A dialog about humans that happened between two philosophers of the Deran race

A dialog about humans that happened between two philosophers of the Deran race

*transcribed and translated*

- Evening, my good friend Ellay. I was expecting to see you. Haven't you returned recently from the long voyage to the mysterious Milky Way?
- Yes, indeed I have. Evening to you too, my dear friend. Your mind is still too old to travel?

*sounds that are equivalent to human laugher*

- And you are yet too young to be serious and settle down, but let's drop further formalities and sit down to breath, and then you will tell me all about different races you've encountered during your journey.

*time equal to three terrestrial hours elapsed in silence*

*first part of the dialog is omitted because it carries no importance and concerns mostly living creatures of different races*

- ... everything that I told you is not entirely new for you, maybe only some details and stories. The most delicious tale I saved for the last.
- Oh, tell me, tell me! I knew you would bring some extraordinary observations. Is it a new race of intelligence? You know that the most significant question in the Universe concerns the origin of intelligence.
- Well, it is not something new. It is rather about a race known to our scientists for a long time. They call themselves humans. No one actually visited their solar system – this race was catalogued when someone caught their brainwaves. They were so uninterested and primitive and shallow, if you wish, so nobody had any desire to spend as much as a third of a quing to go and look at them.

*a quing is approximately an hour*

- They turned out to be more interested then we suspected?
- No and yes. Knowing your love to all kinds of strangeness of the ways minds work and how they see the Universe, I thought of you first when I met the humans. I even considered that you would like to go and see for yourself, if you weren't still so old. I have all my experiences recorder and are available to you, but why neglect pleasures of communication and just acquire information directly from another mind?
- Absolutely. Pray continue. Recount how they look like. What is the way their minds shape their body? What different ways they chose to live?
- Yes, that is a very peculiar fact, their appearance. Humans have external sensors on their bodies to sense the world around them. Those, however, are quite few in number: only six or seven of them.
- Peculiar and rare, but not unheard of. What else?
- And their senses are somewhat limited.
- How limited?
- Say, humans can detect only a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum.
- It should not be a problem – they always can change their abilities to see the Universe.
- Wait, my friend, not so fast. I didn't tell you yet that humans' form are permanent. I encountered two different kinds of appearance the use. Male and ... female, yes, that is how they call themselves. They are able, during their lifetimes, change their sizes, but not the internal structures of their bodies.
- By Creator, are these humans suffer? are their minds disabled? We must save them. It is the duty of every intelligence in the Universe to help anyone who endures such a struggle. Hurry.
- Patience, my dear friend, your old mind makes you act irrationally. Wait until I tell you the whole story, don't jump to a conclusion too soon.
- Of course, please, forgive me my impatience. Continue, I breath.
- Humans have limbs. Four of them, though sometimes I met individuals who possesses less, but never more. And they use their limbs to interact with the material world around them.
- Ellay, you mentioned they are unable to change their forms. How do they express their moods and feelings?
- Oh, a very good question indeed. Humans' bodies are supple and they make all kind of different movements with their limbs, and other humans observe and guess moods and feelings. Humans also apply colors to the different parts of the bodies to show who they are.
- I know races that have arts of decorating their forms, but only for aesthetic reasons.
- Humans do that all the time. But it is not what astounded me. The human race is in love with chemical reactions.
- Chemical reactions you say...
- Yes, and you will never guess how they get energy to support their lives.
- Should be some an extraordinary method? From the stars?
- No, their bodies are designed it the way that organic matter put into them can be broken down into smaller components by numerous processes. Inside their bodies. And the products of the digestion process, as they call it, are absorbed straight into their bodies, and that is what powers them.
- The most inconvenient way of getting energy one can ever imagine. Why do they do this? And where do they get organic materials?
- I'll answer your second question now, but the first one you can answer yourself when I finish. Humans designed their homeplanet so that it is inhabited by manifold of creatures and none of them has intelligence. Some of them are absorbing energy from the nearest star and from the planet itself and cannot move; some of them are able to move and add others shaped to their own. Humans use these creatures, they call them animals, as a source of organic material.
- Ridiculous. Do they live in space or they prefer to stay on the planets?
- Yes, they do live in space and on the satellite of their own planet, but you will laugh when I tell how they get off their home.
- So, tell me.
- Remember I told you they are fond of chemical reactions, so they use the power of expanding gases after explosion of some chemical compounds to overcome gravitation forces. They call it a propulsion engine.
- Are they insane? How they dare to play with such unpredictable powers, to unleash such forces. I understand from your words that these humans‘ shapes are very vulnerable, why they use such strange methods that can be dangerous?
- Exactly what I was puzzled about, but everything will be crystal-clear before I finish. There are more strange things about humans: they developed a language.
- Developed a what?
- A language. The mean of communication.
- Why anyone wants to have means of communication?
- I don't know, but humans decided they should have some. With some of their external organs they produce special sound waves and other humans with other external organs receive these sound waves and interpret them. They also make some signs on different kinds of material and encode meaning in these signs and other humans see these signs and decode them.
- Don't they sometimes misinterpret the meaning of signs and sound waves?
- Yes, they do. Humans are used to encode their messages in different forms and quite often other humans don't understand, they become very angry and start moving their limbs and produce some more sound waves. Usually it leads to even more confusion.
- What a crazy race. It looks like they took all the troubles to make their lives as complicated and dangerous as possible.
- It certainly seems this way.
- But I think you have another idea about these incomprehensible creatures. Tell me.
- Oh, yes I do. I spent many quings contemplating their strange behavior and I cracked the mystery. Humans are ingenious, and you will agree with me in a minute. The human race was once similar to ours, or maybe even superior. One quing they got bored, so bored they had no means to entertain themselves. Finally, some of the humans had an idea. Everyone else just loved it. They went to the remote galaxy and to the remote solar system and created the most unlikable world one can ever imagine; and they created all this creatures and designed the whole system of living organisms that is based on chemical reactions; they created bodies with eyes and four limbs and, after temporally limiting they mind powers, became humans I saw. Humans are the race that is trying to escape from boredom.
- Brilliant observation and analysis, Ellay. I see that my intentions to help humans were untimely, for I didn't know everything. Now I believe that we should not distract them from their game. I would see myself that the word is spread not to interact with humans until they are satisfied with their game.
- Certainly, my friend. Let's breath now for a while and I'm looking forward to my next voyage into the depth of this strange and unpredictable, yet beautiful Universe.

*end of dialog*