Humans like make commerce, yes?

It’s vaguely cat-shaped—it knows humans like cats—but with five legs, because it’s never seen a cat, and purple because all of the things that make up BigHappyFriend are purple.

The cat-thing holds out a root carved into a familiar shape. I take it and turn it around. I think they’re supposed to be sunglasses.

I put them on. I can see dimly through a worn-down area in front of each eye. They’re almost functional.

“Thank you, these are very good sunglasses.”

The Syndicate has a strict policy of being polite and encouraging to BigHappyFriend, especially for Understanding and Incorporation syndics like me.

Before the planet TOI-700-d, the Galactic Sentient Syndicate had never encountered any lifeform larger than one centimeter, anywhere. BigHappyFriend is as large as its entire home planet but made up of billions of smaller things of all sizes and shapes, and all the same bright purple. The Syndicate’s exophylogeneticists have a long, official, hard to pronounce name for it, but even they just call it BigHappyFriend, because that’s what it calls itself.

Humans like make pay for commerce, yes? We still don’t understand how it communicates with us. It doesn’t use sound—we just hear it. Current theory is a kind of resonant telepathy. That would also explain some things it knows about us that we haven’t told it about.

I pull down the almost-sunglasses. The cat-thing has its paw out.

I pick up a pebble and put it in its palm. It makes a musical thankyoupleasurebusiness and retreats to the back of the cave/office/apartment where I sleep and work.

About an hour later, a long, twisting, purple shape extrudes from the floor and comes up near my mouth.

Humans like food friedchicken waffle this day, yes? it says.

I’m tired of this posting, I haven’t seen or touched another Earthling in sixteen months. I don’t really believe we’ll ever accomplish our mission statement of welcoming BigHappyFriend as our first non-human syndic, and even if we did, the news would take ten years to get to Earth—another ten for any congratulations to come back. I have seven reports to compose, and BigHappyFriend wakes me up at random hours of each night with Humans like make listen music, yes? All of this is to explain why I’m not thinking clearly when I mumble “I’m not hungry.”

The cat-thing and the food-thing change, lose their bumpy, unstructured surfaces, expand, crystalize, and glow in alternating patterns that blind me.

Humans like food friedchicken waffle chickenfried this day, yes, yes, yes?

BigHappyFriend likes humans and wants to please us, but it doesn’t understand nuance—it’s way too big for that—or shifting wants, and it has a really hard time with “No.” There are three former syndics who refused something from BigHappyFriend—back when we had an even weaker understanding of it—whose families will recieve a lightspeed-lagged message in a few years starting, “We are sorry to inform you…”

I lift my head up sharply. The cat-thing is looking more like a lion-thing, and violet-glowing vapor is coming off its armor plating.

“Sorry, I mean… Yes! I would love some food.”

Cat-thing and food-thing return to their normal look. A nozzle pokes into my mouth and a paste oozes out. It tastes nothing like chicken or waffles, or anything I’d consider edible, but the exonutriologists say its harmless—probably, if we don’t eat too much.

I mumble thanyew around the nozzle and it retreats.

I’m granted almost half an hour before, Humans like make games, yes?

I let it beat me at tic-tac-toe even though it doesn’t understand the rules and drew a four by seven grid.

Two hours later, it’s, Humans like make view far away high, yes?

I pull up my facemask and activate my planetsuit’s enclosure mode as a large, purple insect-amoeba-thing flies down through the rainbow-colored bubble-field that keeps breathable air in my cave and the ammonia-based atmosphere out. The flyer picks me up, pulls me outside and lifts me to top of the tower it built for me to live in. We haven’t managed to make it understand railings yet, so I step back from the thousand meter fall.

I can see far across the surface of TOI-700-d—the hundred or so towers BigHappyFriend built for each of my fellow syndics, the shifting, oil slick colors of the wetlands, the sulfur ocean, the tall, fractal peaks that cluster together like mathematical, rocky forests, the floating islands, trailing their tendrils across the fields of crystals—all inhabited by BigHappyFriend in its billions of purple things. We don’t yet understand how it keeps contact between each separate piece—it’s probably similar to how it speaks to us.

TOI-700-d has a quarter of the Earth’s gravity and a much thinner atmosphere, and the GSSS Rudolf Rocker is the largest ship of its class. I can see it in its low orbit in the too-dark sky, near the weak, red sun.

Humans like first surprise time, yes?

“Sure, BigHappyFriend, we like surprises.”

A dozen things pop up in orbit. They look vaguely like the Rudolf, except purple, about twice as large, and with railguns. Every one of them is turning towards our single vessel, our only way off TOI-700-d and back home.

A purple, human-looking thing forms in front of me, pointing a large, purple, gun-thing in my direction.

Humans like make war, yes?

* * *

Ⓒ Rodrigo Culagovski