Aleph was almost disappointed.

She was on a spaceship which was accelerating so hard that it felt like she was back on terra! Talking to an alien that was an assemblage of blocks, camera, a screen and wiggly woven tendril arms.

She was hugging some kind of squishy multi armed mono-eyed alien that she had begun to realize was essentially imprinted on her now and decided she was its mummy/master.

She was being taught secret knowledge from beyond the stars unknown to any living soul on terra! She felt like this should have been a lot more exciting or dramatic.

“Are you doing alright Aleph? Is the diagram and exercise not clear?”

She huffed and continued writing out, by hand, on paper with a pen (where did Elsie even learn about pens?! Where did they FIND three of them?!) everything she could remember from the last fifteen minute digest.

It was not really hard, it was not quite boring. Elsie would check on them periodically to make sure that whatever they had said was translating correctly.

But the whole experience just seemed really mundane. What Omega did with her to prep for this trip was often a lot more exciting than this. Then again she didn't have to deal with being wrapped up in the dark covered in spiders trying to repair an air exchanger.

Huh, it was actually really relaxing to just watch, listen, follow simple instructions and then get quick feedback.

To be fair this was still the ‘evaluation’ period. But it was a lot better then any tests Aleph had ever heard of. Elsie would give them scenarios, situations, visuals or sometimes just blocks of text. Then they would write out both the nature of the situation as they saw it, the problems they could identify with it and how to resolve the problems based on their means in the scenario.

Elsie would clarify with questions or expand on things that it turned out had been garbled in translation, but sometimes it was hard to even identify what the nature of an exercise was.

Like this one? all it had been was a series of events and quick vignettes. Strange shapes doing something? Aleph was not sure but she had put in her effort to try and figure out and give the thing context, with ink, and pen.

Then they would move onto something else. Aleph’s hand was starting to cramp from holding the pen so long. How much time had they spent doing this? She was getting a little bit bewildered.

“I think it is now time to stop ladies, Please turn in your exercises now and begin athletics while I evaluate”

Aleph was pretty sure these ‘gym breaks’ were actually so long for their benefit then how long it took Elsie to read the scrawls they all presented on the paper.

The amount of data stored in those had to be tiny. Either way she didn't mind breaking up the routine and she trusted that the aliens knew what they were doing. After all they built civilizations a lot larger and more involved then Terrans ever had. Surely they knew what they were doing with training?

She bounced across the spongy clouds over to Omega.

“So! This is... Not what I expected”

Omega offered what was honestly a pretty weak grin.

“Yeah, I guess I kinda ran you pretty rough to get you trained up so fast. But this is a lot more like what the Universities actually did. I’m pretty sure if I have the right skillshare loaded up right this is some kind of aptitude test. But it’s all out of order and no one seems to recognize two thirds of it”

Aleph blinked several times then frowned.

“Wait are you cheating? Loading up a skill share to try and get an advantage on this? Omega! That’s part of the whole reason we are doing this is to get you caught up without having to carry a dozen experts along for the ride!”

Omega cracked a grin.

“Elsie didn't say what we were going to cover, so it’s not like I could have prepared for that. So I just reached for a bunch of teachers and academics to try and get an idea of the lesson plan?”

Her expression soured a little.

“Not that it really helped, most of what all these foggies know have to do with bureaucratic idiocy and standards and practices Elsie probably never even heard of. The handwriting thing is pretty good though. Multiple association things like that really help, but I dunno what she could possibly be trying to have us retain from all this”

Aleph shrugged.

“I’m sure there is a good reason for it, we just don’t see it yet”

“Aleph, I get you think this is great but they do make mistakes. Does none of us any good to not look for and point them out.”

She decided to ignore omega for a bit to focus on stretching out her back and thighs.

“Yeah, yeah I’ll stay super skeptical ya sour-puss”

Quarti was doing something absurd and contorted balancing on one hand. Aleph honestly had almost forgotten how stupidly graceful the prophet could be under gravity in the last year. It was a bit easier to swallow after getting to know her but still stung a bit.

It made Aleph feel like she was some kind of decrepit invalid to watch Quarti’s figure twist and pivot arbitrarily like that. Especially since paradoxically she looked MORE weightless moving under acceleration then she had while they were all in free fall.

“So slim-shim and bulka-blue! How’s first brain scraping going for yas? Is pretty fun but admits aye that most dullsome... Cookie-Square-Tripli is a not so great with my like-some think. Ya dig click?”

Omega gave a grunt as she twisted herself left and right with a series of audible cracks and pops.

“I think if you just spoke clearly to them for once you’d have a lot less trouble Quarti, I’m pretty sure their translator breaks every third time you speak”

Quarti spun around in a whirl of leg and arm and head and she was not entirely sure what else.

“Bah flip-flopa that ta-gunge! Aye’ll speak howeva!”

Aleph sighed and shook her head. Why did the soul older than terran civilization make her feel like the only adult in the room?

That was just backwards somehow.