Chapter 4 - Pointer

  Day 4

  The creature makes a strange noise from beneath Dawn Watcher's paw. Very strange. Like it can only take the shortest of breaths before exhaling again and again and again. Is the light speak doing this? She stops asking questions that receive no answers and the the creature stops too. Strange.

  "No running when I let you go?"

  The creature doesn't acknowledge her.

  She asks again.

  The creature shakes its head but Dawn Watcher is not convinced they are really communicating. If it does run she can always run it down.

  She raises her paw. And the creature bolts!

  "No! I said no running!"

  The creature makes another strange noise and stumbles around in the sand before finding something, and the something is placed over its eyes. The intrigue is so thick Dawn Watcher swears she can cut it with her claws.

  It sits now, looking towards her. Mimicry. She sits too, just to see what will happen next but it seems content to stay there. OK then...

  Dawn watcher wants to see what the creature has done to her bait. It looks like a tooth is biting into it and a wire goes back to some oddly shaped metal. She surmises that the creature was tossing the tooth at it. Why?

  Is this how it dealt with the acercino? Is it a tool user? Most others would frown upon those who need tools to hunt when they should be demonstrating their prowess with claws and jaws but the creature appears to be lacking (quite severely, Dawn Watcher notes) in both areas. Maybe tools are the only option it has? Fascinating. Dawn Watcher has never seen a creature like that before. She wonders about the elongated metal thing it was reaching towards before she pushed it away. What kind of tool is that?

  Now the creature is pulling on her tail. Does it want her to see something? She doesn't understand the vocalizations it makes but she gives the creature her full attention anyway. Dawn Watcher has a new burning question. What are those things is has put on its head, covering its eyes?

  It makes a slow deliberate movement with its (much too small) paw thus ensuring she cannot miss what happens next. The paw is lowered down onto some kind of device affixed above the creature's leg.

  There is an intriguing beeping noise coming from the device now that the paw has touched it, even if the sound is somewhat irritating to listen to continuously. As the creature gets closer to the bait stone with the hook embedded within it the beeping frequency increases. Dawn Watcher understands the cause and effect occurring here. Close to stone? More beeps. Further back? Less beeps. How is such a thing possible? Mystery. "What are you getting at, little thing?" she mutters.

  Dawn Watcher loves a good mystery.

  Again the creature pulls on her tail. As the thing stands next to her there are a lot of beeps. Dawn Watcher is pretty close to the stone... Ohhhh! The creature wants less beeps! That must be it.

  The distance it has retreated to just now must be the 'correct' distance, for over there the beeps are have ceased entirely. Dawn Watcher rises up and walks so that the creature is between her and the stone. She can see little white teeth flash from the creatures mouth. Success! Their first successful communication! Dawn Watcher's tail flicks in satisfaction. They have successfully exchanged the 'correct' distance one should stand from the rock. Although Dawn Watcher is wary to assign emotions to creatures she has only just met, she is almost certain that it is satisfied too. It might be easier to tell without those tube things obscuring its eyes though.

  Rock distance must be very important to this creature for it to be the first thing the creature shows her. Now what?

  Dawn Watcher watches the creature get low, shuffling along the sand on its belly, moving up to the metal thing the wire is attached to. Wait!? Why is it getting closer to the bait? Isn't this distance she stands at the 'correct' distance?

  Already, this creature's actions are a mystery to Dawn Watcher. But she decides to respect the rock distance and remains seated on her hind legs, content to watch the creature do its thing. It is strange though. Even though the creature is closer than she was to the stone now, the beeping only emits intermittently.

  The creature grabs the metal with both paws and jerks it. The tooth comes loose. The creature makes a sound in response. It sounds a very similar to one of those noises it made repeatedly while she was holding it beneath her paw. Nonetheless the creature reels in the tooth and then stands up quickly to throw the tooth at the bait! It threw the tooth! Wow. A tool user indeed. After the throw, it gets back down low. Dawn Watcher makes a mental note: while it was standing, the beeping frequency increased sharply. It fell again as the creature fell down onto its belly. Cause and effect. Simple really. Dawn Watcher understands now. The beeping is not related to proximity, but observability! It tells the user how easily they are seen from the perspective of the rock! What a delightful little tool! No wonder it beeped so much while the creature stood next to her. She is much larger than the creature.

  The creature must be trying to show her how it hunts. This is very cool. The creature has a hunting aide that informs it how visible it is to prey! That must help teach it how to sneak up on prey for an ambush. Maybe the first two acercino were felled by ambush attacks from the creature before the last one finally reached its hiding spot under that orange green sheet? Dawn Watcher is starting to recreate the order of events in her mind. It's not how she would have dealt with the acercinos but each to their own. She would have clawed off their limbs before returning them to the ocean. The creature ran off before it could return the acercinos to the ocean because of her. That was silly of Dawn Watcher. But she returned them to the water on the creature's behalf. Hopefully that will still be acceptable to the Micoligo. She will have to ask them next time she sees them.

  The creature is now tugging on that piece of metal while lying low on the sand and by the wire's connection it is also pulling the stone along with it. All the time Dawn Watcher is careful to respect the minimum stone proximity distance. They are moving, slowly but surely, down the beach, dragging the stone away from the anomaly.

  Dawn Watcher thinks this is a neat little game they are playing. And play it they do! For quite some time the cycle continues. Tug the wire. Tooth comes loose. Quickly try to get the hook back on the stone. Drag. Repeat. It all seems quite fun to Dawn Watcher. She envisions her son playing the game when he is older, tugging while holding the metal thing in his jaws much like how the creature holds it in their paws. At what feels to Dawn Watcher to be a quite arbitrary distance, the creature scurries away from the metal and comes close to her once again. It gets down and begins digging a hole in the sand with its tiny paws. The paws gesture towards her.

  'You want me to help dig a hole? Alright then.'

  Dawn Watcher offers two scoops of sand and steps back. The creature paws at the ground again. 'Not deep enough? I understand, little creature'.

  She claws out a large amount of sand, paws just bucketing the stuff rearwards, creating a hole reaching down to the layer beneath the sand where the rocks become large in size and dense in distribution. Dawn Watcher hopes the hole is deep enough now because digging through the rocks below will be actual claw breaking work. No one really wants to work in the middle of the night.

  But it must be deep enough because she sees the teeth flash again.

  Now the creature is dragging the stone inland towards the hole. Always, Dawn Watcher is careful to stay at the respectful distance they have established. The stone is dragged into the hole and the creature spends much time filling it in with sand, one paw swipe at a time, from a prone position. It uses the metal object to cut the wire and then stands up. The device is silent now. Of course it is. The stone can't see anything beneath the sand. Dawn Watcher is happy that her theory regarding the device has predictive power. In the strange light Dawn Watcher sees that the creature is much warmer now after the exertion. Wait!? When did the creature become so damp? There are moister patches all over it now, especially where its arms meet its body. This little thing is just full of mysteries. Dawn Watcher wants to figure them all out.

  But what was the point of the hole? If this was a demonstration of how the creature hunts, Dawn Watcher would have liked to have seen the next part too! How does it eat prey with such a tiny mouth!? The two of them walk together back towards the anomaly. Perhaps the creature has prey inside the anomaly and it intends to show her how it eats. She looks forward to it. She chortles, letting her tail tap on the sand as she walks. Sky Catcher won't believe any of this.

  Day 4

  Fuck man. That was a mission and a half but thank God it's done. No more radiation hazards.

  I am so fucking happy the dragon understood the radiation dosimeter's alarm meant something. Now we can get to the real business at hand.

  It was Gus Grissom who said "How are we going to get to the moon if we can't talk between three buildings?" during a static test of the Apollo Command module. Me and the dragon aren't trying to reach the moon (I haven't actually seen a moon around this planet yet) and we're not even trying to talk between buildings, because there are no buildings here. Gus and the rest of the Apollo 1 crew were claimed by a terrible fire in the Command Module's pure oxygen environment shortly after he said that, by the way. They think loose wires in the microphone caused a spark. Now I’ve no reason to suspect this dragon breathes fire. I don’t think there will be any fires. I really hope there won't be any fires. But I do need to learn how to communicate with this scaly thing. It will increase my survival chances exponentially.

  The UESC should have sent a linguist because I have no clue where I should start. I think I would do anything for a linguist right now. Do anything to hear even just the advice of a linguist on what I should do.

  Or maybe I already have one in my presence? What if I just don't understand what it is saying to me? If this dragon talks using growls and talks with the bioluminescent lights running down the sides of its neck then that means it is already bilingual, yes? I think so. You go dragon! Already speaking two languages. Maybe learning a third won't be so hard for you? Maybe you already have some ideas on where we should start.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  When we arrive back at the camp I stand and wait but it seems I need to make the first move. The dragon just stares at me expectantly.

  Fuck it, might as well start with mathematics then. The only language that is guaranteed to be universal, even if we all speak it with varying degrees of proficiency.

  I need something to represent quantities.

  There is plenty of coastal grass around. I have to move very slowly and deliberately to collect my grass blades. The dragon seems to think I might try to run away.

  With a fist full of grass I begin the sermon on the sand.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

  I count up my little grass bundles and put them on the sand for the dragon to observe. I point and count through several times. After the repetitions I draw the digit symbols into the sand next to each of the bundles and do it all over again.

  After tilting its head this way and that, after flashing the lights on its neck in brief bursts, the dragon finally decides to continue our fledgling dialog. For a moment I was worried I was losing the dragon's attention. I know I probably would have lost a child's attention by pulling this stunt. Do dragons have a word for boring?

  The tail is raised to point at the grass just like my finger. The tail is pointing! Now either we evolved to use the same gestures or this dragon is very observant. We always thought pointing was a quite unique behavior to evolve. Something to do with throwing spears. But I guess we need to reconsider that hypothesis.

  "?????? ???? ????? ????? ??? ???∥ ???∥ ????? ??? ???" The dragon growls, not so loud this time I might add.

  As each draconic number is stated the tail points at the relevant grass bundle.

  I've now heard draconic numbers. I am the first human ever to hear the numbers of another species not of Earth. The first... and it was completely illegible! I say that I'm sorry and that I don't understand. Well I kind of do. It's me, my voice box, that doesn't understand how to make the sounds.

  Day 4 Addendum

  It seems as good a place to start as any. Numbers. Dawn Watcher would have liked to have seen how the creature eats but ultimately she concedes, even though it disappoints, that really they need to move beyond 'watch and look'. Dawn Watcher would have preferred playing the naming game. There are a lot of mysterious objects here which Dawn Watcher would like to know the name of. She watches carefully as grass is laid on the sand. The creature says the words, while the (much too small) paw almost stabs at the the grass bundles. Dawn Watcher wonders what the paw is for. You can't stab grass. Is it to direct her attention? Does it think her daft? She can infer where the creature looks by it's eyes just fine. Maybe the creature's eyes are not so good, so it must rely on such extravagant gestures? How is she going to ask it about the strange light, when the topic surfaces?

  Dawn Watcher counts along silently, trying to pick up the stranger's numbers. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eigen, vahn, twogen. Why does the creature stop at twogen? It seems such an arbitrary number. Maybe she is missing something. Oh... The creature has twogen claws on its much-too-small paw. Dawn Watcher has eigen claws on her forepaws. Fair enough, she thinks. At least Dawn Watcher knows that the thing can speak now. It has been completely hopeless at the spoken word and light speak has been good only for grabbing the creature's eyes and making it quiet. The paw now carves little symbols next to the grass. Digits. Creature digits. The second one looks familiar to Dawn Watcher. She saw it on the anomaly on the other island. Now she knows what it means. One mystery solved just like that.

  As the creature repeats the numbers again Dawn Watcher decides maybe it will be better if she tries a different approach.

  Day 4 Extended Event Monitoring

  When I don't echo the draconic numbers back. The dragon does something that blows my socks off so to speak.

  Seems magic can happen in this universe.

  "Wuhhn... Tooh... Free... ... ... Fouu... Feeigh... Sipss... Sepun... Eught... Nun... Tun!"

  "Yes! Yes! You did it!" I say, throwing a hand in the air in celebration. The dragon speaks! I can't believe the dragon speaks.

  The dragon raises a wing, mimicking my raised hand. I imagine the xenobiologists of the future shall treat my account of this night as hallowed text. Or maybe they will fight each other over it. The accounts of first contact with intelligent extra terrestrial life.

  I don't know how long passed after that, but we spent the minutes and hours trying again and again. The dragon's enunciation improves in the same way a sloth is fast.

  Late night mania. I'm just going for it at this point. The dawn could break soon and we're trying something more ambitious now.

  Addition. Such a simple concept in the dark before dawn. In the sand there are now hundreds of blades of grass. Each row, a different example. Each row decorated with the digits that represent them. I suspect the grass won't be needed much longer.

  Some choice examples from among the selection include: 1 + 1 = 2 and 6 + 4 = 10 and 30 + 50 = 80. The examples go on and on and on.

  "????? ????? ????? ???? ??∥??? ??? ?????? ?????? ????? ???? ???∥ ??? ??? ??? ????? ???? ??? ??? ???" The dragon mumbles while working through the examples. Often it reverts back to its native tongue. Often it takes long pauses. I can't imagine what is going on in that mind for it to be picking this up on the first try.

  It must be a beautiful mind.

  "Toh, teeen, ei- eighteee" I raise my fist again. Those four eyes watch me close. The wing joins me in reaching for the stars. Not that we can see them under the fog blanket.

  I must say, the dragon is trying to be accommodating, for it uses my human digits and my human symbol for addition as it draws new problems into the sand. New problems for me! But these are different. There is nothing on the right hand side of the equals sign.

  Oh! It wants me to solve them!

  To help it along I draw a big X into the sand in the empty space next to the equals sign.

  "Variable," I say, pointing at the X. I want to say unknown variable X, but confusion is a devil I wish to keep at bay in these delicate moments.

  "Vuhreeble" the dragon replies, tail pointing at the X.

  Maybe the dragon is asking about numbers it is not sure about. Or actually... No. Every problem here is just the number eight being added to itself. 8, 16, 24, 32, 64... Why is it so interested in the number eight...

  My fist moves to hit my forehead. It's so obvious, you-dummy-you, George. My palm misses and I slap the night vision goggles instead.

  I'm lucky I don't have a black eye. I'm lucky the dragon has four toes on each foot. Eight in total. Base eight. The dragon's numbers are in base eight! And it told me by obsessively drawing math questions related to the number in question.

  Wow.

  It must be doing a lot of mental work to translate not only into base 10, but translate into this Proto-Draconic-English too. I'm speechless. Really. The lights flash on its neck, snapping me back to attention. I think it knows I like watching the lights. So, the dragon wants to know my words for what must be important quantities in its language. I could work in base eight too, you know? But we've already made such great progress in Proto-Draconic-English base 10. When I say 'sixty four' it says "?????... Sifty foor". I smile at the dragon who continues to impress me. Why does the dragon tap its tail on the sand when I smile? Has it figured that aspect of human expression out?

  Our math lesson is disrupted by the light of Chara. The dragon turns its head and watches the whole thing, the creature is fully captivated by Chara's graceful act. The night is cleared, the stars retreat, and the fog is burned by the light, revealing the beach in all its glory. I remove the goggles and the dragon watches my every move. Maybe it can infer what the goggles do by my actions?

  I'm so God damned tired but I don't want to stop. This is the most interesting thing that has happened in my life – and I'm stranded on a planet 27.6 light years from Earth...

  In the sand I draw symbols for and examples of subtraction, multiplication and division. I make sure to avoid combinations that will result in fractions and other forms of numbers. Basic integers will do for now. The rest can come later.

  The dragon doesn't play along. "Something wrong?" I ask. The black scaled tail points up at Chara.

  "???§" the dragon says.

  "Chara," I respond. The tail taps on the sand. That must have been a burning question.

  The light from Chara shines on the dragon. I see now that of the four eyes, it may be better to say they are two sets. One pair has vertical slits, like the eyes of a cat, the iris is a grey blue. The other pair of eyes? They are black pits from which no light escapes. It looks kind of creepy. Four eyelids blink at the same time but the ones covering the black void lack the third eyelid. We have those on Earth! I mean we don't, but some birds and reptiles do. It protects the eyes while flying or underwater. Does the dragon fly with the black eyes closed?

  I ignore my empty stomach and press forwards in the name of mathematics. The dragon has demonstrated to me beyond a reasonable doubt that it can not only comprehend the four basic arithmetic operations but solve simple problems with them too. I have been moving the "vuhreeble" around on both sides of the equals sign and the dragon continues to do well.

  Let’s try something a little more abstract then. Square numbers and square roots. I lay down the examples and wait to see if the dragon can reverse engineer their meaning. I note the tail. It taps on the sand for all examples the dragon reads that involve multiples of the number eight. After several minutes we have it down. The dragon even draws in some problems for me to solve, taking the initiative, combining multiple operations together and waiting to see the answer I put in.

  That is very smart dragon. There is no guarantee we both adopted BEDMAS for the order of operations. What if the dragon did subtraction first before multiplication? We would get different answers.

  Then something very surprising happens. The dragon draws in the sand:

  X^2 + 1 = 1 - 1

  Are you testing me? Or do you really not know?

  Maybe this is the limit of your mathematical knowledge?

  I sketch in the correct answer but I don’t think the dragon understands. I mean we literally call them imaginary numbers. If you put this problem into a simple calculator it would tell you the answer does not exist. And it is right in a way. The imaginary unit is not something that can physically exist. You have to imagine it. The dragon lowers its head down to the new symbols: '+i', '-i', and it snorts. Sand is blown around and the imaginary units and the problem at large are destroyed.

  I didn't like learning about imaginary numbers at first either.

  Speaking of knowledge limits. I start trying to push them. Division problems that result in fractions are answered with numbers and division symbols. Does the dragon not understand my drawings of fractions? Or is it more comfortable sticking with the symbols we already have?

  I try to press further.

  The dragon makes a keening noise when I put the number 2 in the square root symbol. Not comfortable with irrational numbers? The dragon would be in good company with the ancient Pythagoreans then. At least I have escaped the fate of Hippasus... for now.

  The dragon's enthusiasm for our math exchange seems to dwindle now. No more tail taps. I think they were inversely proportional to the complexity of the issues on our sandboard.

  Dragon, if you want to talk with me, and I mean really talk with me, we’re going to need the language of mathematics.

  I try to introduce the logarithm and exponential, curious if the dragon knows of such fundamental quantities and it rewards me with a growl! Rude!

  I guess the dragon has had enough. Sure, not everyone’s a math type.

  How about logic?

  I try draw the AND logic gate and a truth table with ones and zeros but the dragon has had enough, the heaving paw brushes the sand clear, erasing my work.

  Aww.

  The word ‘jock’ comes to mind.

  What now then?

  "Vuhreeble" the dragon says. The tail points at my escape pod. "Vuhreeble, Vuhreeble, Vuhreeble!"

  Ahh, I see. We've finally got a word that can substitute for 'question' and you want to get as much use out of it as possible.

  "Escape pod," I say.

  "Eska poh" the dragon replies.

  "No. Escape pod."

  "Escaap pood?"

  "Close enough."

  I walk up the the marvel of engineering and the dragon follows. If the dragon has had enough mathematics for today then I think it's time for breakfast. It is a wonderful morning.

  I reach into the escape pod and go for broke. I only have a few Pizza MREs but this is as good an occasion as any. The most popular food on Earth now exported to the galaxy at large. I mix in some pain killers into the ration energy drink (orange flavor) beverage. The pizza goes into the flame-less ration heater and I sit on the sand to change out my socks. One of them is stained red. Damn crabs. The dragon's head comes in close, way too fast for my liking, the nose goes straight for the red sock. It takes big voracious breaths.

  The tail points at me this time.

  "Vuhreeble?"

  "Yes. I'm fine."

  "Yes?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes."

  Glad we could pick up another word, dragon. I tear open the Pizza MRE and take a moment to appreciate this thing. The United States Military has long prided itself on giving her soldiers field rations others can only dream of. I've heard this is meant to be the best of the best. As I take a bite I look up at the dragon.

  The tail is tapping on the sand at some near 300 taps per minute.