Born again humans

1.13 The loss

Adam and Eve were devastated when they realised they had lost both their kids. They had argued and rejected the fault on one another until they received Jeremy's farewell. Then, followed a long period of silence which lasted several weeks. Adam really mourned his sons, but he was more deeply affected by the feeling of personal guilt. He ordered Melody to wake up five more babies and fell down into depression while waiting.

Eve totally agreed with Adam's self-accusation at failed leadership and quickly recovered from the psychological shock. She naturally assumed the responsibility of communicating with the aliens. Actually, she was the one who devised the first interspecies graphs using the series of power of 2 and 3 followed by the images of circle and sphere.

The aliens understood the power meant the number of dimensions, and they could even visualise the very short film, that featured the solar system in movement, which was preceded by the power 4 series representing the time dimension. The second Centaurian attempt at communicating reached Eve at that time and was not intelligible. It seemed the aliens had departed from using regular time spacing between signals. And the strength and length of the signal were also varying.

Patricia explained that an efficient way to emit more information at the same time was to use frequency modulation, which Eve didn't understand yet. But Patricia didn't detect any pattern like he did for the Fibonacci sequence, so they were at a loss and Eve requested the help of Adam.

His only useful input was to measure the distance and speed of the alien source, but he was thinking of Jeremy when he got the idea. Quickly, Patricia was able to confirm the source was emitted from a spaceship rocketing at extreme speed towards them. Besides that, he had trouble contacting the escape pod.

Eve returned to her study, and thought about a way to compress signals. 'That would nice,' she thought, 'if they could at least understand numbers.' And just like that, she thought she should teach them and set herself to the task.

***

'My dear Grishka,' quietly started the captain, 'I asked you to come to my apartment so we could talk more comfortably and also privately. You should relax. Take a seat. Have a drink.'

'I thank you, Captain, but I would rather refrain from both and start immediately onto my heavy responsibilities.'

'Really? Care for more of those delicacies? No? Pity, they're...', he slurped, 'delicious. Well, anyway. The topic is in fact really serious, so it is just as well you stay focused on what I have to stay. Now, I hope you realise that the words and the tone you used in our last exchange in front of everyone is not recommended by any standard of civil politeness I know of. In fact, military speaking it is strictly forbidden. And at times of war, it can be assimilated as an act of treason and therefore lead to the penalty of death. Do you follow me?'

'Captain, I am absolutely aware of military rules.'

'Well,' he coughed, 'and you couldn't control yourself, instead of embarrassing everybody?'

'Captain, I am quite sure I had full control of myself both at that time and also right now, Sir.'

The captain coughed again, quite loudly, and bent double as he painfully asked, 'And why have you done that then?'

'Sir, I think the goal was clearly to avoid antagonising you again,' he pronounced impassively, while observing the captain who had to lay a knee on the floor.

'Well, if you want to stop being...' Loud and long cough. '...Being a pain, just help me out now...' Series of cough again.

'Captain, I'm afraid it will not help.'