelated to the syntax for the spoken language, a visual syntax. Can you show me an example coming right up? I sat down at my desk and using a computer pulled up a frame from the recording of yesterday's conversation with Rasper. I turned the monitor so he could see it. In the spoken language, a noun has a case marker, indicating whether it's a subject or object in their written language. However, a noun has identified a subject or object based in the orientation of its logogram relative to that of the verb. Here, take a look, I pointed up one of the figures, for instance. When Hepapod is integrated with here as this way, with these strokes paralleled, it means that the Hepapod is doing the hearing. I showed him a different one. When they're combined this way, with the strokes perpendicular, it means that the Hepapod is being heard. This morphology applies to several verbs, another example is the inflection system I called up another frame from the recording,

29:14in their written language. This logogram means roughly here easily or here clearly. CD elements it is in common with the logogram for here. You can still combine it with Hepapod in the same ways as before to indicate that the Hepapod can hear something clearly, or that the Hepapod is clearly heard. But what's really interesting is that the modulation of here into here clearly isn't a special case. You see the transformation they applied. Airy nodded pointing. It's like they express the idea of clearly by changing the curve of the strokes in the middle. The modulation is applicable to lots of verbs. The logogram for C can be modulated in the same way to form C clearly, and so can the logogram for read in others. And changing the curve of those strokes is no parallel in this speech. With a spoken version of these verbs, they add a prefix to the verb to express ease of manner. And the prefixes for C and here are different. There are other examples, but you get the idea. It's essentially a grammar in two dimensions. He began pacing thoughtfully. Is there anything like this in human writing systems? Mathematical equations, notations from music and dance, but those are all very specialized. We couldn't record this

30:16conversation using them. But I suspect if we knew it well enough, we could record this conversation in the Hepapod writing system. I think it's a full-fledged, general-purpose graphical language. Gary found, so their writing constitutes a completely separate language from the speech, right? Pied. In fact, it would be more accurate to refer to this writing system as Hepapod be a new Hepapod astrictly for referring to spoken language. Hold on a second. Why use two languages when one was a vice? That seems unnecessarily hard to learn. Like English spelling, I said, ease of learning isn't the primary force and language evolution for the Hepapods. Writing and speech may play such different cultural or cognitive roles that using separate languages makes more sense than using different forms of the same one. He considered it. I see what you mean. Maybe they think our form of writing is redundant, like we're wasting a second communications channel. That's entirely possible. Finding out why they use a second language for writing will tell us a lot about them. So I take it this means we won't be able to use the writing to help us learn this spoken language. I say, yeah, that's the most immediate implication,

31:20but I don't think we should ignore either Hepapod or B. We need a two-pronged approach. I pointed at the screen. I'll bet you that learning a two-dimensional grammar will help you when it comes time to learn their mathematical notation. You've got the pointer, so are you ready to start asking them about the mathematics not yet? We need a better grasp on this writing system before we begin anything else. I said and then smiled when he mind frustration. Patience, good sir. Patience is a virtue. You'll be six when your father has a conference to attend in Hawaii and will accompany him. You'll be so excited that you'll make preparations for weeks beforehand. You'll ask me about coconuts and volcanoes and surfing and practice full dancing in the mirror. You'll pack a suitcase with the clothes and toys you want to bring and you'll drag it around the sea how long you can carry it. You'll ask me if I can carry your wrench just get you in my back since there won't be any more room for it in yours and you simply can't leave without it. You won't need all these, I'll say. There'll be so many fun things to do there. You won't have time to play with so many toys. You'll consider that. Dimples will appear above your eyebrows when you think hard. Eventually you'll agree to pack fewer toys but your expectations will, if anything,

32:23increase. I want to be in Hawaii now. You win. Sometimes it's good to wait, I'll say. The anticipation makes it more fun when you get there. And you'll just pout. In the next report I submitted, I suggested that the term logram was a misnomer because it implied that each graph represented a spoken word, when in fact the graphs didn't correspond to our notion of spoken words at all. I didn't want to use the term idiogram either because of how it had been used in the past. I suggested the term semi-gram instead. It appeared that a semi-gram corresponded roughly to a written word in human languages. It was meaningful on its own and in combination with other semi-grams could form endless statements. We couldn't define it precisely but then no one had ever satisfactorily defined word for human language as Ada. When it came to sentences in Haptopod B, though things became much more confusing. The language had no written punctuation. Its syntax was indicated in a way that semi-grams were combined and there was no need to indicate the cadence of speech. There was certainly no way to slice out subject predicate pairings neatly to make sentences. A sentence seemed to be what to have a number of semi-grams a Haptopod

33:26wanted to join together. The only difference between a sentence and a paragraph or a page was size. When a Haptopod B sentence grew fairly sizable, his visual impact was remarkable. If I wasn't trying to decipher it, the writing looked like fancy for preying mantis drawn in a cussistile, all clinging to each other to form an estrus glatus, each slightly different in a stance. And the bigger sentences had an effect similar to that of psychedelic posters, sometimes I watering, sometimes hypnotic. I remember a picture of you taking it your college graduation. In the photo, you were striking a pose for the camera. Modderboards stylishly tilted on your head, one hand touching your sunglasses, the other hand on your hip holding open your gown to reveal the tank top and shorts you are wearing underneath. I remember your graduation. There will be the distraction of having Nelson and your father and what's her name they're all at the same time. But that will be minor. That entire weekend, while you're introducing me to your classmates and hugging everyone incessantly, I'll be all but mute with amazement. I can't believe that you, a grown woman, taller than me and beautiful enough to make my heart ache, will be the same girl I used to

34:26lift off the ground so you could reach the drinking fountain. The same girl who used to trundle out of my bedroom, dripped in a dress and hat and four scars from my closet. And after graduation, you'll be heading for a job as a financial analyst. I won't even understand what you do there. I won't even understand your fascination with money, the preeminence you gave to Salary when a negotiating job offers. I would prefer it if you'd pursue something without regard for its monetary rewards, but I'll have no complaints. My own mother could never understand why I couldn't just be a high school English teacher. You'll do what makes you happy, and that'll be all that I ask for. As time went on, the teams at each looking gas began working and ennased on learning how to put terminology for elementary mathematics and physics. We worked together on presentations, with Ling was focusing on procedure and the physicists focusing on subject matter. The physicists showed us previously devised systems for communicating with agents based on mathematics. But those were intended for use over a radio telescope group. We reworked them for face-to-face communication. Our teams were successful with basic arithmetic, but we had a roadblock with geometry and algebra. We tried using spherical coordinate systems instead of a rectangular one, thinking it might be more natural to the

35:30deptopods given their anatomy, but that approach wasn't any more free-fold. The heptopods didn't seem to understand what we were getting at. Likewise, the physics discussions went poorly. Only with the most concrete terms, like the names of the elements did we have any success. After several attempts at representing the periodic table, the heptopods got the idea. We tried to demonstrate basic physical attributes like mass and acceleration so we could elicit their terms for them, but the heptopods simply responded with requests for clarification to avoid perceptual problems that might be associated with any particular medium. We tried physical demonstrations as well as line drawings, photos, and animations. No more effective days with no progress became weeks, and the physicists were becoming dissolutioned by contrast. The linguists were having much more success. We made steady progress to code in the grammar of the spoken language, heptopode. It didn't follow the pattern of human languages, as expected, but it was comprehensible so far. Free word order, even to the extent that there was no preferred order for the clauses in a conditional statement, and to find some for human language. Universal, it also appeared that the heptopods had no objection to many levels of center embedding of clauses, something that quickly defeated humans percured, but not impenetrable. Much more interesting were the newly discovered morphological and grammatical

36:30processes in heptopod B that were uniquely too dimensional, depending on a semi-grunge declension. Inflictions could be indicated by varying certain strokes' curvature, or its thickness, or its manner of undulation or Bavaria. Drew McIntyre here from WWE, wielding the claymore can be a life of chaos. When I'm not dominating in the ring, Chumba Casino is how this warrior takes a wee break. With hundreds of online social games and new weekly releases, there's always something fresh to try. And those daily boosts, next level, even my free time feels like Val Hallum. So when life feels like a battle, kick up your feet, have some fun, and let's Chumba. No purchase necessary, VGW Group Boyd were prohibited by law CTs and Cs, 21+, sponsored by Chumba Casino. Being the relative sizes of two radicals, are their relative distance to another radical, or their orientations, or various other means. These were non-segmental graphins, they couldn't be isolated from the rest of a semi-grunge, and despite how such trace behaved in human writing, these said nothing to do with calligraphic style, their meanings were defined according to a consistent and an ambiguous grammar. We regularly asked the heptopods where they had come, each time they answered to CR to observe. Indeed, sometimes they prefer to watch a

37:34silently rather than answer our questions. Perhaps there were scientists, perhaps they were tourists, the State Department instructed us to reveal as that was possible about humanity in case that information could be used as a bargaining chip and subsequent negotiations. We bled, though it didn't require much effort to the heptopods never ask questions about anything. Whether scientists were tourists, they were an awfully incurious bunch. I remember once when we'll be driving to them all to buy some clothes for you, you'll be 13th one moment, you'll be sprawled in your seat completely and self-conscious. All child, the next year you'll toss your hair with a practice casualist like a fashion model in training, you'll give me some instructions as I'm packing the car, okay, mom. Give me one of the credit cards and we can meet back of the entrance here in two hours. I'll laugh, not a chance, all the credit cards stay with me, you're kidding. You'll become the embodiment of exesperation, we'll get out of the car and I'll start walking to the mall entrance after seeing that I work budge in the matter, you'll quickly reformulate your plans, okay, mom, okay. You can come with me. Just walk a little ways behind me so it doesn't look like we're together. If I see any friends of mine, I'm gonna stop and talk to them but you just keep walking, okay.

38:34I'll come find you later. I'll stop in my tracks, excuse me. I'm not the hired help, nor am I some mutant relative for you to be ashamed of. But mom, I can't let anyone see you with me, what are you talking about? I've already met your friends, they've been to the house, that was different, you'll say, incredulous that you've had to explain it. This is shopping, too bad. Then the explosion. You won't do the least thing to make me happy, you don't care about me at all. It would have been that lawn since you enjoyed going shopping with me, it will forever astonish me, it will forever astonish me how quickly you grow out of one phase and enter another. Living with you will be like gaming for a moving target, you'll always be further lawn the next back. I looked at the sentence and haptopod be that I had just written, using simple pen and paper. Like all the sentences I generated myself, this one looked misaked, like a haptopod written sentence that had been smashed with a hammer and then an expert they taped back together. I had sheets of such an elegant semicirons covering my desk, fluttering occasionally when the oscillating fan swung past. It was strange trying to learn a language that had no spoken form, instead of practicing my pronunciation. I had taken to squeezing my eyes shut and trying to paint semi-grams on the inside of my eyelids, there was a knock at the door and before I could answer.

39:37Gary came looking in, jubilant, Illinois got a repetition in physics. Really? That's great. When did it happen? It happened a few hours ago. We just had the video conference. Let me show you what it is. He started racing my blackboard, don't worry, I didn't need any of that. Good. He picked up a knob of chalk and drew a diagram. Okay, here's the path of ray of light takes when crossing from air to water. The light ray travels in a straight line until it hits the water. A water has a different index of refraction so the light changes direction. You've heard of this before, right? I nodded, sure. Now here's an interesting property about the path the light takes. The path is the fastest possible route between the two points. Come again, imagine, just for grins, that the ray of light traveled along this path. He added a dotted line to his diagram. This hypothetical path is shorter than the path the light actually takes, but light travels more slowly in water than it does in air, and a greater percentage of this path is underwater, so it would take longer for light to travel along this path than it does along the real path. Okay, I get it. Now, imagine if light were to travel along this other path.

40:39He drew a second dotted path. This path reduces the percentage that's underwater, but the total length is larger, so it would also take longer for light to travel along this path than along the actual one. Erie put down the chalk and gesture to his diagram on the chalkboard with white tip fingers, any hypothetical path would require more time to traverse than the one actually taken in other words. The route that the light ray takes is always the fastest possible one that's Fermat's principle of least time. Home, interesting. And this is what the Heptipod responded to. Exactly. More had gave an animated presentation of Fermat's principle at the Illinois looking class, and the Heptipod repeated it back. Now he's trying to get a symbolic description. He grinned. Now is that highly neat or what? It's neat alright, but how come I haven't heard a Fermat's principle before? I picked up a binder and waved it at him. It was a primer on the physics topic suggested for use in communication with the Heptipods. This thing goes on forever about plant masses and the spin flip of atomic hydrogen and not a word about the refraction of light. We guessed wrong about what would be most useful for you to know, carry set with embarrassment.

41:40In fact, it's curious that Fermat's principle was the first breakthrough even though it's easy to explain. You need calculus to describe it mathematically and not ordinary calculus. You need a calculus of variation. We thought that some simple theorem of geometry or algebra would be the breakthrough. Curious indeed. You think the Heptipod's idea of what simple doesn't match iris? Exactly. Which is why I'm dying to see what the mathematical description of Fermat's principle looks like. He paced us we talked. If the version of the calculus of variations is simpler to them than their equivalent of algebra, that might explain why we've had so much trouble talking about physics. Their entire system of mathematics maybe tops it heavy compared to iris. He pointed to the physics primer. You can be sure that we're going to revise that. So you can build from Fermat's principle to other areas of physics probably. There are lots of physical principles just like Fermat's. What? Likelyrus's principle of least cause of space? When did physics become so minimalist? Well, the word least is misleading. You see, Fermat's principle of least time is incomplete. In certain situations, life follows a path that makes more time than any of the other possibilities. It's more accurate to say that light always

42:44follows an extreme path, either one that minimizes the time taken or one that maximizes it. A minimum and a maximum share certain mathematical properties so both situations can be described with one equation. So to be precise, Fermat's principle isn't a minimal principle. Instead, it's what's known as a variational principle. And there are more of these variation principles. He nodded. In all branches of physics, almost every physical low can be restated as a variational principle. The only difference between these principles is in which attribute is minimized or maximized. He gestured as if the different branches of physics were arrayed before him on a table. In optics, where Fermat's principle applies, time is the attribute that has to be an extreme. In mechanics, it's a different attribute. In electromagnetism, it's something else again. But all these principles are similar mathematically. So once you get their mathematical description of Fermat's principle, you should be able to decode the other ones. God, I hope so. I think this is the wedge that we've been looking for, the one that cracks open their formulation of physics. This calls for a celebration. He stopped his pacing and turned to me,

43:47hey, Luisa. Want to go out for dinner? My treat. I was mildly surprised, sure, I said, it'll be when you first learn to what that I get daily demonstrations of asymmetry in our relationship. You'll be incessantly running off somewhere, and each time you walk into doorframe or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it's my own. It'll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of myself, whose sense renews report pain just fine, but whose motor nose wouldn't convey my commands at all. It's so unfair. I'm going to give birth to an animated voodoo doll of myself. I didn't see this in the contract when I signed up. Was this part of the deal? And then, there will be times when I see you laughing, like the time you'll be playing with the neighbor's puppy, poking your hands through the chain link fence separating our backyards. And you'll be laughing so hard you'll start hikipe. Puppy will run inside the neighbor's house and you'll after it will gradually subside, letting you catch your breath. Then the puppy will come back to the fence to lick your fingers again and you'll shriek and start laughing all over again. It will be the most wonderful sound I could ever imagine, a sound that makes me feel like a fountain or a wellspring.

44:48Now, if only I can remember that sound the next time you blight disregard for self-posservation gives me a heart attack. After the breakthrough with Fermat's principle, discussions of scientific concepts become more fruitful. It wasn't as if all the HEPPA pod physics was suddenly rendered transparent, but progress was suddenly steady. According to Gary, the HEPPA pod's formulation of physics was indeed topsy-tier V relative tires. Physical attributes that humans defined using integral calculus were seen as fundamental by the HEPPA pods. As an example, Gary described an attribute that, in physics jargon, bore the deceptively simple name action which represented the difference between kinetic and potential energy integrated over time. Whatever that meant, calculus for us, elementary to them. Conversely, to define attributes that humans thought of as fundamental, like velocity, the HEPPA pod's employed mathematics that were, Gary assured me, highly weird. Physicists were ultimately able to prove the equivalents of HEPPA mathematics and human mathematics, even though their approaches were almost the reverse of one another. Both were symptoms of describing the same physical universe. I tried following some of the equations that the physicists were coming up with, but it was no use. I couldn't really grasp the

45:51significance of physical attributes like action. I couldn't, with any confidence, ponder the significance of treating such an attribute as fundamental. Still, I tried to ponder questions formulated in terms more familiar to me. What kind of wolf you did the HEPPA pods have that they would consider firm as principle the simplest explanation of light refraction? What kind of perception made a minimum on maximum readily apparent to them? Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Victory Lane? Yeah, it's even better with Chumba by my side. Race to ChumbaCasino.com, let's Chumba. No purchase necessary, VTW Group, voidware prohibited by law, CTNCs, 21 Plus, sponsored by ChumbaCasino. Your eyes will be blue like your dad's, not mud brown like mine. Boys will stare into those eyes the way I did and drew into your dad's, surprised and enchanted, as I was in and defined them in combination with black hair. You will have many suitors. I remember when you were 15, coming home after a weekend at your dad's, incredulous over the interrogation he'll have put you through regarding the boy you're currently dating. You'll sprawl on the sofa recounting your dad's latest breach of common sense. You know what he said? He said, I know what teenage boys are like,

46:53roll of the eyes, like I don't, don't hold it against him. I'll say, he's a father, he can't help it. Having seen you interact with your friends, I won't worry much about the boy taking a vantage of you. If anything, the opposite will be more likely, and I'll worry about that. He wishes I was still a kid. He hasn't known how to act toward me since I grew breasts. Well, the development was a shock for him. Give him time to recover. It's been years, mom. How long is it going to take? I'll let you know when my father has come to terms with mine. During one of the video conferences for the linguists, his narrows from the Massachusetts looking glass had raised an interesting question. Was there a particular order in which some grams were written in a heptopopy sentence? It was clear that word order meant next to nothing when speaking in heptopode, when asked to repeat what it had just said. A heptopode would likely as not use a different word order unless we specifically asked them to. Was word order similarly unimportant when writing in heptopod B? Previously, we had only focused our attention on how a sentence in heptopod B looked once it was complete. As far as anyone could tell, there was no preferred order when reading the semigrams in a sentence. You could start almost anywhere in the nest, then follow the branching

47:55clauses until you'd read the whole thing. But that was reading. Was the same true about writing? During my most recent session with flapper and rasperi, I'd asked them if instead of displaying a semigram only after it was completed, it could show it to us while it was being written. And they had agreed, I inserted the videotape of the session into the VCR, and on my computer I consulted the session transcript. I picked one of the longer utterances from the conversation. While flapper, it said it was the teptopod's planet at two moons, one significantly larger than the other, the three primary constituents of the planet atmosphere were nitrogen, argon, and oxygen, and 15th-last-20 eighths of the planet's surface was covered by water. The first words of the spoken utterance translated literally as an equality of size rocky orbitous slush rocky orbitous related as primary to secondary. Then I rerun the videotape until the time signature matched the one in the transcription. I started playing the tape and watched the web of semigrams being spun out of inkisbiders, silk. I rewind it and played it several times. Finally, I froze the video right after the first stroke was completed and before the second one was begun, all that was visible on screen was a single. Sinous line, comparing that initial stroke with a completed sentence,

48:55I realized that the stroke participated in several different clauses of the message. It began in the semigram for oxygen, as the determinant that distinguished it from certain other elements, then. It's laid down to become the morpheme of comparison in the description of the two moon sizes, and lastly, it flared out as the arch backbone of the semigram for ocean yet. This stroke was a single continuous line, and it was the first one that flapper wrote that meant a heptopod had to know how the entire sentence would be laid out before it could write the very first stroke. The other strokes in a sentence also traversed several clauses, making them so interconnected that none could be removed without redesigning the entire sentence. The heptopods didn't write a sentence once emigrant at the time, they build it out of strokes or respective of individual semigrams. I had seen a similarly high degree of integration before in calligraphic designs, particularly those employing the Arabic alphabet, but those designs had required careful planning by expert calligraphists. No one could lay out such an intricate design at the speed needed for holding a conversation, at least. No human code, there's a joke that I once heard a comedian tell that goes like this, I'm not sure if I'm ready to have children. I asked a friend of mine who has children, suppose I do have kids. What if when they grow up, they blame me for everything that's wrong with their lives?

49:56She laughed and said, what do you mean if? That's my favorite joke, Gary, and I were at a little Chinese restaurant. One of the local places we had taken to patronize and to get away from the encampment. We sat eating the appetizers, pop stickers, rattle and a pork, and the sesame oil. My favorite, I dip one in soy sauce and vinegar, so how are you doing with your heptopod B practice? I asked Gary looked at the ceiling, I tried to meet his gaze, but he kept shifting it, you've given up, haven't you? I said, you're not even trying anymore? He did a wonderful houndic expression and just no good at languages, he confessed. I thought learning heptopod B might be more like learning mathematics than trying to speak another language, language, but it's not. It's too forum for me. It would help you discuss physics with them, probably. But since we had our breakthrough, I can get by with just a few phrases. Aside, I suppose that's fair. I have to admit I've given up on trying to learn mathematics. So we're even. We're even. I sip my tea, though I did want to ask you about Phromat's principle. Something about it feels odd to me, but I can put my finger on it.

50:57It just doesn't sound like a law of physics. A twinkle appeared in Gary's eyes, I'll bet I know what you're talking about. He snipped a popsicle in half with his chopsticks, you are used to thinking of refraction in terms of cause and effect, search in the water surface as the cause and the change in direction is the effect, but Phromat's principle sounds weird because it describes light to behavior and goal oriented terms. It sounds like a commandment, a light beam, thou shalt minimize or maximize the time taken to reach thy destination. I considered it, go on. It's an old question in the philosophy of physics. People have been talking about it since Phromat first formulated it in the 1600s. Plunk wrote volumes about it. The thing is, while a common formulation of physical laws is casual, a variational principle like Phromat's is proposive, almost teleological hum. That's an interesting way to put it. Let me think about that for a minute. I pulled out a failed tip pen and, on my paper knuck-in, drew a copy of the diagram that Gary had drawn on my blackboard. Okay, I said, thinking aloud, so let's say the goal of a ray of light is to take the fastest path. How does the light go about doing that? Well, if I can speak anthropomorphic projectionally, the light has to examine the possible pass and compute how long each one would take. He plucked the last popsicle from the serving dish,

52:01and to do that, I continued, the ray of light has to know just where its destination is. If the destination were somewhere else, the fastest path would be different. Gary nodded again, that's right. The notion of the fastest path is meaning that, unless there is a destination specified. And computing how long a given path takes also requires information about what lies along the path, like with the water surfaces. I kept staring at the diagram on the napkin, the light ray has to know all of that ahead of time before it starts moving, right? So to speak, said Gary. The light can't start traveling in any old direction and make calls corrections later on, because a path resulting from such behavior wouldn't be the fastest possible one, the light has to do all its computations at the very beginning. I thought to myself, the ray of light has to know where it will ultimately end up before it can choose the direction to begin moving in. I knew what that reminded me of. I looked up at Gary. That's what was bugging me. I remember when you were 14, come out of your bedroom, a graffiti-covered notebook computer in hand, working on a report for school. Mom, what do you call it when both sides come when? I'll look up for my computer in the paper I'll be writing. What? Do you mean a win-win situation? No,

53:04there's some technical name for it. Some math were. Remember that time dad was here and he was talking about the stock market. He used it then. Hum, that sounds familiar, but I can't remember what you called it. I need to know. I want to use that phrase in my social studies report. I can't even search for information on it unless I know what it's called. I'm sorry. I don't know it either. Why don't you call your dad from your expression? That will be more effort than you want to make. At this point, your new father won't be getting along well. Can you call dad and ask him, but don't tell him it's for me? I think you can call him yourself. You'll fume. Jesus, mom, I can never get help with my homework since you and dad split up. It's amazing the diverse situations in which you can bring up the divorce. I've helped you with your homework, like a million years ago, mom, I'll let that pass. I'd help you with this if I could, but I don't remember what it's called, if you'll head back to your bedroom in a half. I practiced Heptopod B at every opportunity, both with other linguists and by myself. The novelty of Somerset Graphic Language made it compelling in a way that Heptopod wasn't, and my improvement in writing had excited me. Over time, the sentence is a real crucially or more cohesive. I had reached the point where it

54:08weren't better than when I didn't think about it too much. Instead of carefully trying to design a sentence before writing, I could simply begin putting down strokes immediately. My initial strokes always turned out to be compatible with an elegant rendition of what I was trying to say. I was developing a faculty like that of Heptopods. More interesting was the fact that Heptopod B was changing the way I thought. For me, thinking typically meant speaking in an internal voice. As we say in the trade, my thoughts were phonologically coded. My internal voice normally spoke in English, but that wasn't a requirement. The summer after my senior year in high school, I attended a total immersion programme for learning Russian. By the end of the summer, I was thinking and even dreaming in Russian. But it was always spoken Russian. Different language, same mode. I've always speaking silently allowed. The idea of thinking in linguistic, yet non-phanological mode always intrigued me, I had a friend born of deaf parents. He grew up using American sign language and he told me that he often thought an ESL instead of English. I used to wonder what it was like to have one's thoughts be manually coded to reason using an inner pair of hands instead of

55:10an inner voice. With Heptopod B, I was experiencing something just as foreign. My thoughts were becoming graphically coded. There were trance like moments during the day when my thoughts weren't expressed with my internal voice. Instead, I saw simigrams with my mind's eye spreading like frost on a window pane. As I grew more affluent, simigraphic designs would appear fully form, articulating even complex ideas all at once. My thought processes when moving any faster as a result, though. Instead of racing forward, my mind hung, balanced in the symmetry and allowing the semigrams. The semigrams seemed to be something more than language. They were almost like Mandela's. I found myself in a meditative state contemplating the way in which premises and conclusions were interchangeable. There was no direction inherent in the way propositions were connected, no train of thought moving along a particular route. All the components in an act of reasoning were equally powerful, all having identical precedents. A representative from the State Department named Hosner had the job of briefing the U.S. scientist on our agenda with the Heptopods. We sat in the video conference room listening to him lecture. Our microphone was turned off so Gary and I could exchange comments

56:13with that interrupt in Hosner. As we listened, I worried that Gary might harm his vision, rolling his eyes so often. They must have had some reason for coming all this way, said the diplomat, his voice tiny through the speakers. It does not look like their reason was conquest, thank god. But if that's not the reason, what is? Are they prospectors? Apropologists, missionaries, whatever their motives, there must be something we can offer them. Maybe it's mineral rights to our solar system. Maybe it's information about ourselves. Maybe it's the right to deliver sermons to our populations. But we can be sure that there's something. My point is this, the mode of might not be to trade, but that doesn't mean that we cannot conduct trade. We simply need to know why they are here and what we have that they want. Once we have that information, we can begin trade negotiations. I should emphasize that our relationship with the Heptopods need not be add for cereal. This is not a situation where every gain on their part is a loss on iris, or vice versa. If we handle ourselves correctly, both we and the Heptopods can come out winners. You mean it's a non-zero sum game? Gary said mockingly, a non-zero sum game. What? You'll

57:19reverse course, heading back from your bedroom. When both sides can win, I just remembered, it's called a non-zero sum game. That's it, he'll say writing it down on you notebook, thanks mom. I guess I knew it after all, I'll say, all those years with your father, some of it must have robbed off. I knew you'd know it, he'll say, he'll give me a sudden brief hug and your hair will smell of apples. You're the best. Lose? Sorry, I was distracted. What did you say? I said, what do you think about our Mr. Hosner here I prefer not to? I've shied that myself. Ignoring the government, seeing if it would go away, it hasn't. As evidence of Gary's assertion, I also kept bothering. Your immediate task is to think back on what you've learned, look for anything that might help us, has there been any indication of what the Heptopods want of what the value, gee, it never cut us to look for things like that, I said. We'll get right on it, sir, the sad thing is, that's just what we'll have to do, said Gary. Are there any questions? Ask tosser. Beargart, the linguist at the Fort Worth looking glass broke up. We've been through this with the Heptopods many times, they maintain that they're here to observe, and they maintain

58:21that information is not tradable, so they will have us believe, sit-hossner. But consider how could that be true, I know that Heptopods have occasionally stopped talking to us for brief periods, that may be a tactical maneuver on their power, if we were to stop talking to them tomorrow, wake me up if he says something interesting, said Gary. I was just going to ask you to do the same for me. That day, when Gary first explained Fermat's principle to me, he had mentioned that almost every physical law could be stated as a vorational principle. Yet, when humans thought about physical laws, they preferred to work with them in the casual formulation. I could understand that. The physical attributes that humans found intuitive, like kinetic energy or acceleration, were all properties of an object at a given moment in time, and these were conductive to a chronological casual interpretation of events. One moment growing out of another, causes and effects created a chain reaction that grew from past to future. In contrast, a physical attributes that the Heptopods found intuitive, like action or those other things defined by integrals were meaningful only over a period of time, and those were conductive to a teleological interpretation of events. By viewing events over a period of time, one recognized that there was a requirement

59:23that had to be satisfied, a goal of minimizing or maximizing, and one had to know the initial and final states to meet the goal. One needed knowledge of the effects before the causes could be initiated. I was going to understand that too. Why are you last again? You'll be three. Because it's your bedtime. I'll say again, you'll have gotten as far as getting you bathing into your jammers, but no further than that. But I'm not sleepy. You'll whine. You'll be standing at the bookshelf, pulling down a video to watch. You're the latest divisionary tactic to keep away from your bedroom. It doesn't matter. You still have to go to bed. But why? Because I'm the mom, and I said so. I'm actually going to say that, aren't I? God, somebody please shoot me. I'll pick you up and carry you under my arm to your bed. You're wailing pitfully all the while. But my soul concern will be my own distress. All those vows made in childhood I would give reasonable answers when I became apparent. That I would treat my own child as an intelligent, thinking individual. All for naught. I'm going to turn into my mother. I can fight it as much as

1:00:24I want, but there will be no stopping my slide down that long, dreadful slope. Was it actually possible to know the future? Not simply to guess at it. Was it possible to know what was going to happen with absolute certainty and specific detail? Gary once told me that the fundamental laws of physics were time symmetric, that there was no physical difference between past and future. Given that, some might say yes theoretically. But speaking more concretely, most would answer no because of free will. The existence of free will meant that we couldn't know the future, and we knew free will existed because we had direct experience of it. Folution was an intrinsic part of consciousness. Or was it? What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? Would have evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would? I stopped by Gary's office before leaving for the day. Looking for excitement, Chamba Casino is here. Play anytime, play anywhere. Play on the train, play at the store, play at home, play when you're bored. Play today for your chance to win and get daily bonuses when you log in. So, what are you waiting for? Don't delay. Chamba Casino is free to play.

1:01:25Experience social gameplay like never before. Go to Chamba Casino right now to play hundreds of games, including online slots, bingo, slingo, and more. Live the Chamba Life at ChambaCasino.com. I'm calling it quits. Did you want to grab something to eat? Sure, just wait a second, he said. He shut down his computer and gathered some papers together, then he looked up at me. Hey, want to come to my place for dinner tonight? I'll cook. I looked at him dubiously. You can cook. Just one dish, he admitted. But it's a good one. Sure, I said. I'm game. Great. We just need to go shopping for the ingredients. Don't go to any trouble. There's a market on the way to my house. It won't take a minute. We took separate cars, me following him. I almost lost him when he abruptly turned into a parking lot. It was a gourmet market. Not large, but fancy. Toll glass jaws stuffed with imported fruit sat next to specialty utensils and the store stainless steel shelves. I come in and carry as he collected fresh basil tomatoes garlic

1:02:29ling wine. There's a fish market next door. We can get fresh clams there, he said. Sounds good, utensils. My gaze wandered over the shelves, pepper mills, garlic presses, salad tongs, and stopped on a wooden salad bowl. When you were three, you'll pull a dish towel off the kitchen counter and bring that salad bowl down on top of you. I'll make a grab for it, but I'll miss. The edge of the bowl will leave you with a cut in the upper edge of your forehead that will require a single stitch. Your father and I will hold you, sobbing and stained with Caesar salad dressing as we wait in emergency room for iris. I reached out and took the bowl from the shelf. The motion didn't feel like something I was forced to do. Instead, it seemed just as urgent as my rushing to catch the bowl when it falls on you and instinct that I felt right in following. I could use a salad bowl like this. Gary looked at the bowl and nodded approvingly. See, wasn't it a good thing that I had to stop at the market? Yes, it was. We got in line to pay for our purchases. Consider the sentence. The rabbit is ready to eat. Interpret rabbit to be the object of eat. And the sentence was an announcement that dinner would be served shortly. Interpret

1:03:31rabbit to be the subject of eat, and it was a hint. Such as a young girl might give her mother social open a bag of purine of bunnichau to very different utterances. In fact, they were probably mutually exclusive within a single household. Yet either it was a valid interpretation, only context could determine what the sentence meant. Consider the phenomenon of light hitting water at one angle and traveling through a different angle. Explain it by saying that a difference in the index of refraction caused the light to change direction and one saw the world as human saw it. Explain it by saying that light minimized the town need to travel to its destination. And one saw the world as the Heptopods saw it. Two different interpretations. The physical universe was a language with the perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be passed in two entirely different ways. One casual and the other theological, both valid. Neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available. When the ancestors of humans and Heptopods first quiet the spark of consciousness, they both perceived the same physical world. But the pasta perceptions differently. The world views that ultimately cost with the end result of the divergence. Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness. While Heptopods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness, we experienced events in one order and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They had to be reinstalled events at once

1:04:33and perceive the purpose underlying them all. A minimizing, maximizing purpose. I have a recurring dream about your death in the dream. And the one who's rock climate me, can you imagine it? And you're three years old. Riding in some kind of back I came wearing. We're just a few feet below ledge where we can rest. And you weren't weighed until I climbed up to it. You start pulling yourself out of the pack. I order you to stop. But of course you ignore me. I feel you're weight-alternating from one side of the pack to the other as you climb out. Then I feel your left foot on my shoulder. And then you're right. I'm screaming at you. But I can't get a hand free to grab you. I can see the wavy design and the souls of your sneakers as you climb. And then I see a flick of stone give way beneath one of them. He slide right past me and I can't move a muscle. I look down and I see you shrink into the distance below me. Then all of a sudden name at the mug and orderly lifts the sheet from your face and I see that you're 25. You okay? I was sitting up right in bed. I'd walk and carry with my movements. I'm fine. I was just startled. I didn't recognize where I was for a moment. Sleepily he said we can stay at your place next time. I kissed him. Don't worry. Your place is fine. We culled up my back against his chest and

1:05:33went back to sleep. When you're three and we're climbing a steep spiral flight of stairs, I'll hold your hand extra tightly. If you'll pull your hand away from me I can do it by myself. He'll insist and then move away from me to prove it and I'll remember that dream will repeat that sink out this time during your childhood. I can almost believe that given your country in nature, my attempts to protect you will be what create your love of climbing. First, the jungle gym at the playground then trees out in the green bells around our neighborhood. The rock walls at the climbing club and ultimately cliff faces and national pucks just like the one you would fall from in my dreams. I finished the last vertical in the sentence but then the chalk and sat down in my desk chair. I leaned back and surveyed the giant Heptopod B sentence I'd written that covered the entire blackboard in my office. It included several complex causes and I'd managed to integrate all of them rather nicely. Looking at a sentence like this one, I understood why the Heptopods had evolved a semisographic writing system like Heptopod B. It was better suited for a species with simultaneous mode consciousness. For them, speech was a bottleneck because it required that one word follow another sequentially, with writing. On the other hand, every mark on a page was visible simultaneously. Why can strain writing with a lot of graphics straight to get demanding that it just be as sequential as speech? That would never occur to them.

1:06:36Simisographic writing naturally took advantage of page 2 dimensionality instead of dueling out more fiends one at a time. It offered an entire page full of them all at once and now that Heptopod B had introduced me to a simultaneous mode of consciousness. I understood the rationale behind Heptopod's grammar, what my sequential mind has perceived as unnecessarily confluded. I now recognised as an attempt to provide flexibility within the confines of sequential speech. I could use Heptopod more easily as a result, though it was still a pro substitute for Heptopod B that was a knock at the door and then Gary Portis head and Colonel Weber will be here in a minute. I grimaced. Right. Weber was coming to participate in a session with flapper and raspberry. I was to act as translator. A job I wasn't trained for and that I detested. Gary stepped inside and closed the door. He pulled me out of my chair and kissed me. I smiled. You trying to cheer me up before he gets here? No. I'm trying to cheer me up. You weren't interested in talking to the Heptopods at all. Were you? You worked on this project just to get me into bed. Ah, you see right through me. I looked into his eyes. You better believe it. I said, I remember when you'll be a month old and I'll stumble out of bed to give you to him feeding through nursery. We'll have the baby smell of diaper rash cream and towel compounded with a faint ammoniac with coming from

1:07:39the diaper pale in a corner. I'll lean over your crate, lift your squalling form out and sit in the walking chair to nurse you. The word infant is derived from the Latin word for unable to speak but it'll be perfectly capable of saying one thing, a sufferer, and you'll do it tirelessly and without hesitation. I have to admire your auto commitment to the statement. When you cry, it will become average and conate. Every fiber of your body employed and expressed in that emotion, it's funny, when you're tranquil. You will seem to radiate light and if someone were to paint a portrait of you like that, I'd insist that they include the halo, but when you're unhappy, you will become a clockson, built for radiating sound. A portrait of you then could simply be a fire alarm bell at the stage of your life, there will be no past or future for you until I give you my breast. You'll have no memory of contentment in the past nor expectation of relief in the future, once you begin nursing, everything will reverse and all will be right with the world. Now is the only moment you'll perceive you'll live in the present tense in many ways. It's an endable state, the haptopods are neither free nor bound as we understood those concepts, they don't act according to their will. Nor are they helpless automatons, what distinguishes the haptopods mode of awareness is not just that their actions coincide with history's events. It is also that they murderous coincide with history's purposes, they act to create the future to enact chronology.

1:08:42Freedom isn't an illusion, it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness, within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion, it's simply a different context. No more and no less valid than the other. It's like the phenosoptical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman face turned away from the viewer, or what knows, Cron, chin tucked down on her chest, there's no correct interpretation, both are equally valid, but you can't see breath at the same time, similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future, conversely. Now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to the future, including telling others what I know, those who know the future don't talk about it. I turned in the VCO and sorted a cassette of session from the Fort Worth looking glass, the diplomatic negotiator was having a discussion with the Hebtepods there, with Bogrod acting as a translator, the negotiator was describing humans' moral beliefs, trying to lay some groundwork for the concept of alterism. I knew the Hebtepods were familiar with the conversations of actual outcome, but they still participated in disastrically. If I could have described this to someone who didn't already know, she might ask if the Hebtepods already knew everything that they would say or hear, what was the point of their using language at all.

1:09:42A reasonable question, but language wasn't only for communication, it was also a form of action according to speech-act theory statements like, you're under arrest. I christened this vessel. Or, I promise, we're all performative. A speaker could perform the action only by uttering the words. For such acts, knowing what would be said didn't change anything. Everyone are whetting anticipated the words, I now pronounce you husband and life. But until the minister actually said them, the ceremony didn't count. With performative language, saying equal to doing. For the Hebtepods, all language was performative. Instead of using language to inform, they used language to actualize. Sure, Hebtepods already knew what would be said in any conversation, but in order for their knowledge to be true, the conversation would have to take place. First, Goldalox tried the Papa Bear's Bull of Porridge, but it was full of Brussels sprouts, which she hated. You laugh. No, that's wrong. We'll be sitting side by side in the sofa of the skinny, overpressed hardcover spread upon our laps. I'll keep reading. Then, Goldalox tried the Mama Bear's Bull of Porridge, but it was full of spinach, which she also hated. You'll put your hand on

1:10:46the page of the book to stop me. You have to read it the right way. I'm reading just what it says here. I'll say all innocence. No, you're not. That's not how the story goes. Well, if you already know how the story goes, why do you need me to read it to you? Cause I want to hear it. The air conditioning in Weber's office almost compensated for having to talk to the man. They're willing to engage in a type of exchange. I explained, but it's not trade. We simply give them something, and they give us something in return. Neither party tells the other what they're giving beforehand. Colonel Weber's brow furrowed just slightly. You mean they're willing to exchange gifts? I knew what I had to say. We shouldn't think of it as gift giving. We don't know if this transaction has the same associations for the haptopods they give giving us for us. Can we drop hints about the kind of gift we want? They don't do that themselves for this type. It is Ryan C. Crest here. There was a recent social media trend, which consisted of flying on a plane with no music, no movies, no entertainment, but a better trend would be going to chumbacacino.com. It's like having a mini social casino in your pocket. Chumbacacino has over 100 online

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1:12:51discovered anything new in the physics discussions? He asked right on cue. If you mean any information new to Mackine, no, said Gary. The Haptopods haven't varied from the routine. If we demonstrate something to them, they'll show us their formulation of it. But would they know? Anotments that was spontaneous and communicative in the context of human discourse became a ritual recitation when viewed by the light of Haptopodby, Weber's gal, alright then. We'll see how the State Department feels about this. Maybe we can arrange some kind of gift giving ceremony. Like physical events, with the casual and technological interpretations, every linguistic event of two possible interpretations is a transmission of information and is the realization of a plan. I think that's a good idea, Colonel, I said. There was an ambiguity invisible to most. A private joke. Don't ask me to explain it. Even though I'm proficient with Haptopodby, I know I don't experience reality the way a Haptopod does. My mind was cast in the mold of a human. Sequential languages and no amount of immersion in an alien language can completely reshape it. My worldview is an amalgam of human and Haptopod. Before I learned how to think in Haptopodby, my memories grew like a column of cigarette

1:13:54athlete down by the infinitesimal silver of combustion that was my consciousness, making the sequential present. After I learned Haptopodby, new memories fell into place like gigantic blocks, each one measuring years' duration. Although they didn't arrive in order, a long contiguously, they soon composed a period of five decades. It is the period during which I know Haptopodby well enough to think in it, starting during my interviews with flapper and raspberry and ending with my death. Usually Haptopodby affects just my memory. My consciousness crawls along as it did before at a growing sliver crawling forward in time. The difference being that the ash of memory lies ahead as well as behind. There is no real combustion, but occasionally I have glimpses when Haptopodby truly reigns and experience past and feature all at once. My consciousness becomes a half century long amber burning outside time. I perceive, during those glimpses, a period encompassing the rest of my life and the entirety of yours. I wrote out the semigrams for process, create endpoint, inclusive way meaning, let's start. Raspberry replied in affirmative and the sliders began. The second display screen that Haptopods had provided began presenting a series of

1:14:59images composed of semigrams and equations, while one of our videos screens did the same. This was the second gift exchange I had been present for, the 8-1 overall, and I knew it would be the last. The looking glass tent was crowded with people. Burgard from Fort Worth was here, as we're gerrying a nuclear physicist, assorted biologists, anthropologists, military brass, and diplomats. Thankfully, they had set up an air conditioner to cool the place off. We would review the tapes of the images later to figure out just what the Haptopods gift was. Our own gift in the Lusco cave paintings. We all crowded around the Haptopods second screen, trying to glean some idea of the images content as they went by. Preliminary assessments asked Colonel Weber It's not a return, said Burgard. In a previous exchange, the Haptopods had given us information about ourselves that we had previously told them. This had infuriated the state department, but we had no reason to think of it as an insult. It probably indicated that trade value really didn't play a role in these exchanges. It didn't exclude the possibility that the Haptopods might yet offer us a space drive or cold fusion or some other wishful fill in miracle. That looks

1:16:00like an organic chemistry, said the nuclear physicist pointing at an equation before the image was replaced. Gary nodded. It could be materials technology, he said. Maybe we're finally getting somewhere, said Colonel Weber. I want to see more animal pictures. I whisper quietly so that only Gary could hear me and pounded like a child. He smiled and poked me. Truthfully, I wish that the Haptopods had given another's in a biology lecture as they had on two previous exchanges. Judging from those humans were more similar to the Haptopods than any other species they ever encountered. Or, another lecture on Haptopod history those had been filled with apparent non-secretures but were interesting nonetheless. I didn't want the Haptopods to give us new technology because I didn't want to see what our governments might do with it. I watched raspberry while the information was being exchanged, looking for any anomalous behavior. It stood barely moving as usual. I saw no indications of what would happen shortly. After a minute, the Haptopods screen went blank. And a minute after that, Iris did too. Gary and most of the other scientists clustered around a tiny video screen that was replaying at the Haptopods presentation. I could

1:17:04barely hear them talk about the need to call in a solid state physicist. Colonel Weber turned. He too, he said, pointing to me and then to Berger. Scheduled the time and location for the next exchange. Then he followed the others to the playback screen. Coming right up, I said. To Berkart, I asked, would you care to do the honors or shall I? I knew Berkart had gained a proficiency in Haptopod B, similar to mine. It's your looking glass, he said. You drive. I sat down again at the Transmitting computer. I army translated back when you were a grud student. That's for God I'm sure, he said. Even now, I can hardly believe it. Everything we said to each other felt like the carefully bland exchanges of spies who meet in public, but never break cover. I wrote out the semograms for Locus Exchange Transaction, Converse, inclusive we eat with a projective aspect modulation. Rasper eroded to reply. That was my cue to front and for Berger to ask, what does it mean by that? His delivery was perfect. I wrote a request for clarification. Rasper's reply was the same as before. Then I watched it glide out of the room. The curtain was about to fall on this act of our performance. Colonel Weber

1:18:04stepped forward. What's going on? Where did it go? It said that the Haptopods are leaving now, I said. Not just itself. All of them. Call it back here now. Ask it what it means. Um, I don't think Rasper is wearing a pager. I said. The image of the room and the looking glass disappeared so abruptly that it took a moment for my eyes to register. What I was seeing instead, it was the other side of the looking glass tent. The looking glass had become completely transparent. The conversation around the playbuck screen fell silent. What the hell was going on here, said Colonel Weber. Gary walked up to the looking glass and then around it to the other side. He touched the rear surface with one hand. I could see the pill levels where his fingertips made contact with the looking glass. I think he said. We just saw a demonstration of transportation at a distance. I heard the sounds of heavy footfalls on dry grass. A soldier came into the tent door short of breath from sprinting, holding an oversized walkie-talkie. Colonel, message from Weber grabbed the walkie-talkie from him. I remember it would be like watching you when you were a day old. Your father will have gone for a quick visit to the hospital cafeteria and you'll be lying in your best-ner and I'll be leaning over you. So soon after the delivery,

1:19:07I will still be feeling like a rung-out towel. He will seem unconsciously tiny given how enormous I felt during the pregnancy. I could swear there was room for someone much larger and more robust than you in there. Your hands and feet will be long and thin, not shall be yet. Your face will still be all red and pinched, puffy eyelids squeezed shut, the gnome-like face that precedes the trubek. I'll run a finger over your belly, marveling at the uncanny softness of your skin, wondering if so could abrade your body like bell-app. Then you'll rye, twisting your body while poking out your legs one at a time and I'll recognize the gestures when I had felt you do inside me many times. So that's what it looks like. I feel elated at this evidence of unique mother child blonde. This certitude that you're the one I carried. Even if I'd never laid eyes on you before, I'd be able to pick you up from a sea of babies. Not that one. No, not for either. Wait, that one over there. Yes, that's her. She's mine. The final gift exchange was the last we ever saw of the Heptopods. All at once, all over the world, their looking glasses became transparent

1:20:08and their ships left orbit. Subsequent analysis of the looking glasses revealed them to be nothing more than sheets of fuse silica, completely inert. The information from the final exchange session described the new class of superconducting materials, but it laid to prove to duplicate the results of research just completed in Japan. Nothing that humans didn't already know. We never did learn why the Heptopods left any more than we learned what brought them here, or why they acted the way they did. My own new awareness didn't provide that type of knowledge. The Heptopods' behavior was presumably inexplicable from a sequential point of view, but we never found that explanation. I would have liked to experience more of the Heptopods' worldview to feel the way they feel than perhaps I could immerse myself fully in an necessity of events, as they must, instead of merely waiting in its surf for the rest of my life. But that will never come to pass. I will continue to practice the Heptopod languages as well the other linguists on the looking glass teams, but none of us will ever progress any further than we did when the Heptopods were here. Working with the Heptopods changed my life. I met your father and learned Heptopod B, both of which make it possible for me to know you now here on the patio in the moonlight.

1:21:09Eventually, many years from now, I'll be without your father and without you. All I will have left from this moment is the Heptopod language, so I pay close attention and note every detail. From the beginning, I need my destination, and I chose my route accordingly. But am I working toward an extreme of joy or of pain? Will I achieve a minimum or a maximum? These questions are in my mind when your father asks me, do you want to make a baby? And that's my own answer, yes. And I own wrap his arms from around me, and we hold hands as we walk inside to love each other. And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one. Got it. Step two, collect your welcome bonus. Come to Papa, welcome bonus. Step three, play hundreds of casino-style games for free. That's a lot of games, all for free.

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