Earth: Starting Notes
Copyright© 2026 by Flubu
Chapter 8: The Shape of Being Seen
The first official portrait of Neris Vael began with antlers. Neris came downstairs carrying Daniel’s chipped mug and found Lysa and Jaydee sitting shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen table, both staring at a wall display. Neither noticed her. That was suspicious. Neris stopped behind them. On the screen was a tall, blue-skinned creature with four eyes, two antlers, a transparent robe and approximately twice the number of fingers Neris considered reasonable.
Across the bottom:
ARTIST’S INTERPRETATION OF NERIS VAEL, FIRST XIANGLUME VISITOR TO EARTH
Neris stared. Jaydee said:
“I like this one.”
Lysa nodded. “The antlers are good.”
Neris put the mug down. “Why do I have antlers?”
Jaydee jumped. Lysa did not. She had always been better at being caught.
“You’re awake.”
Neris pointed at the screen. “Why do I have antlers?”
“We don’t know.”
“Do mephits have antlers?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Jaydee enlarged the image. “Maybe humans think couriers need them.”
“For what?”
“Navigation?”
Neris stared at her niece. Jaydee shrugged. “Could be sensors.”
Lysa changed the image. This version of Neris was insectoid, with six legs, two wings, a narrow head and, inexplicably, a leather flight jacket. Neris leaned closer. “Why does that one have a jacket?”
Lysa said: “Pilot.”
“That does not answer the question.”
“It has pockets.”
Jaydee nodded solemnly. “Couriers need pockets.”
Neris looked between them. “You two have been doing this for how long?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Forty-three,” Lysa said.
Jaydee frowned at her. “You said you wouldn’t tell.”
“You were wrong about the antlers.”
“That has nothing to do with time.”
Neris scrolled through humans, near-humans, bird-like and reptilian people and something composed largely of light. One artist had apparently decided courier pilot meant military officer and had put her in a black uniform covered in medals she had not earned for wars she had not fought. Neris frowned.
“That one is offensive.”
Lysa looked at the medals. “Why?”
“I have never been promoted.”
Jaydee laughed. The next image stopped all three of them. It was designed to frighten, and Neris understood that before she had finished taking in the predatory teeth, red eyes, claws and burning spacecraft. The headline above it used her name for something that was not meant to be a person.
Jaydee’s smile disappeared. Lysa reached to change the image, but Neris put out one paw. “Wait.”
She had refused the photograph because she wanted one day in her parents’ house before billions of strangers were given her face. That still felt like the right choice, but the empty space had not stayed empty. Earth had filled it playfully, thoughtfully, badly and, sometimes, with fear.
Jaydee frowned. “Does it bother you?”
“Yes.”
“The scary one?”
“That one most.”
Neris looked at the screen. Daniel had accepted what she was before he knew what to call her. Claire had adjusted and started asking structural questions. Mara had cared more about consent than alienness. Marcel had reached the point of complaining about her tail being in the way.
None of them had required an official photograph. Earth did, because Earth had not been there.
“I don’t know,” Neris said.
Lysa watched her. “You’re thinking about doing it.”
“Maybe.”
Jaydee’s eyes widened. “Can I take the picture?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You made my ship have a tail.”
“That was a drawing.”
“Evidence of judgment.”
Lysa said: “I can take it.”
Neris looked at her. “You once photographed half my ear.”
“That was twelve years ago.”
“You blamed the camera.”
“It was badly designed.”
Neris picked up Daniel’s mug. Linnea entered carrying food. She looked at the screen, then at Neris.
“What happened?”
“Earth is guessing.”
Linnea studied the antlered image that had returned to the display.
“About what?”
“Me.”
Linnea considered the creature. “That colour would be terrible on you.”
Neris stared. “Mom.”
“What?”
“I am deciding whether to release an image to another civilization.”
“So?”
“That is historically significant.”
“Yes.”
Linnea began putting breakfast on the table. Neris waited. Her mother finally looked at her. “I think you should wear something you like.”
Neris blinked. “That’s your advice?”
“It’s sound.”
“Not whether I should do it?”
“That part is yours.”
Neris looked at the food, then at her mother. Linnea added: “And fix the fur behind your left ear.”
Neris touched it automatically. Jaydee laughed. The photograph became a family project twelve minutes later. Neris regretted everything.
The first attempt lasted nine seconds. Neris stood against a plain wall in the sitting room wearing the dark civilian overshirt she used for Ministry meetings. Teral held the camera. Lysa stood to one side. Jaydee stood behind Teral. Linnea sat nearby. Ormaz was reading and had insisted he was not participating. ER occupied the room terminal. Kaden had left before the argument began, demonstrating extraordinary judgment.
Teral took the image. Everyone looked. Lysa said: “No.”
Neris frowned. “What?”
“You look like you’ve just been arrested.”
“I look normal.”
“You look like the Ministry has accused you of something.”
Jaydee nodded. “Angry.”
“I am becoming angry.”
Jaydee pointed. “See?”
Neris turned toward her. Teral took another picture. Neris looked at it. Worse. ER said: “The camera position introduces avoidable perspective distortion.”
Everyone looked toward the terminal. Neris said: “You are a spaceship.”
“That does not preclude understanding photography.”
“You have never taken a family portrait.”
“I have imaging systems with substantially greater resolution than that device.”
Lysa glanced toward the terminal. “He has a point.”
ER continued. “The current light source is also asymmetrical.”
Ormaz spoke without looking up. “The chair by the south window has better light.”
Everyone turned toward him. He remained focused on his document.
Neris said: “You are not participating.”
“I observed a lighting condition.”
Lysa smiled. “Participating.”
Ormaz turned a page. “Incorrect.”
They moved to the chair by the south window. Neris sat. Her tail had nowhere sensible to go. She put it around the side. Jaydee objected. “You’re hiding it.”
Neris looked down. “I am sitting.”
“You should show the whole thing.”
“My tail is not a diplomatic credential.”
“No, but it’s yours.”
That stopped her. Jaydee was right: if Earth was going to see Neris, hiding her tail to make the image easier for humans would defeat the point. She adjusted in the chair and let it curve naturally beside her.
Teral lifted the camera. Linnea said: “Not that shirt.”
Neris closed her eyes. “Why?”
“You wore that for courier identification.”
“It is a shirt.”
“It is a uniform pretending not to be a uniform.”
“Mom.”
“You asked.”
“I did not.”
Lysa said: “She’s right.”
Neris looked at her.
“You are enjoying this.”
“Yes.”
Ten minutes later Neris wore a soft charcoal top she had owned for years and comfortable trousers she had forgotten were still in her childhood room. There were no Ministry markings, courier insignia or formal presentation.
Jaydee brushed a section of Neris’s tail before Neris took the brush away. “I can groom myself.”
“There was a flat bit.”
ER said: “There was.”
Neris looked toward the terminal.
“Traitor.”
“Visual accuracy.”
Ormaz said: “Left ear.”
Neris touched it. The fur Linnea had mentioned had risen again. She flattened it.
“Anyone else?”
Eventually Lysa took the camera rather than Teral, who was too careful and made every image look official. Lysa kept talking to Neris while shooting, about nothing in particular: Jaydee’s school project, a neighbour who had adopted an animal with no sense of boundaries, and Ormaz calling government officials before breakfast. Ormaz objected from across the room. “I was asked to stop.”
“After doing it.”
“Chronology does not invalidate compliance.”
Neris laughed. The camera caught her before she could stop. Lysa lowered it.
“Got it.”
Everyone looked. Neris’s ears rose. “What?”
Lysa showed her. Neris sat by the window. Ordinary clothes. One arm resting on the chair. Tail curved fully beside her. Her eyes were turned slightly away from the lens toward Ormaz because he had been speaking. Her mouth held the beginning of a smile. The picture was simply Neris rather than pilot, first contact or survivor. Jaydee leaned closer.
“That one.”
Linnea nodded. Teral said: “Yes.”
Ormaz looked at the photograph. “Acceptable.”
Neris smiled. ER remained quiet until she looked toward the terminal.
“ER?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“That is how you look when you are home.”
The room quieted. Neris looked at the image again. Her throat tightened.
“Keep it.”
Lysa smiled. “Done.”
Neris opened the household communications interface, then stopped. “Not public yet.”
Teral nodded. “I know.”
“I promised Daniel first.”
Daniel spent Thursday morning explaining to a government questionnaire that he was not immortal. Mara sat beside him at the clinic. The questions appeared on a tablet between them. Daniel read the first.
IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE THAT XIANGLUME MEDICAL NANOTECHNOLOGY CURRENTLY PRESENT IN YOUR BODY CAN BE TRANSMITTED TO ANOTHER PERSON?
“No evidence.”
Mara nodded. Daniel entered the answer.
CAN THE NANOTECHNOLOGY BE REMOVED?
Daniel looked at Mara.
“Unknown?”
“Unknown, and removal is not currently recommended.”
He entered that and moved on.
HAS THE TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED YOUR PHYSICAL STRENGTH, COGNITIVE ABILITY, SENSORY CAPACITY OR OTHER HUMAN FUNCTION BEYOND EXPECTED BASELINE?
Daniel read it twice.
“No.”
Mara nodded. Daniel added:
Recovery is ongoing.
He paused at the next question.
HAS THE TECHNOLOGY STOPPED OR SLOWED NORMAL HUMAN AGING?
Daniel typed:
Unfortunately, my knees say no.
Mara looked at the screen.
“No.”
Daniel looked at her.
“It answers accurately.”
“It answers poorly. You have no evidence your knees are an aging biomarker.”
“They are personally persuasive.”
Mara reached for the tablet. Daniel moved it.
“Leave it. People think I’m immortal. I’m allowed one joke.”
Mara stared. He stared back. She sighed.
“Fine.”
Daniel smiled and opened the next question.
DOES THIS TECHNOLOGY HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO CURE HUMAN DISEASES?
Daniel’s smile disappeared. He read the question twice.
“What do we say?”
“You decide what you say.”
“What would you say?”
“We do not know.”
The words pulled him back to Emily in a hospital bed, pretending the coffee he had brought was not terrible and later sleeping while machines made small noises around them. He remembered how quickly desperation could move the line between impossible and worth trying. Three years ago, if someone credible had promised that a machine somewhere beyond Earth might buy one more month, one more treatment, one more chance, he knew exactly how much he would have risked.
He typed slowly.
We do not know. My treatment happened in an emergency using technology nobody on Earth currently understands well enough to reproduce, prescribe, or generalize. People should not make medical decisions based on what happened to me.
Mara read. Did not change it. Daniel looked at her.
“Good?”
“Yes.”
Next.
WOULD YOU PROVIDE BIOLOGICAL SAMPLES FOR INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH?
Daniel laughed once. Mara did not.
“You saw the requests?”
“Beaulieu sent a summary.”
They came from governments, universities, medical institutes, private research organizations, foundations and companies. Most asked for access related to the nanites rather than to Daniel by name, a distinction he did not find meaningful.
Mara turned her tablet so he could see the categories: blood and tissue samples, longitudinal monitoring, imaging, genomic and immune profiling, access to the Earthside monitor and requests for direct Xianglume consultation.
One proposal used the phrase international scientific custodianship.
Daniel stared. “Custody?”
“No,” Mara said before he finished the question.
Most of the requests were not malicious, which made them harder to dismiss. Children’s hospitals, trauma institutes and researchers working on diseases that killed people every day all had reasons to ask. Daniel understood those reasons. He hated that too.
“They might find something.”
“Maybe.”
“So saying no feels like withholding something.”
“You are not withholding a cure.”
Daniel looked at the monitor clipped to his belt.
Mara leaned forward.
“We have one patient carrying technology neither Earth nor Xianglume believes should be copied, transferred, sampled freely or manipulated. We do not know what uncontrolled investigation could do to you, and one case cannot responsibly establish a treatment for everyone else.”
Daniel looked down.
Mara continued. “A desperate person is not helped by us pretending uncertainty is a treatment.”
He looked back at the questionnaire. Aging, disease, healing: all the hopes people were already pouring into the word alien.
“Written interview only. No samples or technical access.”
Mara nodded.
“Not now.”
Daniel exhaled. His phone was in his coat. The maple transceiver was at home. The world could not reach him through it, and he liked that more every day.
Ressa Tor brought another engineer to meet ER. ER disliked this immediately. His objection was not to the engineer but to what the introduction implied. The engineer stood in Aster Vale’s repair bay beneath Takuhai’s partially restored aft hull, looking up through three sensor arrays ER was currently using to look back. Veyan Cor specialized in civilian embodiment systems for distributed artificial citizens, which made Ressa’s opinion of ER’s “preliminary” requirements document uncomfortably clear.
Veyan lifted one hand toward the nearest camera. “Hello.”
ER answered through the maintenance platform beside them. He had reacquired both the chassis and the orange vest. “Hello.”
Veyan looked at the vest and, usefully, said nothing.
Ressa said: “Veyan read your requirements.”
“I did not request a specialist.”
“You generated a nineteen-page requirements document.”
Veyan spared Ressa the argument and reviewed the design instead. Two arms, two legs, a clearly synthetic body, safe-force limits below common industrial standards, fine manipulator capability, full tactile feedback, environmental sensing and civilian proportions all survived the first pass. Ressa said those requirements all fit into existing, well-defined social-space designs. ER had also accepted nineteen hours of reliable endurance under the current constraints, reluctantly.
The unresolved problem was ER had labeled nonbiological facial architecture, and Veyran simply, the head.
Veyan looked at the maintenance chassis.
“Where do you want people to look when they speak to you?”
ER’s sensor head turned toward him.
“Toward the primary optical cluster.”
“How will they know which one is primary?”
“An indicator.”
“Visual?”
“Obviously.”
“Then you already understand the problem. You specified that the platform should support ordinary social interactions. Bodies communicate orientation.”
ER disliked the phrasing but not the engineering. Neris already looked toward the elevated sensor cluster when she spoke to the maintenance chassis; a civilian platform needed to make that direction legible without pretending to be biological.
Veyan moved on to the environmental requirements added after the first draft: lower temperatures, moisture and particulate tolerance, stability on unpaved ground.
He looked up.
“You’re designing part of this for Daniel Mercer’s farm.”
ER’s platform folded its arms.
“That is unnecessarily specific.”
Ressa smiled but kept working.
ER turned toward her. “You are losing access privileges.”
“You do not control my access.”
“That is an organizational flaw.”
Veyan continued as though neither had spoken. “You also increased tactile discrimination in the manipulators after using the maintenance chassis.”
“Yes.”
“For tools?”
“Among other uses.”
Veyan waited without pushing. ER remembered Neris leaning against his shoulder, her paw covering his mechanical hand and the unexpected weight of a hug registered as a place he occupied rather than a remote sensor reading.
“Not only tools,” ER said.
Veyan nodded once and moved on.
The continuity architecture remained non-negotiable. Takuhai would remain ER’s primary continuity centre; the mobile chassis would carry only enough local processing for latency and degraded-link operation, with no independent persistent identity. If the platform were destroyed, ER remained. If the link failed, the chassis went safely inert. ER confirmed each condition.
Veyan looked at the orange platform.
“Then you are not asking for another body.”
ER corrected him.
“I am asking for another reachable location.”
Veyan nodded and returned to the design.
The Ministry statement accompanying Neris’s photograph took longer to write than the photograph had taken. Neris sat with Ivara remotely from her parents’ kitchen while Ormaz pretended not to listen and listened to every word. Linnea was making something at the counter. Jaydee sat beside Neris. Lysa had insisted on remaining because she had taken the photograph and therefore claimed artistic rights. Teral had informed her she had no such rights.
Lysa remained anyway. The draft read:
Neris Vael is a mephit citizen of Xianglume and civilian courier pilot. Mephits are the principal native sentient species of Xianglume. Xianglume is also home to citizens of numerous other sentient species and participates in a wider multispecies interplanetary civilization.
Neris read it twice. Jaydee said: “That sounds boring.”
Ivara said: “Good.”
Jaydee looked at the screen. “Are all government people like this?”
Ormaz answered: “Yes.”
Ivara looked at him. “You are retired.”
“I retain expertise.”
Neris returned to the phrase “numerous other sentient species.” Earth would ask how numerous. Ivara explained that there was no single useful number without first defining whether the question concerned evolutionary lineages, current residents, collective member populations, protected developing cultures or artificial citizens.
Jaydee stared. “That’s terrible.”
Neris laughed.
“We are not beginning with taxonomy,” Ivara said.
The draft added:
Planetary citizenship and species are not equivalent categories within the Xianglume collective. Multiple sentient species may live on the same world or colony through migration, diplomacy, settlement and ordinary movement between inhabited systems.
Neris looked toward Ormaz. He had stopped pretending not to listen. “This will confuse them.”
Ivara nodded. “Necessary. Real-life situations often resist precise labels.”
Earth’s early questions kept assuming that one intelligent species belonged to one world. Xianglume daily life had made that assumption meaningless long ago. Neris thought of a transfer terminal full of different bodies and lineages, everyone simply trying to get somewhere.
“Keep it,” she said.
Ivara moved to the next section. Neris read, then stopped.
Xianglume is not located within the Milky Way galaxy.
The kitchen seemed to become quieter. Even Linnea looked over. Jaydee said: “They don’t know that?”
“No,” Neris said.
“They know stars.”
“They know their stars.”
Ormaz said: “They know more than that.”
Neris looked at the statement. Ivara continued. “We should be precise.”
“Are we giving coordinates?” Neris asked.
“No. Their astronomical coordinate framework and ours do not map cleanly enough for a public value to be useful without technical context.”
Ormaz looked up. “They will assume security.”
Ivara inclined her head. “That is also part of the reason.”
Ormaz smiled faintly. Neris sighed.
Ivara continued. “We can state that Xianglume exists in the same universe as Earth, at a cosmological distance far beyond the Milky Way and its immediate galactic neighbourhood.”
Jaydee frowned. “How far?”
“Very,” Neris said.
“That is not a number.”
“Correct.”
“Humans like numbers.”
Ormaz said: “Everyone likes numbers until they become inconvenient.”
Neris looked at Ivara. “What happens when Earth learns this?”
Ivara considered. “Intense scientific reassessment.”
“That is bureaucratic language for panic.”
Ivara said: “Not panic.”
Ormaz laughed. “Panic with publications.”
Neris covered her eyes. She had been home with her father for two days and already the Ministry seemed less dignified. Ivara ignored him and continued. “The technical briefing will emphasize that communication and transit are not conventional faster-than-light travel through ordinary metric space.”
Neris lowered her paws. “And Earth will understand?”
“It may take some time.”
ER’s voice entered through the household system. “Tell them it is not a wormhole.”
Neris looked toward the speaker. “You’re listening.”
“I was invited.”
“You were silent.”
“I had nothing to add.”
Ivara said: “Earth scientists have already used the term.”
“It is inaccurate.”
“They do not know that.”
“They should stop.”
Neris smiled. Jaydee said: “What is a wormhole?”
ER answered: “A simplified Earth term for a hypothetical spacetime geometry connecting distant regions.”
“Is that what the corridor is?”
“No.”
“What is it?”
“Not a wormhole.”
Jaydee frowned. “That doesn’t answer.”
“It eliminates one incorrect answer.”
Neris laughed and shook her head.
Daniel returned from Mara’s clinic to find the maple transceiver downloading something. He stopped in the kitchen doorway. The display read:
PERSONAL PACKET — IMAGE
Below:
TRANSFER IN PROGRESS
Daniel did not move. The maple box had received tiny diagnostic images before. This was different and personal: an image. He knew before it finished. Neris. The transfer crept forward.
Thirty-eight percent. Forty-one. Forty-four.
Daniel took off his coat without looking away. The furnace ran. A truck passed outside. The box continued. Sixty-two percent. The front door opened. Marcel came in. Daniel did not turn. Marcel looked at him, then at the transceiver. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
Marcel started toward the kitchen, then chose the counter on the other side of the room rather than coming up behind Daniel.
“Coffee’s there.”
The transfer reached one hundred percent. The image resolved slowly: blocks, then colour, then form. Neris. Daniel forgot to breathe for a moment. She was sitting beside a window in a room he had never seen, her tail curved naturally beside the chair.
He knew it was home from her posture before anything else. She looked relaxed and well, her fur properly groomed, ordinary clothes replacing bandages and snow. Her head was turned slightly away from the camera toward someone outside the frame, the beginning of a smile on her mouth.
Daniel sat. Marcel poured coffee without asking to see. The message beneath the image appeared.
This is the image I’m considering releasing. You see it first. Tell me if I look ridiculous.
Daniel laughed. His eyes stung. He enlarged the image; compression softened the details without changing what mattered. Neris was home.
He had read the words about her family, the surface transfer, Linnea feeding everyone and Ormaz criticizing ER’s vest. Seeing her there made those words physical. Marcel said from the counter: “She okay?”
Daniel looked at him. “Yeah.”
Marcel nodded without asking to see. Daniel looked back at Neris and typed:
You do. Send it anyway.
He smiled, then added:
You look like you.
He hesitated.
He typed another line, deleted it, typed something else and deleted that too.
The two lines were enough. He queued the reply. The box informed him:
NEXT PROBABLE WINDOW: 02:11–03:04
Daniel touched the maple casing. Marcel said: “Good picture?”
Daniel looked at him. “Yeah.”
“She’s home.”
Marcel smiled. “Good.”
The scientific community began losing its collective composure before Neris’s photograph was even public. The technical note went first to governments and designated scientific institutions so translation and briefing could happen alongside the image release.
Dr. Evelyn Shaw was in Ottawa when Dr. Samir Halberg opened her office door without knocking, carrying a tablet and the expression of a man who had recently discovered that a foundational assumption had been personally insulting him.
Evelyn looked up.
“Samir.”
“Where is Xianglume?”
“Good afternoon.”
“Where?”
She leaned back.
“You received the technical note.”
“I read what they wrote.”
“That is generally how notes work.”
Samir put the tablet on her desk and pointed at the line that had brought him in.
XIANGLUME IS NOT LOCATED WITHIN THE MILKY WAY GALAXY.
“They mean outside the galaxy.”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
“The public note does not say. Internally, we do not yet have a coordinate mapping our people are prepared to interpret confidently.”
Samir stared at the text. Irritation gave way briefly to wonder before irritation reclaimed the useful parts of his face.
“They have been talking to us from outside the Milky Way. Mercer exchanged messages before the formal relay network existed.”
“That is what the authenticated record indicates.”
Samir walked away from the desk, then back.
“This is not FTL propulsion in any ordinary sense.”
“That is also what their note says.”
“The communication latency alone—”
“Samir.”
He stopped. “You are about to explain the speed of light to me.”
He closed his mouth. “Sorry.”
“Accepted.”
He sat and read the note again.
“If the origin claim is authentic—”
“It is.” Samir looked up. Evelyn did not often use that degree of certainty.
“Then either our understanding of usable spacetime is catastrophically incomplete or their coordinate description is not describing distance the way we think it is.”
“Possibly both.”
They had said same universe, not alternate universe, and had translated their mechanism as dimensional transit. Beyond that, the technical packet refused to reward speculation. Samir ran through the obvious candidates anyway: additional spatial dimensions, topology, brane structures, nonlocal geometry.
Evelyn waited until he finished. “We do not know which framework applies, or whether any of those labels describe it at all.”
Samir stared at her. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
He looked back at the note. “It says not a wormhole.”
“ER feels strongly about that terminology.”
“ER the AI?”
“Citizen AI.”
Samir nodded. “Right. How many species?”
Evelyn laughed. Samir looked offended. “Why is that funny?”
“Because you came in here prepared to dismantle cosmology and got distracted by biology.”
“It says multiple sentient species.”
“It does.”
“How many?”
“We don’t know.”
“On Xianglume?”
“More than mephits.”
“What are mephits?”
“You’ll find out in approximately ninety minutes.”
Samir stared. Evelyn enjoyed that more than she should.
Neris received Daniel’s reply during lunch. The household channel chimed. Jaydee reacted before she did. “Earth.”
Neris opened it.
You do. Send it anyway.
Her ears flattened. Lysa leaned over.
“What?”
“Daniel says I look ridiculous.”
Ormaz nodded. “Honest.”
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