First contact

A week ago, I reminded you that as we hit the home stretch for Tales of the Vuduri, I won't have time to truly flesh out all the Big Ideas I had for the novel The Milk Run. Instead, I am presenting some capsule summaries of the motivation behind a subset of those ideas. Today I would like to show you Aason's first contact with the plant people called the K'val. As would be the case in any remotely realistic science fiction, the chances of the aliens speaking understandable English are zero. But because Aason is dealing with thoughts, he can use his ability to translate the alien's thinking into terms we can understand:

     OMCOM used his hands to split his head in half and the two pieces separated, coming to rest on the livetar’s shoulders. Aason took a breath and the silane fluoride in the air made him cough violently and repeatedly. The creature tilted his head and watched the boy go through his gyrations. Eventually, he regained control and forced his lungs to stop their spasms. When the coughing fit subsided, Aason activated his combo PPT/EM apparatus and “spoke” to the creature for the first time.
     “I am Aason Bierak,” he said. “I am not here to harm you.”
     In real life, the sounds the creature emitted were grating. But within Aason’s mind, his response was surprisingly clear and coherent.
     “You are a meat-bag,” the creature said. “You will kill us the first chance you get.” The alien stopped speaking for a moment then added, “As you should.”
     “No!” Aason said more forcefully. “I know that you’ve been taking our people. I want to know why.” The odor emanating from the creature was very musty. It smelled like decaying leaves. Aason could only wonder what a human must smell like to the creature.
     “You are food for our Lord,” the alien replied. “He commands us to give Him one of your kind every year.”
     “Who is your Lord?” Aason asked. “Why do you feed my people to him?”
     “The Lord is…the Lord,” the creature answered. He turned his head away from Aason. “And we must feed Him your kind because we are not worthy.”
     “That doesn’t make it right,” Aason said. “We’ve done nothing to harm you.”
     “It is not a matter of choice,” the plant-man stated. “Long ago, my kind were simple plants along the ground. We were happy to just soak up the sun and the rain and sway with the wind. Then the Lord came to our planet, we call it Ay’den. He raised us up. He gave us intelligence and these limbs.” The alien flapped his arms up and down. “We are called the K’val, the very word itself means we are the Unworthy.” The creature lifted up his arms, palms outward.

It may not seem like it but this is a deep insight into the psychology of the K'val trying to deal with god-like creature Molokai. The bottom line is that Aason's "powers" worked and no matter how foreign the thoughts, his psychic ability let him translate Sh'ev's thoughts into English so we could understand what is going on. The K'val are not a bad species but they were made to do horrible things in the name of their Lord, Molokai.