The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)

[lurker]

That was well-written. I noticed a lot of the Commonthroat quirks (whole guts, holy rings, and swimming teeth), and the story was well integrated. The hagiography was a bit long, but that very well adds to the effect of the story.

"My teeth are swimming" or "my back teeth are floating" is an expression I've heard elsewhere and adapted for Commonthroat. The digression about St. Clearwater was originally a separate lore post, but I decided it made sense to stick it in the story. Drowning in a pool of raw sewage is near the top of my list of ways I'd rather not die.

n (non-Reformed?) Christianity, they are intercessors who specialize in whatever. Plus there's Mary. (Listen, going to someone's mom so they'll convince them to help you is the oldest trick in the book!)

As someone who lives in the South, I can verify that saints are very much not a thing in most Protestant circles. In general, the more low church a denomination is, the more suspicious they'll be of the concept. Catholic and Orthodox go whole hog, but mainline Protestant denominations like Anglicanism (or Episcopalians) will probably mention saints by name but not do much in terms of intersession or other customs. As you move across the gradient to denominations that arose after the Great Awakening like Evangelicals, especially here in the Bible Belt they'll straight up accuse you of devil worship, although they may use terms like "the saints in heaven" as a collective noun but nothing more.

I always thought modern American culture's obsession with things that were touched or owned by celebrities scratches the same itch. "This baseball was hit by the famous batter Muscles McRoidRage" or whatever. (IDK anything about baseball lol but you get the idea)

As far as the Claravian notion of saintly intersession, I think it stems from their apophatic theology. If The Light is utterly incomprehensible, the saints, as holy men and women who were nevertheless mortals, serve as stepping stones from the realm of the knowable to the realm of the unknowable.

As for the afterlife, I still have ideas rolling around in my head. I had this whole thing set to go where when you died, you had to climb a giant tree called the Tree of Trials, with the saints basking in the beatific vision of The Light above the canopy. How far up the tree you started depended on your deeds in life, so basically Dante's Purgatorio except it's a tree rather than a mountain.

Then I watched This video literally as I was preparing to write up the lore post about it, and it put me off the concept because 'of course arboreal animals would picture the afterlife as a giant tree, that's way too easy'.

Regardless of how it shakes out, Any descriptions would be presented as analogies for a reality beyond comprehension. So it might not be a literal tree, etc.

I've already talked about The Void, which is basically me lying awake at 3 AM being gnawed by existential dread, but for all eternity.

[Visions1]

I think the tree thing would be perfect for the Neoshamaists.
Some Claravian preacher writes a nice short story about how the afterlife is like a tree - meant to be taken as literally as we take that story about people having spoons tied to their hands in heaven - and some Neoshamaist is just like "You know what? I think I've stumbled on some ancient Yinrih religion"...
...despite the fact the guy basically just made it up.

I do think it would also make for lovely illuminations, like those Greek Orthodox ladder illuminations. Everyone knows they're metaphors, but the effect is striking. https://religioused.sanfran.goarch.org/ ... imacus.jpg

[lurker]

I think the tree thing would be perfect for the Neoshamaists.
Some Claravian preacher writes a nice short story about how the afterlife is like a tree - meant to be taken as literally as we take that story about people having spoons tied to their hands in heaven - and some Neoshamaist is just like "You know what? I think I've stumbled on some ancient Yinrih religion"...
...despite the fact the guy basically just made it up.

I do think it would also make for lovely illuminations, like those Greek Orthodox ladder illuminations. Everyone knows they're metaphors, but the effect is striking. https://religioused.sanfran.goarch.org/ ... imacus.jpg

I had some ideas already for a particular flavor of neoshamanists. I read a Wikipedia article on a particular culture either in the Sahara or the Sahel that had a monotheistic religion but also a form of ancestor... anti-worship, if that makes sense. Basically the ancestors are evil and one of the jobs of a particular class of religious leader is to keep them away. It was more than the typical "don't make your ancestors angry by doing such and such." The spirits were actively malevolent.

I could be conflating what I read with the ideas I added for this Neoshamanist group, so caveat lector. Can't remember the name of the culture, but I stumbled upon it by doing the typical wiki walk from something completely unrelated.

---

So I had an idea for a group of Neo-mechanists that combines ideas of the original Mechanists with the Artificer's Litter. A group of yinrih becomes stranded on a dwarf planet in Partisan Territory or the Inner Belt. They have no means of summoning help, so they use the supplies that have available to try and build a craft to leave the planet. Before they can build the craft, they have to set up an entire factory/supply chain going from raw materials to intermediate products and so on in order to build the craft. They eventually go crazy and get it in their heads that they must keep expanding the factory, making it more efficient, etc. Decades or centuries later, someone stumbles upon this group, and all the stranded yinrih can be heard saying is

"pM GJlNMr rgj..."

"pM GJlNMr rgj..."

"pM GJlNMr rgj..."

[Visions1]

I actually knew a guy from Madagascar, who said that's basically how some of them (anti)worship their ancestors. It depends on the region.

I think that factorio mechanist group would make for a good story. I've been waiting to learn more about life and culture on the other planets.

[lurker]

This one holds the cloth above the ears and allows the ears to swivel.

[Visions1]

So like a henin or tantur.

[Khemehekis]

So like a henin or tantur.

Wow, I've never come across the word "hennin" before outside the National Spelling Bee! This boy got the word in Round 6, and missed it (he guessed it as "hennen"). They said the correct spelling was "hennin" with a double N, though. Everyone was talking afterward about how the word was too obscure to go in the same round as "escargot" and "gesundheit". Some of us, including my family, were nonetheless delighted to learn the proper word for a conical streamered princess' hat!

[lurker]

So like a henin or tantur.

You're a fountain of new vocabulary, particularly hat-related.

---

Here are some random story ideas that I'll probably never get to:

A human hires himself out to a rich Sweetwater eccentric thinking he's working as a personal assistant, but it turns out he's being hired to live in his menagerie as a sapient pet. The tree dweller that the rich guy already owns becomes jealous of the newcomer (or alternatively, sees him as food) and the two end up duking it out before the human can escape.

A story set during the end of the War of Dissolution. A group of Pious dissolutionists descends on Yih to free the remaining debtor slaves from the Preservationists, only to be met by a group of Secular Dissolutionists attempting to do the same. The two groups stop fighting the Preservationists and start fighting one another over who gets to free the slaves. Meanwhile, the slaves just wander off on their own during the chaos.

The misadventures of an idealistic and crazy Knight of the Sun and his dimwitted but more grounded squire. They wander the land in their mech Rust Bucket in order to right wrongs... as far as they know.

[lurker]

The bobtailed hob, bob hob, or just hob, is a vulpithecoid comparable in intelligence to a baboon. It is also roughly equal in evolutionary distance from the yinrih as baboons are from humans. The name is a human designation that refers to hobgoblins, but even more to Thomas Hobbes, as these creatures are nasty, brutish, and short.

It is fully bipedal, with feet optimized for a cursorial lifestyle. The feet are digitigrade, retaining the yinrih's paw pads and claws but with much shorter toes, of which it has only four compared to the yinrih's six. The structures homologous to the yinrih's inner and outer thumbs have become sharp dewclaws.

Its hands have similarly become more specialized for grasping. There is no writing claw, the fingers are tipped with flat primate-like nails, and while the hob retains a well-developed opposable inner thumb, the outer thumb has atrophied and its claw has become a sharp knife-like spur positioned somewhat further up the arm. The palms of the hands lack pads.

As its name suggests, it does have a tail, but a rather stumpy one. It's face is much flatter, with reduced whiskers but retaining a wet rhinarium. There is a prominent marking above the eyes that give the impression that the hob has a unibrow. The eyes have only one set of crimson-colored bandpass membranes that are fused shut, though like the yinrih the hob also has a set of "normal" primary eyelids.

Hobs can be found in a particularly volcanically active region similar to Yellowstone, although with much more frequent and less volatile eruptions. The area goes through cycles of eruption followed by repopulation by grasses and herbivores. The frequent eruptions have dotted the area with easily accessible surface deposits of obsidian. Hobs use obsidian shards as stabbing weapons. They lack the intelligence to make tools of their own, and rely on scavenging naturally occurring sharp flakes. Their tool use is instinctual rather than learned, like an otter using a rock to crack a shell.

They are quick pursuit predators similar to cheetahs, chasing down their prey and dispatching it with rapid stabs to large arteries. Curiously, they emit a high pitched, almost tuneful cry immediately prior to giving chase. It is thought that the cry is used to goad their prey into running. This cry is so recognizable and standardized that it has become a kind of leitmotif for the animal. They drink no water, getting all their necessary liquids from the blood of their kills, which they almost fully exsanguinate.

While the large knife-like spurs on their arms can be used as a weapon when in want of obsidian, it is more relevant as a display structure to attract mates, with sharpness being preferred over length. Hobs are strongly r-selecting, with a very small childermoot (usually a single male-female pair) producing a great many offspring which they abandon soon after weaning. Unlike yinrih, they are iteroparous and relatively short-lived.

Bob hobs are associated with fire in yinrih culture, similar to Salamanders on Earth. Legends say that their heads catch fire when angry, and their fused red bandpass membranes give the impression that they have glowing fiery eyes. Their prodigious quickness has also made them the byword for speed, much like Terran cheetahs. The hob's affinity for sharp objects is also frequently referenced.

[Visions1]

They sound eerily similar to humans and I'm all for it.

---

I'd honestly like to know more about the volcano habitats. They sound interesting. They remind me of the Rift Valley (the bob hob bad bab boons) and Hawaii (active volcanoes).
Speaking of which, how long did it take for the Yinrih to get there?

[lurker]

They sound eerily similar to humans and I'm all for it.

---

I'd honestly like to know more about the volcano habitats. They sound interesting. They remind me of the Rift Valley (the bob hob bad bab boons) and Hawaii (active volcanoes).
Speaking of which, how long did it take for the Yinrih to get there?

The hob has roots in what I consider my first conworld, which goes back to last century. It was really more of a collaborative project between myself and a few friends, in fact it started as a joke between two of my friends and I just ran with it. I might share more of the world on here someday, or maybe not, as it's exactly the sort of thing you'd expect a middle schooler to come up with. The creatures from this conworld that the hobs are based on were short humanoids rather than the pseudo-Pokemon presented here, but hobs otherwise check all the boxes that these creatures did. When

I also thought it would be funny if Yih had obligate bipeds with prehensile hands that aren't the dominant species. Very broadly, I imagine hobs looking like Moombas from Final Fantasy VIII, although with much smaller feet, a stumpy tail, shorter ears, and more ape-like hands. In particular, the spiky head fur is exactly how I imagine their heads looking.

As for how long it took before the yinrih discovered them. I'm not sure. Your post about population growth has got me thinking about how to generalize their population growth given their very alien reproductive strategy, although as you mention, the population would increase very slowly. This is something I had in mind, as it helps explain why there's less ideologically motivated violence, the War of Dissolution being the one glaring exception. If one group didn't get along with the rest, there was no shortage of resource-rich land to exploit, so they just struck out on their own similar to the Puritans on the Mayflower. This strategy of "if you don't like it, move somewhere else" later became enshrined in cynoid political philosophy as an inalienable right to movement and residence. Voting with one's paws is considered more fundamental than actually voting. The Spacer Confederacy sees itself as the last remaining "somewhere else" at Focus.

[Visions1]

I crunched some more numbers (in other words, mashed = on the calculator).
Here's what I got:

3,000 years (30 generations): 1,202,508 + 1,352,821 + 1,521,924 + 1,712,165 = 5,789,058
5,000 (50 generations): 12680563 + 14265634 + 16048838 + 18054943 + 20311811 = 68,681,326
10,000 (100 generations): 5151304284 + 5795217320 + 6519619485 + 7334571921 = 24,800,713,010

This population growth is linear, not exponential as in humans. It's molasses, really. (Texas BBQ sauce?) Humans can shoot from 3 billion during the Vietnam war to 8 billion today - in a span of around 50 years. It takes millennia for Yinrih to reach one billion.
In terms of a multiplanetary empire this isn't really an issue. It's probably easier that way. In terms of evolution however, it's risky.
If Yinrih are a highly intelligent apex predator, though, this won't strain resources as much. There're only so many space coyotes you can cram into San Fran Cisco. But a single extinction event is enough to end them (early on).
I'm not saying it can't happen. But it's precarious.

This also means that humans will look as ravenous and freespawning as kudzu. If humans wish to live on Hearthside and they're of the "buy a whole orchard and increase exponentially" persuasion, population measures may be necessary.

[lurker]

I crunched some more numbers (in other words, mashed = on the calculator).
Here's what I got:

3,000 years (30 generations): 1,202,508 + 1,352,821 + 1,521,924 + 1,712,165 = 5,789,058
5,000 (50 generations): 12680563 + 14265634 + 16048838 + 18054943 + 20311811 = 68,681,326
10,000 (100 generations): 5151304284 + 5795217320 + 6519619485 + 7334571921 = 24,800,713,010

This population growth is linear, not exponential as in humans. It's molasses, really. (Texas BBQ sauce?) Humans can shoot from 3 billion during the Vietnam war to 8 billion today - in a span of around 50 years. It takes millennia for Yinrih to reach one billion.
In terms of a multiplanetary empire this isn't really an issue. It's probably easier that way. In terms of evolution however, it's risky.
If Yinrih are a highly intelligent apex predator, though, this won't strain resources as much. There're only so many space coyotes you can cram into San Fran Cisco. But a single extinction event is enough to end them (early on).
I'm not saying it can't happen. But it's precarious.

This also means that humans will look as ravenous and freespawning as kudzu. If humans wish to live on Hearthside and they're of the "buy a whole orchard and increase exponentially" persuasion, population measures may be necessary.

So I spent most of my day messing with an Excel spreadsheet trying to work out population growth myself. I could be absolutely wrong about this, but here's how I did it: Assume at the time of the Kindling there are 50000 newly yeaned sapient yinrih. Let's assume that they all form moots at age 100, that litter size is exactly 1.5 times that of the moot that yeaned it, and that 75% of those pups go on to have pups of their own. Let's also assume each yinrih lives for 700 years.

Every 100 years, you get a new cohort bigger than the last by (1.5*0.75=1.125). At year 700, the first generation of sophonts dies off. 100 years later, the second generation dies off, and so on. At 1000 years we now have a population of about 820572. Iterating for 100 generations lands me at 9,900 years with a population of a little over 29 billion.

If I am correct, and we assume that the yinrih reach the space age around the time they hit 3 billion (the same as the human population in 1960), that gives them 8000 years between the Kindling and the space age.

I am almost certainly wrong about this, but I just wanted to throw that out there.

---

Honestly the iffiest part of the yinrih's lifecycle is the fact that they live so long after reproducing. I'm not going to change it, but my naive assumption about semelparity is that the parents don't invest any energy into parental care, so they need to see themselves out so as not to get in the way of their offspring (by consuming resources that could go to the kids).

Perhaps the yinrihs' ancestors developed semelparity first, but found a survival advantage by protecting and teaching the pups... IDK, but like I've said all along, this isn't a speculative evolution project, even if evolution does play a big role in Claravian theology.

[Visions1]

1) 50000 newly yeaned sapient yinrih.
2) Let's also assume each yinrih lives for 700 years.
3) the yinrih reach the space age around the time they hit 3 billion

4) Honestly the iffiest part of the yinrih's lifecycle is the fact that they live so long after reproducing.
5) I'm not going to change it, but my naive assumption about semelparity is that the parents don't invest any energy into parental care, so they need to see themselves out so as not to get in the way of their offspring (by consuming resources that could go to the kids).
6) Perhaps the yinrihs' ancestors developed semelparity first, but found a survival advantage by protecting and teaching the pups... IDK, but like I've said all along, this isn't a speculative evolution project, even if evolution does play a big role in Claravian theology.

1) What does mean mean? I thought that meant leaving a spaceship.
2) I thought they lived 500? (I gave them 400 since I assumed in the early years they'd die early)
3) I figure they'd hit it a bit sooner, since they have writing and a hyperfocus for science. While people have dreamt of going to the heavens for ages (you'd be surprised how this shows up in the Bible), humanity wasn't really thinking of going to space until the 1600, and only considered it as a matter of fact over fantasy in the 1800s. Still, I'm being nitpicky.

4) Firstly, evolution can be iffy. Cephalopods are semelparous, but they can live for a while before they breed, and are rather intelligent at that.
5) It's partially true. The parents often die to prevent resource competition, but in some cases (i.e. marsupials) they raise their young before dying. I don't think it would be such a contradiction.
6) That's actually what I was thinking. I have a plan laid out in fact.

- Typical exoviviparan species with semelparity and maybe slightly greater lifespan and intelligence
- Put them in a desert where it hardly rains
- They evolve longer lives to cope with the dryness (to wait for rain, so your womb nest won't dry out)
- They evolve greater intelligence to also cope (being smart makes both you and your children less likely to die in the meantime)
- Eventually the intelligence becomes an evolutionary sink because it's OP (the species is otherwise a dumb possumb)
- The region is de-desertified
- But now they accidentally have lobster genes (they live wierdly long lives) which only become relevant once they become particularly intelligent

Also, I think you might like taking a look at this guy's stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky
https://www.tsiolkovsky.org/en/the-cosm ... hilosophy/
https://allpalaces.itch.io/the-planets- ... ing-beings
The latter is one of my favourite text adventures of all time. And don't worry, it's rather short.

[lurker]

1) What does mean mean? I thought that meant leaving a spaceship.

IRL, to yean means to give birth, particularly in the context of a ewe giving birth to a lamb. I chose it because it comes from Old English, making it fit my Anglish translation convention, as well as for being a cognate to the word amnion. The (yet to be realized) Commonthroat word that it is a gloss for refers the process of kits emerging from the womb nest, and so by analogy, to missionaries (or gel-heads) coming out of metabolic suspension and emerging from a suspension capsule.

2) I thought they lived 500? (I gave them 400 since I assumed in the early years they'd die early)

The average lifespan is ~724 Earth years, which is 492 Yih years. Yinrih are sexually mature at about 36 Yih years, or about 53 Earth years. As on Earth, however, cultural norms likely encourage moots to be started later.

3) I figure they'd hit it a bit sooner, since they have writing and a hyperfocus for science. While people have dreamt of going to the heavens for ages (you'd be surprised how this shows up in the Bible), humanity wasn't really thinking of going to space until the 1600, and only considered it as a matter of fact over fantasy in the 1800s. Still, I'm being nitpicky.

You're likely correct. The canon time frame is still about 5000 Earth years after the Kindling. All they knew post Theophany was that there were beings like them in soul but unlike them in body who dwelt among the stars, but had no idea what the stars even were. Cue a few centuries of Hellenistic-style philosophizing. I suppose the first thing they must have grasped was that if they themselves were sophonts, and other sophonts dwelt among the stars, that the yinrih themselves must have their own star, leading to the identification of Focus as a star itself. The presence of a ring allowed them to quickly determine that Yih was round given the shadow it cast on the ring on Summer nights, and they were off to the races.

4) Firstly, evolution can be iffy. Cephalopods are semelparous, but they can live for a while before they breed, and are rather intelligent at that.

I hadn't made the connection with cephalopod intelligence, but you have a point. By all rights they shouldn't be as smart as they are. By all rights yinrih shouldn't live so long after reproducing, but they do. Also, the slow birthrate offsets their longevity.

6) That's actually what I was thinking. I have a plan laid out in fact.

I'll have to look into that. From what I know of "long-lived" desert species like certain kinds of shrimp that live in ephemeral ponds, a lot of that long lifespan is spent in an inert tun state waiting for rain. I haven't decided if longevity is a universal thing on Yih or whether it's a peculiar trait of vulpithecins. Tree dwellers already match the yinrih's longevity, but hobs most certainly don't. Not sure if that means being closer to a human in lifespan, so just short compared to yinrih, or if it means living fast and dying young like rats or possums.

I've done some very cursory poking around into what gives rise to longevity, and having few external threats (no predators, usually) is what usually gets it going. I've heard before that that's why certain bird species live so long, like large parrots.

Regarding your links, that was an interesting wiki walk. Helps get me ideas on how the yinrih's space program would develop, and this Cosmism philosophy brushes against what I'm going for with the Bright Way. The wiki article even mentions the noosphere, which was independently conceived by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (who wrote the book I based most of the Bright Way on) and Vladimir Vernadsky, who was involved in or adjacent to this Cosmism movement. It's funny, though, as there's also Cosmicism which is basically Lovecraftian cosmic horror as a worldview.

I based the yinrih's use of projectiles in early attempts at spaceflight on Jules Verne's book From the Earth to the Moon, where a group of American gun nuts decide to shoot a projectile at the moon. Originally it's just a cannon ball, but they pivot to putting people in the projectile. I don't know much about the physics of guns and projectiles, but I remember doing a homework problem in my college physics class that showed that the passengers would either have died due to the sudden acceleration, or the projectile wouldn't have breached the atmosphere.

In the early days at least, a lot of people died before the projectile even left the bore of the cannon thanks to the G forces. I picture a nervous would-be astronaut and soon-to-be martyr lying in a dark cramped chamber of a projectile smelling of grease and gunpowder, the only sound is the quiet ticking of a mechanical chronometer and the murmur of a few last minute prayers he counts off on his claws. The last thing he hears is a metallic clunk as the cannon shifts into position, then a barely perceptible snick as the powder is touched off.

[lurker]

I am growing a bit bothered by the fact that only one of the six missionaries is a native Commonthroat speaker. I think I'm going tweak Stormlight's backstory so that the primitive Wayfarer community his childermoot was a part of was on Sweetwater, and his parents moved to Pilgrim's Rest after the plague that killed the rest of their family. They spoke Commonthroat at home and thus Stormlight is an L1 Commonthroat speaker and learned Outlander at school.

[TBPO]

Spoiler:

I think the tree thing would be perfect for the Neoshamaists.
Some Claravian preacher writes a nice short story about how the afterlife is like a tree - meant to be taken as literally as we take that story about people having spoons tied to their hands in heaven - and some Neoshamaist is just like "You know what? I think I've stumbled on some ancient Yinrih religion"...
...despite the fact the guy basically just made it up.

I do think it would also make for lovely illuminations, like those Greek Orthodox ladder illuminations. Everyone knows they're metaphors, but the effect is striking. https://religioused.sanfran.goarch.org/ ... imacus.jpg

I had some ideas already for a particular flavor of neoshamanists. I read a Wikipedia article on a particular culture either in the Sahara or the Sahel that had a monotheistic religion but also a form of ancestor... anti-worship, if that makes sense. Basically the ancestors are evil and one of the jobs of a particular class of religious leader is to keep them away. It was more than the typical "don't make your ancestors angry by doing such and such." The spirits were actively malevolent.

I could be conflating what I read with the ideas I added for this Neoshamanist group, so caveat lector. Can't remember the name of the culture, but I stumbled upon it by doing the typical wiki walk from something completely unrelated.

---

So I had an idea for a group of Neo-mechanists that combines ideas of the original Mechanists with the Artificer's Litter. A group of yinrih becomes stranded on a dwarf planet in Partisan Territory or the Inner Belt. They have no means of summoning help, so they use the supplies that have available to try and build a craft to leave the planet. Before they can build the craft, they have to set up an entire factory/supply chain going from raw materials to intermediate products and so on in order to build the craft. They eventually go crazy and get it in their heads that they must keep expanding the factory, making it more efficient, etc. Decades or centuries later, someone stumbles upon this group, and all the stranded yinrih can be heard saying is

"pM GJlNMr rgj..."

"pM GJlNMr rgj..."

"pM GJlNMr rgj..."

What does it mean?

[lurker]

What does it mean?

Code: Select all

pM  GJlN-Mr     rgj-0
NEC factory-3P  grow-A

NEC = necessitative modal partical
3P = 3rd person proximal noun
A = authoritative verb

The factory must grow.

[lurker]

I don't think I've given much thought to how humanity handles First Contact, so here's some brainstorming:

This is how it plays out for Bob and the other hams in the park with him the night of First Contact:

-Bob attempts to make a contact through a recently launched amateur satellite (What hams call "squirting the bird").

-He tunes into the sat's beacon signal, which is just it's call sign repeated in Morse. Right after tuning in, the signal abruptly stops.

-Bob chalks it up to someone else hogging the transponder output power and starts sending his call sign and asking for a response from any listening station ("Calling CQ").

-After a minute or so of repeated CQ's he gets a response, which is just "CQ CQ CQ CQ CQ CQ" spammed over and over again.

-Bob responds with something along the lines of "You must be a new ham. Happy to see you working satellites, but this isn't how a contact is supposed to work." (I'm expanding what would in reality be a heavily abbreviated string of letters). Here's how a CW QSO over satellite is supposed to go.

-The mysterious other party spams CQ CQ CQ a few more times and then stops.
-Bob goes to bed.

-He wakes up well before sunrise to go to the bathroom but can't go back to sleep, so he exits the camper/tent/etc and just stands outside staring at the stars.

-Quick note about Bob. Like a lot of hams he's an odd fusion of geek and redneck. He was raised on his father's pulp sci-fi collection and golden- and silver-age comic books, and has the typical interest in tinkering common to all hams. He is also the typical friendly but uncomplicated and blunt sort of person you'd associate with semi-rural Texas. In short, he's a genre-savvy redneck.

-He sees a UFO land in a nearby clearing. It drifts to earth under a parachute, having dropped like a stone from orbit rather than landing like a shuttle. It's roughly the size and shape of a camper van.

-He stares dumbstruck at it, fearing to come closer. This state of affairs continues until morning twilight.

-He hears stirring from within the craft, and cautiously approaches, crouching behind some bushes to remain hidden.

-As the sun breaches the horizon, a hatch noiselessly opens and a white-furred creature the size of a large dog emerges, looks around, then re-enters the craft.

-Bob hears quiet yipping and growling coming from inside the craft, then the same creature re-emerges along with five others, one of whom is completely hairless. A rod surmounted by a decorated metal ball is wrapped in the white one's tail. The creatures look like monkeys with the head of a fox, and thus Bob mentally starts calling them "monkey foxes" in want of a proper name.

-The nekkid monkey fox starts looking over the other five, uttering louder yips and growls, which Bob has now deduced is their language.

-As this point Bob knows that aliens have landed, that there are only six of them, and that they do not appear to be making any effort to stay hidden. They appear to be unarmed (the rod born by the white-furred creature does not seem to be a weapon), so Bob cautiously emerges from the bushes.

-The aliens notice him approach, and all but the first white-furred one retreats back to the ship. It barks a few times in their direction, then turns to face him.

-It backs up a few paces, its ears pinned back, then it unceremoniously pukes a bunch of translucent yellow goop onto the grass.

-It shakes itself off in canine fashion, dropping the rod in the process. The metal ball at the top bursts open, and bluish white milky liquid spills out, soaking into the dry brown grass. The creature glances back at the mess, then back at bob, an unreadable expression painting its vulpine countenance.

-Bob notices the creature is craning its neck to meet his gaze, so he sits down in the grass to make it more comfortable.

-This seems to embolden the creature and it comes closer. It barks a few more times in the direction of the craft, and the others tentatively re-emerge.

-The creature rears up on its hind feet, pats its belly twice with its left front extremity, then sits back down. It repeats this gesture again, and bob mimics it, assuming it to be a greeting.

-The creature utters something, gesturing downward at its feet with its muzzle. It utters the same thing while pointing its muzzle at its conspecifics behind it. As with the greeting, it repeats this a few times. Bob catches the following repeated /yip, whine, huff, growl, huff/.

-Bob attempts to repeat the utterance, guessing its their name for themselves, but all his human vocal tract can manage after a few tries is “yinrih, yinrih”.

-Bob pats his chest and says “Human, human”. After a few repetitions, the creature manages /huff, grunt, huff, grunt/.

-At this point, Bob's fellow hams have approached, standing a ways behind him and the aliens. They express fear and skepticism about this encounter, suggesting that the authorities be called.

-Bob, as I said before, is genre savvy, and there’s only two flavors of alien encounters he’s aware of: Either they come in peace or they don’t. If they do come in peace, the government captures them and cuts them up. They’ve shown no hostility up to this point, and besides that, they’re fuzzy and cute, and it’s always the adorable ones that end up on the dissection table. Bob delivers an impassioned speech along the lines of “This is America, they’re innocent until proven guilty. If they are hostile, then we shouldn’t be the ones to fire the first shot, Texas means ‘friend’, and we should greet them as friends,” etc.

-Bob turns back to the white-furred one who he assumes is the leader and extends his hand to offer a handshake. It looks at his outstretched limb, its head tilted in puzzled bewilderment.

-Bob attempts to demonstrate, clasping his hands together and pumping them in a ‘one man handshake.’

-The alien rears up and clasps its own forepaws together and pumps them in exact imitation of Bob’s gesture. This elicits a chuckle from Bob, but he persists in demonstrating the correct way. He pulls one of the other humans forward and demonstrates a proper handshake with this second party, repeating several times.

-He faces the alien and extends his hand again. It reaches forward slowly. Bob notices the features of its forepaw: thick doglike pads, sharp red claws, six digits (inner thumb, four fingers, and outer thumb). The claw next to its inner thumb is flatter and broader than the others. Hand and paw finally grasp one another, and First Contact is achieved.

[lurker]

Arthur C. Clark once said “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

I would like to propose a third possibility, one more tragic than terrifying. It seems that curiosity and a desire for connection ought to be two common traits of social sapient beings. Taken together these traits ought to lead such beings to seek other minds among the stars, to know they aren't alone, to encounter those who are like but unlike themselves.

Yet even our little galaxy is impossibly vast, and the universe is infinitely more so. The laws of physics as we understand them prohibit either matter or information from traveling fast enough to permit such meetings to occur. The universe may be filled with tiny voices uncounted, crying out into the cosmos, voices that fade into meaningless noise at the fathomless scales of time and distance on which our universe exists, never to be heeded.

There may be others out there, and we will never ever know.