Why would Sam ask if she was able to die? Of course she could die. Easily even, given the location she was in right now, surrounded by the vacuum and coldness of space. She had the memories of the ones that died and knew how they had fallen. But none like that question implicated. Was that a cause of death among the humans, death of age? How many had died of that to make Sam curious if it happened to Nyar as well?

She sent her reply to the translator: "Yes, I am of course able to die. Seven-hundred and thirteen of my species have perished, for numerous different reasons I will not go in detail about. I thought it had been clear that my ship is there to ensure my well-being during my travels through space. If it disappeared, I would not be able to survive. May I ask how many humans have died of age?"

A strong wave of confusion came back from Sam. And only the short reply, that every single human had died of age but the ones alive currently.

"I fear I cannot bring your statement into a context where I could understand the ramifications."

The confusion had not waned as Sam began to explain that the humans had a limited lifespan that for the current ones was one-hundred and sixty years at the most. And that this lifespan had been shorter for humans in the past, even recently. They took Nyar as an example and stated that if she had visited Earth just an sixth of her age earlier, the whole human population would have been made up of entirely different individuals.

Nyar was shocked, this could not possibly be right. This would mean that there had been billions of deaths amongst the humans. Tens, no, hundreds of billions of deaths. The number of dead of her species was nothing compared to that and even the number of all alive individuals did not compare. How could a sapient species not crumble and break under such a barrage of death? She could not even imagine what it would be like for an individual - knowing they would just die at some point. Not even through some outside force, but for no reason. The implications were so vast, she could not form the thoughts quick enough.

---

"So you just die?"

This time, she surely did not imagine it. The voice sounded shocked beyond belief. And Ambassador Neil could feel the same shock. Not only was this being in front of her so unimaginably old, that it could have literally lived through all of modern human history and then some, but it seemingly did not even have a limit to its age.

Neil could not imagine a species of immortals. How would that even work in a society? Or in evolutionary terms? Was that the reason Nyar was so knowledgeable and highly skilled in building spaceships and equipment - unlimited time for education? It did give her new ideas about the population count of its species. Because if none of them died of age, the possible growth rate would be much higher. Though Nyar had mentioned the dead of her species and that number was actually shockingly low. How could she explain that those seven hundred deaths would not even cover the humans dying within any given hour of the day?

"No, we-", she stumbled over the words she wanted to use and dropped herself heavily into the chair while she thought of a better way to explain it, "Humans stop growing after reaching maturity, but the body does not stop changing. That we call aging. I think it's something to do with the biochemistry inside our bodies and cells that causes it. We have medicine now to slow that decline and push off that aging process. But still, there are only around forty years after maturity where our bodies will remain more or less the same. After that, there are forty to sixty more years where we will just slowly get worse overall. Muscles will get weaker, bones brittle, skin flabby, organs don't function at full capacity, even the brain will get worse at processing and retaining information. And then there is a final sharp decline where every year could be the last. All the organs got so bad that even mild outside interference could make them fail and we are too weak to handle the day-to-day living on our own. If we live through that, there will still come a point where the decline progressed so far that our body itself will not be able to uphold all the processes necessary to keep functioning. Then we just die."

Nyar had shifted so close to the transparent barrier, it nearly pushed its head up against it. But it remained silent, apparently at a loss to what to say.

So Neil added: "Immortality, with which I mean not dying of age, had been a staple of human imagination for a long time. But even after so many technological advances, we still only pushed it off. Personally, I would just like to be able to choose. What if life is so interesting, that I don't want to leave? Or after a thousand years it turns out, I am bored out of my mind? I can't imagine not having the end of my life somewhere in my mind. But maybe it is also what drove the humans so far, the wish to achieve more within a lifetime. Or just the desire to leave something meaningful behind."

---

The emotions that came from Sam were so deep, Nyar herself was overtaken by the wistfulness and melancholy. When they had spoken, she had actually seen a human life trickling by before her. A bright light standing steady, then slowly dimming over time, soon flickering uneasily in shadows and finally fading away into nothingness in the end. How could they live with that, having the limit of one-hundred and forty years? Or was it, as Sam had offered in the end, actually a strength? If time was limited, was there not more incentive to make the most of it? To constantly push forward?

This topic of inevitable death did not seem inviting to dwell on. She usually avoided thinking of those seven-hundred and thirteen of her species that had died or the one-thousand, five-hundred and thirty that were missing. And she presumed it would be the same for Sam, which must know a number of humans that were struck by this death by age.

Changing the topic would not be too hard. As this new information did make the human population number even more remarkable. They did die after some time and were then unable to create more offspring. How did they bring their numbers up to twenty-two billion and five-hundred million if it took them twenty years to bring a human to full maturity? For a moment she was enthralled by the image of offspring dropping from human bodies shortly before those humans just crumbled into dust, after which the newly grown ones made offspring and then died and so on - a cycle of constant growth just to slowly raise the population. But was it really so?

A question logically followed that slipped right out: "How often do you create offspring within a lifetime?"

A decent amount of surprise came with the reply that there were differences in the number of children depending on a variety of factors and that Sam did not know the exact number. They did offer an estimation of something close to two point five children on average.

That meant there were three more humans for every two that died. Which was at least a population increase of fifty per-cent within a human lifetime. That did sound utterly horrifying. So Nyar was unsure if this warranted another bout of concerned panic, because this had to be impossible.

Before she could think further, Sam mentioned that they had forgotten to tell Nyar that there always were two humans involved in the process of creating offspring and only half of them were actually able to bear children. So the number of offspring would be halved if counted towards a single human.

Two humans took part in creating offspring, but then only one made it? What was going on with the humans' biology? She did know about species she had found on alive planets that needed a combined effort to procreate, but then it resulted in both of them creating offspring. Were half of all humans infertile? At least Nyar had now dropped the previous train of thought completely.

---

"I must ask for more details on the procreation of humans. Why is half of your population unable to produce offspring and what purpose do they serve in procreation?"

That was one of those big questions that Neil had prepared herself for, but also hoped to not have to answer. It seemed that compared to how Nyar created a child, the human way was much more active and physical. She best not go into detail on this very first encounter with a new sapient species and stay with the dry basics.

Neil opted to remain in the chair when she began explaining: "Most of the species on Earth are dioecious, which means they are made up of two subsets of individuals that are called male and female. These differ at least by the type of reproductive organs they have and in most of the dioecious species, also through other biological traits. The female part in reproduction is to carry the female specific cells that may potentially grow into an offspring. The males have a different type of reproduction relevant cells and only a combination of both, which is called fertilization, will turn the female specific cell into a zygote, which is the basis development stage for a new individual. From then on, the zygote has to be provided nourishment to grow from a single-celled organism into an offspring that can live independently. In humans this process happens inside the female body in an organ called the uterus, and will commonly produce a single offspring that may become either male or female in an even distribution. So the development of a new human begins with the fertilization and ends with birth, which is the expulsion of the offspring from the uterus when it reaches around four point five percent of the mass of the female. In humans, this whole process takes an average of two-hundred and eighty days."

"Humans can create offspring every two-hundred and eighty days or possibly faster with more offspring per fertilization?", the translator spoke up immediately.

"Oh. Well, no", she thought of a way to put it, "So, humans usually pair up, and usually it's one female and one male that become a unit to create and subsequently care for offspring together. Biologically, it's something like forty to sixty days after birth when it would be theoretically possible for the female to become pregnant again - which means carrying developing offspring. But those pairs will usually forego any attempts at successful fertilization until much later, as the infant - which is the independent but underdeveloped offspring - needs a great amount of care and will still be directly sustained by the female. This happens through a set of organs - mammary glands - that secrete a liquid that will be the basis of nourishment for the offspring for the first two-hundred and forty days. This can be substituted or supplemented by an artificial alternative if needed."

Neil sat up a bit straighter when she tried to remember what she had read about birth statistics. But it didn't come to her and she chose to cut it short: "Now the multiple offspring thing is very rare, in less than four percent of births there is more than one child, and mostly it is just two. There are cases of more children born, but biological constraints will make it rare for those do develop properly before birth. I don't know either the specifics or the numbers though."

A bout of silence followed that at least she could be sure about didn't mean there would be a garbled mess coming from the translator. But it was quite the information dump she had just dropped, even without any messy details about either conception or birth.

Finally, after about a minute, Nyar spoke up through the translator: "If I am understanding this correctly, the females of your species are actually the ones to produce more humans and the males just provide their specialized cells? Please elaborate on the evolutionary reason for this split of species into subsets as I only see the downside of half of the species individuals being unable to create offspring and thus halving the possible population growth rate."

---

Though Sam could not clear up the question about this split as they claimed not to know much about the biological specifics. They did use a number of terms that Nyar could not understand in trying to somewhat explain it. Again after Sam had admitted of not knowing something, they had tinted their reply in embarrassment.

What Nyar did understand was the fact that humans were not one type of being but two different ones that were dependent on the other to uphold their own type. Something she had never seen in other species before, neither on her species' origin world, nor on any other alive planet. The humans had so many layers of novelty, her mind would probably never stop spinning if she had learned it as fast as she could learn knowledge from her own species. Luckily for her sanity, this way of communication was a slow process.

After another short mental pause, she sent the simple question to the translator: "If I may ask, what are you, and what would the differences be to the other type of human?"

Sam replied with a wave of excitement that she had prepared for this and needed to fetch something from her ship. Without waiting, they then ran off to come back less than a minute later, holding a rectangular metallic plate that reflected the light in a pleasant yellow tint. There were fine lines etched into the plate that Nyar could not distinguish until Sam held it up in front of her with both hands, asking if she could see it clearly. Besides other diagrams, two figures that strongly resembled Sam were pictured with a rectangle between them that most certainly was a representation of the metallic plate itself - as she deduced from the marks on it and its relative size.

Then Sam explained that this was to be a gift for Nyar as it was a knowledge cache on how humans looked and where they came from. It had been designed to convey information regardless of any other communication issues, by using simple pictures. Sam pointed out the two figures and explained them to be an average representation of a male and female human. Then Sam added, that they themselves were female - the childbearing type of human.

Both of those figures did strongly resemble her, but were markedly different from each other. These biological differences probably had some evolutionary reason behind them that Nyar could not possibly figure out at the moment. Maybe after she had learned more about their planet Earth and other species there.

A thought came to her, that she directly put into words to state: "If the human females are the individuals that create and nourish offspring, then my species resembles those most."

Something exceptional happened next, that Nyar was absolutely not prepared for. Sam stated that this was true and that Nyar was - a mother. This word she did not understand, but there was a such an overwhelming and bright mixture of positive feelings that sprung forth as Sam had said it, Nyar could not distinguish specific ones out of the interwoven gleaming clutter. A mother was obviously something tremendously valuable for humans.

---

"I would like that", came the reply.

It was a strange feeling to attach a label so closely tied to human families to Nyar, a sapient individual from such a vastly different species that they only had one gender and reproduced asexually. How bizarre but fascinating to think of this thousand year old immortal alien being several times her size that could produce spaceships with its own hands as just a mom of six she was having a chat with.

Neil pondered if she should explain more about the differences in biological sexes or if this would suffice for this first meeting. After putting the golden plaque down onto the chair, face pointing towards Nyar, she decided to leave it to her.

"Do you want to know more about females, males or human reproduction?"

"Please tell me more about the paired up units you have talked about, as it seems there is a large significance on the female that has created children. You have called her a mother."

She started waving her hands as she clarified: "Both parents are important for the upbringing of children. Usually it is a male and female pair - the male would be called a father - but two females or two males may also pair up and-", cutting herself off, she decided to keep it simple and forego delving into different family dynamics and continued with, "And the parents will teach their knowledge and experience to their child or children, imprinting on them for life. This relationship dynamic is called a family and they are very important to nearly all humans. Do you have a similar connection to your parent or offspring?"

The translator spoke up after a brief pause: "Yes, there is indeed a similarity with my species to what you have told me. My ancestor had taught me selective experiences and knowledge so I could become independent to learn and grow on a cradle planet. After I have reached bodily and mental maturity and returned to the origin world, I learned everything else from my species which included the memories of every individual. I am certain my ancestor has imprinted on me greatly, as I was chosen to represent my species due to how I have handled the time of independent growth where I had been fully reliant on what I had been taught by her."

Now this made Neil well up with a great amount of questions. But she pulled herself together and concentrated on the question that burned on her mind the most: "You know everything your ancestors did?"

"To a near complete degree, yes."

"Like, your oldest ancestor - the very first of your species - you know all about its life?" Then she quickly corrected: "Her life, I mean?"

"Yes, she is the ancestor to all individuals of my species."

That was a flash of surprise so hard, she could not even hear herself say: "Can you tell me about her? What was she like?"

The answer took so long, Neil had worried she had asked for too much. But this was just mind-blowing. How utterly fascinating it would be to learn of the very first human? How different would the humans be, if there was more left from the distant past but vague pictograms and a few words of long forgotten meaning hewn in stone?

She noticed Nyar shifted her gaze before the translator said: "I am not certain on how to speak of the first ones life as there had never been a need to abstract memories into language before."

"Just tell me what her early life was like, when she was the only one of your species. The important things that happened, and what she saw and did."

"Very well, I will try my best to put it into coherent words. The first one of my species was created by a non-sapient ancestor that was biologically the same as my species. This ancestor had little to teach to the first one before she became independent and was sent away to grow and learn on her own.

"You must know that the origin world was dangerous in that time due to a predatory species of fast breeders that preyed upon the non-sapient ancestors as well as the first one. They would amass and hunt in numbers, making the greater relative size and physical strength of their prey irrelevant. Moving solitarily and masking her presence had been taught to the first one as the best defense against those predators, so the first one hid within the dense forest where she drank from trees and grew.

"The origin world has a recurring cycle of a time of moderate temperatures and high precipitation that promotes abundant growth, followed by falling temperatures and aridity and then followed by a time of great sand storms that raze the plants and forests. The first one had also been taught about the cycle and that she had become independent near the end of the time of abundance. So she had to prepare during the cooling period for the great sand storms that would follow. By closely studying other life and her surroundings, the first one learned of evolutionary efficient design principles and went on to utilize this knowledge to be resourceful in creating shelter to live through the storms.

"During the time of abundance that followed, the first one concentrated on learning more from nature and moved vast distances to see as much as possible from the forests. She learned of many things through these observations and began seeing the governing principles of mathematics in the design of life. But she also learned of the forest borders, behind which were seemingly unending sands. It was also during this time that she had to evade the fast breeders often, and she saw many of my non-sapient ancestor species that had been taken down by them."

A brief pause followed, Neil imagined that those memories could be part of Nyar like her own, which would surely cause great discomfort if she thought about the dangers of the past.

"Near the end of this second time of abundance, the first one came upon an attack that was in progress, seeing her own direct ancestor struggling to defend itself. She went to help and tried to trample as many of the fast breeders as she could, but they were quick enough to evade most of her attacks. After her ancestor succumbed, the first one fled as she had become target to the predators. Utilizing her knowledge of nature and the forest, she had managed to evade them.

"The energy cost of these acts were significant and set back her preparations for the coming time of the great sand storms. Though the resourcefulness of the first one enabled her to live through the storms again and see the next time of abundance. She reflected upon what she had learned and observed, and speculated that the forest, though expansive, did not offer enough space for the species living within to develop and grow.

So the first one travelled to the forest border to observe the sands behind which she suspected fertile lands with more forests and decided to search for them. Replenishing her nutrient stores as quickly as possible, the first one embarked on the journey still within the third time of abundance and left the forest behind. To navigate she observed the movement of the sun during the day and the movement of the stars during the night, learning their predictability."

Another pause, Nyar shifted her gaze.

"I must admit, that the memories of the time that followed are not in a way I can describe, but I will tell you what I have deduced myself. The first one wandered until the median point of the sun's movement was nearly above her, finding nothing and nearly succumbing to the heat of the sands at that point. Since her nutrient stores were already insufficient for a return, she continued on until she had finally spotted something breaking the horizon. These were the hardened remains of long dead trees sticking out of what had been a formidable hill-top that had not been completely covered by the great sand storms. Seeing nothing else but lifeless sands and losing full grasp on her intellect, the first one became afraid and turned around.

"The struggle of the journey back to the forest is incomplete and barely comprehensible as the first one had not been fully aware at most times. She did return to the forest, close to starvation and at the end of the third time of abundance. The first one was barely able to prepare for the storms this time and was again close to death before the fourth time of abundance began. It was this point in time that she had changed from a reactive and observant lifeform into a sapient being.

"She had learned from her observations deep in the sands that the forest had been far larger in the distant past. Wandering the forest borders with that in mind, she recognized the signs and deduced that each cycle grew the sands which took away more of the fertile ground the plants needed for their growth. She saw that the time of the forest was limited and that the predators would become more dangerous as the space to evade them diminished, and forged the plan to attack the fast breeders to protect herself and my ancestral species which she still saw as her own. It was also during this time of replenishment that her biology induced the creation of an offspring."

Completely enthralled, Neil took a moment before she noticed that Nyar did not intend to continue, so she quickly asked: "Is this all you know about the first one?"

"She has lived on past this point and I know more of her, I have merely stopped because you had requested to know of her life before there were any other of my species."

"Please, tell me more."