A short sci-fi story about how aliens might smell the universe differently. A work in progress. Copyright Terry Cornall 2022
In the plescium nestled a wurble, its fenesters luminous with softly pearlescent light. The Grumble looked long upon the shimmering of it and gridled gently to thingself. "It is well. We may now begin to carry out the Plan. Our long awaited redemption is at tentacle. The Stones of Wah(shiver) shall show us the slimepath and at the fruition, all shall be as it should be." The Grumble oscillated out of the temple of Those That Slithered Foremost and appeared on the balcony overlooking the Plaza of the Multitudes.
"My things!" he gridled. "The wurble has finally pleshed its fenesters and the Wah(shiver) has been vindicated! No longer shall we pay mandible-service to the sniding of the Blankethuggers! Our future is upon us and it is time to take to the skies with gripes of furgle! The interlopers shall be expunged and our volume shall be at last our own once more! We shall do great things and the Universe shall remember us and gridle our nurmellations long after we and our afters have sporulated! Long shall those dull, tendril-less frontganging Humans wail that they ever bifurcated into our optical awareness!
The multitude plurbled enthusiastically and the Grumble was filled by the waves of emotion that washed the balcony. Joyously, thing's glands responded in kind and the musky sweet smell of plurble wafted in the still warm air of Gah(plinge), the chief city of the planet of Hingle-tang(soft plurble).
Thing's tendrils waved slowly, whurdlingly, gathering the scents. Long had thing waited this affirmation of the Wah(shiver). Long had the gurgly Blankethuggers extended the appeasment tendrils cringlingly toward the invaders and long had this burned like furgle in his organs. No more! Now that the wurble had pleshed, no-thing could gainsay the need to insinuate themselves into their gripes and fly to envelope the Humans. From this moment, no more mister nice thing.
I like this beginning, because it is weird. Its garbled gobbledygook accentuates the possibilities for misunderstanding.
Titles might be:
The "Wurble that pleshed", or "I stink therefore I am", or "In space, no-one can smell your farts".
I don't favour the final two titles, because they give too much away, but I'd like to use "I stink therefore..." somewhere.
Perhaps Feteo Ergo Sum (To have a bad odour, on account of existing)
The plot goes like this:
Humans discover a world peopled by amorphous beings that they can't communicate with. They assume non-sapience.
The reason they can't communicate is not just that the Hingle-tang(soft plurble)-lings use smell and light and body-motion as well as sound to talk, it's because no two use the same 'language': each is unique. This makes it tough for the linguists who rely on statistical analysis. The Hingies are able to cope with this variability because they are born knowing thousands of encodings for the same concept. It would be as if humans could speak every possible human language multiplied by hundreds, and were comfortable with switching at random between them.
The Hingies could learn to communicate, but they are assuming that smell and light are the major components so they can't cope with the sound-based language of humans at all. Having almost no smell, due to very good shipboard hygine and airtight exploration suits, we appear to lack dimensionality.
Add in our habit of shining torches at them and we appear to be screaming at them.
So, we find them stupid, and they find us incomprehensible, boring, stupid and loud.
The situation borders on open warfare, until one Corporal Jones comes onto the scene. Jones is 'blessed' with scents. He has every smelly disorder you can imagine. Halitosis, smelly feet, a fart like he has a dead rat shoved up his...
you get the picture. Normally, although he is able to contain his odors in a shipsuit and a breathing mask when off-duty, or in armour when in the field, he is still a very unpopular person with his platoon mates.
It is only his usefulness as a forward scout that keeps him from an honourable discharge, to go along with all the dishonourable ones he already has.
During the opening hostilities, Jones is posted on a rock tower, told by his Seargent that, "Jones, you got a stink that only a Hingie could love, so you get away out there where I can't smell you and you watch 'em. Keep me posted by radio, so I don't have to smell you up close." So, instructed to scout, he spends a lot of time watching the Hingies and forms his own opinion about their intelligence.
He is able to decipher patterns of light and motion from one individual Hingie, whom he designates as Field Marshal Ruum, and its interactions with the others, but he can see that there is something missing. He assumes it is sound, but when he turns his teleaudic gear to Ruum, he hears that Ruum emits very little by way of sound. Then he switches to infra-red light and notes the plume of heat that each Hingie gives off. He is puzzled that the plumes don't travel upwards in the same way as a human target's would.
The Hingies plumes tend to spread out a lot more, and overlap to a large extent. He hypothesises that this might be some form of defense mechanism to hide them from heat-seeking predators, and wonders how they achieve it. It would require something like an internal fan.
Anyway, however they do it, Jones realises that this might be the missing communications method and fits a gas absorption analyser to his scope. He discovers that each Hingie is giving off a vast array of volatile gasses. Smells.
It is well known that the Hingies stink even worse that he does, but it was never guessed that they might be communicating that way. Now he sees that Ruum has a consistent emission pattern, even although every other Hingie is different.
He ponders what that means, and comes to the aphorism, that "everybody's own fart smells best to them" which brings him to the idea that each Hingie might have its own unique language.
The story concludes when Jones is jumped from behind by a gang of Hingies on patrol and his suit is badly ripped, allowing his scent to escape.
Fascinated by his smell, and realising that he is disarmed, they cease hostilities and start to follow him around, trying to work out what he is saying. He radios, "Hey, Sarge, I think they like me."
Blue Goo with a hi IQ
Another story in this arc could be about a trader or first contact officer meeting a little 'plop' of blue goo. The usual "one pebble, two pebble, three pebble... you continue the sequence" thing fails because the goo doesn't react (it is blind) until in frustration the man starts dropping the pebbles into the goo and it waits until he gets to 1+2+3+4=10 and then it spits out 5+6=11 which is the first time it can respond with a sum in which both the left and right hand sides continue the sequence, even then having to add in a 'pebble' of its own that turn out to be a large rough diamond and then the man could offer it some specially formulated food in return for the diamond but the goo rejects that and finds a ration bar instead. There should be haggling that ends up with the man left with nothing but pink paste to eat for the next month and the goo gets two pallets of tasty ration bars.