Chapter Text
“Connection established,” the radio tech, Lt. Mason, says but when they try to make contact, what comes through is a rush of angry sounding clicks, growls, and something Secretary-General Jermaine Moreau is pretty sure must be language of some kind but they can’t make heads nor tails of it. He looks to the group of linguists they dragged in to help but they’re as clueless as he is by the dawning look of horror on their faces.
Sighing, Jermaine waits until their is a pause in the noise and then asks, “Pardon, but can you speak English? Parlez-vous français?”
There’s a pause and then another short burst of noise, but this sounds almost confused. Then comes an unmistakable string of cussing. Jermaine is sure that if he could understand it, he’d be blushing or laughing, one of the two. It slows down and there’s more talking but he’s pretty sure it’s not directed at him because it sounds almost like more than one speaker- No. Definitely more than one. There’s a different cadence in the second voice, lower and with less growing, more clicks, and much slowly pronunciations. The head linguist, Sarah, is making notes as fast as she can in some kind of shorthand Jermaine can’t actually read, but there are a couple weird looking doodles in the mix. The others are writing away as well and comparing notes to one another.
Minutes pass as Jermaine waits, figuring the aliens are up to something-
“Transmission coming through,” Mason announces. “It’s from them. Receiving… Got it. Uh, I think this is some kind of program- yeah, they sent a readme in English, how nice of them. It looks like an add-on. The coding is a little weird but it seems to be mostly compatible. It’s a translator.”
“Can we look through the code without it taking hours? I don’t want to suddenly lose all our systems if it turns out to be an alien bug.”
Mason starts tapping, going through it line by line slowly. It takes less time than Jermaine imagined it would and the aliens keep chatting to each other as they wait. There seems to be a third one now. The voice is lighter, a little more bouncy. Lots of clicking, weird moaning undertone.
“Had to make a few adjustments,” Mason says finally, “but it’ll work. It’s a simple speech-to-text mechanism and they also sent a vocabulary database of about 1500 words to go with it.”
“That sounds like a lot,” Sarah says, frowning a little, “but that’s something like a third or fourth grader. Enough for the beginning communication but we’ll have to learn more through trial and error. Any grammar notes?”
“Not really, ma’am.”
Jermaine doesn’t like that but he gives the tech a nod to try it. They isolate his station as much as possible first, just to make sure nothing will spread to the rest of them if this doesn’t turn out to be a goodwill token after all. The plugin loads and calibrates into their text communications so that it can print out translations as they come in.
Abruptly, the screen begins to fill up as it picks up the current babbling, first in the alien glyphs and then in English, even separating it out with some kind of call sign for the individuals.
CG: WHOLE —- HOUR HALF MESS THIS —- WORK ??
TA: PROBLEM MINE NEGATIVE UPSET TALK(CONTINUOUS) STOP NOW
CG: —- —- —-
TA: NICE NEGATIVE —- GENITAL ORGAN
AA: YOU(PLURAL) REMEMBER —- CONNECTION OPEN POSITIVE ?? JUVENILE
CG: —-
TA: —-
“Hello?” Jermaine tries. The connection goes quiet but they’ve still got a steady link, so…
AA: GREETING THIS !! I(EQUAL) WRITE YOU(EQUAL) TALK
CG: GREETING ??
“It’s working!” Mason marvels quietly to himself. Jermaine gives Sarah a glance and she is staring hard at the screen while she makes more notes and mutters under her breath to her team.
“My name is Jermaine Moreau of the United Nations. I’ve been chosen to start first contact-” He pauses as the program spits out another bunch of skips and then:
“Dave,” gets carefully enunciated over the line before another spatter of growls comes out:
CG: WHERE ??
Jermaine glances at Sarah and she’s got her brows high before she offers, “That sounds like a personal name to me, but-”
CG: “Dave” WHERE ?? !!
“Oh shit, it’s getting mad,” Mason mutters, looking a little worried.
“Who is Dave?” Jermaine asks, mostly to the others, but then the aliens reply.
CG: “DAVE” WHERE ?? !! —- “DAVE!” —- —-
“Uh, my name is David,” one of the linguists says and sounds kind of like he wishes he hadn’t.
CG: —- —- —- !!
AA: —- QUIET !! HUMAN YOU(EQUAL) SCARE !!
CG: “Dave” WHERE ?? !!
AA: —- QUIET !! —- TALK NOW YOU(EQUAL) SIT
TA: —- AGREEMENT
Whatever upset the first alien, it goes quiet as another steps in, the one that didn’t growl as much.
TA: “Dave” WHERE ??
Same question but a lot less angry and annoyed. Progress, Jermaine hopes.
“We don’t know who you mean. Dave is a common name in a lot of the world-”
CG: “DAVE” COMMON NEGATIVE —- COMPETENT NEGATIVE GENITAL ORGAN —- —-
AA: SIT —- IMPORTANT TALK(CONTINUOUS) NOW
TA: ROMANCE NOW NEGATIVE
Romance?! Jermaine gives Sarah a sharp look that she completely ignores but Mason looks as surprised and confused as he is.
“Why did they even include ‘genital organ’ in the limited lexicon?!” one of the linguists hisses out with annoyance.
TA: I(PLURAL) “DAVE” NEED —- STUPID
CG: YOU(EQUAL) FORNICATE
AA: I(EQUAL) YOU(PLURAL) KILL SLOW
Jermaine covers his eyes a moment. It’s like listening to his kids.
“Can we-”
TA: “DAVE” NEED STUPID WORD NEGATIVE TRANSLATE
“Please tell me I am not the only one who thinks that means this ‘Dave’ person can translate better than the program,” Jermaine says, giving the others a glance.
Sarah looks thoughtful but shrugs. “It’s worth a try.”
“Okay,” Jermaine sighs. “Do you know Dave’s surname? What country he lives in?”
CG: “DAVE STRIDER” YOU(EQUAL) LOCATION SEND
TA: I(SUPERIOR) KNOW —- —- JUVENILE —-
“Transmission received,” Mason reports. “It’s a set of coordinates. Tracking… United States, southeast Texas. City of Houston. Looks like… an apartment complex?”
“Someone get a line to the US Ambassador. We need to find out if there’s a Dave Strider living in there.”
CG: “DAVE” HERE WHEN ??
“As soon as possible,” Jermaine promises.
CG: THANKS —- —-
Twelve hours later, two men in very nice suits and very official paperwork show up at Jeff Egbert’s house to talk about very important, life or death, government business with a sixteen year old boy who keeps laughing at them while the other seven kids make bad puns.