First Contact - Li Ming Deep Space

[Ray of Meep]

2319

Li Ming System interplanetary space, between Xianglong and Qiling orbit

LM-LX-00138 was a seemingly ordinary interstellar object hurling itself deeper into the system, its trajectory expected to fling it back out within a couple of decades. Originally, it was identified as a dirty rock, covered in dark silicates and carbonates, left to amateur university students to keep an eye on for their end-of-year astronomy projects.

Then 138 moved.

It was a subtle shift in velocity as it reached the periapsis around Li Ming, enough to close its orbit to keep it in the system. After all natural causes were ruled out, nervous whispers spread through the astrophysics and astrobiology departments of a potential first contact that, unlike the Aos Si, were capable of interstellar travel. A plan was formed, funding reallocated. First, deep space telescopes in low Zhuque orbit would observe 138 from a safe distance as this interstellar object passed the planet's orbit with Li Ming.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

138 was a rock like any other rock, craggy and subtly multicoloured in the distant lights of the vacuum of space. Its shape was akin to a badly rendered semi-blockymeatball in an ancient, underpowered gaming system struggling with nascent 3D graphics. To that end it was an almost comical shape but the shape began to speed up its tumbling motions from a slow rotation to a faster spin. Its body once dull and drab shimmered with a faint light that crawled in creeping, caterpillar like patterns across its bumpy topography.

It was not reflecting light to cause this. There was not enough coming in from the nearby stars but emitting it. From their observation point it looked at first like a chemical reaction of some sort initiated by whatever mysterious compounds lay beneath its rough surface. Minutes passed and what at first appeared random soon became deliberate. Those were not the motions of purely reactive chemical phenomena but something... living or at least moving beneath the surface.

What kind of stone however was able to allow light to pass through? The scans were not detecting any fissures or holes on its surface marking it as a perfectly solid slab. Silhouetted shapes could be faintly seen through the illuminated rock. It was not a strong light but it was enough that something structural was illuminated inside of the stone; long arching branches connected to internal support rods made themselves visible. Was it attempting to communicate to them with some sort of message? Had it been activated by an unknown observer from afar? Was this just a freak once in a lifetime occurrence?

 

[Ray of Meep]

After weeks of observation from afar, a pod containing six probes were launched from Jing towards 138. They would arrive within a week, spreading out in orbit around the object, pinging it on a multitude of electromagnetic frequencies, scanning the surface terrain and probing deeper beneath.

Meanwhile, a team of field scientists and a science vessel was assembled, along with an escorting marine frigate. Debates amongst local space command and the academic community continued on how to handle the object, which was almost certainly of intelligent design. There were talks of a preemptive strike upon it using asteroid busting missiles. Eventually, as the probe fleet arrived, a compromise was reached: a team of Kongjian units would land on the object once the probes completed their work, ensuring safety before scientists came along. Should any significant danger present itself, the marine frigate would launch its missiles to destroy the object with the Kongjian units still on it, if necessary.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

Something about this rock did not want to be found out. Its surface revealed some of its secrets; traces of complex electronics and signatures akin to biological mechanism, sometimes separate but more often than not interwoven to be inextricable from one another. Fascinating as it was, the specifics of the internal components and chemistry could not be discerned beyond initial scans. Readings came back scrambled and replete with floods of junk data. It at first might have seemed the attempts of pirates or hostiles attempting to interfere with the mission but it was too random and chaotic in its execution. It seemed almost like whatever was sent its way was merely bounced off.

Whatever 138 was, it had been very deliberately intended to be difficult to observe.

No lights shone to greet the sight of the probes other than the ambience of distant stars and its surface was inert and still, drab as when they had first seen it. Whatever lay beneath remained hidden, perhaps intentionally now that armed force was a possibility. Yet even from mere closer observation, something was off about the rock.

For starters, while it was bumpy and uneven there was something almost deliberate about it. The heights of its little outcroppings were almost but not quite symmetrical. At times they appeared to be hollowed out into pseudo-bowl like shapes and others vertically jagged in a way as if they were sunken towers partially emerged frm the bumpy surface. Everything about it appeared to be a rocky mess from afar but up close, it felt very uncanny as if its unusual construction was very much deliberate.

 

[Ray of Meep]

The Mantian, a Dasan-class marine frigate, loaded with the Kongjian team Hongyun (Red Cloud), along with two asteroid-busting missiles, loaded coilguns, and additional supplies and scientific equipment, flew to a 1 light-second orbit around 138. It escorted the Zheng Weilai (Master the Future), a Hayden 2 Class science vessel purchased from the AU, which carried a small drone fleet, advanced sensors, supplies, scientific equipment, and a sizable team of thirty scientists and technicians.

After scanning 138 extensively, with no entrance deeper into the body, a landing drone was sent first as Hongyun team stood by. Upon arrival on the surface, it drilled a small hole, the diameter of a pinky finger, into the ground, collecting a sample of the debris for analysis.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

The drill bit and dug into the outer layers of the asteroid through the rock and the metal. The resistance it gave was fleeting before the machinery and soon it gave way in consistency. The drill did not shake but seemed to slow as if clogged or stuck not in stone but something softer. Nonetheless, it could be removed and its contents analysed.

Contents that revealed themselves to be far more than just mineral and stone. The top layers it had drilled through had mixed in with a strange powdery mixture - synthetic metals and some sort of crusty matter organic in origin. Almost as if there was dirt inside of its interior and some sort of metallic internal structure and the drill had scraped off a combination of them.

 

[Ray of Meep]

After waiting 24 hours, with no further response from 138, command to the drone was given. It drilled deeper into the object, the hole expanding to the width of a thumb, bringing up more debris for analysis, while also lowering a sensor probe inside to take a variety of measurements. Samples were sent back up to the Weilai for more in-depth examination.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

The hole widened and with it, the debris that exited through the hole made by the drill. Not just flecks of dust-like particle clouds but a fluid of sorts that seemed to shimmer in the faint light of the stars. A murky pinkish-orange fluid, like some badly stored foodstuffs squirting out of a hole, hung around in the air and shimmered in the sight of the probe's cameras.

It was not just due to the reflective nature of the fluid. A closer examination revealed small creatures were moving around within, little legs on dot-like disc-shape bodies wriggling wildly and half swimming half crawling through the blood-like cloud of liquid. They moved in the frantic way associated with plankton swarming a light on a deep sea submarsible, seemingly unaffected by the lack of gravity in their frenetic confusion.

They were however gradually moving back into the hole.

 

[Ray of Meep]

A sample of the fluid was quickly sent up to be viewed under a microscope, the creatures deconstructed using nanotools, then placed inside incubators for cultivation, all under hushed whispers of excitement and several inches of reinforced, transparent aluminum.

Meanwhile, as the hole grew wider and deeper still, exposing the body of fluid to vacuum, a small, aquatic drone was sent in to explore beneath the surface.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

Amidst a small snowstorm of whirling, fragmented, seemingly invertebrate life the drone looked increasingly akin to a very large mosquito or hosefly making a gruesome mess of whatever large life form it had attached onto. More and more fluid ejected from the tubular wound being drilled into the body as the tiny denizens of 138 found themselves snatched, captured, and dissected under the hungry eyes of a foreign species.

A species now aware that these were not entirely organic beings. That even in such tiny forms, metal connective frames could be seen containing shaped organic matter, chitin and metal existing as a cage for complex micro-electronics plugged into miniature organ clusters. These things were not just creatures but some sort of internal control mechanism.

For what exactly? The drone that sunk into the wound found itself not in a reservoir of fluid but a cramped, claustrophobic space. One that swarmed with myriad little creatures already visibly patching the hole it had slipped into. Some sort of half plastic wrap, half silk like subustance was being created by clusters of the swarming creatures.

Inside, it was a deliriously bright mess of orange and pink fluid around spire-like structures they had seen partially emerged outside. Long bridges of a chitin-like material gnarled and segmented as if made from long-dead, gigantic insects was visible. So were clusters of robotic shell-clusters, boxier in spite of the intent in their shaping and plugged into biomechanical computer-clusters and what looked almost like some sort of pulsing centipede-like connector appendages, linking them together.

The whole thing pulsed not with a fleshly life but something very synthetic and unnatural, as if it was some artificial parody of a living thing. They could see steel padding and wiring woven into the floor beneath and metallic plating across the various surfaces. Receptors would pick up all kinds of chaotic white noise data, arranged in encoded patterns that might as well have been computer generated gibberish. Blinking lights from behind coccoon like clumps on the walls, swapping between red, blue, and yellow hues on the drop of a hat.

It was alive and yet, it was something else than an entirely living thing.

 

[Ray of Meep]

There were always theories of technorganic species, which combined living flesh and metallic machinery into one working system. In a way, humans were technorganic themselves, plastering their bodies with inorganic tools to improve productivity. The structures here, alien as they were, seemed to work by similar fundamental principles. Most importantly, if whatever created this object mastered technology like so, they could communicate, and be reasoned with.

The landed drone left 138, dropping behind a golden disc with human imagery and basic, scientific diagrams on the surface. The drone that found its way underneath the surface served as a self-invited liaison, beaming binary transmissions, Morse codes, the digits of Pi and Euler's number at the robotic clusters. The scientists onboard the Weilai frantically worked to decode the data, looking for a way to communicate with the clusters.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

The problem with trying to communicate with the moist, fetid, chitinous cavern was that it was entirely guess work. The clumps that appeared to be some sort of data-processing plants or "computers" did not correlate with those of conventional human design, sending a scattershot array of signals and data bouncing around in ping-pong ball richocets. Yet no digital intelligence nor remote control observer responded. Under the intensifying swarms of the biomechanical zooplankton the drones were rocked about as larger creatures were seen crawling and sliding amidst the pillars of syncretic matter.

A sound could be picked up, not by acoustic receptors but the signal transfer mechanisms of the drone. This time, it was something structured but it was not being directed at the HFR automata. It was simply picked up even if not sent thier way. A series of clipping, interwoven electrical buzz-patterns garbled and pitch-shifted into what sounded like an approximation of some kind of speech. Not human speech but an intricate replication of whatever language, growled and echoed, its creators spoke.

The cybernetic swarms that had previously clouded the interior had vanished as did the larger ones that had been dragging themselves about. Silence returned to the sloshing room, the hole the drone had made patched up, and the false rock once more inert.

 

[Ray of Meep]

The communication between the clusters were recorded, preserved, and passed to xeno-linguists on the Weilai, Jing, and Zhuque. For several days, human and Aos Si scientists struggled to find patterns in the data, commonly used phrases.

Chunks of the language were divided, separated into what the linguists through were individual words and phrases, sending them back to the science vessel, which relayed them to the drone. One phrase at a time, the drone transmitted them to the clusters, waiting for a reaction, before transmitting the next phrase, positive, negative, neutral.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

If something could be discerned from the garbled dialogue, it was that it seemed to comprise of somewhere between two and four layers of speech. Rather than jumbling over itself into pure noise, everything about it seemed intended to be taken as a singular whole in spite of multiple constituent voices. One "stream" of audio-dialogue seemed to indicate primary meaning, another counterpointing with specifics of details, but the others were difficult to determine. Were they too speaking "meaning" or was it something cryptic simply beyond their current capabilities to understand?

Something could very vaguely be discerned from this however. The recovered audio indicated that this message was being sent outwards, presumably towards 138's owner's. Embedded in the dialogue was location data; exactly where the sattelite had been. Someone had heard them and was aware contact had been made between species.

138 itself remained dead still as if in fear of a predatory presence, its days passing in a dead silence with but perfunctory flashes of electrical signatures detectable by the drone within. A few flashes of the swarming creatures and the larger staphlynid-esque creatures could be picked up but it had returned to hiding its secrets. It was once more the conspicuously reclusive false-asteroid that they had first discovered, now awaiting whatever orders its creators could send from afar.

 

[Ray of Meep]

Everyone onboard the marine frigate and the science vessel were growing increasingly nervous. 138 was communicating, and now the scientists knew enough of the language to understand that it sent out coordinates. More small satellites were deployed from the Weilai, this time pointing away from 138 to intercept any return signal. No spacetime distortions were detected, no anomalies in the object's EM profile, its mass, which meant FTL communication was highly unlikely. Thus, if it was intelligent and looking to for timely response from friendly groups, they too were in system, undetected.

Every known body in the Li Ming system was re-examined, their expected formation and age, looking for similarities between any of them and 138. The process would take months, however, time that the first-contact team did not have. They needed to make diplomatic contact quickly, or else the military will have their way and launch a preemptive strike.

The original hole was opened once again, sending in another drone, this time carrying a projector and physical photos. This new drone displayed pictures of stars, planets, cities and people, transportation networks and diagrams, hoping to show the observers in this object that humans were of an advanced interstellar civilization that was built upon largely peaceful, complex systems. The coordinates were deciphered, guesses made to the equivalence to human numbers, rearranging them into digits of important mathematical values, returning them back to the clusters.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

Roughly four days had passed and the interior of 138 remained quiet and inert save for the same marginal activity keeping it functional. Anytime the hole was opened, the swarms reemerged to close it shut and the long-beetle creatures slithered away into the low gravity internal fluid pool. It seemed unlikely that the sattelite itself would reveal any of its secrets.

An enormous object approaching kilometres away would see to that.

The very first signs that there was company was a blur on the horizon. Very, very distantly with telescopic cameras could what appeared to bed a black and brown-red speck be seen growing in size in the distance. It was approaching directly towards the fleet on a flight plan that was in the path of 138, accelerating fast enough that more details could be made out.

Most of what was visible was some sort of dust-cloud like composition at first but soon it revealed itself to be far more disturbing to the sight. The easiest way to describe it would be pestilent; a miasma haze of fragmenting decomposed biomatter and flittering insectoid forms the size of small fighter-drones, hovering around an enormous lumpy mass of swarming biomechanical matter. It appeared similar to what 138 was made of internally rather than externally but this was a darker black metallic colour interspersed with fragments of elytras, carapace, shell, and appendages. The whole thing twitched as it shifted, biomechanical mass consuming biomechanical mass and shapes of segmented earwig like creatures dove in and out of the machine-chitin pile.

The rot-cloud that surrounded it made it seem larger than it did as it was attached to the body of something that at first seemed a vessel until ten long limbs across a rove-beetle like body were spotted. One that was outlined by the contours of the festering biometallic mass, shrouding whatever it was that wore it like a coat of decomposing, squirming soil. At least two other vessels were visible behind it, roughly medium cruiser sized as opposed to the lesser battleship bulk of the rove beetle esque thing. Any features they possessed were obscured behind the living fog.

That is when 138 began to activate again. The same caterpillar lights shining once more, a frenzy of voracious activity as its inhabitants re-emerged, and the spin of its lumpy body reactivating. As if retracted by a thread of string, it began pulling away towards the shrouded fleet as long arms of living cloudy matter, as much mini-machines as they were the winged jet-creatures, wrapped around and retracted it further and further from the fleet.

The two ships that accompanied it remained behind it, further making them difficult to see. The shroud of rot was blocking any scans but it began to stretched back and the full squirming mass, like an exoskeletal frame filled by grub-wridden hungry soil, was clear to see.

It was not hiding itself but pinging the coms channel directly. If it had any weapons, they were impossible to see or discern from within the miasma cloud or the ocean of vile coalescence that it clearly controlled.

 

[Ray of Meep]

It was now confirmed that these objects were aware of the human presence, and actively pinging them. It was also quite concerning that two more of the objects, now dubbed 138-1 and 138-2, were able to hide their presence for so long, hidden away from the vast sensory networks in the system. As uncanny as the outward appearance of the objects were, they could be harmless, or as dangerous as human capital weaponry. It was unclear, unknown, and it were those questions that truly frightened the scientists onboard the Weilai, but also intrigued them, pushing them to work tirelessly, often on medication, to establish communication.

The alien numbers were sent back in response to the ping of gibberish, along with the human binary codes for said numbers. If a mutual mathematical understanding could be established, then the path for expanding understanding between the two species could be opened.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

The ships themselves held dead still with only the living fog and object 138 visible, quickly vanishing behind it along with the drone and any data feed it could provide. As their line to their drones went dead, the squirming shroud-covered one pinged back in staccato bursts as if mimicking morse code. The static taps like a finger against a microphone deepend, dropping in pitch, and distorting not into noise but a deep and resoning grating. They had the courtesy not to annihilate human eardrums.

What was at first a pulsing ambience was now morphing and the sonic structure of language, just like what the fleet had analysed previously, began to gradually congeal and solidify. At first it was distorted, meaningless mumble-growls but soon it became coherent. Audible, clear, but more importantly, comprehensible.

It did not sound like an organic voice that was speaking Mandarin, but a machine-like one synthesized out of the depths of the living ship. That one appeared to be the "flagship" of this group of at least three vessels itself included.

"INFORMATION ON DRONE: INSIGNIFICANT. INFORMATION YOU SEARCH: REPLICABLE. YOUR KIND: PERCEPTIVE. SECTOR ACTIVITY: MODERATE. SPEAK."

 

[Ray of Meep]

On the Weilai, a man sat in front of a monitor, troubled, eyebrows knit, as his colleagues surrounded him staring at the message along with him. He was Sun Bukang, the xeno-linguist assigned to serve as diplomat when common communications were established with 138. Well, there were three of them now, beaming a request to reply.

Bukang thought to himself as he thought up a message. Were these a hivemind of sorts? It was certain they were technorganic, melding flesh and machine together moreso than any other currently known sapient. They were also the least humanoid, their physical appearance grotesque, which is the least surprising thing here. He reread the message again and again. Insignificant. Replicable. Perceptive. Moderate. The message was laconic and cold. If this was the supposed cultural norm for this species, it'd be best to reply in the same manner.

The xeno-linguist typed up his answer:

Self-Identification: Species: Homo Sapiens. Affiliation: Heaven Forged Republic. Individual Unit Name: Sun Bukang.

Purpose: Peaceful First Contact. Request: Non-violent reply.

He reviewed his message, sending it through a dozen diplomats and linguists throughout the system to read over as well, taking in their feedback, ignoring most of it, before beaming it back to the objects within three hours of the alien's first message to them.

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

"SELF-IDENTIFICATION - SPECIES: VREXUL. AFFILIATION: JEDGNOZILIK - HNIZDUVNOSTI. ENTITY DESIGNATION: IXAXXION FRAGMENT 0583. PURPOSE: ACKNOWLEDGED. REQUEST: GRANTED."

The voice of the entity could not said to be entirely synthetic. Subtle fluctuations in the drone-tone mimicked the speech of a living entity and closer observation revealed it was not one voice but at least ten or so woven through one another. The pitch, timbre, and volume of each one was different as if they were all puzzle pieces intended to create a fully functional voice. What sounded like static could be heard in the background; muddy, splashing, and scratching. It was as if there was a group of children stomping in water pools on grass lawns after heavy rains filtered through some sort of audio-masking software..

"MY PRESENCE OBSERVES THE AREA YOU INHABIT. CURRENT REGION COMMON ROUTE FOR VREXUL TRAVEL. YOUR BORDERS ARE UNFAMILIAR AND OTHERS DWELL WITHIN. BIOMODIFIED ORGANISMS, HOSTILE IN NATURE. WE HAVE AVOIDED THEIR PRESENCE BUT IT IS A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE WE CANNOT."