Chapter 8: Mum’s The Word

“Hello,” the alien replied! It wasn’t a helmet: she had bright pink hair, or red almost, that glittered metallically. It was woven into six tendril-like plaits, shoulder length, three each side.

“You speak English!” Grace was shocked.

The alien thought a moment before replying slowly: “We learn,” she said, “come in.” She stood back and waved Grace into the little grey house.

“Hello,” smiled Grace to the two other aliens - the front door had opened straight into the living room. These aliens were like the first one, just a bit smaller. One of them had bright green hair, the other bright blue. Primary colours. They were woven into six plaits like the first one. Their eyes were brightly coloured as well: violet, slightly different shades from each other. In fact the green-haired one’s were a bit more green, and the blue-haired one’s were a bit more blue. It was weird, but in a good way.

Grace gave a little bow, by way of making her contribution to the formalities of meeting aliens from outer space, and the aliens smiled and nodded in return.

“You must be Grace,” said the first alien, freaking Grace out. “Zara told us about you.” The alien smiled just like a human.

“Oh! My mum?” At least that kind of made sense.

“That’s right.” The red alien had a slightly odd, thin voice now, the intonation a bit off and an American accent. Her lips hadn’t moved this time, and still didn’t. Grace realised the voice had emanated from an ordinary Acer laptop sitting on the coffee table.

“We have conversations with her,” explained the alien more fluently now, through the laptop speaker, “and Claude ... a man who is an expert in translation.”

“Claude Simon!”

“Yes.” The alien waved towards the laptop “Between us we adapted his real-time translation engine, which is quite good now. My species communicate a lot by thought, I should explain, with our hair. It’s like your wifi, but for brainwaves. It’s a lot faster than moving your mouth and lips, creating soundwaves as you expel air. You have taken the first steps in this direction too. We are, in general, only about a hundred years ahead of you I’d say.

“I am Rose, forgive me, and this is Emerald, and Cyan, my friends. We are color-coded for you,” she grinned engagingly. “It is genetic engineering, our coloured hair. Quite a recent development so we got a bit carried away to be honest. Our original names aren’t pronounceable for you, because you only have one tongue, so you can just call us by our hair colors.” She opened her lips slightly and slid a forked tongue out, held it there while Grace goggled for a second or two, then retracted it. “We can speak with our mouths, but we are out of practice.

“We see Zara and Claude, and there are two others who know, that’s all: Claude’s boss and Zara’s, and they keep us at arm’s length. No others know. They have staff who do things of course but without knowing it’s for us. It is very important that our presence is kept secret. Claude and Zara think that if word got out we’d be locked away in a laboratory forever, or even euthanized. Especially with the reason we left our own planet.”

“We won’t tell anyone,” promised Grace. So that was why her mum had kept it secret! A wave of relief washed over her that it was such a good reason. Even the most loving mum would have to keep that secret from a teenage daughter. Grace knew girls who’d immediately update their profiles with this hot story!

“WE?” asked Rose. “Oh, the others who were looking in. Well shall we bring them in?”

Grace called Mia, the introductions were made, the explanation about the hair and laptop was repeated, and everyone sat down on the two old sofas and one old chair, in the low-ceilinged and rather sparsely furnished living room. Grace was thinking her mum and Dr Simon might have bought them second-hand or something. Perhaps it was all quite rushed and unofficial?

“So...” she started, still excited, “it’s amazing that you’re here. But the most amazing thing, I hope you don’t mind my asking, is how come you’re so much like us?”

“You’re thinking that we would be random,” said Rose in the slow and slightly synthetic American voice, “but we aren’t. You have to understand infinity.” She looked round the awestruck teens: “An infinite number is like a trillion times a trillion, a trillion times, over and over. That is what you call the Universe.

“It was a certainty that among an infinite number of galaxies and planets there would be another lifeform exactly like us, on a habitable planet. Of course we couldn’t search an infinite number of planets, but we could listen. Did you know a research group here broadcasts Wikipedia into space?”

“Wikipedia?” Paul’s eyebrows rose.

“That’s right, they did it in secret, starting a few years ago. It took us a long time to decipher the language, but luckily there are plenty of pictures.

“Also you have to consider some basic principles which shorten the odds. For example two is a fundamental quantity. It gives grip, balance, gait, a backup, spatial abilities ... In fact once you have water, carbon and a sun, then the odds of beings like us evolving probably shortens to only, I don’t know, a few quintillions. It’s a principle called convergence.”