The Day Humanity Spoke

And The Ahsi Listened

“All you have to do is sit here,” Destiny said. “That’s all. Can you manage that, Sage? Without getting restless I mean.”

Sage nodded as she took the chair that was offered to her. In front of her was a computer, hooked up to a graphics tablet and a series of monitors that were supposedly for measuring radio waves or something like that. She honestly hadn’t been briefed on the whole thing very well. “Am I doing anything else?”

Destiny nodded. “You are wearing these—” she handed over a headset "--and listening. You have the best hearing of all of us.”

“What am I listening for?”

“Voices,” Destiny replied.

Sage tilted her head slightly as she stared at the monitors in front of her. “I’m listening for voices... from space? Haven’t we already tried this for like the last fifty-something years?”

“You might get lucky, Sage,” Destiny replied. “And hear something no one has ever heard before.”

Sage nodded. “Right. What should I do if I do hear something?”

“Come get me,” Destiny replied. “I’ll be right over here.” She motioned toward the other side of the room. “Monitoring a different frequency.”

Again, Sage nodded. This couldn’t be too difficult of a task if she was assigned it on only her second day of mentoring with the Seekers of Truth. They must have trusted her to not lie about whether or not she hears anything but static.

At first, the whole thing was rather tiresome. There was mostly just static on the frequency she was tuned to, and she couldn’t quite tell if it was partly the headset itself, or completely just the sounds space makes. She’d always thought space was a complete vacuum, devoid of sound. If that were true, why was she hearing static. After several hours and a few bathroom breaks, she actually heard something over her headset. She couldn’t quite make it out.

...rame Cian...

“Ramen ghih-ahn? What kind of ramen is that?” she mused to herself, then bit her lip when she realized she'd voiced that thought. Am I hearing one of the other interns mumbling about their lunch? There’s so many of us, and so many frequencies, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them got crossed.

...rame Cian, Cite...

“Rah-me, ghih-ahn, ghih-teh? That doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard before,” she mumbled. “How do I make the signal clearer?” Again, she bit her lip, realizing she was talking to herself.

She tapped around on the little indicators on the computer monitor before finding the one labeled ‘frequency’ and adjusting it by .01 numbers up, then by another .01, at which point most of the static died away and she was left with a fairly clean signal.

...rame Cian, Cite. És céas imatefa miraan ferin.

Sage shook her head in disbelief. This definitely wasn’t one of the other interns. This voice, it sounded almost like water. Something was talking, and it wasn’t anyone she knew. For a second she glanced around to see if anyone was looking her way, giving any indication that they’d heard her talking moments ago.

She took a deep breath and sighed. She’d always hated talking when she couldn’t see who was on the other side, still she tapped the button on her keyboard that she knew would send her voice out on the same frequency she was listening to. “Hello? I know you probably don’t understand me. But hello, anyway.”

For a moment, the headset went quiet, aside from the very low amount of static. Then there was a sound like someone was arguing with someone else, before a different voice replied to her, ”Aí, aen cét Éan?”

Sage struggled for a second trying to think of a response. She had no idea what this person had just asked her. So she decided to hazard a guess at the first question someone should ask a person they’d just met. ‘Who are you?’

“Hello, my name is Sage. Who are you?”

“Aí, É name cé Amati.”

That’s a start! So ‘eye’ is probably like, hello? ‘EE’ probably means like ‘I’ or ‘me’ or something, it’s a pronoun for sure! ‘name’ means name? We have the same word for name? That’s pretty cool! ‘Gee’ must be their verb to be? Amati has to be the name. “Aí, É name cé Sage? Éan name cé Amati?” It was worth a try, she hoped what she’d just said was ‘Hi, my name is Sage. Your name is Amati.’

“Aí, Sage. Éan cét Sage. É céa Amati!” There was a pause and then a new question. “aex cét Éan?”

“É cé on Earth?” Sage replied. She had a feeling she was very much missing out on some grammar or something that would have made the sentence make more sense.

“Earth?” Was the only response back. “Earth cé aex?”

“Oh, right, you probably don’t know our names.” She bit her lip. “From the Star. Three planets in?”

”Earth cé dan cian. Anan dat cian? Sen cian a dam xian?”

“Those sounded like colors? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

”Imac imate?”

“Image?”

“Ia! Ih-ma-geh.”

Sage frowned slightly. I don’t think you can send images over a radio wave? “Image? Éan, É?” She asked this, hoping that Amati would understand she was asking for the image to be sent from them, to her.

For a moment there was more silence on her line then her computer beeped and one of the monitors caught her attention. She didn’t understand what the code on the screen said, so she took off her headset and went to get Destiny.

“Destiny,” she said quietly as she tapped her mentor on the shoulder.

Destiny immediately turned and looked up at her. “You don’t have to keep telling me every time you take a break,” she replied automatically, “even though I do appreciate knowing where you’re going.”

“No, you said to come get you if I heard something,” Sage chirped. “Come see! There’s some kind of message on my monitor. The people I’m talking to want to send us a picture, I think.”

“Sage, you’ve probably intercepted someone’s cellphone signals,” Destiny replied. “What are the chances you’re actually speaking to an Alien? However, since there’s a message, I’ll help you interpret it. What language are they speaking?”

“Something I never heard before!”

That gave Destiny pause. Sage had volunteered with the Embassy when she was in high school, and was known for being able to learn languages as quickly as babies learned to breathe. The chances of someone within the city speaking a language Sage had never heard before were astronomically low.

Sage headed back to her station quickly and put on her headset again. “I’m sorry,” she said, “If you were talking and I didn’t respond. I had to get my boss. The lady in charge. I don’t know how to get the image to load if you’re sending me one. She might.”

There was a long pause on the other end and then the voice returned. “Imac...” There was another pause, then a sound kind of like something being tapped. “Imac. Sandatdi. Na?”

“Are they talking?” Destiny asked. “You look confused.”

Sage nodded but before she could try to explain to Destiny what was happening, Destiny held up a hand, cutting her off to her minor annoyance.

“When you spoke, you said something about getting the image to load. Are you trying to get them to send a picture? We have something prepared for this, actually,” she said. “Here, take the tablet. We’ll send a binary coded picture, I don’t know if their systems can read it, but if we send one first, they might be able to find you the same way we can locate people via the gps coordinates stored in images taken with their cellphones.” She paused for a moment then nodded to herself. “One simple picture. Did you figure out the word for ‘Us’ in their language?” After a moment, she added. "I'm sorry, I know you're not all that good with computers. Binary is the simplest data format that we know of. It's worth it to assume that a race advanced enough to communicate with us, probably knows how to translate binary data."

“I figured out the word for ‘I’ which is probably the word for ‘me.’” She tilted her head. "That makes sense. Maybe 'Sandatdi' that she asked me about means binary? If we assume they can read the simplest data, maybe they're also assuming that we can read the simple data."

“'I' should be close enough, hopefully. Here’s a binary image of our solar system. Annotate on it a line pointing to Earth. Did you tell them the planet name?”

Sage nodded.

“Good, then write that next to the line.”

After Sage had done that Destiny smiled.

“Tell them you’re sending an image, if you don’t know the full words try just ‘I’ and ‘image’ if you know them.”

Sage nodded. She pressed the button to speak again as Destiny tapped a bunch of prompts on the screen to send the image with her voice signal. “Amati. É imac.”

The reaction to the image came at a slightly longer delay than Sage had been hoping.

”Imac! Sandatdi! Sandatdi imac, a Éan! Sandatdi imac, a É!”

Sage repeated the words to Destiny as Destiny clicked around on the monitor a bit faster than Sage could keep up with. “As best I can tell, Sandatdi most likely means binary, just like I thought.”

“What’s most interesting here is that while I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be spelled the same in the Latin Alphabet, the word for image is the same in both English and whatever language they’re speaking.”

“The word ‘name’ appears to also be the same,” Sage replied. “Amati is the name of whoever I’m talking to. We’re probably not going to get lucky enough that any more words are the same.”

What appeared on the screen when Destiny was done clicking were two images, simply coded in binary. One of a squishy looking creature appearing somewhat similar to an Axolotl, squishy with light skin and a ridgelike crest along their jawline, and brilliant sparkling eyes. The other was of the solar system with a line pointing to a spot just behind Jupiter, with letters in a flowy swirly script next to it.

Destiny cursed slightly under her breath. “We forgot they probably cant read our alphabet, just like we can’t read theirs.”

But Sage was a step ahead of Destiny on that and quickly plugged her phone into the usb port on the keyboard. She used the tablet like a mouse and quickly pulled up a picture she’d taken of herself. “Can you make this binary?”

Destiny nodded and quickly ran a conversion on it. “Done.”

“Good, get ready to send it.” Sage replied. “When I say my name, hit the things to send it out.”

She tapped the button to speak. “Amati, Imac cé Éan? Éan imac? Imac cé É, Sage.” Destiny sent the image out with her message.

Again the reaction was more delayed than Sage anticipated, but this time she figured out it was likely because sending an image might take longer than sending a voice.

“Image... is... you?”

“Imac cé É!” Sage replied.

“Image... is me.” Accompanying those words were a picture of another of the same creatures as before, though this one had a blue tint to their skin, was smiling, and had glasses, as well as bits of what looked like gold jewelry hanging from their crest.

“That’s a 16 bit image,” Destiny whispered. “Not binary, I've never seen such rich colors in a picture from space!.”

“And the words Amati just said were very simple English,” Sage replied. “We’re learning!”

“Sage, my young friend,” Destiny said with a huge smile on her face. “Remember a few years ago you said you wanted to become an Ambassador? Well, it looks like you’re now Earth’s first Ambassador to an alien race. What do you want to tell them? It’s been recording this whole time. There’s proof of what you’ve done for us today. What words do you want remembered for all history?”

Sage grinned and pushed the button to speak again. “Amati, I don’t expect you to understand all of my words. My name is Sage, I’m from Earth. We, the people of this planet, are called Humanity. Before today, we thought we were alone. Our ships can make it to the Red Planet—” She annotated and quickly sent off the same binary picture of the solar system, but with Mars marked instead— “We call it Mars. Our probes and drones can make it very far away. Have you seen them? Do you see the satellites orbiting the planet you’re near? We put those there. We want to know what’s out there. What lives out there. In space. With you. Can you help us? Can you tell us what’s out there?”

After she was done talking there was an extremely long pause before a response. “We... must... speak with... our leaders... first. Atis céh cianrana.”

"How did you learn our language so fast?" Sage asked quietly.

"Internet?" Amati replied. "All... Humanity's... information. It... will... help our leaders... make their decision. There are rules."

"How did you access... the internet? And how did you find us?" Sage replied.

"I am... not... a scientist... I don't have answer," Amati replied, sounding almost like she was trying to apologize. "I just talk on the... radio? Officer of Communication. We found... probes? That word? We followed them." There was a pause then she said, "We... try translate data. Found location. Came here. Try translate other data. If can't work out... Might try to speak with your leaders? This... hope... not a problem?" She was struggling trying to get the words to work, Sage could tell some of the sounds were extremely foreign to her. "You... Ambassador? Officer of Communication?"

Sage blinked and looked up at Destiny. "She's saying that they found a way to access the internet, all of Humanity's data, but she doesn't know specifics, because she's just the communications officer. They followed the probes to get here. She says if they can't figure out how to translate the data, they might wish to speak with our leaders. She hopes it's not a problem. I think she wants me to be there when they do. As the 'Ambassador' which she seems to think is the same thing as 'officer of communication.'" She took a breath. "The Seekers should handle this. I'm worried about how governments might try to take this over, aggressively. We want friends, not enemies."

"The Seekers will handle it," Destiny replied. "But if they come back, refrain from calling them 'she' Sage, we don't even know if that's a concept they have. It might offend them to assume their gender... if they even have genders."

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For a more in depth look into the Ahsi language, complete with a dictionary of over 230 words, click here.