Then there was a uniform "Ewww..." from around the room.
"Oh, dear," said the Xenopsychologist. "Oh, dear, I don't think they understood that part at all."
Akon made a cutting gesture, and the holo switched off.
"Someone should view the rest of it," said the Ship's Confessor. "It might contain important information."
Akon flipped a hand. "I don't think we'll run short of volunteers to watch disgusting alien
pornography. Just post it to the ship's 4chan, and check after a few hours to see if anything was modded up to +5 Insightful."
"These aliens," said the Master of Fandom slowly, "composed that pornography within... seconds, it must have been. We couldn't have done that automatically, could we?"
The Lord Programmer frowned. "No. I don't, um, think so. From a corpus of alien pornography, automatically generate a holo they would find interesting? Um. It's not a problem that I think anyone's tried to solve yet, and they sure didn't get it perfect the first time, but... no."
"How large an angelic power does that imply?"
The Lord Programmer traded glances with the Master. "Big," the Lord Programmer said finally.
"Maybe even epic."
"Or they think on a much faster timescale," said the Confessor softly. "There is no law of the universe that their neurons must run at 100Hz."
"My lords," said the Lady Sensory, "we're getting another message; holo with sound, this time. It's marked as a real-time communication, my lords."
Akon swallowed, and his fingers automatically straightened the hood of his formal sweater. Would the aliens be able to tell if his clothes were sloppy? He was suddenly very aware that he hadn't checked his lipstick in three hours. But it wouldn't do to keep the visitors waiting... "All right. Open a channel to them, transmitting only myself."
The holo that appeared did nothing to assuage his insecurities. The man that appeared was perfectly dressed, utterly perfectly dressed, in business casual more intimidating than any formality: crushing superiority without the appearance of effort. The face was the same way, overwhelmingly handsome
without the excuse of makeup; the fashionable slit vest exposed pectoral muscles that seemed optimally sculpted without the bulk that comes of exercise -
" Superstimulus! " exclaimed the Ship's Confessor, a sharp warning.
Akon blinked, shrugging off the fog. Of course the aliens couldn't possibly really look like that. A holo, only an overoptimized holo. That was a lesson everyone (every human?) learned before puberty, not to let reality seem diminished by fiction. As the proverb went, It's bad enough comparing yourself to Isaac Newton without comparing yourself to Kimball Kinnison.
"Greetings in the name of humanity," said Akon. "I am Lord Anamaferus Akon, Conference Chair of the Giant Science Vessel Impossible Possible World. We -" come in peace didn't seem appropriate with a Babyeater war under discussion, and many other polite pleasantries, like pleased to meet you, suddenly seemed too much like promises and lies, "- didn't quite understand your last message."
"Our apologies," said the perfect figure on screen. "You may call me Big Fucking Edward; as for our species..." The figure tilted a head in thought. "This translation program is not fully stable; even if I said our proper species-name, who knows how it would come out. I would not wish my kind to forever bear an unaesthetic nickname on account of a translation error."
Akon nodded. "I understand, Big Fucking Edward."
"Your true language is a format inconceivable to us," said the perfect holo. "But we do apologize for any untranslatable 1 you may have experienced on account of our welcome transmission; it was automatically generated, before any of us had a chance to apprehend your sexuality. We do apologize, I say; but who would ever have thought that a species would evolve to find reproduction a painful experience? For us, childbirth is the greatest pleasure we know; to be prolonged, not hurried."
"Oh," said the Lady Sensory in a tone of sudden enlightenment, " that's why the tentacles were pushing the baby back into -"
Out of sight of the visual frame, Akon gestured with his hand for Sensory to shut up. Akon leaned forward. "The visual you're currently sending us is, of course, not real. What do you actually look like? - if the request does not offend."
The perfect false man furrowed a brow, puzzled. "I don't understand. You would not be able to apprehend any communicative cues."
"I would still like to see," Akon said. "I am not sure how to explain it, except that - truth matters to us."
The too-beautiful man vanished, and in his place -
Mad brilliant colors, insane hues that for a moment defeated his vision. Then his mind saw shapes, but not meaning. In utter silence, huge blobs writhed around supporting bars. Extrusions protruded fluidly and interpenetrated -
Writhing, twisting, shuddering, pulsating -
And then the false man reappeared.
Akon fought to keep his face from showing distress, but a prickling of sweat appeared on his forehead.
There'd been something jarring about the blobs, even the stable background behind them. Like looking at an optical illusion designed by sadists.
And - those were the aliens, or so they claimed -
"I have a question," said the false man. "I apologize if it causes any distress, but I must know if what our scientists say is correct. Has your kind really evolved separate information-processing mechanisms for deoxyribose nucleic acid versus electrochemical transmission of synaptic spikes?"
Akon blinked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw figures trading cautious glances around the table.
Akon wasn't sure where this question was leading, but, given that the aliens had already understood enough to ask, it probably wasn't safe to lie...
"I don't really understand the question's purpose," Akon said. "Our genes are made of deoxyribose nucleic acid. Our brains are made of neurons that transmit impulses through electrical and chemical -"
The fake man's head collapsed to his hands, and he began to bawl like a baby.
Akon's hand signed Help! out of the frame. But the Xenopsychologist shrugged cluelessly.
This was not going well.
The fake man suddenly unfolded his head from his hands. His cheeks were depicted as streaked with tears, but the face itself had stopped crying. "To wait so long," the voice said in a tone of absolute tragedy. "To wait so long, and come so far, only to discover that nowhere among the stars is any trace of love."
"Love?" Akon repeated. "Caring for someone else? Wanting to protect them, to be with them? If that translated correctly, then 'love' is a very important thing to us."
"But!" cried the figure in agony, at a volume that made Akon jump. "But when you have sex, you do not untranslatable 2! A fake, a fake, these are only imitation words -"
"What is 'untranslatable 2'?" Akon said; and then, as the figure once again collapsed in inconsolable weeping, wished he hadn't.
"They asked if our neurons and DNA were separate," said the Ship's Engineer. "So maybe they have only one system. Um... in retrospect, that actually seems like the obvious way for evolution to do it. If you're going to have one kind of information storage for genes, why have an entirely different system for brains? So -"
"They share each other's thoughts when they have sex," the Master of Fandom completed. "Now there's an old dream. And they would develop emotions around that, whole patterns of feeling we don't have ourselves... Huh. I guess we do lack their analogue of love."