Because we all know the aliens are all Japanese. We’ve seen the movies. :D

oh man this is stellar!!!! god told me to tell you this is 9872nd best short story of all time……but dont fret because the 9871st is old man in the sea. awesome job!!!!!!
A brazijitoghliion pencils.

I’d like to see something more come out of this, this is really pretty cool.

very awesome, Stovo. If I wasn’t extremely tired I would venture a sequel. Another day, I suppose. Well done, as always.

That ending hit me with about as much force as the Chicxulub impactor. Awesome job, my friend, awesome job.

mmmmm. Methinks a sequel from the same pen..eh.

Nice way of doing the whole ‘alien as curious protagonist’ thing, and the spoken vs. written word thing is an interesting idea.

Oh, and I dare anyone to sequel it before Stovo. I would, but I have a patient showing up any minute. Ha, try and beat Stovo and me to a sequel! Haha!

is that supposed to be a picture of human, or just a word in written format? neat idea tho.

Yeah, I’m slightly confused… did these aliens never develop writing? That seems extremely unlikely. In the first paragraph the alien even says that they are writing back. I gotta say , my first impression was that maybe the humans gave the old one-fingered salute to the aliens. Sorry, I’m giving 2/5 cuz of the confusion.

Oh…thpppt. Looks like I changed my intentions halfway through the story. Thanks, Science. =P

And @Elsha: in the original 1024+ format, I had the words as “[trace over] the visual communication” or something to that effect. So no, the aliens do not have writing (maybe they evolved communicating in different ways…there are meant to be fundamental similarities but also strange differences between the two species—what if they simply didn’t need writing?), but they obviously have sight and can attempt to replicate pictures, or in this case, letters. Cavemen didn’t know writing, but they could still draw on the walls.

So the idea is that it’s sending a picture of the letters—and anyway, the log is “notated”, meaning it was written down from voice, meaning presumably that the aliens didn’t write it. Hence the brackets and ellipses in some spots.

(Sorry to write another ficly…)

…I had thought perhaps they were going to inquire regarding our various sign languages? Perhaps they don’t have deaf persons in their race?

(Being that I’m currently learning ASL, my ideas probably tend toward that.)

Being nice after the change and upgrading this to 4/5

Ooh, feature! Thanks everybody!

But they’re made of meat!

… Sorry.

@White hat: Oh i get it. hehehe yeah i get it
@Hobo i understood that they had a higher level of communication.
@elsha: MENACE
@science: Get a PIC
@Fyora: sign language is so freakin cool.
@THX its awesome that you have time to comment between crazy people.
@G2 you know they say if you want something done right, do it yourself.
@bluefish, are they illegal aliens? because those are from Nicaragua, i think.
@Marli I often wondered if hobo and Ne were siamese twins that work in some backwoods mexican circus like rodrigeuz brothers.
@Rorschach: it all fun and games until someone uses a Chicxulub impactor.

Science has a pic,
and its sick as HEEEELL

Thanks, but seriously, that thing was a joke to make. I took the ficly pic, selected two regions by color, and filled them in blue. Voila.

The joke itself is why it’s awesome. It’s like a snarky grin at everyone who told you to get a pic.

How would they develop civilization, technology, and the like without a means of making a permanent record? You have to write stuff down in order to pass it on to future generations. Verbal tradition is nice for story telling, but not really good at passing on engineering information.

Still, it’s an interesting way of making the aliens really “alien”.