Lemuria

Days passed as the two intelligences communicated about mathematics. The ship’s computer was operating at the limit of its speed, establishing a “mathematical pidgin” to bridge the vast differences in notation, assumptions, and underlying notions of what constituted a solution to a problem. Five thousand years of terrestrial mathematics rushed between them, and yet little progress was made in any other avenue of thought. Each member of the crew became frustrated and anxious in their own way.

Marius was elated and overwhelmed by turns. Based upon utterly alien postulates and assumptions, Lemurian mathematics had skirted by or bulldozed through many limitations of Terrestrial mathematics. Curiously, there seemed to be a fundamental disagreement about the triangle inequality.

For Marius, the problem was one of comprehension. An alien solution to a familiar problem looked exactly like an incorrect answer. There was also a cultural complexity. The Lemurians were free in transmitting questions and unsolved problems, but they never gave an answer to a problem without the promise of receiving one in return. Furthermore, only certain answers counted as solutions. He was obsessed, and the stress began to show on his face.

Helga was nervous. Even the most peaceful intentions cannot be evident without common ground for communication, and Lemuria’s increasing interest in the ship became nerve-wracking. From the mathematical exchange, it became possible to establish a handful of common symbols for non-mathematical concepts. These included; what?, where? (relative to sets of things), why? (relative to sets of answers of questions), us (meaning the set including the crew), you (poorly defined, always plural), the galaxy, the Lemurian sun and planets, the Earth. The five members of the crew were also recognized, but the Lemurians insisted on ranking them. Marius was first, Helga second, etc.

For Tat and Vigo, the inability to correlate an immensely developed system of thought with any biological or cognitive process became frustrating. They had established common words for all the chemical elements, many compounds, and certain subatomic particles. This was Vigo’s inspiration. The two had arranged for the ship to emit jets of various gaseous elements and compounds. The ship was then maneuvered into the cloud of gas. By establishing the ship as either within, or not within, the unknown set, it finally became obvious that the actual cloud of gas was the unknown set. Tatiana got the impression that this insight, the equivalency between being the ship’s symbolic location within an unnamed set, and its literal location within a cloud of gas, was an enormous intuitive leap for the Lemurians.

Then, something happened.