Elder Cultivator

The first person Anton put in significant effort to speak with was of course the friendly algae. Assuming that whole thing was a single individual was easier, but he didn’t actually know that. Still, a few minor discontinuities on a physical body being connected was a small matter compared to lacking the normal requirements for sapience such as a brain of some sort.

His friend was excited to see him again. They bubbled out of their new home into a humanoid form and went right in for another same-side handshake. That was more or less where communication broke down, but Anton was in contact with others who should be able to help.

He tried a few things. Sound still didn’t work, but his movements seemed to be perceived by his conversation partner. Sign language was suggested, but not one that Anton knew. There were some language specialists who took stock of the situation, and having received updates along the way they had begun to develop something that seemed to fit.

Since the algae didn’t seem to do well at distinguishing smaller digits like fingers, the specialists in space had come up with a sort of full body sign language. Anton felt very silly, waving his arms around and making exaggerated gestures, but the algae didn’t seem to care and happily joined in while mimicking his actions.

After a few hours the algae seemed to get tired, but the next day it happily interacted with Anton again. It took several days of attempts before it actually seemed to understand the meaning behind anything. They were beginning with object words, starting with relevant things like lake, river, and human. The translators weren’t really sure if they should come up with a name for the algae. Calling it algae might not even be correct at the current point- that would be more like calling humans ‘skin cells’ or something equally insufficient like ‘flesh’.

The algae based individual’s ‘hands’ were still more like mittens than anything else, but they placed them ‘palm down’ and made a wide sweeping gesture towards the lake, then an arm gesture that Anton was trying to use for follow. They then moved out onto the lake, collapsing into a floating pile.

“They did it!” the voice of Anton’s contact, Abioye. There was a whole team with him, but it was easier if only one person spoke directly to Anton once they made decisions on how to go about things. “I think.”

“I will follow to find out,” Anton agreed. He stepped into the lake, following after the algae. There was a microscopic chance it was trying to lead Anton to a watery demise, but that didn’t seem likely.

He felt curious senses on him as he began swimming. Clearly they didn’t expect him to move in that particular way. The algae formed into humanoid shape and tried swimming, but it quickly gave up. As a single mass, it moved around sort of like an octopus, swimming circles around Anton in a way he was quite certain he could interpret as happy.

Considering the only real words Anton had exchanged with his friends were pretty much ‘hello’ and ‘lake follow’ he still did feel they were friends. Because of that, he wanted to show off a little. Anton picked himself up out of the water before standing atop it.

Excited algae looked curiously at his feet, moving quite close and observing the way he spread his energy out to increase the effect of surface tension. That was the most reliable way to stand on water, in Anton’s opinion.

The algae moved its energy to try to replicate the feat- succeeded- and then seemed to immediately regret it, dropping back into the water. Given that being in water was probably necessary for survival, it made sense.

The algae didn’t seem to want to give up on replicating Anton, however. It was doing something, changing shape and flailing about at the surface, before finally turning into ‘humanoid form’ with water captured inside it. They ran around flailing their arms, clearly quite excited at the novelty… though it quickly wore off. Perhaps it realized that walking atop water was a lot like walking on the ground, not that there was much experience with either as far as Anton could tell.

For one thing, the way they ran was just by going through walking motions more quickly, not that it was ever actually quick. Except when scooting around in the water in vague clump form.

No new words seemed to be learned the rest of that day, but it was fun.

-----

The next day, they were down one word. Because the word Anton’s new friend used for lake was now also being used for the ground.

“Oh! It probably thinks it means anything sort of flat!” Abioye commented. “Or perhaps just horizontal. I guess that makes sense, with the gestures.”

Anton was following it through the nearby area, not quite certain where it should be leading him. He’d vaguely observed it moving further from its home a few times, but it seemed to quickly return.

They came to a clearing, upon which the mass of algae collapsed onto the ground and began struggling with something. No, that wasn’t quite right. Anton thought at first his friend had a hiccup in natural energy, but on further observation the collapse should have been purposeful.

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Anton only took so long to recognize what it was doing because he was unfamiliar with plant based energy cultivation. He’d only interacted from the human perspective, but soon he realized he’d seen the behavior before, atop the lake. It was cultivating, specifically the core process of taking in energy in the surroundings. The algae was of course spread out to get the most sunlight possible.

An ‘arm’ raised up, making a follow gesture. So it wanted Anton to do the same thing. Anton sat down and began gathering energy, though most of his energy came from internal sources now. His limitations in cultivation weren’t based on how much energy he could get his hands on, but how much he could hold and how well he could use it.

Still, he did his best to visibly represent cultivating. As he did so, his friend stood up, reached out and grabbed his wrist, and left- shaking out twigs and leaves from within its strands.

“Oh, a combined hello and goodbye!”

“That’s my fault, probably,” Anton said. He didn’t get any indication he was supposed to follow, so he just sat. “What do you think?”

“I have no idea,” Abioye commented. “But if I had to guess… it wanted you to cultivate, and thought since you lived on land you’d need a proper clearing?”

“About what I thought,” Anton agreed. “I would have expected more observation, though. Maybe they don’t care?”

“We need a name,” Abioye said. “For us to use, if nothing else.”

“Well, algae is no good. And there’s no way I’m using ‘Al’.”

-----

They came up with a name a few days later. Each day, the algae had been generally more interested in physical contact with Anton, grabbing his wrist, elbow, then shoulders- with both hands. That last one had just happened, and Anton chuckled, putting his arms over its shoulders and pulling his buddy close.

The way they wiggled momentarily made Anton think he’d gone too far, but the algae only did so to free its own arms to return the gesture to Anton. And from then on, instead of attempting any sort of handshake- or wristshake- the standard greeting was always a bear hug.

“Bear Hug isn’t a bad name,” Anton said.

“And going by Akrys naming conventions might have been a bit too clinical,” Abioye agreed. “Though ‘Ten Thousand Strands’ wouldn’t have been too bad.”

“That’s not even the right number,” Anton pointed out. “And it changes.”

“I still think its a decent name,” Aboye countered. “But Bear Hug is quite fitting.”

-----

After about a month, after spending hours every day with his friend, he couldn’t particularly hold a conversation… but he could communicate practical things. One of those was ‘cultivation’ or ‘natural energy’. His algae friend tended to use those interchangeably, or maybe it didn’t recognize the subtle differences. They hadn’t even been a big part of the language plans until it became clear that it was one of the few things the algae cared about.

Another thing was fun. Running around, swimming, and roughhousing with Anton seemed to be the main things there. Food was… not something it understood. Drinking water was odd to it, because Anton only drank a very little bit and not all the time.

Bear Hug didn’t seem to like actual combat, but Anton saw it happen regardless. Some fish were nibbling at it, not quite getting why they couldn’t bite. Everything had some amount of natural energy, and they chomped down on a bit of Bear Hug. The fish were immediately slapped away.

When one returned to bite at the food it couldn’t quite sink its teeth into regardless, Bear Hug was a little less gentle, whipping the creature with their strands. The fish was enraged by the ‘attack’ and rallied most of its energy, but when it lunged forward Bear Hug stabbed through it, a hundred different strands sticking through the creature’s body.

Bear Hug shook it off and sulked for the rest of the afternoon, not even enjoying the sun and cultivation. Anton was quite happy to make friends with something peaceful. He also realized that by Bear Hug’s estimation, Anton might be the only other thinking thing in the world. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t a community of plant cultivators. There were a few that had colonies he’d found, but Bear Hug might not even know about the spiky-fruit tree at all, let alone one that could cultivate.

Maybe it was better that way. Except that Anton believed, even with some of the plant cultivators being sessile, that eventually they would come across each other. Violence was highly possible, if they felt threatened- and unclear communication could increase that probability.

Since Anton hadn’t seen signs of language, let alone a common one, that could be a serious problem. That said, he wasn’t entirely sure that there weren’t some communication methods he was missing. He’d placed some unobtrusive pieces of equipment that were helping monitor the area, looking for things like pheromones or whatever else the language team thought might take the place of something like speech or gestures.

-----

Communicating to Bear Hug that he would be gone for a long time was difficult. At the end, Anton wasn’t even quite certain he had succeeded. The exaggerated hug he received as a goodbye was a little bit longer than usual, he thought, but that was about it. Still, even if he personally wanted to hang around, without introducing more people into the mix he was also the only method to learn about other natives.

Anton considered creating an energy clone, like on Unov, but it would be difficult to make tangible and he didn’t want to confuse Bear Hug with something unreal. With humans, he could just explain- and they would likely already understand what was going on. So he would have to be away for a while… but that would be a good way to see how well Bear Hug retained words.

Anton mostly shared a number of nouns with his friend, as tangible objects were the easiest things to indicate. It wouldn’t be a big loss if those were forgotten, and he doubted ‘swim’, ‘run’, and ‘cultivate’ would be lost, but how memory worked for a mass of algae was somewhat in question. Still, he’d been recognized some weeks later so clearly there was something there.

The next target was the spiky tree, mostly because Anton thought maybe it had tried to communicate with him already. It was possible it had told him to go away and never come back, but he still felt it was something. Provoking more reactions could make that more certain, and satisfy the numerous language fanatics up in space. There would never be enough data for them to pore over, Anton imagined. Not that he thought they should ever be satisfied with having ‘enough’ of their essence, it was just interesting to see what particular things humans focused on if given the opportunity.