Steady tonal vibrations moved harmoniously in the cool darkness, their changing interference creating an evolving picture that felt three-dimensional in its acoustic depth. Strewn throughout were soft pings that made spots of light in the ambience which blinked into existence and dissipated rapidly. Occasionally a high note drew a clear, shiny streak across the flowing randomness like a falling water droplet. Slowly and subtly, the ensemble lowered its volume, until after many minutes, only pure silence remained.

A deep and heavy mind stirred in the void that was left, slowly unravelling the clumped together mass of thoughts and making light in the surrounding consciousness. Nyarn'Enth-Hep awoke from her meditative rest and, before anything else, checked her ship and surroundings. She quickly concluded that everything was perfectly fine and the human spaceship still hung silently besides her own. Three-hundred and eleven minutes of rest had passed and provided her with renewed mental vigour.

There was still time left, but also things to do. For one, she had to re-shape the visitor room and distill the special atmosphere into it that was needed by the human. And also she wanted to address the issue with her translator and refine it. Right now she did desire some refreshing drink, even if her energy storage would be well sufficient for a long time. So she reshaped the wall outlet by her side and took in a small portion of the sweet liquid before closing it up again.

Now, on to the translator. She opened her eyes and made her chamber light up with a thought, then she took the tiny disc where she had planted it to the wall. Carefully she scanned its structure and thought more about the mechanism that humans used to communicate and what she had learned from direct observation. Their way of creating air vibrations functioned vastly differently from the way they sensed them. The translator design was based upon a reverse of the latter, since it did seem the more efficient way of doing things, especially because it did not involve moving the air itself.

Nyar deduced after a moment of thinking, that the issue had not been the way of creating the vibrations, but her own misunderstandings of the limits of information density. Since the humans could only create a singular string of vocalizations of their language, it made sense that their capacity would be limited to following a single string as well - even though mechanically they would be able to sense a high density of parallel inputs, coming close to how she would communicate with her species.

If she wanted to convey their language more like a human, this translator would not do. Its transformation range was too wide and would make it difficult for her to stay within the single string output she wanted. But redesigning the internals was not possible as it was a mixture of flexible and rigid structures. So she crush-melted it in her hands and re-absorbed the building blocks. Then she pulled up fresh ones to her fingertips and began building a new one along the improved design.

---

A cup with the remains of a lukewarm black liquid rested on an indented circle besides the physical keyboard of the console. Two screens were up, both of them filled with diagrams, text and pictures of unrecognizable things. Neil was reading up on, and barely understanding, the analysis report of the alien translator device. The summary had not satisfied her initial wonderment of the building abilities of the alien being.

Or should she now think of it as Near-and-Chap? She did get the alien beings name from the transcripts, though she had to listen to the isolated sound to be able to repeat it and still was very unsure of the proper pronunciation.

As she had understood from the report, which essentially amounted to a research paper with dozens of names on it, the whole outside of the alien device was made from a hydrocarbon polymer lattice that had a near-perfect repeating structure in the micrometer range and looked slightly reminiscent of an organic cellular structure. The makeup changed along the disc shape, apparently depending on what mechanical properties were desired from the macro-material. In the paper were mentioned several different lattice structure archetypes, each showing sub-variants that together with the material thickness fine-tuned the properties to a degree that vastly surpassed anything human-made from single materials.

Noticeable as well was the overall shape - while Neil had thought it to be a circular disk, it was slightly off from an ideal circle and also the material structure was not perfectly symmetrical radially. About the internal molecular makeup was no information, the scanner had apparently not been able to do much more than a surface material analysis due to the thickness and density of the outer layer. But judging from the versatility of this polymer lattice, it would be a good guess to assume the whole thing was made from it.

Thinking about the size difference, that translator must have been miniscule for it and still, it had created an object that Neil would say was profoundly more intricate than either the mechanical clock or the interpreter device. Which it had been very impressed by, for some now incomprehensible reason.

She checked the current time on the corner of one of the viewscreens and noted that she had less than thirty minutes until the next meeting - time to don her all-purpose pressure suit with the interpreter and check in with her point of contact before going over onto that alien ship again.

"Greetings representative of the humans and welcome back to my ship. I sincerely hope you have rested and recharged well", a voice boomed that was definitely not the one she had listened to before.

Neil was so surprised, she stopped in her tracks a few steps into the corridor. What she had heard actually sounded a bit like her own voice, though fuller and slightly deeper. From here she could already see that the meeting chamber barrier was transparent. Somewhat bewildered she continued her way there, to see a waist-high white cube besides a comfortable looking chair and a differently coloured translator device resting on the latter.

Two black eyes were already fixed on her, belonging of course to the massive creature behind the barrier. Again, it seemed to comfortably rest on its arms and to hold its head specifically to Neils eye-height.

"Greetings as well. I am happy to be back and I am indeed well-rested. May I ask if you have made a new translator?"

It was definitely the new yellow-tinted disc that spoke: "Yes, I have now seen the limitations of my understanding and the previous translator device. So I have taken to a changed way of communicating the words of your language and built this new device that will translate my thoughts narrowly and directly."

Truly, the speech fully came from the translator without any distortion or background noise and decidedly louder. Her interpreter also had nothing to say. Neil was positively stunned on how quickly that being had not only devised but also built a new translator, especially after learning about the insanely intricate makeup of the old one.

While removing the earpiece and dismounting the flat rectangular main body of the interpreter from her chest, she complimented: "I am very impressed by your building abilities and also with the speed with which you can create things. Could you tell me if this translator is made from the same material as the old one?"

"There is only this material for building and everything I build is made from it."

"Your whole spaceship is made from the same stuff the translator is?"

"I have built the structure and shape of my ship from this material as well. But there are other elements encapsulated within my ship that I need to sustain my well-being and to create movement. From those I also draw the components to create the atmosphere and conditions necessary for your well-being."

Neil put the interpreter down onto the chair besides the translator, because she already had spun a length of cable around her finger. To her delight this new voice was much nicer to listen to than the old one, but she still had the feeling that she had been used as a template for it.

"So, from the old translator human scientists were able to learn that the molecular structure is very special and impressively complex. They deduced that the function of it came solely from how it was arranged in the device, which is of course exactly what you have told me. I would like to know how you are able to create this structure on a molecular level? How do you influence it so it will be the way you need it?"

A moment of silence followed before the translator spoke up: "I cannot explain, I know of no words in the human language to properly express it."

"Well then use some from your own language and I might be able to get it from the context."

"My species' way of communicating does not introduce this layer of abstraction as the humans' do by using language. There are no words of my language I can provide you to substitute the ones you do not have."

"You don't use words to communicate?"

"My species can transfer knowledge and experience without the need for them."

Now she had the desire to pick up the interpreter again to busy her hands. What it had said did not quite add up though and Neil objected: "You do have words, you gave me your name; Near-and-Chap."

A slight shift in its body position followed before it replied: "You had asked for a name, as you have a specific designation for each and every human. My species does not have the need for names as I know every individual and they know me. When you had asked for my name, I could only think of the sound I had been addressed by when I still was in development on the body of my ancestor. And that is Nyarn'Enth-Hep."

While it had said its name through the translator, Neil could pick up a barely audible low-frequency noise without a clear point of origin. Concentrating rather on stepping up the politeness level again, she began explaining: "I could not imagine not having words. The human thinking process is heavily influenced by the way we communicate, and even my internal thoughts are mostly formed around my language. I apologize for assuming you would have the same basis", then she did her best to repeat the name, "Near-Hand-Jeb."

"There is no need to apologize as I have not told you about any of this yet. And you may call me Nyar."

"Thank you, Nyar. Then you can call me Sam."

---

How strange was it to think of an individual not as the very thing it was, but as a disconnected one-word denotation. But Nyar recognized that with a species made up from thousands of millions of individuals, a straightforward identification system had to be necessary and it was only logical that it would be based on the language they used. Then she staggered in her train of thought.

Quickly she sent her thoughts to the translator word by word: "You have only provided me with words of communication from your language. But I have not learned the words you use as names. Am I missing twenty-two billion and five-hundred million names?"

Amusement flavored the reply that there were not. Apparently there were a number of designated human forename words - a few hundred-thousand at most - that then were paired with a surname from another set of words designated for that purpose that only partly overlapped with the other. Sam explained that resulting full name would then be the official identifying name of a specific human, though she mentioned that it was not necessary amongst humans to conform to the common name words and mentioned the example of colonists of a planet in their home system that had a tradition of names made from seemingly random letter and number combinations. More than just one forename or surname could also be used in combination, as names carried ancestral significance.

And they continued by saying that commonly a human would be addressed by others by their forename or surname only, and sometimes an individual may choose a different name altogether to be addressed by that might or might not be based on either of their official names. Then Sam used her own name as an example, as it officially was Samantha Daniella Neil, which were two forenames combined with a surname and she preferred to be called by Sam which was based on Samantha.

"So only the entirety of your name is the unique designation which all humans could use to identify you?"

They replied back that they were unsure if that was the case. And that even full names were not unique across all currently living humans.

So that whole confusing illogical mess actually was not even useful to identify an individual amongst humans? Nyar nearly burst out with the question of why they relied on such a convoluted and disconnected system if that was true.

As if sensing that there was the need for more clarification, Sam added that names were paired with more information to make that unique identification possible in official dealings. And also that other context, paired with the name, was usually sufficient to identify an individual that had been encountered before when trying to convey information about any human.

Still, Nyar did not know what to say. She had wanted to know the names of all of the humans after learning about the concept, but now she doubted that it would be as useful as she had imagined it to be.

---

The translator boomed: "Could you please provide me with the names of all humans the same way you have given me the language information? I desire to learn them and see no efficient way to communicate this extensive number of words through direct communication."

"What...", Neil trailed off. They wanted to learn the names of all humans? As in - the full names of 22.5 billion individuals? She double-checked by asking Nyar: "I'm sorry, I don't think I understand. Do you want a list of all the names we are using? Or do you want a list of the names of every single human being?"

"To clarify my previous inquiry, I am asking for the pseudo-unique full name identifier of every human."

"Ok, well", she dug her hands into the curly hair on the back of her head, "That might not be possible. I think even as a first contact ambassador I'd have problems to get at all that information."

"Do you not know?", came the question from the translator. She imagined an accusing undertone, but the voice from this device, while much nicer in timbre, still spoke without emotion.

"Do you mean if I, personally, know every person's name? Because I am excellent with names, but on the spot I may be able to recall a few hundred people plus their names if you give me enough time, but very much less than one thousand and absolutely definitely not twenty-two billion."

"I am having difficulties seeing the reason of using names to identify individual humans, if you do not know the names so you may identify them. How do you instigate communication if you are unable to address them or know their identity?"

The point had been reached again where Neil felt the urge to begin pacing.

"I can't follow. You knew nothing about me when we first met, right? And we still began communicating", she said while also very much aware of the fact that the exchange was somewhat rough before she had been able to make use of the interpreter.

"Humans had communicated to me that a representative of the human species would be coming to the place of meeting. Though I had accepted I would not know more about either the representative or your species in advance, since this is the first contact. But since you are one individual from your species, I thought you would know the identity of all others of your species."

Neil took a breather. Did Nyar really mean what they had said before? Did their species continuously learn who every other individual was, possibly without even the intention of meeting them? Slowly it dawned on her that their population count had to be very low to even make that possible, that conclusion was further justified by the total number of all of their children that was in the 1,700s.

She explained: "Humans usually only learn the names of a low number of special individuals if they are not meeting them. Otherwise, we learn the name from the individual directly, after having already communicated with them."

"Do you have communicated with less than one-thousand humans?"

"Oh. No I've-", she quickly thought of a way to properly elaborate, "Humans may deal with any number of other individuals, but if there is no need to offer or learn a name for future relations, we won't. I must have met several thousand humans in the two days before our meeting, but only a few of them have actually offered me their names."

---

Having said that large number in connotation with the short time-frame, Nyar involuntary imagined a swarm of them running on the ground around and beneath her. It was a severely unpleasant mental picture and made her tense up reflexively. To distract herself, she tried to concentrate on that whole naming and identity thing. Those were seemingly heavily tied together, but any given human individual did only know a number of others to which they had direct relations to. How then could a representative of the humans even exist, if they could not possibly know all the other humans and understand their desires and wishes? Did all of this had to do with their immense population count?

Though she did not get to express her desire for further explanations on that topic, when Sam asked - shaded by eager curiosity - to continue talking about Nyars age. They quickly provided the information that Nyar apparently was a century older than the humans' ability to rapidly duplicate their first wide-spread medium of external information storage.

Surprised by the sudden change as well as mildly confused by the provided information, she sent some words to the translator: "I am sorry to say that I do not know the significance of this event or understand why you have provided this piece of information."

Sam began explaining that the human world had been vastly different at the time when Nyar had came to life. They talked about things she did not understand the meaning of, apparently describing technology. It did not help with providing an explanation.

Nyar put together a question to ask back.

---

Mid-sentence the translator talked over her: "I am unable to follow why you are providing me with information from your past."

Neil crossed her arms, then switched them to hanging loose and then buried her hands back into her hair, all within two seconds. How could she approach the question she actually wanted to ask without some context?

She gave up and bluntly threw out: "Nyar, how old can you get?"

"I can get three-hundred and sixty-four-thousand, four-hundred and five days old."

"That's how old you are now. I mean, how old can you get before you die of age."

"I do not understand the question."