The hours flew by.
"One is before two," EUe said. "Two is before three. Three is after two. Two is after one."
"Zero is before one?" the Impactor asked.
"True!" EUe whistled happily. "Past is before. Future is after. Present is before future and after past. Present is now."
Walking up to the wall, he drew a circle. Drawings like these had proven to be very helpful when it came to introducing key concepts like many, few, big, small, same, similar, and different.
Brushing his fingers over the circle, EUe erased the image and then quickly redrew it at a location several feet away.
"Circle move," he explained. "Now, circle is here," he added, and then, erasing it yet again, he drew the circle above where it had just been and then pointed at the new location, saying, "Now, circle is here."
Then he pointed at the circle's previous location and said, "Before, circle was there."
— — —
For the next lesson, EUe wrote on the wall:
| lU-twO E – |
"True or F—?"
"—False." The Impactor interrupted him before he'd even finished asking the question.
It was like the Impactor was trying to tell him, "Dude, I'm so tired of this."
"I know grammar is frustrating, buddy, but, I swear, there's a method to the madness!" EUe shook out his wings and then proceeded with the lesson.
"Statement not have number one," he said.
At the moment, the object of the exercise was to explain the concept of need. "Statement need number one to be true," EUe said, before adding in the missing symbol:
| lU-twO | E – |
"Now statement has number one. Statement is now true."
"Question question question: need?" the Impactor asked. It had already learned to copy the intonation EUe used whenever he asked a question.
EUe started listing examples of need in action. "If need then. Question need answer. Triangle need three lines. Square—"
"—Four lines." The reply came swiftly. "Five-shape need five lines. Number-shape need number-lines. Next question. Next!"
It really liked the word next.
— — —
The good news was that the Impactor was making progress. It was talking! The bad news? Their pidgin was probably going to kill EUe before his dreamshard did.
The way they were talking made EUe's research papers seem well-written by comparison.
"What is can?" the Impactor asked.
"Can is…" EUe warbled softly for a moment, pausing to figure out how to answer. "Can is when statement start 'be-in-future' statement end equals true." He spoke the words slowly, double-checking them to make sure he hadn't screwed up.
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A major complication had entered into their communications when EUe had started to use "statement start" and "statement end" to indicate the beginning and end of his explanations.
In hindsight, this proved to be a very bad idea.
"Not can is cannot," he said. "Cannot is when statement start be-in-future statement end equals false."
"Make example, please."
"Statement can equals true, false, or neither. False statement cannot equal true. True statement cannot equal false. One plus positive number can equal bigger than four if number equals big. One plus negative number cannot be bigger than four."
"Next!"
EUe paused. He spent a moment trying to figure out the next lesson to teach when he realized he'd rather stab beaks into his eyes than continue with this mess.
It was one of the most important lessons a researcher could learn: sometimes, you just had to start over from scratch, or thereabouts.
He just couldn't take any more of the madness.
"Alright, time-out time-out."
"Question?"
"This is getting too complicated. Let's start over. You know the concepts, so let's try talking more naturally. And this time, when I want to use is instead of equals, I'm using is instead of equals, and you're not gonna convince me otherwise!"
The wall rippled in frustration.
This time, he started with "the".
— — —
Wanting to save his nectariat phials for an emergency, EUe flew back to the camp for his lunch break. He ended up getting one of the last servings of nectar from the camp's tankards. Fortunately, as tlE-la explained, an airship would be arriving by sundown with a new tankard.
Somewhat disconcertingly, when EUe asked about how gEl was doing, tlE-la told him that the specialist they'd asked for hadn't arrived yet.
That was unusual.
Delays were a rarity in the modern Ecumene. As one of the biggest sources of twEfE-on-twEfE fatalities, delays had to be prevented at all costs. The current Nectar-King was known to be very proud of how his administration had worked in concert with the civil engineering castebunds to bring the Ecumene's infrastructure to never-before-seen levels of efficiency.
"Considering how far out of the way we currently are," lU-twO said, "I wouldn't be surprised if the specialist was flying along with the evening's nectar delivery."
On the plus side, lU-twO had happily informed him that the group had succeeded in capturing one of the drones.
"The little guy put up quite the fight," the astrophysicist said, "but we got him." He scratched his head feathers. "Everyone's beat. The drone is in the lab; we'll examine it after dinner, once everyone's gotten a chance to rest and freshen up."
"I hope you'll wait for me," EUe asked.
"Of course."
After updating the others on his progress, EUe returned to Impactor. He had a busy afternoon ahead of him. The short flight back to the alien vessel felt like an eternity—and EUe knew exactly why: for the first time in recent memory, he was happy.
He even did a loop-de-loop.
EUe had become an engineer because of how engineering had fascinated him. Not only could it bring about miracles, but anyone could puzzle over its mysteries and come away with something significant, as long as they set their mind to it. Runetics gave him a sense of belonging and purpose, one that, in its own way, was as precious as the bonds he'd formed with the people he treasured. It gave him a forum where he could reach out and connect with others. It didn't matter if you were awkward or they were awkward, you were working together! Wonder was a nectar meant to be shared with good company.
He'd almost forgotten what that feeling was like.
Puzzling out the mysteries, exchanging ideas with colleagues—and now, flying back to the Impactor in search of another breakthrough… it was what he'd loved about his work.
He'd never imagined he'd feel it again. But he did. He didn't think deserved to feel it, either, and yet he felt it all the same.
Flying back inside, the Impactor was as glad to see him as he was to see it, especially when he revealed that his next test involved him once again sinking his arm into the wall, much to its delight.
"Question," he said, "who is this? Answer: EUe. I am EUe."
Prying himself loose proved to be quite tricky, most because the wall tried to swallow his spare arm—not to mention his feet—as EUe tried to push himself free.
But, finally, he managed to break free of its clutches.
It rippled with frustration as he stepped away.
"Who are you," he asked.
"What is you?" the Impactor asked.
EUe spent a moment puzzling over how to explain you. You wasn't an absolute concept. It was a relative one.
Hmm…
Eventually, he settled for if-then statements.
"If the total is three, and one of three is EUe, and if me is EUe, then you is the one of three which is not EUe."
After a moment of nervous silence, the Impactor's interior rumbled with a sound that was not a sound, but something more, and from what EUe could hear, it sounded like a lot had been lost in the formatting compression. Geometry reemerged from the chamber's upper reaches, clinking and twinkling. The not-light spun out from them danced around him, as turbulent as algae-spangled waves on the night-tossed sea.
"Answer," it said.
EUe was so enchanted with the sight that the plain old sound of the Impactor's answer startled him to attention.
"W-What?"
"EUe question: who are you? Answer—"
—And then it made that sound again.
Not even the dreamshard in his chest was enough to make EUe able to pronounce that, so he settled for a rough approximation. Since the sound began with a tone being interrupted by a static clack, he decided it was worth a shot to try pronouncing it.
"Vyx," he said.
Gods, that was a weird name.
"Question?" Vyx asked.
"Uh… your answer complicated to say," EUe said. "Vyx not complicated to say."
The walls rippled with frustration.
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