Posted by Lieutenant Priscilla Simms (Chief Science Officer) in Main Sim - Bridge - The Arrival

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Issac Forgrave (Chief of Security) in Main Sim - Bridge - The Arrival

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Renveer (Executive Officer) in Main Sim - Bridge - The Arrival
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

SNIP

Renveer missed Holloway’s look; he was too concentrated on trying to pick up anything from the music or the body language of the singer. Thankfully, he was able to glean some basic emotional cues, which at least gave hints to the first real question they needed answered: what were their intentions? From what Renveer could gather, the aliens did not have malicious intent. In fact, they seemed nervous. If their ship was caught in some sort of anomaly that had also effected the station (as the scans seemed to indicate) Renveer could imagine that the other crew might fear that the Dresden had come to take advantage of their helpless state.

With this in mind, Renveer set out to use his own body language to indicate their own intent as peaceful and (hopefully) helpful. He turned his hands palms-up and raised his forearms to rest perpendicular to his waist. He tilted his head in a classic body language cue to communicate ‘I’m listening’. Renveer relaxed the muscles in his face, adopting as neutral of an expression as he could and pushed his shoulders back to straighten his posture. He might look a little ridiculous to other members of the bridge crew, but what was important at that moment was establishing some sort of baseline for an understanding of the desire to communicate and cooperate. Maintaining this position, Renveer waited for the being to respond to the captain’s question. He paid particularly close attention to the alien’s body language going forward.

(Lt. Cmdr. Renveer, XO)

The Ship’s Marine Commander watched everything intently. With the slightest move of his right pinky finger, Harris tapped a dark purple button on the very far right of his console. The ship’s computer made not a sound on the Bridge of the warship, but deep within the hull… a distinct purple klaxon flashed silently in Marine Country. Every jarhead on duty knew exactly what the light meant and in the next moment, the Marine Detachment of the USS Dresden began to quickly and quietly prep for First Contact Protocols.

Harris remained focused on the screen, but the corner of his eye stayed on the small, blinking button. When the glow became solid, he would know his troops were ready for peaceful… or not so peaceful… First Contact.

Harris, MarDet CO

Forgrave was remaining still and quiet; feeling distinctly out of place. Sure; he’d been trained in first contact protocols; but frankly, he was keenly aware of the fact that there were much better qualified people on the bridge for that job. He was content to observe the crew and the viewscreen; trying to gauge tensions and reactions. He didn’t miss Harris tapping the ‘alert’ button, and silently agreed. Despite the apparently peaceful (if non-communicative) nature of things so far.... there were simply too many unknowns to allow their guards down.

The Universal Translator was struggling to make sense of the music. Without a contextual starting point, it was currently giving an estimated time to translation of thirty-seven…

Years.

The figure didn’t look at Holloway, nor even seemed to register the sound of her voice. It simply looked from face to face, as if waiting for something.

GMT

Although the being had not responded to or mirrored Renveer’s inquisitive body language, the executive officer did not want to give up on the idea of some form on non-verbal communication just yet. After all, Captain Holloway’s effort proved equally fruitless, so better to try something than just continue to stand here.

Noticing the alien’s gaze lingering on the faces of the Dresden’s crew, Renveer’s instinct was to simply… smile? In almost every humanoid culture, a smile seemed to be a universal indicator of goodwill and friendliness. There was of course the off-chance that this species saw such a gesture as “baring your fangs” but based on the surface physiology of this species, it seemed unlikely that such a gesture had been used by their evolutionary ancestors.

With that in mind, Renveer slowly broke out into a smile. It was a bit forced and definitely awkward, and Renveer sincerely hoped that the Captain did not look his way until he knew whether the idea worked or not.

(Lt. Cmdr. Renveer, XO)

Thirty-seven years… well that’s less than fraggin’ useful! Thought Issac ruefully. He gave Renveer a bit of side-eye at his exaggerated non-verbal communication, but honestly he couldn’t criticize it - this alien species didn’t seem to be responding to audio at all. Which made him wonder.... Quietly, and hopefully below the range of audio pickup, he whispered to the science officer. “Ma’am… is it possible that our audio ain’t being received? Or maybe we could send some music over the comms - they might just not recognize speech…” Issac was silent for a moment, thinking of possibilities. “Or maybe galactic standard ain’t musical enough - I reckon Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, but maybe there’s something else that’s more so?” Issac’s face pulled into a grimace as he tried to explain his thinking. “I don’t know if that makes sense at all…”

Forgrave, CoS

Priscilla had been listening, as enraptured as the rest. When it was over, she blinked and glanced at Forgrave a moment. “That may make more sense, Captain. A language of our with more music like lilt.” She turned quickly and did a query of the languages in the database that were close to ‘musical’ in nature. She opened the search up not just to Earth, but all the languages in the database.

Priscilla
CSO

Drillek nodded in agreement and helped Simms with the inquiry. In a few moments, they had a listing of languages that were more melodic in their base speech patterns: among Earth-based languages were Mandarin Chinese (as the Security Chief had suggested), Hmong, Shona (an African group of languages), and even some Scandinavian languages had some tonal-based qualities.

Outside of Earth, there were only a smattering of species that had tonal-based languages, and only three that used music solely as a means of communication: The Drolilians of Jo’f II (extinct, language not in Universal Translator), and the Mofirindi (home world unknown, extinct species, language not in Universal Translator). The last entry was found in the logs of the USS Voyager detailing an encounter with a being known as Fantome (species unknown) who may have been a native of the Void. But the samples of that language did not sound similar to the music from the alien vessel.

Drillek looked at the readings and the information and then looked at Holloway. “Captain, we need a starting point. Something the UT can grab as a common between the languages. We need the same word or name for something.”

GMT