The Transmission
My name is Ork. Ours is a Triple Star system. It’s a complex mess.
We are an advanced species and regularly scout for data and signals from other star systems to find useful resources and advanced species to regularly monitor them.
I have been part of our signal analysis collective for about 300 cycles now. We decode transmissions, run pattern recognition, catalogue anomalies. Its a very logical profession. Very precise. I am considered one of the better analysts in my station, not boasting, just stating a observed fact, which is what we do.
Last week something came in.
The signal originated from a small rocky planet, third from its star, spiral arm of a unremarkable galaxy. We had been passively monitoring electromagnetic emissions from this region for some time. Mostly chaotic noise. Radio waves, some structured, most not. Nothing that warranted priority attention.
But this one was different. It was dense. Layered. But it did not warrant any action from our scout team because the species that inhabited the plant was primitive. The signal was given to be decode and dispossed. But I am curious, may be something there to decode. Why would someone painstakingly send a signal which requires massive energy from the perspective of an under developed specifies to the space? We are 23 light years away.
The transmission was analyzed by Rue, our machine. And decoded but as per her, it did not carry any significant data that we were looking for. The decision was made to dispose it. But I wanted to see what the message was.
The species that sent it are bipedal. Bilaterally symmetrical. Mostly water. You know the type, we've catalogued a few. They call themselves many things depending on regional grouping but the dominant self-designation seems to be "humans." Moderate intelligence. Technologically adolescent. Still burning hydrocarbons for energy, bless them.
The recording itself was long. Extremely long.
The recording was in the electromagnetic spectrum which we are not entirely using. I had to do some adjustments to see it in our spectrum.
The recording showed, a young male human holding a even smaller quadruped. The audio in the signal was feeble. He introduced the quadruped as a “dog”.
Now, the dog is a separate species entirely. Seemed to have Significantly lower cognitive capacity than the human. No technological contribution to their civilisation whatsoever. Completely dependent on humans for food and shelter.
From a resource allocation standpoint, the relationship makes very little sense.
The recording begins at what seems to be the dog's earliest days of life. It is very small. Its eyes are not yet functional. It makes irregular vocalizations. The boy, he appears to be in early developmental stage himself, perhaps a quarter through his expected lifespan . He holds the creature in both hands and just... looks at it.
He doesn't do anything particularly useful. He just looks at it.
His facial configuration does something initially looked like a muscular anomaly. It took me a while to understand it was intentional.
The clips continue across what appears to be many of their solar years.
The dog grows. Becomes large and chaotic. It destroys several objects in the dwelling. The boy makes strange frequent noise, it what seems like a high pitched vocal anomaly. They run together across open terrain. The dog falls into a body of water and emerges confused. The boy makes the strange sign again.
There is a period where the boy appears to transition into a older developmental stage. His physical dimensions change. His voice changes. He seems to go away for intervals. But every time he returns, the dog is waiting at the entry point of the dwelling.
Every. Single. Time.
I ran this pattern fourteen times because we thought it was a data loop. It wasn't.
Then the later segments.
The dog is old now. You can see it in the way it moves. The fur around its face has gone pale. It walks slowly. It sleeps most of the time. I am not able to comprehend why they are wasting their resources on a species that is at the very end of the life cycle. Our system would incinerate the lifeform which doesn’t give any productive outcome and euthanize those that get old after cataloging their experiences into Rue.
The boy, now a fully developed adult male, sleeps on the floor next to it. Not in his designated rest area. On the floor. Because the dog can no longer climb to where the boy sleeps.
He brings it food by hand. He speaks to it constantly even though the dog cannot understand language in any meaningful cognitive sense. He strokes its fur for what our instruments calculate as hours at a time.
Near the end, the dog cannot stand. The boy lies beside it. He puts his forehead against the dogs forehead. He is producing liquid from his optical organs, a stress response their bodies apparently generate under certain conditions.
The dog's tail moves. Very slowly. One last time.
Then it doesn't.
The boy stays there for a very long time after. He doesn't move. He doesn't do anything logical or productive. He just stays there with his forehead pressed to an animal that can no longer respond.
I have reviewed approximately 4,400 transmissions in my career.
I have never had to stop working and sit quietly for an extended period in the middle of an analysis.
I did this time.
Something happened in my processing during those final segments that I cannot fully explain and frankly it is embarrassing to admit because I am a scientist and I deal in explainations. There was a, weight. Somewhere that is not a physical location. A pressure that had no source. I kept returning to the image of the boy on the floor. I kept returning to the tail moving one last time.
I dont know what this is.
I consulted our entire medical and psychological database. The closest thing I can find is a concept documented in several civilisations at certain developmental stages. A response triggered not by personal experience of loss, but by witnessing it in another.
These creatures loved something smaller and simpler than themselves, completely and without reason, until it was gone. And then they sent it to the stars.
I think we should write back. For, it has triggered a new neurological response in me.
I am starting to see the nuances in our life which my species overlooks as it is a deterrent to our development. My species had suppressed the bonding for over a millenia to be more scientifically advanced and yet here I am starting to develop that repressed neurological pattern once again.
I am not sure if I would be send to the incinerators next week when they do a biological scan for any anomaly. But I don’t really care for it anymor. The boy and the dog has given me something to cherish other than science and technology. It is beautiful, this feeling and I am going to live every moment of it before my memoties are achieved and my body incinerated.