The House of Friendship

[lurker]

Standing a mere stone’s throw from the Eternal Hearth, the edifice was supposed to be a monument to the friendship between the only two sapient species in the galaxy, and to the Yinrih who built it, it was just that, but to most humans visiting the holy world of Hearthside, it was--well--a tower of human skulls.

We had offered a large supply of medical cadavers to our new galactic neighbors so that they might better understand human biology. It was thought that the Yinrih, who had terraformed every suitable body in their star system just as we humans were putting plough to earth for the first time, could bestow upon our primitive species all manner of medical miracles, after, of course, dispelling their ignorance regarding our anatomy. When the human ambassador was asked what ought to be done with the bodies after they had been studied, “Treat them as you would your own dead.” Seemed to be the culturally appropriate response.

What we didn’t know at the time was what exactly they did to their dearly departed. Bury them? Cremate them? Nope, turns out the answer was dissolve the soft tissue with acid, then use the bones to build with. Of course, not every structure had the honor of being made from the remains of your friends and family. In more traditional corners of the system, such architecture was reserved for houses of worship. In more secular parts, this peculiar building style extended to monuments, libraries, halls of learning, and centers of political power. In the most general sense, the best way to make your building scream “this is important!” was to cover it in skulls.

The Yinrih healers studying our anatomy had mountains of alien remains to deal with, and also wanted to show us weird flat-faced hairless bipeds that they saw us as friends. Building a library to house the newly acquired medical knowledge in the traditional ossuary style seemed to solve both problems neatly. So there it was, bones bleaching in the perpetual noon of a tidally locked world, containing the musings, anecdotes, theories, and observations of an intelligence that was not our own pondering the peculiarities of the human form.

Aurora sat politely at the door, ready to greet any passing visitors, human and Yinrih alike. She always found it interesting how differently the two species reacted to this little library. Her fellow Yinrih would hurry inside, passing the façade of grinning alien skulls without comment, but eager to peruse the shelves, learning as much as they could about these large tailless creatures. Humans, on the rare occasion they decided to visit Hearthside, would stare open-mouthed at the outer walls encrusted with the skulls and bones of their conspecifics with a mixture of disgust and fascination. Or at least that’s what she gathered from their comments. The nuances of human body language still escaped her.

There was one memorable exception. He was a cleric, or at least he looked like the pictures Aurora had seen of human clergy. He approached her, teeth exposed in the way humans did to show they were not a threat, extending his arm to grasp hers in a greeting gesture. After quickly remembering not to expose her own teeth, she stood on her hind legs to better meet his gaze, wrapping her tail around the pillar behind her for balance. She politely refused the handshake. The human was positively drenched in that pungent excretion, “sweat”, she thought they called it. The unforgiving heat of the nightless desert apparently did not agree with this alien visitor. It was just a brackish solution used to regulate body temperature, exuded by glands just under the surface of the skin, odorless on its own. It was the bacteria living on the skin that caused the smell. Whatever it was and however it smelled, she was not eager to get it on her pelt.

“Good, uh, morning?” said the human, quickly glancing up at the star perpetually frozen at the zenith. “Sure is hot today.”

“Hello,” Aurora yipped. “It’s like we say: on Hearthside, if you don’t like the weather, too bad, it’s not going to change.”

“Quite the monument you’ve got here. What’s it for if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Not at all. I’m actually a volunteer here. This is the House of Friendship. It’s just a little medical library. It’s all books on human biology and medicine.”

“Ah,” the cleric responded. “And the skulls are real, then?”

“Uh, yeah,” she hesitated. “It’s considered the respectful thing to do here. You guys gave us all these cadavers to study, and we wanted to do right by you when we were done with them.”

“Fascinating.”

“You’re not… uh… offended? Most humans seem to think it’s morbid.”

“I mean, we build our altars on top of the bones of saints. It’s really not all that different, I guess. We even have a few chapels that look just like this. We usually bury our dead first, but after a few hundred years it kind of builds up and we need to make room. The bones get dug up and they need to go somewhere.” he gestured at the façade. “There’s even a huge system of tunnels lined with bones under one of our national capitals.”

“Interesting,” said Aurora, ears tilted forward in attention.

“Well, most of us humans still think that stuff is morbid, too. I don’t know, I guess it can be, context is everything. But in a way I can see why you find it comforting. Being surrounded by friends and family. Being reminded of one’s mortality also keeps your mind on the important things.”

“Exactly,” Aurora barked happily, glad to finally see a human recognizing her species’ gesture of kindness. “You know we’ve been searching for other sapients for so long. It’s kind of the whole point of all this.” She waved her paw in the direction of the Eternal Hearth and surrounding religious buildings. “We’re just happy we’re not alone anymore.”

“Thanks,” said the human. “We’re just as glad as you are.”

[Visions1]

This is fantastic!

[lurker]

This is fantastic!

Thanks :D

This was actually born out of a single soundbite I heard on a TV while waiting at the airport once. It was a SETI scientist talking about how if we found aliens we wouldn't have to ask priests and philosophers about the meaning of life... or something. So I thought it would be funny if the aliens turned out to be searching for other sapient species for religious reasons.

That got me thinking about how real world religions view the possibility of alien intelligence. Admittedly I haven't done a ton of research, but it seems to range from "absolutely not" to "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." I didn't know how to fit it into the story, but that's what the priest is doing on Hearthside, finally crossing that bridge, as it were. The central dogma of the aliens' religion actually requires that other sapient species exist.

I also thought about how First Contact tends to go in other stories. The aliens are almost always part of a galaxy-spanning multi-species government that we humans just haven't stumbled upon yet. What if they were just like us? All alone, crying out into the empty void. So they're not here to blow us up, and we're not going to dissect them. We're both just happy we've found one another after groping around in the darkness.

[WeepingElf]

This is charming. Indeed, an interesting change from the usual "we humans find themselves on the edge of a vibrant galactic metacivilization" (so masterfully satirized by Douglas Adams) narrative.

[Visions1]

It could be argued that discussions of gods in various mythologies are something similar to how we look at aliens. But I dunno.

[elemtilas]

Hi Lurker!

All together I'd say this is really wonderful and delightfully written!

The only thing I have any problem with is that no priest would say "I mean, we build our altars on top of the bones of saints. It’s really not all that different, I guess." I think a priest might say that we build our altars on (or around) the bones of saints, who we understand to be particularly holy people." And might then seek to find out more about these sophonts he's visiting. This isn't the same thing as exposing bones in, as you allude to, the catacombs under Paris.

For what it worths, I love that you chose a priest for this sort of first real contact. He must be a Jesuit. If he were, he almost certainly would not be surprised at the existence of life on other planets; after all, traditionally Christianity not only admits to the existence of, but flat our affirms the reality of non-human sophonts.

Also, excellent choice in a priest to build that bridge. After all, priests are pontifices, bridge builders!

So far, I have to say this is my favourite first contact story ever! I think you've got the core of a really neat and interesting FC novel here! You should totally write it before someone else does!

[lurker]

Hi Lurker!

All together I'd say this is really wonderful and delightfully written!

The only thing I have any problem with is that no priest would say "I mean, we build our altars on top of the bones of saints. It’s really not all that different, I guess." I think a priest might say that we build our altars on (or around) the bones of saints, who we understand to be particularly holy people." And might then seek to find out more about these sophonts he's visiting. This isn't the same thing as exposing bones in, as you allude to, the catacombs under Paris.

For what it worths, I love that you chose a priest for this sort of first real contact. He must be a Jesuit. If he were, he almost certainly would not be surprised at the existence of life on other planets; after all, traditionally Christianity not only admits to the existence of, but flat our affirms the reality of non-human sophonts.

Also, excellent choice in a priest to build that bridge. After all, priests are pontifices, bridge builders!

So far, I have to say this is my favourite first contact story ever! I think you've got the core of a really neat and interesting FC novel here! You should totally write it before someone else does!

Thanks for teaching me a new word. I'm trying to find concise ways of saying "rational mind residing in a mortal body that is not human." The dialog is awkward. I don't know if the priest would be a Jesuit, I imagine him wearing a black cassock and biretta, and that's a more traditionalist thing to do.

The Yinrih's architectural style is supposed to allude to the ossuary churches like the capila dos osos in Portugal. It's a style I kind of wish would catch on if only because it's so unintentionally hardcore.

Dealing with religious subjects in speculative fiction is difficult because it's hard to straddle the thin line between parody and tract. The aliens' faith isn't exactly Christianity. I imagine them as unitary monotheists, and they don't conceive of the Incarnation. They also have strict taboos surrounding eating in public (they evolved from arboreal carnivores with a strong resource-guarding instinct) so the Mass would be profoundly scandalous to them. This is mostly to compensate for their lack of Eros. I want them to be flawed like us, just flawed in different ways. If you think of the model of the soul as a set of appetites/instincts being controlled by the will, which is in tern formed by the intellect, then the Yinrih lack some appetites that humans have, and have some that humans don't.

But all this is supposed to be mostly in the background.

[Visions1]

Maybe "sentient" or "sapient"?

[Keenir]

I love the story and the explanation of the construction (and sometimes ornamentation) method; kudos!

[thethief3]

Interesting.

[lurker]

Maybe "sentient" or "sapient"?

Already got those two.

Also I can think of "rational" as in "Man is a rational animal".