Thomas' Dog

Visiting Thomas was such a hassle. First I had to go into a decontamination room were everything I had on me would be disinfected, which seemed pointless really because I had to take off those clothes anyway, put them in a plastic bag, and put on some sterile scrubs. Then I had to go through several layers of identification: my retina would be scanned, along with my finger prints, blood samples would be taken, and I would have to put a series of codes into different machines at every stage.

But as much as I hated it, I had to admit it was necessary, we couldn’t risk anything hurting Thomas.

Thomas was an alien, of course, although these days he preferred to be called a “non-human person” when his species was relevant and simply “a person” any other time. He had been chosen by the bureaucracy of his species to be a sort of ambassador to humanity, a situation which had presented many challenges.

For one, his species just announced he was coming one day, giving the human bureaucracy little time to prepare. Of course some people wanted to tell the aliens that we should negotiate, that they should at least give us time to make arrangements… but we simply had to accept.

This was another civilization with completely different understandings of diplomacy, negotiation, and peace, it was a miracle they had had the initiative to send us an ambassador. We simply could not waste this opportunity.

We hurried to prepare for his arrival, there had been so many things to consider: the gravity, the food, the atmosphere, and the communication…

Up to that point and since first contact both of our species, homosapiens and terosapiens, had communicated through a complex system of calling things by their molecular compositions and shapes, and the shapes themselves were communicated through mathematical functions in three dimensions. To communicate more complex ideas like desires or fears we had to rely on biological features both of our species shared. For example, in this “language" the word for “need" was the same as “hunger" since the need for sustenance was the most basic need that both species could understand from each other.

“The state humans share is hungry to hold the one you give us”. This is what we finally decided to reply when we knew about the incoming ambassador, while the original phrase given to the translation engineers had been “We want to receive your ambassador”.

As you can imagine, there were Terosapien scientists who would receive this message and translate it into their own language so that the rest of the Terosapiens would understand it. With any luck, both sides would know what to do and what to expect from the other. Although there had been misunderstandings a couple of times.

As cumbersome as this method of communication was, it was simply not an options for Thomas. It did not matter how much experience he had with the new Shared Language, it was so complex and confusing that in some cases it could take hours, and several tries, to communicate a simple thought.

For that reason I was chosen to learn the terosapien language, because I am a linguist, and I’m trying to say this as humbly as I can, but I am expert in isolated languages.

Now, what is an isolated language?, well, if you lower your guard I can go on and on about language families, classifications, language evolution, and what even IS a language?… but the short version I use with the friends of my wife is this:

Languages evolve, if a language spreads over a population, it can change differently in different places, creating different languages, we can trace that evolution and create a sorta “family tree of languages” but there are languages that don’t seem to belong to any family, they are orphans, we call those, “isolated languages”.

The system of communication of the terosapiens was, of course, isolated from any human language, so the bureaucrats had reasoned that a human expert on the most disconnected human languages was the best choice to learn a completely disconnected alien language.

I can understand why they thought this, and while I disagree, it also seemed super fun and it would look fucking AMAZING in my CV, even if I failed. But to my surprise, I managed to actually learn a lot.

Also, my name is Netzahualcoyotl by the way, but you can call me Netza. I didn’t know when to introduce myself and I felt like this was my last chance.

As I continued to learn more and more from Thomas I started to think that maybe there was something universal about information and how it is encoded, something that all brains of all species can understand. I’ve heard that there are many mathematicians working on trying to figure out what it is.

Now, I wanna make something clear: of course I cannot literally speak the terosapien language, mostly because it doesn’t even use sounds. Instead terosapiens communicate by moving their iridescent… scales?, feathers?, nails?… their iridescent solid-and-yet-flexible-skin-protrusions they have all over their bodies.

They move them to reflect different colors of light towards their interlocutor, this requires the “speaker" and the “listener" to be aware of the sources of light in the room and their relative positions to each other, since the same movements could produce different colors in different situations…

For that reason I think that what really encodes the information in this language is the movement of the scales themselves, and not the specific colors they reflect, you simply use the colors to deduce the movements that produced them, and those movements are like the sounds of this language.

All of this meant that I had to learn to understand the terosapien language, even though I cannot speak it, because I don’t have iridescent scales all over my body, and Thomas had to do the same with english because he doesn’t have a windpipe that can make all sort of sounds.

Our conversations would consist of each of us speaking in our own languages, paying a lot of attention to each other, trying to figure out what the other one would say, and then reply again in our languages. Han Solo and Chewbacca make it look easy.

That day, as I waited in the decontamination room for all the normal air to be extracted and replaced with pathogen free clean air, I remembered fondly the time when I successfully explained Thomas what a name was. His species had a similar concept, of course, except that they had many different kinds of names. The way I understood it, when you met your coworkers for example, you would tell them one part of your name, but you would teach your offspring another pert of your name. This way even if someone from your offspring met one of your coworkers they would never realize that they knew the same person.

It all hinges in some ideas about privacy, identity, and how we show different aspects of ourself to different groups of people.

Of course it is more complex than that, but Thomas did seem very happy about the idea of having one name for everyone, it seemed almost dirty and childlike to him, and of course he wanted to try it.

-Have you thought of a homosapien name for you?- I asked

-Thomas - he replied without a pause

-Why that name?

-I heard about a homosapien thinker who thought he had proven the existence of the Supreme Being. Of course, he was wrong, but it seems that he really tried, and there’s something about attempting an impossible task and thinking you succeeded that really resonates with me. I think this breath connects our souls.

Of course, I’m giving you my translation of this conversation, the things that Thomas would have said if he could speak a human language. A translation I had already made by the way, because I have to submit translated transcripts of everything Thomas says to me. The idea is that other experts in terosapien languages can see these translations and report if they think I’m hiding something.

Terosapiens can’t really be classified as “male" nor “female”, they take different roles in the reproductive process at different stages in their life, and depending on their environment some can skip some stages or go back to previous ones. But Thomas is a male name, and ever since we refer to Thomas as a “he”, but we must remember this is simply a limitation of our language. Who knows how terosapiens explain genders in their languages.

After the air was cleaned from any pathogens that could harm Thomas immune system it was time to… perform several other sterility protocols, each one more annoying than the last. This is a long and tedious process, but not nearly as tedious or long as the time I brought Diogenes over. See, Diogenes was a dog.

-I’ve been studying a particularly interesting homosapien custom - Thomas had told him one day

-Which custom?- I asked

-Pets. We understood why you took some animals away from their natural state and made them work for you, horses, cows, and other similar cases, but dogs are different. At first I thought they were the same, an animal meant to protect or hunt, but no, most dogs today don’t do those tasks, but there was no fundamental change, since the very beginning your relation with dogs was symbiotic in a way that is hard to understand

-You said it yourself, it’s a symbiosis, both parties get benefit

-No, the dogs get benefits, but what do humans get?

-We like dogs

-Exactly, there’s something about their very presence that is pleasing to humans, and I struggle to know what it is. It cannot be that they instigate in you paternal instincts, what you call “cute”- this word was spelled with an agreed encoding of human characters into certain symbols of the terosapien language - because virtually every mammal can instigate paternal instincts in other mammals, but only dogs, and sometimes cats, perform this kind of relationship with you

-Well… why don’t you do an experiment?

-What would be the shape of this experiment?

-Get a dog, care for it, and see if you come to understand why humans like them

I had repeatedly hated myself for making such a suggestion, it seemed easy at the time, but it turned out to be a logistical nightmare. They had to make sure that there were exactly 0 pathogens not only on the dog, but also inside it, that meant that the god would have no intestinal flora to help with digestion and special food would be required, food that had to be sterilized too, then there was the problem of the atmosphere, of safety…

But eventually, after months of planning, we were able to give Thomas a dog.

I was worried about how the dog would react to Thomas, we had brought children before and they had been scared or even disgusted. One girl vomited, and Thomas understood what it meant, and he got very sad.

To my surprise the dog seemed hardly interested in Thomas and just smelled things around the room, then Thomas moved and that caught the dog’s attention, almost as if it had not realized that Thomas was alive until then. I can’t blame him, if they are not moving terosapiens can look like some kind of abstract sculpture or some weird plant growing over an even weirder rock.

The dog was cautious, Thomas extended one of his appendages to the dog and it approached to smell it. Then Thomas offered it treats and the dog seemed confused.

-Maybe… if you make some sounds, maybe it hasn’t realized that you have a face - I suggested

-Would it even recognize my cluster of sensory organs as a face, Netza?

-I do, and I think a dog would to, I had a dog that used to get scared by halloween masks… a mask is a…

-I remember what masks are Netza, but not “halloween”, please explain me later

Then Thomas made a couple of sounds with his respiratory system, it sounded like a bagpipe that wanted to be a piano, but it caught the dog’s attention, and it indeed looked at Thomas’s face, he approached it in that way dogs do when they don’t want to touch something, like extending themselves, ready to run away the next instant, then Thomas made another sounds and the dog immediately tried to lick his face.

“What a good boy” I thought, but Thomas only seemed vaguely disgusted at the concept of tongues.

The next couple of days had been fascinating. It seemed to me that the dog considered Thomas something like a car, a washing machine, or some other sort of “human magic”, one that gave treats and threw balls, but nothing more. It was an interesting result, and in the meantime we continued our usual conversations, endlessly learning about each other.

-Okay- I said one day and stopped writing- you have to explain that to me again, what is the purpose of this ritual you describe?

-It has no purpose, we don’t expect anything from performing it

-Is it fun?, do you get pleasure from performing it?

-No

-Is it religious in nature?, superstitious?

-This ritual is performed by all, regardless of superstition

-Then I don’t get it

-And I don’t know how to explain- said Thomas, defeated, and stopped talking

There were days like this, where it seemed like there was an insurmountable wall between us, that understanding was impossible. The frustration of such moments left a bitter taste in both our minds, perhaps the only thing they had in common at that moment.

Then the dog approached, waving its tail, at first I thought she was coming for me, as she had done before when I visited Thomas, but no, the dog walked right pass by him and stood there looking at Thomas, and Thomas just looked at it.

-I have fed her, I do not know what she wants from me- Thomas announced to me

-I think… it just wants you to pet it

-I don’t have hands like you Netza

-Use your control appendages

-Will she enjoy it despite my appendages being so different from yours?

-Maybe, just try not to hurt it

Thomas extended slowly one of his appendages and the dog lowered its head slightly, Thomas' appendage touched the dog, and he petted the dog as he had seen other humans do, the dog continued to wave its tail and got closer to Thomas.

-I think I know how to explain that ritual now- Thomas announced - it is to show others that they can love us

It was the first time Thomas used the word “love" in reference to his species.

That was I very good session, and I hoped this one would be just as good.

The atmosphere terosapiens breath isn’t toxic to homosapiens, but it's also not ideal, for that reason every person had to have small oxygen tanks with tubes they could suck oxygen from every once in a while, but oxygen being so reactive, there was a whole separate protocol for getting one.

-Name and rank - said the soldier in the check point

-You know me Sarah, I do this every week, do you really have to pretend you have no idea who I am every time?- I pleaded

-Name. And. Rank. - the soldier replied

-Netzahualcoyotl Jimenez Flores, special civilian agent, etno-cultures division

As Sarah typed my name the only evidence of the hundred of times we had done this was that she already knew how to spell my name

-Please input your password

“Purepecha” I typed and the computer agreed that it was indeed my password.

As I walked towards Thomas’ house I remembered how I was worried that the dog would never understand Thomas’ commands, and how wrong I was.

-Come -said Thomas with the flickering of his iridescent protrusions and to my surprise the dog did came

-Wow, that’s amazing, dogs don’t even see colors as well as we do, I didn’t believe it could learn your commands- I explained

-You also didn’t believe you could learn the symbols of my species' communication because they weren’t related to sound, and yet you did, it seems you did the same mistake with the dog, she can understand the symbols of my species too

-That’s border collies for you, they’re super smart

-For a dog

-For a dog - I agreed - have you thought of any name yet?

Thomas flickered a terosapien name to him - Although I’m still teaching her that’s her name - he said as he started to pet the dog and the dog look at his strange face, and she looked very pleased and happy.

-And what about a homosapiens name?

-Diogenes- Thomas replied without hesitation (although he spelled it wrong)

-This is a female dog

-And this increases entropy because…?

-That’s a male name

-Homosapiens label their animals like “sphere of water micro crystals” or “patch of different color” or “king in latin", I think I can label mine Diogenes

-I hate to admit it but I think you are right, also, you are doing that thing again were you use the definitions of the words instead of the words themselves

-Did I?- he said looking up from his dog - I have to check that definitions book again

Once I was finally allowed inside the embassy I took a moment to appreciate the “garden” full of organisms from the terosapien planet being grown for the comfort of Thomas (but also to conduct experiments on alien biology).

Usually Thomas was somewhere around the garden reading or translating human documents, but that day he wasn’t around.

-Thomas is in his office Mr. Netza- one of the soldiers informed me

-Thanks - I replied and went into the strange building whose architecture still confuses me

-Thomas, I have arrived - I announced - Thomas?

I waited but I saw no beams of light being reflected into the walls from anywhere. I started walking around the building until I found Thomas spread over the floor in a dark room.

-Thomas… is something wrong?, are you sick?

-I am not sick- he flickered with the little light that entered the room

-Then… how am I to interpret your state?, I had never seen you expressing this emotion and I don’t recognize it

But Thomas didn’t reply, his appendages were moving across from me and I shifted to have a better view, there I saw a confusing sight: Diogenes dead on the floor, and Thomas tearing bits and pieces of its flesh… and eating them.

-What happened?- I asked

-When I finished resting my mind I found it odd that she hadn’t come to greet me, as she always did, but she could not have greeted me, because as I found out, she had died while I rested, the cause was usual organ failure… and so, to my surprise, I am eating her, as if she was my own dead offspring… the people of my species would be completely disgusted, but they don’t understand… I didn’t understand…

Was Thomas… crying?. To be clear, there was no process similar to crying that he could do, but his breathing was irregular, his muscles were flaccid, his skin dry, all of which had been recognized as symptoms of distress before, but had never been observed all at once.

I kneeled next to Thomas and continued to watch him eat the corpse.

-This seems so absurd - Thomas admitted- this creature… I never had a conversation with this creature, she didn’t understand most concepts, she didn’t know what a Laplace transform was, she didn’t know what atoms are, she didn’t understand the nature of light nor the biochemical processes in her own body, and yet… there was one concept she understood… she understood that we were friends… and that’s not an easy concept, it’s not a simple concept, it’s highly abstract, and yet she understood it perfectly… she knew what friendship was

At this point Thomas turned his cluster of sensory organs, his face, in my direction, something he rarely did.

- How did you do it Netza?, how did homosapiens found, among all the creatures in this planet, one that could understand friendship?