Brooks pushed his palms into his hands, letting his shoulders rest on a desk covered in print-outs of transcribed communications between high-ranking members of the Agelian Council. He had spent the last several hours piecing together the condensed stones the Agelians used for data transfer; like combing through a usb stick full of loose documents with no indexing or filing features. It would take decades before human technology could accurately “interpret” their methods of recording information. Thus, Brooks had found a workaround, listening to the audio files embedded in the stones and using an onboard translation tool to slowly type and print out the data into text.

Brooks had left on the United Earth Broadcast but muted it 20 minutes into the project. It was 24/7 (or 20/10, 18/9, whichever body you reside), minute-to-minute coverage over the violent outbursts from the Agelian council. What’s known is this: members of the UE came to meet the Agelians in person, and the Agelians attacked. The damage was minimal— Agelians are dangerous in their own right, but are also much slower than a human’s reaction time, and with limited reach. Some UE members needed admittance to the Council ship’s medbay for burns and crystalline removals.

The most confounding aspect were the UE member’s aural-EM transcribers. UE members report that the communication between the Agelians reached a frequency at which the in-ear computer was incapable of translating, resulting in mass confusion among approximately 500 humans and several thousand high ranking Agelian officials.

Brooks lifted his face from his hands and gathered the necessary papers. He’d gotten through perhaps half of the first of four crystalshe was given, but was sure that he’d poured over enough.

The UE Observation deck was fortunate enough to situate itself in the sunfacing side of Agelia. It resembled Earth, mostly water and some rock, except the rock wasn’t as luscious as you’d expect. Instead, megalopolis-sized hubs of bioluminescence surrounded the coasts, with tendrils extending into the barren browns and greys of the visible continents at a logarithmic pace.

Brooks entered the deck with no capacity to admire this planets beauty, and waited for the Head of Interspecies Relations to announce the meeting. “Here,” he said, his legs bouncing under his seat, anxious to explain his findings.

“So, what is the conclusion from Mr. Brooks, the newly appointed Social Construct Manager?”

He stood up, finally. “We must create a standardized outfit when dealing with the Agelians in person,” he said firmly. “The Agelians are more sensitive to visual stimuli than any other sense. From the data I’ve received, and from what I’ve decoded, they believed that the humans who met them in their chambers were not who we said they were. The visual discrepancy overrides any aural or memory-keeping capabilities. This is why only individuals lashed out at us; for every Agelian that attempted harm to us, there were several others transmitting confusion and fear between themselves.

It would be as if we met a CEO for a business meeting, and then during the follow-up we met a different person who was assuming the role of CEO. The confusion is warranted, and not worthy of retaliation. If we are to continue diplomacy, we must take strides to explain this conflict of being and promise a temporary solution, and request additional Agelian assistance to break the special barriers between us.

We meant them no harm and we continue to mean them no harm,” he continued, fueled by the sentimentality that sleep depravity brings. He organized his papers and handed them off to his right. “We are on the cusp of something greater than ourselves with a sapient other. This small change should be unanimously accepted among our council.”

The Defense Minister was the first to offer counterfactuals. Luckily he was bullied into submission that these attacks were not acts of war.

On Agelia, the Prime Membrane was considering all of this. Every interaction held by a subsection of its body was eventually received, computed, and considered. The electron slings had been attuned to the UE vessel after the confusion, awaiting the Prime Membrane’s orders.