Stories tagged “alien lifeforms”
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Investigation, Communication
We floated in a sea of light. It surrounded us, suffused us through and through. There was a strange sense of intelligence about the light as it, well, the only way to describe it is that felt like it was investigating us. It wasn’t invasive; it ...
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Symbology
I studied the symbols again. Their architecture was clearly alien, and yet their sense of familiarity was unmistakable. They meant… something to me, but I wasn’t sure yet what that was. Cartography was part of it, certainly, but there was m...
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Cartocommunication
That sense of being investigated pressed in on us again, and this time it was invasive. The intensity of the probing made my head swim, and for a few brief minutes I lost all sense of time and location. The moment passed, and I shook my head to clear m...
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Encounter in the Black
The exterior floodlamps were out, like most of the other ship’s systems. Under normal circumstances this would have been a problem. Space is a very dark place. Without external illumination we shouldn’t have been able to see much of the hul...
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Multi-Dimensional Species
Harrigan spoke up. “I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this, carto. How does a species develop the ability to communicate three-dimensionally?” I nodded. “That, sir, is exactly the crux of the issue.” I pulled ...
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Building Blocks
“What we have here, I believe, is a first-contact scenario,” I said. “An entirely new species, heretofore unknown to us or to any other race in the galaxy, occupying a space utterly alien and incomprehensible to our three-dimensional ...
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Chosen
It was Furlough who posed the next question. “Why now, carto? Why us? There are plenty of other species in the galaxy, several more advanced than we are. Why choose our race and, more specifically, our crew?” This was one question I didn...
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Choice
Later, on the bridge, we sat in silence, only the light of our individual displays providing illumination. We went about our work, waiting for the crew’s votes to roll in. A question niggled at my brain. I swung my chair around, presenting it to ...
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Trust - and Faith
As it turned out, there was no contest in the results. The crew had voted unanimously to follow this to the end. We’d been through hell and back over the last few weeks, and we were more tightly bonded than any crew had ever been. The vote demons...