The Things We Repair
Copyright© 2026 by Flubu
Chapter 35: What We Tell Them
The idea began with Daniel asking what Xianglume knew about Canada.
ER answered for eleven minutes.
Daniel regretted asking almost immediately.
They were at the kitchen table after breakfast.
The countdown read:
1 DAY, 16 HOURS
Claire had gone into town with Marcel to collect prescriptions, groceries and several things Daniel had apparently forgotten could be bought before running out.
Neris sat beside him with the Earthside receiver open in front of her.
Nothing was wrong with it.
She was checking it anyway.
Daniel had decided not to comment.
ER had not made the same decision.
“Receiver diagnostics remain unchanged from the previous four tests.”
Neris did not look up.
“I know.”
“You are testing it again.”
“Yes.”
Daniel smiled into his coffee.
Neris’s ears angled toward him.
“You checked the cattle cameras six times.”
“Cattle move.”
“The receiver also has state changes.”
“Not when nobody has sent anything.”
Neris closed the casing.
Daniel regarded that as victory.
Then he had made the mistake of asking:
“What do your people actually know about where you landed?”
ER began with geography.
Then population.
Then federal structure.
Then provincial government.
Then historical treaties.
Then languages.
Then economic indicators.
Then climate.
Then transportation infrastructure.
Daniel interrupted somewhere around agricultural exports.
“Okay.”
ER stopped.
“That was not complete.”
“I figured.”
Neris rested her elbows on the table.
Daniel looked toward the speaker.
“How much of that did you know before October?”
“None.”
“So you learned it here.”
“Yes.”
“From what?”
“Publicly available information.”
Daniel looked at Neris.
“Just Canada?”
“No,” she said.
“How much Earth?”
Neris’s ears moved.
“That depends on what you mean by know.”
Daniel glanced toward the speaker.
“That sounded diplomatic.”
“It was precise.”
“Same thing.”
ER projected a small globe above the table.
The image rotated slowly.
Most of Earth appeared normal.
Some regions were overlaid with dense bands of information.
Others much thinner.
Daniel frowned.
“What’s that?”
“Current knowledge density.”
North America and western Europe glowed brightly.
Large parts of Asia showed moderate coverage.
Other regions faded rapidly.
The imbalance was obvious even before ER explained it.
Daniel looked at the globe.
“That’s bad.”
“Yes,” Neris said.
ER said, “It is incomplete.”
“No. It’s biased.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Daniel leaned back.
Neris looked at him.
He pointed at the brightest areas.
“You’ve been using English internet.”
“Primarily English and French sources, with machine-assisted translation for additional languages.”
“So mostly places that publish information where you can easily find it.”
“Yes.”
“And places with enough infrastructure to put everything online.”
“Yes.”
Daniel stared at the globe.
“That’s not Earth.”
“No,” Neris said quietly.
ER dimmed the projection.
Daniel looked toward the window.
Outside, snow covered the yard.
A tractor sat beside the equipment shed.
A cow had discovered something offensive about the mineral feeder and was pushing it with her nose.
One tiny place.
One household.
One farm.
Two months.
Daniel looked back at the globe.
“What does Xianglume get when you go home?”
Neris understood before ER did.
“About Earth?”
“Yeah.”
“Our reports.”
“Which say what?”
Neris hesitated.
“Crash circumstances. Survival. Protected contact. Local interactions. Emergency medical intervention. Communication development. Technical restrictions.”
Daniel waited.
“And people?”
Neris looked at him.
“Daniel.”
“That’s one person.”
“Claire.”
“Two.”
“Marcel.”
“Three.”
“Dr. Singh.”
“Four.”
Daniel pointed toward the globe.
“There are eight billion of us.”
ER said, “Approximately.”
Daniel looked upward.
“Do not make the number worse.”
Neris’s tail curled around one chair leg.
Daniel continued.
“So your people’s first working picture of humanity is four people, some cows and whatever you downloaded while hiding in the forest.”
“That is reductive,” ER said.
“Is it wrong?”
A pause.
“No.”
Daniel smiled.
“Claire’s rubbing off on me.”
The back door opened.
Claire entered carrying grocery bags.
Marcel came behind her with two more.
“I heard my name,” Claire said.
Daniel stood automatically.
His monitor vibrated once.
He sat.
Claire noticed.
Said nothing.
Marcel put the bags on the counter.
“You planning my criminal trial?”
“First contact.”
“Worse.”
Claire removed her coat.
“What now?”
Daniel pointed at the globe.
“Xianglume doesn’t know enough about Earth.”
Claire looked at Neris.
Neris nodded.
“And you’re fixing that today.”
Daniel shrugged.
“We have nothing else to do.”
Neris said, “That is not true.”
Daniel looked at her.
“What?”
“There are still personal departure preparations.”
He stopped.
Claire immediately became interested in unloading bread.
Daniel looked away.
“Fine. We have nothing urgent to do.”
Marcel opened a cupboard.
Stopped.
Looked at the shelves.
“What happened in here?”
“Neris.”
“It’s organized.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Daniel looked at him.
“Don’t.”
Marcel slowly closed the cupboard.
Claire put milk in the refrigerator.
“So what are you proposing?”
Daniel looked at the globe again.
“I don’t know.”
Claire sat.
Neris moved the receiver aside.
ER restored the display.
Daniel said, “Something that tells your people what they’re actually dealing with.”
Marcel pulled out a chair.
“Still sounds like a criminal trial.”
“A starting profile,” Claire said.
Neris looked at her.
Claire continued.
“Not conclusions. Questions.”
ER said, “A structured pre-contact reference framework would be useful.”
Daniel nodded.
“Sure.”
Claire looked at him.
“You have no idea what that means.”
“Not a clue.”
“It means a list.”
Daniel groaned.
Claire was already reaching for paper.
Neris’s tail moved.
ER said, “A digital structure would be more efficient.”
Claire pointed at the speaker.
“We’re brainstorming.”
“Paper does not improve brainstorming.”
“It does for me.”
“Your individual cognitive preference does not establish general superiority.”
Daniel smiled.
“Fight.”
Neris looked between them.
Claire ignored everyone and wrote at the top of the sheet:
EARTH
Then beneath it:
WHO SPEAKS FOR IT?
She looked at Neris.
“Well?”
Neris thought.
“No one.”
Claire circled the answer.
Daniel leaned over.
“That should be page one.”
ER created a new file.
The first line appeared on the kitchen tablet.
EARTH HAS NO SINGLE REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORITY.
Marcel nodded.
“Good start.”
Claire continued.
“Countries.”
“Approximately two hundred depending on recognition criteria,” ER said.
“International organizations.”
“Numerous.”
“United Nations.”
“Yes.”
“Regional blocs.”
“Yes.”
“Treaties.”
“Yes.”
“Disputed territories.”
“Yes.”
“Indigenous nations.”
ER paused.
Daniel noticed.
Claire did too.
“Yes,” ER said.
Claire looked toward the speaker.
“That pause means something.”
“My current dataset is insufficiently nuanced.”
“Then put that in.”
ER added:
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, NATIONS, TREATY RELATIONSHIPS AND SOVEREIGNTY REQUIRE REGION-SPECIFIC REVIEW. DO NOT ASSUME STATE GOVERNMENT FULLY REPRESENTS ALL PEOPLES WITHIN A TERRITORY.
Neris read it slowly.
“That applies elsewhere too.”
Claire nodded.
“Quite a lot.”
Daniel looked at Neris.
“You asked before who represents Earth.”
“Yes.”
“Answer’s going to be annoying.”
“I expected that.”
“No. I mean there isn’t an answer.”
Neris’s ears tilted.
“That is useful to know.”
Marcel opened the bread.
Claire slapped his hand.
“Lunch isn’t for two hours.”
“I’m supporting first contact.”
“With toast?”
“Cultural context.”
ER added:
FOOD PRACTICES.
Daniel laughed.
“Don’t encourage him.”
Within twenty minutes, Claire’s sheet had become three sheets.
Within forty, ER’s file had become a hierarchy.
Governance.
Law.
International institutions.
Sovereignty.
Military capability.
Science.
Technology.
Medicine.
Energy.
Environment.
Economics.
Trade.
Inequality.
Education.
Languages.
Religion.
Media.
Public opinion.
Artificial intelligence.
Spaceflight.
Food.
Family.
Social norms.
Daniel watched the list grow.
Something bothered him.
He could not name it yet.
Neris noticed.
“What?”
“It looks like a report.”
“It is a report.”
“No.”
Claire looked up.
“What’s wrong with reports?”
“Nothing.”
“That tone says otherwise.”
Daniel stared at the projection.
“Governments. Money. Wars. Science. Laws.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not people.”
Claire sat back.
“It’s part of people.”
“Yeah.”
He pointed at the list.
“But if somebody gave me that about Xianglume, would I know anything about you?”
Neris looked at him.
Daniel continued.
“I’d know what your government does. How many people live there. What your technology can do.”
He looked at her tail.
“At some point somebody would probably explain that.”
Neris’s ears lifted.
“But would I know about Returning Light?”
She became still.
“Would I know your sister plays music badly on purpose when she’s trying to annoy you?”
Neris’s muzzle shifted.
“Would I know your niece makes terrible cups?”
“She makes excellent cups.”
“You said the second one leans.”
“It is expressive.”
Daniel smiled.
“Would I know what your mum cooks when everybody comes home?”
Neris said nothing.
Daniel looked at Claire.
“That’s what’s missing.”
Claire tapped the paper with her pencil.
“Culture.”
“No.”
“Values?”
“Closer.”
ER said, “Publicly observable cultural values.”
Daniel looked toward the speaker.
“Maybe.”
He thought.
“What do people keep?”
Neris watched him.
“What do they throw away?”
Claire’s pencil stopped.
“What do they build memorials for?”
Daniel continued.
“What do they write songs about? What do they make jokes about when everything’s terrible? What stories do they tell kids? What do people photograph?”
Marcel said, “Food.”
Daniel pointed at him.
“Yes.”
“Still counts.”
“Absolutely.”
Daniel looked back at Neris.
“What do people call home?”
Neris’s ears softened.
ER said, “Those concepts are difficult to quantify.”
Daniel smiled.
“Good.”
“That is not generally a desirable property of data.”
“Not everything worth knowing fits nicely in a field.”
Claire looked at him.
“You realize who you sound like?”
“No.”
“Emily.”
Daniel stopped.
Claire lowered her voice.
“She used to say you tried to turn everything into a problem with inputs and outputs.”
Daniel looked down at the table.
“Yeah.”
Neris placed her paw over his.
Claire smiled faintly.
“Apparently you learned something.”
Daniel looked at the list.
“Books.”
ER added it.
“Music.”
Added.
“Films.”
Added.
“Public memorials.”
Added.
“Festivals.”
Added.
“Obituaries.”
Neris looked at him.
“Obituaries?”
“People say strange honest things about what mattered after somebody dies.”
ER added it.
“Wedding traditions,” Claire said.
“Funeral traditions,” Neris added.
“Sports,” Marcel said.
Daniel looked at him.
“Seriously?”
Marcel stared.
“Try first contact during the Stanley Cup playoffs and tell me sports aren’t cultural risk.”
Claire nodded.
“He has a point.”
ER added it.
Daniel frowned.
“Don’t tell him.”
Marcel smiled.
Neris leaned toward the projection.
“Humour.”
ER added it.
“Physical contact norms.”
Daniel looked at her.
She lifted one paw.
“Your species is inconsistent.”
Claire laughed.
“That’s generous.”
Neris continued.
“In some places, strangers shake hands.”
“Yes.”
“Some kiss cheeks.”
“Yes.”
“Some bow.”
“Yes.”
“Some embrace.”
“Yes.”
“Some regard prolonged eye contact as respectful.”
Claire nodded.
“And in other places it can be confrontational.”
Neris looked genuinely concerned.
ER added:
INTERPERSONAL CONTACT NORMS — REGIONALLY AND CULTURALLY VARIABLE.
Daniel looked at the line.
“You really wrote that.”
“Would you prefer an international incident?”
“No.”
Neris’s tail brushed Daniel’s ankle.
He looked down.
“Also tell them tails are not universally available.”
Claire covered her mouth.
ER said, “That distinction was already evident.”
The work grew.
So did the problem.
By lunch, they had stopped talking about what information to collect and started arguing about how to collect it.
ER proposed public demographic databases.
Government publications.
Scientific literature.
Legal databases.
International organizations.
Public opinion surveys.
News archives.
Translation corpora.
Claire interrupted.
“In what languages?”
ER paused.
Daniel looked at her.
“There it is.”
Neris’s ears lifted.
ER said, “Current collection capacity supports multilingual analysis.”
“That’s not what she asked,” Daniel said.
Claire nodded.
“What languages are most represented in what you already have?”
“English dominates.”
“By how much?”
ER displayed percentages.
English towered over everything else.
French followed at a fraction.
Spanish.
Mandarin.
German.
Japanese.
Several others.
Then a long tail of poorly represented languages.
Marcel looked at the chart.
“So you’ve learned Earth by reading the people who publish the most stuff you can reach.”
“Yes.”
Claire shook her head.
“That’s dangerous.”
ER did not object.
Neris looked at the globe.
“Then the first principle should be source diversity.”
Claire nodded.
“Language diversity.”
“Regional diversity.”
“Economic diversity,” Daniel added.
Claire looked at him.
“Explain.”
“A farmer in Ontario isn’t a farmer in Kenya.”
Neris nodded.
“A person with reliable internet access may not represent someone without it.”
Claire added:
“Urban and rural.”
“Majority and minority populations.”
“People under open governments and people under censorship.”
ER created another section.
SOURCE BIAS AND REPRESENTATION
Daniel watched it fill.
Then ER said, “Public information provides broad access while minimizing privacy intrusion.”
Neris looked toward the speaker.
“Public does not mean ethically unlimited.”
ER paused.
Daniel looked at her.
She continued.
“A person posting publicly does not necessarily consent to becoming part of an extraterrestrial behavioural dataset.”
Claire slowly put down her pencil.
“That needs to be in there.”
ER added:
PUBLIC AVAILABILITY DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY CONSTITUTE ETHICAL PERMISSION FOR INDIVIDUAL PROFILING.
Neris continued.
“No private communications.”
“Agreed.”
“No hacked systems.”
“Agreed.”
“No medical records.”
“Agreed.”
“No location tracking of individuals.”
“Agreed.”
“No creation of personal dossiers because information can be combined from public sources.”
ER paused slightly longer.
Then:
“Agreed.”
Daniel looked at Neris.
“You thought about this.”
“It is basic contact ethics.”
Marcel opened the bread again.
Claire let him.
Neris continued.
“The objective is understanding societies. Not cataloguing humans.”
Daniel looked toward the globe.
“Good.”
ER added:
UNIT OF ANALYSIS: INSTITUTIONS, COMMUNITIES, CULTURAL PATTERNS, PUBLICLY DECLARED POSITIONS AND AGGREGATE BEHAVIOUR.
AVOID INDIVIDUAL SURVEILLANCE.
Daniel read it.
“That may be the first alien policy document I actually like.”
“It is not alien.”
“Technically.”
“It is being created in your kitchen.”
“Exactly.”
Lunch became part of the research.
Not intentionally.
Marcel asked whether Xianglume needed Canadian food included.
Daniel said Canada did not have one food.
Claire suggested poutine.
Daniel objected on geographic grounds.
Marcel nominated butter tarts.
Neris asked why neither contained vegetables.
No one answered.
ER added nothing to the official framework.
Daniel considered that proof of judgment.
After Marcel left, the work became harder.
Claire pulled the military section onto the screen.
Daniel frowned.
“Do we need that?”
“Yes,” Neris said.
“We’re trying to introduce ourselves, not invade.”
“That is why we need it.”
Daniel looked at her.
Neris enlarged the globe.
“An arriving Xianglume vessel could be detected as an unidentified aerospace vehicle.”
Claire nodded.
“Immediately.”
“Responses vary by state.”
“Yes.”
“Military aircraft may intercept.”
“Yes.”
“Radar systems may track us.”
“Yes.”
“Some states possess nuclear weapons.”
Claire looked at Daniel.
“Definitely include that.”
Daniel rubbed his beard.
“I hate that this is our introduction.”
“It is part of Earth,” Claire said.
“Not all of it.”
“No.”
Neris touched the display.
“That is the point of the profile.”
She looked at him.
“To know a risk exists without deciding the risk defines you.”
Daniel nodded slowly.
ER added nuclear arsenals.
Missile warning systems.
Air-defence structures.
Military alliances.
Publicly documented doctrine.
Space surveillance.
Cyber capabilities.
No classified sources.
No intrusion.
No attempt to discover hidden weaknesses.
Claire asked:
“What exactly is the purpose?”
Neris answered.
“To avoid triggering defensive behaviour.”
ER said, “The objective is not determining how to defeat Earth.”
Daniel looked upward.
“Glad we clarified.”
“The objective is determining how not to accidentally appear to be attacking Earth.”
“That’s better.”
Claire looked at the map.
“So one giant ship dropping through the atmosphere without warning is out.”
“Strongly,” Neris said.
“Fleet?”
“Extremely strongly.”
Daniel smiled.
“Good diplomatic terminology.”
ER said, “An initial formal contact mission would likely remain outside controlled national airspace until communication and authorization existed.”
“Orbit?” Claire asked.
“Possibly.”
Daniel looked at her.
“That’ll calm everyone down.”
Claire grimaced.
“Point.”
Neris looked toward the window.
“Distance may be safer physically and more frightening symbolically.”
Daniel nodded.
“Welcome to humans.”
Claire pointed at the speaker.
“That should be a category.”
ER added:
PERCEPTION OF INTENT MAY DIFFER FROM ACTUAL INTENT.
Daniel smiled.
“That one applies everywhere.”
The environmental section was easier.
Climate change.
Biodiversity loss.
Pollution.
Energy transition.
Resource scarcity.
Neris asked why humans continued activities they knew caused long-term harm.
Daniel said:
“Because knowing a problem and agreeing who pays to fix it are different things.”
Claire looked at him.
“That may also belong on page one.”
ER added it.
Medicine brought them back to Daniel.
Vaccines.
Antibiotics.
Surgery.
Public health systems.
Unequal access.
Traditional medicine.
Medical ethics.
Insurance.
Daniel tried explaining health insurance in some countries.
Neris became increasingly puzzled.
Claire eventually said:
“Don’t start there.”
Neris looked at Daniel.
“Humans sometimes require financial authorization before receiving necessary medical treatment?”
Daniel said nothing.
Claire said, “Next category.”
ER marked the subject for further review.
Artificial intelligence belonged almost entirely to ER.
He collected public legal frameworks.
Technical research.
Philosophical arguments.
Employment concerns.
Creative-use disputes.
Safety debates.
Science fiction.
Claire looked at him.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I am preparing.”
“For?”
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