“Hi there! My name’s Haruel and this is my friend Shalagap and we’re having a great weekend at the Selefan-Tirifan-Perelom Triumbral Funfair!”
“Mr, you get ten minutes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You get ten minutes. You have to select the format and time-index first though, or they’ll just see text.”
“We didn’t do that did we Haruel?”
“No Shalagap we didn’t.”
“Oh well you can always send another one when you’ve finished. Dreams are the best. You get their attention better. Anyway, sorry. I’ll let you finish.”
“Oh, yes thank you. Thank you very much.”
“I could just tweak a few settings for you first, just so you get the best out of the text mode.”
“By all means, go ahead.”
“Ok here goes.”
The small man continued to smear his tentacles over the display. Haruel and Shalagap looked intently as the man worked, not used to purple flesh tones.
“There, I’ve set up your narrative mode. Translation’s on as a default setting.” the man said conversantly.
“Now when you speak it’ll put words after, saying things like who you said it to, or how you said it,” he continued.
“Oh I see,” responded Shalagap stretching one of his longer eye stalks up to see the display, noticing their time ticking down.
“You’ve already set the time-index I see. Ten Billion. Nice round number. Risky though.” he said twisting and untwisting two tentacles, perhaps making some idiosyncratic gesture they were unfamiliar with.
“Risky?” queried Haruel, flaring each of his five nostrils one at a time from left to right, in an attempt to make Shalagap laugh by secretly mocking the purple man. Shalagap restrained himself, nudging Haruel with a flipper.
“Yes how is it risky?” he asked the purple man, who then looked rather pleased that he had.
“Well you see they weren’t great travellers back then, a little stupid in that particular locality too. It’s unlikely many people will get to hear your story,” he explained.
“I see.” they both responded simultaneously, glancing at one another. The purple man obviously took the game rather seriously.
“You probably won’t hit the scoreboard with this one. But never mind. There’s always next time.” he said consolingly.
“Well I’ll get out of your way and let you finish.”
“Would you?” Haruel snapped quickly, noticing the timer counting down even further. The purple man pushed off the console with the tip of a tentacle and floated to one side. Haruel rattled forward on his pincers tugging Shalagap along with him by a tendril.
“Ok people, or whatever wonderful things you are,” began Haruel with renewed determination.
“We don’t have much time left, so listen carefully!” he said sternly moving his long head closer to the terminal.
“They’re reading.” Shalagap reminded his friend.
“Whatever. As I said, we’re here at the funfair in the shadow of the three moons of Floss. Having a fan-tas-tic time. Now, apparently the idea behind this game is to send a message of some kind back through time. The message has to contain something so amazing that has effects lasting millions of years. The little purple man thinks you’re all too boring and stupid to get us on the leader board. The best score is,” Haruel glanced over the readouts looking for the information.
“Four billion, eleven million, two hundred and fifty five thousand, six hundred and forty three years.” Shalagap read out from a high display Haruel couldn’t see.
“Wow, what was that one?” Haruel asked in astonishment.
“I don’t know it doesn’t say,” Shalagap replied, drawing out the words as he had a final look for the answer. The purple man floated down from above the console.
“How’s it coming?” he inquired cheerfully.
“Oh fine, fine.” said Haruel impatiently. “You’ll probably know,” he began wearily. “What got the high score?” The purple man looked at the timer dabbing a slimy tentacle demonstratively at the readout.
“You’ve only got a minute left, you don’t want to spend it talking to me.” he cautioned Haruel.
“I didn’t want to spend the first five minutes talking to you, the least you can do is tell me and my readers what the high score was for!” he shouted up at the man, gurgling slightly as a result of the exertion.
“Oh that. It was a small collection of drawings. Nothing fancy. I think they were miniature sketches of some guy’s children, made out of atoms.”
“How did that last billions of years?” Shalagap asked.
The purple man prodded the console for more information.
“Come on, there’s seconds left” Haruel said bouncing up and down on his pincers with impatience. The information scrolled onto the screen.
“It says here they led to a self-replicating molecule, within a lipid bilayer. Oh I don’t know how well that will translate.” he said regretfully.
“Let me try,” chirped Shalagap stretching some eyes up to get a look at the rest of the information.
“Ahh I see. His drawings turned into little creatures. There they should get that even if they are simple little creatures.” he said proudly.
“Well I’m sure that will make waves” the purple man said sarcastically. Haruel slapped the man with his proboscis sending him flying into a stand of buoyant seeds.
“Shalagap, get some more money out we’re going to do it again.” he said huffing in exasperation. Shalagap looked at the display.
“Four, three, two,” he said reading the timer. |
