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The following pamphlet has been designed, issued, and approved by the Centrium Immigrant Induction Services:
Say Hello to Translation Gas
If you are reading this, congratulations! You have been cleared for test usage of babbledrog-produced translation gas, and are now experiencing its effect. That’s right—this pamphlet is not written in your native language, and is designed to be read by a user of the gas. (Once you are done reading, or immediately if you experience any pain, confusion, dizziness, or general inconvenience, please speak to the supervisor for the next steps of your immigrant species bio-evaluation.)
What is this “translation gas” and how does it work?
Across the cosmos, countless creatures and species have found different solutions for the matter of translation. Some use smart devices or technological implants; some rely on symbiote organisms; some simply use a more experienced and/or telepathic servant. But there’s one solution that may be the most elegant for a broad, diverse place like the Centrium: translation gas.
What we call the “gas” actually refers to Centrium atmosphere filled with the microscopic vesicles produced by babbledrogs, an animal now found across many worlds thanks to this useful trait. These vesicle “germs” are organic, though not living things—just extensions of babbledrog biology. But their innate function is remarkable.
Once inhaled, the “germs” will travel through your body and to the space above the brain tissue, where they all merge into one big mat. Inside, you’ll find a sort of bioelectric web, a fused network of circuit-like connections. And outside: electric field sensors and generators, primed to politely interface with your thought patterns, to both detect and induce words or concepts there.
And this is how the gas forms the translator in your head! By putting what you want to say into its common language, and what you hear or see back into mental concepts—like a make-your-own-translation kit, for your brain to perceive as your language—it lets us all communicate while experiencing the words of our home worlds.
Is it safe? Will it be in my head (or other neural-tissue-housing body part) forever now?
Don’t worry! Since its early natural origins, the translation gas has gone through countless years of evolutionary and artificial development across many civilizations. And since the “germs” are non-living, they don’t grow or reproduce, and in fact degrade rather quickly! The whole structure depends on constant replenishment from newly-inhaled materials. Simply stop breathing the gas, and the network will begin to dissolve, going inactive until it either rebuilds or disintegrates.
What if my language has a different word order/phonetics/etc. than others here?
Good news: the translation gas can work with nearly anything*! Thanks to special markers in the “gas language”, which signal meaning early and clearly, your point will come across no matter what sort of sentence structure you prefer. And with multiple pronunciation systems for its alphabet, from tonal hooting to percussive clicks to standard flappy mouth-sounds, everyone* is included. You’ll speak the variety closest to your native tongue, but can understand any; the gas even accommodates for “lisps”! And unfamiliar words are converted between phonetic systems, making them easy for anybody to hear, repeat, and occasionally mispronounce anyway.
*What about anyone who can’t use the translation gas?
If you’re reading this, you’re likely able to use translation gas and currently doing so, but you may be curious about someone else you know.
As you can see, the gas has many properties allowing it to work well for most species. But a variety of anomalies—such as incompatible brains, languages, or biochemistries—can limit its use. For species, or individuals, that cannot use the gas, alternatives like implanted or external translator devices can be provided. (Note that translator devices often have more restricted or less expressive methods of communication than the gas provides.) Such individuals may also prefer to visit or live in our “Translation-Free Zones” found throughout Centrium City.
Frankie and Mo had gone to the Hive for the day. It turned out that the earthlings’ entrance to the Centrium had been far from typical—in retrospect, not a surprise. This meant they had missed all of the screenings and procedures that an immigrant to the space station was supposed to go through first.
When the Hive staff had first contacted them to explain, one alien had said it was a bit of a miracle the three had survived that long. Usually, newly-immigrating species were given clearance before exposure to Centrium atmospheres or foods, not to mention the translation gas. The appointments also would have made the process of moving in much easier. When meetings were arranged, Frankie had requested they handle financial aid first, since the other concerns hadn’t killed them yet.
Most of the appointments were simple. Elliott only remembered some of it. Lots of educational videos and pamphlets, a few easy questionnaires. A quick scan had even made sure that all the little things in the atmosphere were indeed safe for their biochemistries.
He’d cracked a joke of some sort, about how they’d somehow fared better eating food from alien planets than the sushi from that terrible gas station in Arkansas. Frankie had only grimaced at the memory of food poisoning.
His smartwatch helped take care of things now. It would warn him, like if he ever strayed into a biosphere with a dangerous environment, or was about to eat lunch that might kill him. Apparently something called chirality meant some of the foods around the Centrium were a no-go—not to mention the range of ingredients that could be poisonous to humans. But even then, food packaging on the Centrium took common dangers very seriously. Even the most colorful neon candy packets were adorned with scarily clear labels, indicating everything a hungry earthling needed to know.
The more recent appointments had been a little more complicated, though still just a task or two before the all-clear. Elliott had sat for medical screenings, aced a “be a good neighbor” quiz, and written his name on plenty of forms and papers. The Hive was a busy place, meaning that his, Frankie’s, and Mo’s individual appointments had all been squeezed into any opening they could find. But his were finally done. And after today, Frankie and Mo would be finished with it, too.
For now, though, that just meant that Elliott was on his own for the afternoon.
This was great. As much as he’d miss having the others around, this gave him the perfect opportunity to work on his project.
The assignment instructions were about half a page long. In Elliott’s case, quite literally—a little old-fashioned, an earthling to the core, he’d asked for a printed copy on a piece of the glossy, synthetic-feeling paper used at the Hive. Why not? This way he could tape it to the front of the fridge. He held it lightly in both hands, and ran a thumb across the material’s smooth, slight textures. The rubric text peeked out as his finger passed over it.
Homeworld Heritage Day Project. A little something to celebrate a classic Hive holiday. Below the title was a bullet-point list explaining in vague detail what to do: a presentation of some sort, whatever format he liked, describing his personal answer to a certain question. Be creative, it said, and supply a variety of meaningful examples; what does “home” mean to you?
On a bench in Biosphere 2901’s neighborhood park, Elliott leaned back and looked up at the sky-dome. This would be easy.
Home is…
And Elliott found himself thinking back. A school in rural Nebraska, with chipped tiles and reddish brick walls and kids who never glanced his way. A luxurious campground in California, packed with sun-tanned tourists almost, but not quite, like him. A diner, with menus full of ads for local repairmen and thrift stores, so cozy in its little town that he hadn’t even noticed what state it was in.
Every snapshot was taken from the outside. Like looking through a window, pressed against the glass. He’d seen a hundred different homes, but all of them were someone else’s.
The only consistency was the RV.
Elliott didn’t want to stop there. Home had to be more than a metal box on wheels. Otherwise what had he spent so many years waiting for?
He shook his head and refocused. The neighborhood came into view again. He stared back.
Was this home yet? Most of the neighbors were literally from different planets. Half the food on any menu could be deadly. Every day was a new mystery. And yet here, there were people who knew his name. It already felt like enough.
But what, what exactly, would make it home…?
Two different sides of the universe kept butting heads in Elliott’s mind. Caught in the middle of it all, he thought of the Hive. That was it! He leapt up, tucked the assignment sheet under one arm, and started down the park’s pathways. He’d go ask the Hive Director for a clue.
By some lucky chance he caught her on the way back to her office.
It was a very busy day at the Hive. He had to push through a thick crowd of bustling aliens, in so many shapes and sizes they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, just to make his way down the green-tiled halls. One arm outstretched to get her attention, flailing the assignment paper like a signal flag, he sputtered out, “Excuse—me! Hive Director?”
Side-shuffling his way between a fishlike giant on one side and a fuzzy hexapedal scholar on the other, Elliott broke free of the crowd. Just in time, he found the Hive Director trotting toward the entrance of her office. At the mention of her title a moment ago, she’d perked up, searching for the voice’s source, and now finally found her answer as Elliott waved hello.
“Ah! Elliott,” she started, warm as ever. “It’s been a little while since I’ve heard from you.”
“Hi,” Elliott said, and then noticed the complicated-looking screen in her hand. “Um, I’m not interrupting you, am I?”
“Oh, don’t worry. This report isn’t due for another ten minutes. I have a meeting very soon, though, so I do hope whatever question you have won’t take too long. What do you need?”
Elliott handed over the paper. “You probably know about this project already. It’s for the Homeworld Day thingy here soon, right? Well, I was…actually, I’m not sure what my question is.” He watched as the Hive Director adjusted her glasses with one little paw, her report screen set aside. “I’m not really sure what to do. For the project, I mean. Do you have any advice on, like, how to do it?”
“To do what?” she prompted. She looked back up at him, waiting for the earthling to say it himself.
“You know…” Elliott gestured vaguely. “How to figure it out. What ‘home’ means.”
She closed her eyes and nodded slowly. “Yes, I see. But I’m afraid this is no simple mathematical equation—there’s no one answer for everybody. Might I suggest,” the Director said, “going out there and asking someone else?”
Elliott blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Not to use their own answer, of course,” the Hive Director explained, “but to understand what other residents think of as ‘home’. After all, the Centrium is a place of many homes, and many home planets. Perhaps, once you hear it from others, you’ll understand what might work for you, too.” She handed the paper back to him. “Just a friendly suggestion. I hope that it helps. Good luck, Elliott!”
With that, she turned and headed into her office, to prepare for her important meeting.
By the time Elliott said thank-you, the door was already shut. It was a very busy day at the Hive.
Elliott roamed alongside the streets of Centrium City, the Hive already melding into the metropolis scenery at his back. Who to ask? No classmates’ names came to mind, and somehow the likes of Mr. K or Mrs. Argolis didn’t seem quite right. He was in the mood for adventure again, seeking an answer that’d be all shiny and new, and so he let himself wander around the city in pursuit.
Getting a little lost felt like a great idea. Dreamy, and bold, and full of discoveries to make his assignment stand out. A great grade, guaranteed. After all, in the worst-case scenario, he could just turn around and follow the street signs back home. He had the whole day until dinnertime to spare on this. It was brilliant.
Ten minutes of walking later, Elliott wasn’t sure what had gone wrong.
Maybe he shouldn’t have taken so many turns. That had been a key part of his “get a little lost” idea, but now it meant he couldn’t just turn around once and fix the problem he’d walked into. Now he looked up, and realized he couldn’t even read the street signs.
Elliott shuffled ahead, his pace suddenly halved. The city had warped into a mystery around him. He hugged his arms close to his body, and could feel the hard material of his smartwatch under his sleeve.
He stopped. Even laughed a little. Phew! The smartwatch could fix things, easy! He released a bated breath, tugged up his sleeve, and tapped at the watch to activate it.
The watch displayed a menu in an alphabet he didn’t know. Elliott blinked at it, wide-eyed; it might as well have just slapped him across the face.
He could have sworn things were normal just a second ago. Out of the corner of his eye it had all seemed the same. What happened? Somewhere in the back of his mind Elliott vaguely remembered that first day, down in the biosphere, when his mom wondered aloud in passing if something there allowed them to understand everyone. That something, that mysterious force, seemed to have abandoned him. During his introductory appointments at the Hive they’d handed him a pamphlet that said something or another about translation—but it had been one of many pamphlets and papers, during an appointment with a particularly packed itinerary, and Elliott had only skimmed the overview paragraphs once. That had been weeks ago. He now regretted not committing any more of it to memory. It wasn’t fair, how could he have known back then that he’d end up here? Wherever this was.
Elliott swallowed. He was one strange sound away from jumping at his own shadow out there. So he took the first opportunity he saw—one just a couple buildings down the road, a place that seemed similar enough to other restaurants and lounges around the city. Good enough, he’d decided. The actual language may have changed on him, but the architectural language might be a little more reliable.
Above the tinted glass doors was a green and blue neon sign, declaring in some bouncy font a name that Elliott wished he understood. Posters for snack foods and snazzy drinks decorated the windows, and vending machines for a variety of strange items sat lined up at the entrance. Elliott glanced at the machines’ inventories: some were as simple as little canisters of liquid, others offered entire technological apparatuses made to fit into a mouth, or around a limb, or on some body part that earthlings didn’t have to worry about.
If nothing else, the place seemed to want people walking through those doors. All sorts of people. Hopefully not rough, seedy, scarred and scary people.
Elliott took a deep breath, in and out, and pushed his way in as if he were there to simply order a soda.
The little alien who had just walked in was very clearly lost.
A pair of yellow eyes sized him up. Most notable was his fuzzy cut of funny-looking, vivid red-orange fur, which sat atop a naturally round face, which sat atop a short neck which sat atop a short body. All of that together gave the alien a very soft, friendly, harmless sort of look. He was maybe half the height of his observer, and no doubt a fraction of the weight.
The alien was talking to the owner of the Oasis, who had come to greet him as soon as the entrance bell had chimed its signature tune. Or rather, the alien was attempting to talk—to ask a question, it seemed—and clearly failing.
The owner spent about two words confused before understanding what had happened; this was not the first time someone had wandered in without paying attention. Someone really needed to write to the Head’s urban design experts about making the translation-free zones more obvious. The confused alien visitor was silenced as the owner held up one of his many tentacle limbs, pointed exaggeratedly at the alien and then at the nearest seat, patted the alien’s shoulder in a quick goodbye, and disappeared into the back room to go retrieve something helpful.
And of course, the seat picked out for the lost little alien happened to be right next to his silent observer.
The alien climbed up into the nearest seat, on the very end of the half-circle that made up the central bar area. He gawked at the room’s centerpiece, around which the half-circle counter was bent: a thick column filled with a glowing, gelatinous, lava-lamp substance, radiating deep purple and splotched with slow and graceful blobs, then sprinkled with a school of tiny bioluminescent invertebrates that swam endlessly about in the strange aquarium.
The alien then proceeded to gawk the same way at the holo-screens lining the side walls, the game table levitating in the back, even the food menu that shifted between six different languages. Basically the entire room. It had been pretty obvious from the moment he walked in, but now the customer sitting to his left was without any sliver of doubt: this was the alien’s first time having come this way.
Elliott stared in awe. It was like someone had taken the most eclectic selection of Centrium inhabitants they could find, and gathered them all together in one place.
There were hulking huge ones that barely fit in their seats, and tiny ones that hopped and fluttered lightly around the whole room. There were ones that looked like they’d been carved out of rock and iron, and ones with bodies like shiny see-through gel. There were a few tall, silent ones, with iridescent opal faces that shifted colors like a kaleidoscope. There was a swarm of hovering mini-robots united into one vaguely bipedal being, wavering and buzzing like a living metallic dust cloud. There was a slow, peaceful one in the corner that, frankly, kind of just looked like a coral with legs. And there were ones wearing clunky mechanical armor, or thick dome-headed biosuits, or prosthetics and implants of all sorts, or even nothing beyond the usual garb.
But the character Elliott had found himself sitting next to was definitely one of the more interesting faces in the room. An alien that looked like it had come straight out of a rollicking bargain-bin sci-fi flick. Not in a bad way, though, not at all. If he wasn’t so preoccupied with the current problem, Elliott would probably be grinning stupidly at it.
If he had to put it into one phrase: giant, bluish, turtle-headed mantis-shrimp-thing. One with wide bands of natural chitinous armor curled over the head and neck, plus a massive cybernetic limb in place of one claw arm, and a few other technological implants pressed into the torso. The only modification that didn’t seem unthinkably advanced was a simple eyepatch, stuck across one of the two eye divots in the boxy face. The other side just held two little eyes like gold coins, both calmly focused on the drink atop the counter.
Eyepatch Guy was indeed minding their own business, even as Elliott cluelessly settled into the seat right next to them. A second ago the alien had been having a convivial chat with someone else, composed of strange gestures and stranger sounds, but then their friend had left to go play on the game table across the room and Eyepatch Guy had stayed to finish their refreshment.
Elliott briefly wondered if it was the wrong move to talk to them too, before remembering how it would turn out if he tried.
And yet…
He reached over, and tapped the plate of crustaceous armor that rolled over the curve of their shoulder. He waved a hand and gave a shaky smile as one set of eyes flicked his way. And then he wondered if any of the things he just did, waving and smiling, meant anything to this other species.
“Um…” Elliott began, more for his sake than theirs. “Hey. How’s it going?” No response. “I have this, uh, assignment, and…I thought maybe you could…”
He could tell his words were landing on ears that heard them as little more than primate gibbering. Elliott put the assignment paper on the counter, and slid it so that it sat on the surface between the two of them. He noticed that he could no longer read the writing on it, much like his watch menu, but he recognized the highlighted text placed exactly where the assignment’s central question had been. What does “home” mean to you?
Elliott tapped the sentence on the page, even though it was only legible in his recent memories now. He knew it would probably mean nothing to the stranger.
Eyepatch glanced down at the paper. They rumbled something in an unknown language, rattling a stacked pair of little bony mandible-tusks on each side of their mouth and vocalizing something like “Krghru-krinzshnm.”
“I don’t know what…that means,” Elliott said, murmuring to nobody in particular by the end. With one hand he drummed on the counter surface, mind racing. Maybe there was something nearby that could help? He glanced around the room, and after a moment of scanning for something, anything that might be of use, he clapped eyes upon just the tool for the job. It, he thought, could work on any planet. Hopefully.
Further down the half-circle counter, left alongside an empty drink and an abandoned receipt, was a pen. It was clunky and thick and kind of oddly shaped, but otherwise strangely like Earth’s own. Elliott leapt up, weaved around a few alien species he’d never seen before, murmured a polite but meaningless “Excuse me,” and snatched the pen up from where it sat on the counter.
It was large for his hand, and even heavier than it looked, but it would serve its purpose. He would have apologized to the employee it belonged to, but there was no one in sight—and no one who would understand his words anyway.
But maybe someone here would understand his drawings.
Back at his seat, Elliott tried a quick scribble on the corner of the paper, only to falter. The pen’s tip wouldn’t leave any marks. He fiddled with it, turning it over in his hands and tapping at its shiny metal components, trying to figure out what he had to press to make it work. It had a twisty part on one end, and something like a switch or button against its side, though so far he couldn’t get either to do anything, and he was starting to think he might be holding it upside down.
He sat stumped for a few seconds more before Eyepatch Guy began motioning something. Elliott looked up, and saw them patiently miming a sort of downward tapping and swiping in front of the pen. He stared, thinking it must be another gesture he didn’t understand, until he realized what was happening.
Elliott ran his thumb over the switch on the pen’s side, press-and-pull, just like Eyepatch showed him. The pen activated with a click. He tested it out again, and watched with satisfaction as it marked a crisp black line on the paper.
“Oh! Thank you,” Elliott said. He smiled down at the pen, and then up at the alien. He liked to think that they could tell what the phrase meant.
Elliott raised the pen in front of Eyepatch, holding it there for a second, then slowly began to draw a symbol on the assignment sheet. A house, square with a chevron-shaped roof, plus a little rectangular door and a chimney on top. He pointed between his basic drawing, and the bolded words positioned above it on the paper, at least five times over. Home. He tried pointing at the house symbol, then at Eyepatch.
Eyepatch didn’t react at all. Elliott sighed. Back to the drawing board, then. Literally.
A moment later another idea came to him. Around the house drawing, he inked a little speech bubble, and connected its tail to the mouth of a very crude drawing of the alien themself. Bionic modifications, shellfish-style armor plates, muscular claws, and all. It was a lot to capture in one doodle.
The stranger tapped at the new drawing in its entirety, clicking one of three big chitinous digits against the paper, and rattled the little mandible-tusk-thingies again. It must have meant something, but Elliott couldn’t even begin to guess what. Eyepatch’s one set of eyes had narrowed under a furrowed, ridged brow. At least they were paying attention.
Elliott eyed the house symbol again. His place didn’t even look like that. It never had, but then again, neither would have any of his neighbors’.
He tried drawing a habitation pod instead. It was a bit harder to communicate the idea, since from the outside habitation pods were basically just squares with doors and windows. But with a few carefully placed lines and angles, he thought the point might get across.
After a while, things began to fall into place. Elliott continued to work at his little doodle, never quite satisfied with it, when a claw hand reached out and gently plucked the pen right out of his grasp. Elliott watched the stranger tap with some sense of recognition at the habitation pod, before bluntly crossing it out with the pen.
“Hey! I was working on…never mind.” Elliott leaned back and thought again, hard. And then he leaned forward and kept thinking hard, resting his head in both hands, like he often did when faced with a conundrum. It helped him to figure things out.
His sleeve fell down a bit, and there was his watch. The watch that he couldn’t even read the display on anymore.
The idea hit him like a comet.
Elliott pulled back his sleeve and held his wrist up to Eyepatch Guy, showing the watch. He toggled the watch’s holo-screen then, and let it project out for both of them to clearly see, the words of its display illegible to them now. At least they had that in common.
He pointed at the watch itself, and then to Eyepatch. He tried a set of gestures together: Do you—pointing at Eyepatch—know—pointing at his own head—this?—pointing at the watch. The stranger looked at the watch for a moment, then repeated the motion, pointing at Elliott’s watch and then at their own head.
Elliott inhaled sharply. No way. It was working! He studied the watch menu, and even though the words were different to him now, the layout was the same. He remembered just enough to find the screen he needed.
This new plan didn’t feel as strange as it should’ve. He’d done something like it before. Back on Earth, just once or twice, on days spent crossing the most dull and empty stretches of highway, Elliott would change the language setting on the tablet for fun. (Life could get very boring on the road.) It had been like a navigation game of sorts, because then he’d have to rely on what he remembered of the tablet’s interface to find his way back and reset it, with no labels there to help him. Just his memory and intuition.
This was just like that, in some ways. But now he wasn’t trying to traverse an endless jungle of settings menus. He was simply pulling up the watch’s emergency contact panel. Memory and intuition.
At the top of the screen displayed by his watch was a button that normally read “call home”. Elliott pointed between the text on the button, and his drawings of houses and habitation pods across the bottom half of the assignment paper. And again, and again, looking up at the stranger as he did.
The stranger did the rattle thing another time, but pointed toward the “call home” text on the holo-screen, then at their head. Elliott held his breath. Did they finally understand?
Eyepatch put the pen to the paper again and began drawing their own picture, proven as such by the little eyepatch included in it. And they drew a small group of other aliens, all like them, gathered closely together. They pointed between their drawing and the word.
Elliott paused. His gaze bounced between the buildings he’d drawn, the word on the holo-screen, and Eyepatch Guy’s drawing of a bunch of people. He put his palm out toward the stranger and closed it twice, asking for the pen back, and noticed that that gesture somehow made it through. Pen in hand, Elliott drew a circle around the drawing of the group standing together. He pointed at the word on the screen. “Home?” he asked, like he wanted it to be right.
Eyepatch tried to repeat the word. “Khaouhmn.” They raised a claw and waved it across the room itself. “Khaouhmn, grkkm.”
“This is…home?” Elliott waved around, and then pointed again, in sync with the sentence.
Eyepatch blinked their two eyes. They took the pen back, and drew a circle. Elliott watched the drawing unfold. A circle, into a planet; lines and triangles, into fire and smoke on the planet’s surface; an array of rectangles, into a fleet of ships; a set of ovals and lines, into the Centrium; and spread out underneath it all, a bunch of little simplified versions of the stranger’s species. Maybe it was their version of stick figures.
Eyepatch had sketched a little one, pointed at it and then at themself, and then drew an entire group of larger ones standing next to the first. All of the larger ones had been posed with a claw raised up, and Eyepatch drew what must have been an egg above, so that all of the adults were holding up the egg together. The whole group, one huge family.
“Khaouhmn.” They drew a circle around the family they’d drawn. And then on the other side of the little one, they drew a familiar figure: the alien Elliott had spoken to earlier, when he’d first walked through the doors. The owner of this place?
As the stranger kept drawing, they cast a glance around the room for reference, and Elliott did too just to see what they were looking at. Eyepatch put some of the other customers there in the drawing, including the one they’d been talking to before, plus many others of all kinds. A microcosm of the whole Centrium, in a way. And among the little crowd, they doodled symbols of the snacks and drinks, the game tables, the chatter all around.
Carefully and smoothly, they arced a second circle around that group as well. The resulting mural was a sort of Venn diagram, with the seeming doodle of themself at the overlapping center.
It was as if Elliott had watched a tricky optical illusion suddenly turn into a beautiful artwork. The image curled up neatly inside him. It fit perfectly. Everything had clicked. Just to make sure, he waved one hand toward his earlier drawings, of houses and habitation pods and physical places that could be left behind, and he asked, “Home…?”
Eyepatch said nothing.
And Elliott tapped at the doodle of the planet, drawn brimming with fire and war. “Home?”
Eyepatch said nothing.
And Elliott gestured to the drawing of people, of caretakers from the same species and of a group so diverse it was almost miraculous, and asked, “Home?”
Eyepatch confirmed it as best as their vocal anatomy allowed. “Khaouhmn.” They waved one claw-finger over the entire drawing, the two overlapping circles and everything implied within and beyond.
Elliott couldn’t help but laugh. Not a funny sort of laugh, but a joyful one, because it made so much sense, and he felt his heart swell, and he couldn’t believe his idea had worked. He really did get it now. He couldn’t wait to go back to where the language would work, so he could write the realization down while it was still fresh and sparking in his mind, but at the same time…he’d almost miss the feeling of things being like this. In the absence of shared words, everything meant so much more.
He laughed. The stranger made a sort of rumbling sound. Elliott wondered if it meant the same thing.
The owner reemerged to see the lost little alien now beaming. His two hands were holding the giant claw of a favorite regular at the Offworlder’s Oasis—a rugged, stoic, veteran refugee. Beloved by their friends there, sure, but usually a touch off-putting to anyone who didn’t know them already. But the little alien just shook the claw up and down enthusiastically. Some sort of gesture of gratitude.
Some species out there could make friends with anyone, it seemed.
The owner gave a sort of half-sigh, half-chuckle. He went to give the poor little alien a navigator screen, so that he might find his way back home at last.
Elliott followed the map. Not a word was printed on the cheap screen’s display, but its visual instructions were clear as day, highlighting the exact path he’d need to take and tracking its own location as he went. There came a moment when Elliott looked up from the map, making sure he was where it promised he should be, and found that suddenly everything was normal again. The language was working as he’d always known it, with every passing conversation and every glowing street sign perfectly and beautifully understandable. A weight lifted from his shoulders.
With that resolved, he opened a note-to-self on his smartwatch before he went any further. Two little lines, still fresh in his memory, were typed in.
Home’s not a place you leave or find
Home is the people you want to be there with
Elliott released a long-held sigh of relief. He couldn’t wait to see his family again.