Chapter Text
Several dozen feet in the air, above a bland field of dying grass, the sky shimmered and fractured in an iridescent rainbow, like shards of prismatic glass. Out of this fracture fell the thing. It had mind enough to know that it had made a minor miscalculation, and that it would need to adapt its current ogive transformation into a simple delta planform to sustain minimum damage. But not none. With the mental equivalent of a heavy sigh, the thing rippled, the pointed nose splaying out into rippling pseudopods and a quartet of powerful, spade-ended tentacles. The pseudopods sprawled sideways and muscular contractions raced down them, flattening its body. The tentacles then formed a rough canard. Its body now above any impact area, the thing relaxed, gliding as capably as was possible with its weight in the thin atmosphere.
The landing was hard, bruising most of its lower surface, contusions that would take precious time to heal, but it left little trace of its presence in the field. Pulling its bruised appendages inwards, the creature curled into a ball, and with an odd rippling of its skin, shot off towards the nearby scrub. Anything large enough to shelter in from the surprisingly hot sun. There it lay until nightfall, biding its time, able to tell night from day only by the gradual decrease in its surface temperature. The next phase of its task was now beginning, finding a suitable host or mate with acceptable genetic robustness to begin the conquest of this realm. All things considered, it was going well.
That was when one of the local creatures began sniffing around its tightly coiled base, a damp breathing organ nuzzling into it. A tongue spreading acidic saliva across its skin. The thing recoiled in disgust. The beast clamped its jaws around a pseudopod and bit down hard. The beast’s growl reverberated through the thing’s entire substance, momentarily freezing it. Then the thing lashed out with a tentacle, trying to dislodge the attacker. It worked. Slamming the other three tentacles down gave a sudden sharp relief of beast attacking it—long and narrow, with a rear pseudopod for balance, and four bone filled columns holding it up against gravity. The muzzle was the most shocking, triangular, and instead of a beak, it had rows of angular protrusions—teeth. The thing had not fought a boned, toothed beast for a long time.
Further away, blurred with distant interference patterns, was another creature, easily three times as large as the first, and with only two bone filled columns holding it against gravity. The dynamic stability of such a creature would be an incredible boon. Just as soon as the first one was killed. But the smaller beast had backed off, standing between the thing and the larger creature. As the thing moved, so did the beast, always angling to intercept any move towards the larger creature. Intriguing—the possibility that the larger creature controlled the smaller beast mentally could not be ignored. Which, unfortunately, meant killing the smaller beast might damage the linked mind.
Only after it had parsed all this data did the thing realise it had flattened out in its normal defensive posture, tentacles beating the ground to give it some semblance of vision. Its injured pseudopod had already been drawn back into its body, but blue-white blood dripped across the field. Well, half of its injured pseudopod, that other half dangled limply from the beast’s jaws. Regeneration would take a not inconsiderable amount of energy.
Looking down at the limp… thing… hanging from her dog’s mouth, Vani sighed. “Bossco, do you gotta try to eat everything we find out here?”
The german shepherd at her side barked and jogged around her ankles, almost tripping her.
“Y’know, you better hope whatever that is ain’t poisonous, ya dopey mutt.”
Bossco’s reply was to swallow the chunk of weird meat in a single bite.
“Well, I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we boy?” Bossco jumped at her side, nuzzling her waist. “Yeah, yeah. Down. I wanna find out what this thing actually is.”
Bossco stood back, growling softly as Vani strode forward to investigate the thing she’d seen falling in the afternoon on the far side of her land. It looked somewhat like an octopus, but with too many arms, and then some squid-like tentacles too, and it had blue blood. It couldn’t be any clearer if there was a flashing red sign on top of it saying ‘alien’. It was also hurt, thanks to Bossco, and had withdrawn at least one of its several too many arms into its main body. Vani knelt down to touch the thing. It was soft; it rippled like a waterbed when she touched it—it was also smooth. So smooth it felt wet, but her hands came away bone dry.
“What are you, little one?” She had no idea if it could even hear. It seemed to, though, rolling up into a tight ball. She tried picking it up. “Heavy is what you are. How the hell can you weigh that much?”
Giving the rolled up thing a hard shove, Vani managed to get it moving, Bossco trotting along next to her, occasionally darting forward to sniff suspiciously at the thing. It wasn’t too hard getting it back to the house—it seemed able to move somewhat under its own power, if slowly. It was hard to reconcile that with the graceful glider she’d seen in the early afternoon, popping into the clear blue sky right out of nowhere. And maybe just as well it had been her land; old Frank down the road was likely as not to have filled it with buckshot, and the Anderson kids… well. Vani shrugged. The thing rippled itself up the stairs onto the porch.
“Looks like you ain’t hurt too bad then,” Vani paused with the door open. “But I wouldn’t know the first thing abo—Bossco, get out of it!—about fixing you up. Like, do you eat? Drink? Can you even hear me? Understand what I’m saying? Hell, are you even smart enough not to let Bossco try an’ eat you again?”
The thing had no idea of what was being said, only a very slight vibration against the surface of its skin. Clearly the taller creature was the far more intelligent, and it seemed to be making repeated attempts at communication while guiding the thing around. Every so often the thing would slap down the broad end of a tentacle, building a vague picture of its current location. Built from some local fibro-cellulose based material, with the lower ground contact portion covered in hide and fur. So the taller creature had its own dwelling, with seemingly unique spaces within; another clear sign of intellect superior to that of the aggressive—and hungry—beast it seemed to control.
The creature was now carefully pressing against the thing’s flank, attempting—it assumed—to uncover the injured pseudopod. Slowly, carefully, the thing unrolled the injured pseudopod. That was when it felt the tentacles of the creature cradling it, pressing against it—somewhat painfully—and otherwise manipulating the broken appendage. The range of motion on those tentacles seemed sharply limited, and when it extended another pseudopod to investigate why, those tentacles stopped moving. The thing had a moment to consider whether it might have accidentally triggered a fear response before the tentacles began to manipulate the pseudopod, moving back and forth between it and the injured one.
Tactile comparative analysis. There was one more simple test, and so the thing held out a single tentacle, uncoiling it slowly so it could meet the tentacles of the other. The pads and suckers on the thing’s tentacle wrapped over the tentacles of the creature and suddenly it understood. Those tentacles had rigid bone supports, four seemed normal—as far as the creature’s range of motion was concerned—and one seemed specialised, being both smaller and mutually opposable to the others. The tips of those tentacles also seemed to have two surfaces—a fleshy lower plate, and a hard, smooth, protective upper plate. A truly fascinating biomorphic design. It needed more data.
The thing slowly extended its remaining tentacles and pseudopods towards the tall creature, which right now was moving slowly away, and no longer touching it at all. The thing let its appendages fall limp. The tall creature stayed put. The thing extended a single tentacle towards it, sucker side up. The tall creature didn’t move forward, but the thing felt one of the creature’s tentacles stroke around its suckers. Success. It raised another tentacle. The creature met it with one of its own. A third tentacle, further away. The creature shuffled forward, one tentacle leaving the first the thing had raised and touching the newly raised tentacle. The thing lowered its first tentacle, pressing it gently against one of the flesh and bone columns supporting the tall creature, and felt an odd ripple pass through the creature’s flesh.
Vani stood stock still, her left hand pressing against the further tentacle of the thing, wishing it had eyes. She had just figured out that the only way for it to ‘see’ was to actually touch things—or do that odd ground thump every now and then. She couldn’t hide a vague sense of revulsion as two of those broad, strong tentacles explored her legs. She had no idea what it was that made it so unsettling, it just was. Then again, maybe it was the weird stickiness of the suckers alternating with the oily smoothness of its skin—but neither of those left a single trace on her own skin.
A firm slap pushed first one, then another tentacle away from the top of her thighs—and if they tried pushing any higher, well, she was in the kitchen. Putting that thought aside, Vani was glad she was wearing clothes, the tentacles seemingly able to make the distinction and stay on the outside of them. It was still uncomfortable though, as one wrapped her torso, making it hard to breathe, while another pressed experimentally into her left breast. With an annoyed huff she broke free, holding all four tentacles at arms length. The thing seemed to understand that there were places she didn’t want to be touched. Still, they needed a better method of communication than the purely tactile.
The thing didn’t have eyes, seemed to lack ears, and if it had a nose or a mouth she had yet to see any evidence of them. That was when the smaller tentacles started moving, twining up her legs. When they got high enough—where she’d slapped the larger ones away—they moved around the outside of her body, up her waist. More small tentacles joined them, spreading across her stomach and up her back, avoiding her breasts as they wrapped around her front and down her arms. They were loose enough that she could still move fairly freely. Then one wrapped around her neck. She clawed at it in sudden panic. If this thing was planning on eating her, she was going to put up a fight.
It wasn’t, but the tentacle remained around her neck, looser than before. More climbed the side of her head, covering her eyes and ears, tracing the loose tail of her hair. It truly did see by touch alone—and using so many little tentacles meant it was trying to get the best picture of her possible.
“You are a strange little thing, aren’t you?” The thing made no response, although the tentacle at her throat twitched when she spoke. “If you had eyes—or ears—it’d make this a whole lot easier.”
The thing withdrew all its pseudopods from the tall creature. A fascinating skeletal design, in theory terribly unstable and injury prone in such gravity, but in evident practice a graceful combination of dynamic stability and muscular robustness. It was also still trying to communicate. An experiment then. The thing spread out as many of its pseudopods as possible, flattening them out, raising them, and forming a parabola that centered on its main body.
“You look like a satellite dish buddy.” The sounds were not quite concise, the breaks uneven, but even so that thing knew that this would likely be the tall creature’s primary mode of communication. The only problem would be deciphering it. “Still wish you had eyes.” The variation in pitch and tone suggested a different intent than the first string. There would be an easy way to work out what a negative communication felt/sounded like. The thing reached for the upper, protruding muscles on the creature’s upper body. One of the creature’s bony tentacles slapped it away, followed by a single, firm, sound/note. “No.”
The thing gently moved a tentacle towards the meeting point of the flesh and bone support columns. The same sound, but stronger. Definite negative note. Satisfied, the thing lay its tentacles against the floor. Figuring out an affirmative would be more difficult, as with only one mutually understandable statement little effective communication could be conducted. A vague idea forming, it held up the injured pseudopod separately.
“Does it hurt?” The tone was very different to any previous.
The thing held up an unhurt pseudopod. “What are you trying to do?” Another different tone/sequence. It held up a third pseudopod, then a tentacle. The third pseudopod pointed to each in turn, in slow sequence. The tall creature moved closer, touching each in turn as it spoke. “So this one is hurt? Okay, and this one is normal; right. And then this one, it’s not like one of those other ones. So, why?” If the thing had known what a facepalm was, it would have. There was such a thing as being too successful.
Vani looked at the thing—resembling nothing more than a satellite dish and a bunch of antennae right now—and knew it was trying to communicate with her. It was going to be difficult to establish a shared lexicon if all she could do was talk, and all it could was touch, and point—but if it could point, that meant it had some vague sense of vision. Maybe there was hope yet. Even just a name would be helpful—assuming it had a name. Pointing to herself, and feeling vaguely ridiculous, Vani spoke loud and clear. “Vani.”
Then she pointed to the thing. “You?”
No response.
“Yeah, I should’ve expected that. You only understand ‘no’ right now. Kinda like Bossco as a puppy, really.”
The thing couldn’t parse what was being said any better than before, though it had at least managed to establish that the creature it was attempting to communicate with used the self-designation ‘Vani’. A possibly meaningless noise, but the creature had been purposefully indicating itself while speaking the word. Then it had pointed at the thing—and asked what it called itself. The thing trembled with excitement. That meant the Vani-creature was both self-aware—the most definite sign of true intelligence—and had a theory of mind, asking how another saw itself. This left the problem of the thing not having an individual self-identifying label. It held up its tentacles letting them wave idly while it thought on the matter.
“‘course, I could always just call you Tentacles, on account of you're made of ‘em.” There was a pause as the Vani-creature thought over the statement. “Tentacles.” A significant pause. “Yeah, I think Tentacles sounds right.”
The thing parsed that sound carefully, if the tall creature was to respond to the sound ‘Vani’, then it expected the thing to respond to ‘Tentacles’. It was better than nothing, and as the thing had started with nothing, it had no complaints. Perhaps it was lucky and the name was descriptive.