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Lawrence Nault

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“The hex wall is gone- it's been replaced by a solid wall of clear material. And on the other side of that wall is Rocky. He's a spider. A big-assed spider. I turn to flee. But my rational brain takes over. 'Easy... easy... they're friendly.' I say to myself. I turn back and take in the scene. Rocky is smaller than a human. He's about the size of a Labrador. He has five legs radiating out from a central carapace-looking thing. The carapace, which is roughly a pentagon, is 18 inches across and half as thick. I don't see eyes or a face anywhere. Each leg has a joint in the middle- I'll call it an elbow. Each leg (or should I say arm?) ends in a hand. So he's got five hands. Each hand has those triangular fingers I got a good look at last time. Looks like all five hands are the same. I don't see any "front" or "back" to him. He appears to be pentagonally symmetrical. He wears clothing. The legs are bare, showing the rocklike skin, but there's cloth on the carapace. Sort of like a shirt with five armholes. I don't know what the shirt is made of but it looks thicker than typical human clothing. It's a dull greenish-brown, and inconsistently shaded. The top of the shirt has a large open hole. Like where the neck goes on a human's t-shirt. This hole is smaller than the carapace/ So he must have to put that shirt on by pulling it downward and sliding the arms through their respective holes. Again, like a human's shirt. But there's no neck or head to go through that hole on top- just a hard-looking rocky pentagon that sticks up a little bit from the crusty skin.”

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“There is an object blocking my view of the Petrova line. It’s right next to my ship. Maybe a few hundred meters away. It’s roughly triangle-shaped and it has gable-like protrusions along its hull. Yes. I said hull. It's not an asteroid- the lines are too smooth; too straight. This object was made. Fabricated. Constructed. Shapes like that don't occur in nature. It's a ship. Another ship. There's another ship in this system with me. Those flashes of light- those were its engines. It's Astrophage-powered. Just like the Hail Mary. But the design, the shape- it's nothing like any spacecraft I've ever seen. The whole thing is made of huge, flat surfaces- the worst possible way to make a pressure vessel. No one in their right mind would make a ship that shape. No one on Earth would, anyway. I blink a few times at what I'm seeing. I gulp. This... this is an alien spacecraft. Made by aliens. Aliens intelligent enough to make a spacecraft. Humanity isn't alone in the universe. And I've just met our neighbours. 'Holy fucking shit!”

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“And then, I swear to God, it waves at me! One of its little arms waves at me! I wave back. It waves again. Okay, this could go on all day. I head back toward the airlock. Your move, guys. ... Their move is taking a long time and I'm getting bored. Wow, I'm sitting here in a spaceship in the Tau Ceti system waiting for the intelligent aliens I just met to continue our conversation... and I'm bored. Humans being have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.”

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“He waves to me with a free arm. He knows one human greeting and by golly he plans to use it. I wave back. He waves again. I shake my head. No more waving. He pivots his "shoulders" to rotate his carapace back and forth. He "shook his head" inasmuch as he could. I wonder how we're going to break out of this game of "Eridian See Eridian Do," but he takes care of that for me.”

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“That's an alien. I just saw an alien. Not just an alien ship. An alien being. I mean- just his claw- er... hand. But yeah. Well, I say "his hand", but maybe it's her hand. Or some other pronoun I don't have a word for. They might have seventeen biological sexes, for all I know. Or none. No one ever talks about the really hard parts of first contact with intelligent alien life: pronouns. I'm going to go with "he" for now, because it just seems rude to call a thinking being "it." Also, until I hear otherwise, his name is Rocky.”

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