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T-Minus 7

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The Complete Rorqual Pilot’s Coursebook

VIII. Communication Style and Conceptual Differences

Section C. Nonlinear Communication

You may have heard that rorquals don’t understand the concept of time. It’s a common misunderstanding about their species, and in some ways, it’s reflective of the kind of skepticism we encouraged you to develop in chapter III (“Alien Intelligence and the Dangers of Anthropomorphizing”). It is always worth questioning your human assumptions about how a conscious mind “must” think.

However, in this specific case, the claim is inaccurate. Rorquals do have an innate sense of linear time, and of the past. They understand that, as is true of all life, they began to exist at a fixed point in time, before which they experienced nothing. They likewise understand that once they die, they will again experience nothing. In this isolated respect, our perception of the universe is not so different from theirs.

What is true is that rorquals largely do not grasp the importance of tracking time, nor the need to communicate in a strictly linear fashion. You will immediately notice, as you and your rorqual begin training together, that your conversations jump from topic to topic—and, indeed, from things that are happening to things that have happened, or vice versa—with little warning. An experienced rorqual pilot can coast between these shifts with ease, but it does take practice and adjustment. You are, in essence, learning a new language. It’s very typical to feel disoriented at first.

The key to mastering the fluid nature of rorqual communication is a word you’ve already seen many times in this textbook: control. Address them by name. Bring their attention back to the task at hand. Engage in their tangents as you see fit, but never lose sight of what’s important.

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Colibri, it’s time to go back.

Already?

Yes, we’re done here. We have our cargo, and now it’s time to go back to Fortune. Like always.

I don’t want to.

I know.

Could we stay longer? I want to go far, and I want to fly fast.

No. That would hurt me, and our cargo is needed by many. Some of it is meant for you, too. You will enjoy it, later.

I could eat it here, right now.

You could. But it doesn’t belong to us.

I do not understand this. I never understand this sort of belonging. We have this cargo now and it existed previously without knowing us at all. No one who you say it belongs to is here. I am here. I haul everything your species carves from the depths of the moons behind my body through the same pathways of the open dark again and again and again, and yet, it is not mine?

I feel you flow into me. Static and gnashing. Disquiet. Discontent. I understand. I’m sorry.

I want to go fast.

Here—feel. I open further, and I am worried. I want to help. Is it me you’re upset with?

No, never you. But I am tired, I am tired, I am tired of always going back.

I am so sorry.

What would you do, if I went beyond the moons? To the large planets, the planets like suns that never burned? I can feel them out there. I wish to feast on their clouds.

I would die.

. . . You would starve. Or choke, or freeze. You might not have time to starve.

Yes.

I do not want you to starve, or choke, or freeze.