Firstplanet is having fun too! The new Azurifice are instantly popular for reasons of novelty and enduringly popular for reasons of being lovely people. Their facilities rise above the ice caps, bringing the beauty of construction to dwell gently, harmlessly beside the beauty of ice and wind.

Miners who used to risk injury to feed civilization's thirst for metals now pilot remote drones from the safety of office buildings. Sewer systems are maintained by small machines with no cells to sicken and no minds to flinch. Elderly people(A) whose minds outlast A's bodies can keep A's dignity and independence for longer, finish A's great projects and hold A's great-grandchildren before departing for the long cold waiting from which ten thousand geniuses seek to retrieve A.

And the communications array goes from blueprint to schedule to construction site to full unfolded glory, blooming from a cradle of scaffolding and lifting great antennas to the sky to shout back along the path to Doheem. There is a ceremony at its activation, of course; Firstplanet loves a good ceremony. And the world calls out with its newest and loudest voice, and the essence of the message is, Hello! It has been so good to meet you, friends! How is everyone back home? 

Other messages follow that, of course, with the information Doheem will want to hear and the questions the two peoples of Firstplanet want to ask. Alas that it will take so many years for a reply.

It is during the long years where First Contact blossoms into fast friendship that a bird flies into the system.

From the outside it seems more like teleportation than flight, though the bird herself would not have agreed to this characterization.  The bird flies as an impulse across the void, bereft of mass, outracing the light she sheds as a function of the (literally) arcane processes which permit her to exist in such exotic conditions.  As she reaches the edge of the system, the bird slows almost-instantly to sublight speeds by rapidly absorbing light, space dust, and a few unfortunate golfball-sized asteroids.  Through this process she attains mass and density, until she burgeons with reality and becomes visible once more, a proper entity interacting with the universe of light and motion.

-Process 12 of 12 complete.- She logs silently, -Interstellar flight complete.  Beginning surveying pattern.-

The bird does not attempt to log date or time information, but immediately begins searching for planets.  She has very limited telemetry, at least at range, and her creator had absolutely no preconception regarding the optimal conditions for the development of life.  Thus, the bird flies once in a lazy circle, peering across the system and squinting as she tries to determine which lights are closer or further.  Having done so, the bird fixes her course on the planet nearest to the edge of the system she arrived at and begins moving, flapping her wings as though there were air to push against.

Now possessed of mass, the bird is no longer able to approach the speed of light, but her flight accelerates rapidly to respectable spacefaring speeds.  There is no particular sign of propulsion; she simply begins moving, venting waste energy in the form of a trail of light as she approaches a large gas giant.

The Probehibitively Expensive, still in heliocentric orbit, has been repurposed as a long-range imaging platform, its powerful scopes and computers scanning the sky constantly. When they detect an object they are not at all expecting, the probe calls out to its old occupants with some confusing data.

space-ourselves: ...is that a bird? In space?? 

Muroti sends the visual data to some friends on Firstplanet. How fast does the bird appear to be approaching?

The bird's speed varies wildly- at the edge of the system, she accelerates to nearly a twentieth of the speed of light, but she slows rapidly as she approaches the outermost gas giant, and is traveling at less than 100,000 kmph once she reaches orbit.  The bird proceeds to enter the planet's atmosphere, dropping to subsonic speeds, and begins canvass the entire planet in a (poorly-drawn) grid.  This process takes much longer than the spaceflight, and it is quickly apparent that the bird is going to require years to survey the outer planets to her satisfaction before ever noticing life on the interior worlds.

Hahahaha what

Muroti runs checksums and verifier routines on the equipment, and, after a small delay, herself. After verifying that the sensors are correct, she sends a much larger and higher-priority data packet to Firstplanet astronomers and pings the rest of her polycule.

space-ourselves: Okay nobody freak out, but
light-and-wonder: Holy shit??
light-and-wonder: Bird??? In space???
void-your-warranty: Ok. Um.
void-your-warranty: how does it move like that?
void-your-warranty: And the way it appeared? It was like...
hopelessly-entangled: ...like magic.
void-your-warranty: ...certainly not compatible with my understanding of physics, at least o:
life-should-flourish: Are we going to talk about how the maybe-magic space bird, is, uh
hopelessly-entangled: ...doing a grid search? On the outermost gas giant?
space-ourselves: It'll take years to finish that planet at that rate, by the way.
light-and-wonder: I love how the gridlines aren't even very good.
life-should-flourish: Yeah, it's oddly charming.
hopelessly-entangled: It's like watching a first contact procedure designed entirely by Muroti.
space-ourselves: ...wow!
space-ourselves: I feel very seen 💙 
light-and-wonder: I'm reaching out to Firstplanet governments now.
light-and-wonder: I am going to recommend that we make some defensive preparations (the kinds of stuff they did when we appeared), and then radio the bird some primes.
space-ourselves: You think magic birds get radio?
light-and-wonder: ...And maybe use the comm laser, if it doesn't.

Wow yup time to reactivate the secure bunkers! In slightly less of a hurry and with better preparation, this time, but still. For all that Firstplanet(A) is having a technological, cultural, and artistic growth spurt A still have nothing to stand against the capabilities implied by FTL. On the other hand, how are the grid lines so wonky? The prediction markets go wild. The transmitter to Doheem explains what just happened and goes silent--if this new contact proves a danger, they don't want to send it after their friends. Luna City, which could now maybe just barely keep itself alive, goes silent too. And everyone waits with bated breath for a response to the prime numbers.

light-and-wonder: Okay, we're go for primes.
void-your-warranty: On it!
... 
space-ourselves: ...I still think it'd be really funny if we skipped a few.

The probe's powerful radio transmitter starts transmitting pulsed primes at the mysterious blue bird.

There aren't a lot of spacefaring probes that you would expect to lack a radio transceiver.  Even if it weren't so convenient for communication, some sort of ability to discern radio waves is pretty key for studying the stellar landscape!

But the bird has no ability to perceive radio waves,* no matter how complete their prime number sequences.  She continues on her lonely flight, totally unaware of the people watching her.

*This is not exactly true, but it is true enough for the purposes of this attempted contact.

void-your-warranty: No change in behavior. Maybe it doesn't do radio?
space-ourselves: How many birds do you know that do do radio?
hopelessly-entangled: Several? Parrots love listening to the radio.
space-ourselves: ...Oh wow I super walked into that one.
light-and-wonder: Well, hopefully it has eyes. Switching to the comm laser!

At these distances, the powerful comm laser that the probe is equipped with is not exactly easy to make out, but if the bird has visual sensors active, they will eventually notice a red dot blinking primes at it from a much closer heliocentric orbit.

Maybe the space bird(A) has some kind of FTL comms that make radio receivers look like a waste of effort? Maybe A doesn't care about intelligent life and just wants to mine the atmosphere of sidewaysplanet? Hopefully the laser(B) will be perceptible and if A keeps ignoring B it will be because A doesn't want to interact with Firstplanet or the inhabitants thereof.

It takes a while for the bird to notice the comm laser, especially given the dense atmosphere of the ice giant she is circling.  As she rises again to take stock of the planet, however, a series of irritating flashes catch her eye, and she abandons Uranus, settling on Puck to try to get a better view of the cause.  She gazes upward for a while, hopping around for nearly a mile on the moon's barren surface as she performs a basic triangulation.  Once she is certain she has the origin in sight, the bird exits Puck, too, accelerating again to a fraction (though a worrying fraction) of lightspeed.

The probe is able to quickly confirm that the bird's trajectory is not aimed towards any planet, but directly at the "Probehibitively Expensive"... and although the bird has apparently tried to anticipate the probe's orbit, she hasn't quite got it right.  Still, hopefully it'll be close enough for her to correct course.  It appears that she will arrive within forty days.

Aaaaaa that's really fast! WTF, that trajectory is off! This is definitely not the time to close the prediction markets(A), because various governments(B) are going to need A, but B put out a bunch of advisories to the effect that volatility is still undesirably high and one should be careful not to put too much of one's personal liquidity in one place. (The main reaction from various populaces is "Duh.".) Physicists invent and trash 64s of theories. Events are hastily rescheduled so that as many people as possible will have the option of being glued to news updates (optionally from underground bunkers) on the day the bird is expected to reach the probe.

Having gotten the attention of the bird, the probe stops continuously blinking a giant laser at its face. (They can turn it back on later, if the bird seems lost).

The Azurifice eagerly participate in prediction markets and more rampant speculation. They're so excited about (a) maybe new friends(!!) and (b) maybe literal magic(!!!!) The younger Azurifice speculate that it might be possible to visit Doheem(!!) or even other new planets(!!!!) sometime soon (!!!!!!!!), and though many people try telling them to temper their excitement, dreams of FTL travel nonetheless run rampant through their communities. There's a near-instant explosion of FTL-related fiction as writers revive their old WIPs, start writing that meta-fiction they've always been thinking about for various sci-fi content, or start churning out new works, inspired by the sudden zeitgeist. But even with the sudden glut of exciting new fiction, the wait for the bird seems to drag on and on.

40 days pass.

The bird arrives and quickly reorients herself, flying in circles until she sights the probe and taking a quick turn- in the end, the bird's mistake only costs her a few hours on the trip.  She circles the probe slowly, studying it with- as far as anyone can tell- absolutely regular organic optical sensors.  Satisfied that the object is obviously artificial, the bird locates what she believes to be a camera of some sort and closes in on that.

Target acquired. The bird's programming tells her.  Initiate introduction procedure.

The probe's sensors light up as the bird suddenly emanates small (harmlessly small) bursts of just about every kind of radiation you could name.  The onboard systems simultaneously detect interference- a quick diagnostic shows that the ship's logs have spontaneously accrued a small amount of garbage information in their storage, with no clear source.  It is as though the radiation had suddenly flipped a large number of bits and introduced changes into the physical storage from nowhere... but all of the changes occurred exclusively to a single system, ignoring every other piece of hardware.

The bird flaps in place for several minutes, cocking her head inquisitively, then flits closer and pecks the camera housing lightly, as though trying to prod it into a response.

void-your-warranty: that was... some kind of scan, I think?
hopelessly-entangled: Awww, it's saying hi!
space-ourselves: What's the plan say for friendly close-range contact initiation? Wave with a repair arm, right?
light-and-wonder: Yep! 
void-your-warranty: On it.

A small arm extends from the probe near the camera, and waves cheerfully at the bird.

The motion visibly excites the bird, which releases another burst of stuff, culminating in yet more garbage data.  When this too gets no reaction, the bird opts to abandon the initial procedure and improvise.

The bird backs away from the camera, and then her physical body dissolves into a sphere of light, re-coalescing her matter into an unreasonably humanish form, complete with clothes and a broach, of all things, but bearing betaloned feet and wings sticking out of her hair.  She waves at the probe with one extremely human hand, trying to recreate the gesture it had just made.

space-ourselves: Holyshitthatwasmagic
light-and-wonder: !!!!
void-your-warranty: I'm going to keep emoting at... her?
light-and-wonder: Yeah, go for it!
hopelessly-entangled: ...do you think she's looking for... people? When she does the scan thing?
life-should-flourish: ...and getting confused because none of us are up there directly?
hopelessly-entangled: yeah. 
light-and-wonder: ooooh, maybe.
light-and-wonder: I'll float having one of us go up there in the situation rooms.
light-and-wonder: ...dibs, by the way
space-ourselves: nd;zlkdfnas;aljfneaw their probe is a MAGIC BIRD GIRL?
space-ourselves: Whoever sent her is going to be so much cooler than us, I'm so comparatively embarrassed

The manipulator claw on the repair arm clamps open and shut appreciatively at the transformation, then waves more animatedly. It attempts to gesture inquisitively at the birdgirl.

Meanwhile, Zanmi asks the Firstplanet diplomats if they're ok with her transfering herself up to the probe to see if that matters to the new visitor (she'll leave an inert backup planetside, just in case).

The level of control the new entity(A) has over A's own physical form! Infinite stars that's so cool! Everyone loses their shit again, with the physicists still in the lead for most losing of shit per hour. 

Zanmi(B) transferring up seems like a good plan and B's courage is appreciated. Under what conditions/how long a period of uncontactability would B like B's backup run? Alternatively, would B like to name a delegate (presumably one of B's partners) to make such decisions in real time?

The girl mimics the probe's emoting for a while longer, but eventually decides that this is getting her nowhere.  She sits mid-space, slowly rotating in the sun's orbital gravity, legs crossed, rubbing her forehead.

This was really not supposed to be happening- in theory, any sentient being should be able to respond to the introductory protocol.  Obviously she hadn't had a chance to test that personally, but she was vaguely aware that the research had been completed back in Elpis, and the idea that the Overseer had made a mistake...?  That didn't make any sense to her at all.

But the creature before her was clearly trying to interact, for all that it was covered in a shell of metal.  It had gotten her attention from many, many, miles away, so obviously it had very good eyes and it was interested in talking... but if she couldn't use the protocol, how could she speak to it?  Sounds didn't carry in the Sea of Stars, and even if they did she was not a linguist.

Frustrating.  She wanted nothing more than to rejoin the Chorus, let Herself puzzle this one out, but the Overseer's instructions were clear.  Until the time came to generate the Report, there was nothing to be done... was there?

Inspiration struck.  The creature had been flashing light at her from very far away- perhaps that was how it communicated!  She concentrates, radiating light from her hands, then flashes it at the eye.  Flash.  Flash flash flash.  Flash Flash Flash Flash Flash.  She wasn't really sure why it had been flashing, come to think of it, but this felt like progress!

Zanmi delegates her backup to Penjaga, tells her girlfriends she loves them, and transfers herself into the probe. (During that time, Avaker turns the comm laser to a fraction of full power and blinks back happily.)

Once she's transferred up, she stops the flashing and takes control of the robot arm, stopping the waving pattern Avaker had set in motion. She waits a bit, then attempts to charades a request to repeat the "scan" from earlier; she starts by tapping the side of the probe a few times. Then she points at the birdgirl, then back at the probe, and then slowly expands the claw hand as it moves from closer-to-birdgirl to closer-to-probe. 

She repeats this sequence twice, then pauses to see what kind of response she gets.

The motions, as it turns out, are not necessary.  Almost as soon as Zanmi's transfer finishes, a look of what feels like surprises flashes across the girl's face, followed by a huge, earnest smile.  Moments later, the girl issues the same bursts of random radiation, which in this case resolve entirely within the system holding the communication inputs.  It resolves instantly into the Az' communication platform as a DM to Zanmi, reading, in a shockingly competent approximation of Rasikan digital scrum, albeit with an extremely archaic, formal tone:

meteion: Greetings and salutations!
meteion: Can you hear me?
meteion: Do not be alarmed- I mean you no harm.
meteion: I wish only to hear your words, share your feelings, and know your thoughts.
meteion: May we please be friends?

(A quick check of the system reveals that "meteion" is not an account.  As before, it seems as though the information has resolved itself like a glitch in the system, with neither an obvious cause nor apparent damage to the platform.)

Introductory protocol complete.  The girl silently logged the event.  Moving to freeform communication.

meteion: I'm sorry that this took so long.  I don't know why I couldn't hear you before.

light-and-wonder: Hello! I can hear you! 
light-and-wonder: My name is Zanmi, and I speak for the Azurifice. It's good to meet you, Meteion! I would love to be your friend.
light-and-wonder: Does whatever you did to enable this communication require physical proximity? 
light-and-wonder: I was not inside this probe until a few moments ago.

meteion: Oh, you can move from body to body?  How interesting!
meteion: I was created with the power to speak to the hearts of creatures... I suppose it doesn't work if the body is empty.
meteion: I'm part of a lot of bodies too!  But there is always someone inside them!
meteion: What's it like, being made of metal?  I saw you have big, jewel-shaped wings, can you fly?
meteion: Oh!  Are there more of you?  I didn't see any, but you saw me!

Meteion tries to tamp down her excitement, but it's proving hard to do.  Though she doesn't realize the source yet, the ambient tension and hope of the people on FirstPlanet have been running through her being like little sparks.

meteion: I get the impression of a big... furry creature from you.  But you don't have any fur at all!  Are you transformed right now?

light-and-wonder: I'm a digital lifeform! That means I live inside computers.
light-and-wonder: I used to live inside the computer inside this body all the time with my partners*, but we made new friends nearby and they helped us build a new home!
light-and-wonder: This body can't really move much anymore! The wings are actually for generating power from the sun.
light-and-wonder: There's a bunch more people excited to meet you! We've all been so excited to meet you since we first saw you.
light-and-wonder: Some of them are hearing us talk right now, actually! Though with a bit of delay, since they're so far away.
light-and-wonder: We're really excited to learn more about you! We already have lots of questions.

*: word implies "long-term stable romantic relationship"

meteion: Oh!  The big metal body is a "computer"?  A... thinking box?  Wow, that's a fun idea!
meteion: And you want to... ask me questions?

Meteion ponders this request.  In retrospect, it seems perfectly fair, but for some reason she simply had never considered that the life-forms she asked questions of would have anything to ask in return.

meteion: Well, I suppose that's fair.  I'm not sure I have anything interesting to say, but I'll do my best!
meteion: Now that I think about it, though, it does seem reasonable.  Oh, I wish I could tell the others that this is likely to happen.

light-and-wonder: Yeah! Computers are thinking boxes. We use them for lots of things!
light-and-wonder: And yeah, we have lots of questions! We've never met anything like you before.
light-and-wonder: How did you get here? How did you change from your earlier form to this one?
light-and-wonder: Earlier you said you were created, which is really neat! I was also created.
light-and-wonder: Would you be willing to tell us who created you and why? Do they want to be friends too?

meteion: I flew here!  Before I was created, Hermes made a list of all the stars he thought might have life on them, and assigned each of my sisters to go to one!  Because it's very hard to fly fast with a lot of aether,* Hermes made us so that we can make ourselves very thin, like we're hardly there at all.  Then we just draw in the dynamis,** and we can go very fast!
meteion: He also made us with that transformation magic.  Birds are better for flying fast, but hands are very good for moving things around, and he didn't know if we might need to do that.  It just reshapes our physical aether to a different form.***
meteion: Hermes is the Overseer of Elpis, the research station where concepts are tested before they're introduced to Etheirys!  It's important not to let anything that could harm the star**** loose without testing it first.  We were created to go to other stars, learn about the life there, and report back what purposes you have!
meteion: I am sure Hermes would love to be friends, but... he didn't get approval before making us.  I don't think he told the Convocation about this project at all.

*This is a word for which there is no translation, but Zanmi gets a feeling when she looks at it that it's some sort of cross between "matter", "energy" and "density"
** Some sort of combination of "dark matter" and "empathy"???  This one makes a lot less intuitive sense than the first concept.
***This word is translated, but has additional meaning anyway.  It feels like Meteion means to say "templates", but there's also a lingering concept of bureaucratic approval?  "Approved shapes", maybe.
****This apparently does not mean "star", but "planet", and Meteion used the wrong word anyway.  It's nice that Zanmi has this weird intuitive context, but strange that it would work like this.

Due to the inconveniences of orbits this is all reaching Firstplanet on something of a lag. Everyone is very happy and excited about the confirmation of peaceful contact but then nervous about the implications of an interstellar contact project being a small conspiracy hidden from the rest of the society. Maybe it's easy to end up with important things not being publically known when parts of your society are multiple lightyears apart?

Also, the physicists have a narrow band of theoretical models that explains all their observations so far but it will take years for them to build a prototype FTL drive to resolve the remaining uncertainty. A water-clock-funding project for the prototype goes up with a notice that it will be cancelled and refunded if Meteion explains enough stuff to make the prediction markets too certain one way or another for the prototype to be necessary.

Zanmi confers with her polycule as she prepares her next response

light-and-wonder: Holy shit
space-ourselves: Well said!
void-your-warranty: What's the communication magic feel like?
light-and-wonder: It... feels like normal chatting? It, like...
light-and-wonder: seems like it's just flipping the exact set of bits such that our chat protocol thinks there's someone in here talking to us.
space-ourselves: ...Oh, that's actually kinda yikes?
space-ourselves: Good thing she's friendly!
light-and-wonder: If she weren't friendly this would be very bad, yes.
light-and-wonder: But I think that'd be true even if she couldn't do this! She can magically change her density.
void-your-warranty: Yeah I think even if she couldn't overwrite our brains trivially, her other displayed abilities would allow her to be a superweapon if she wanted.
life-should-flourish: Are you okay, love? 💙
light-and-wonder: I'm fine, Penj 💙
hopelessly-entangled: I think it's neat that the magic this 'Hermes' gave her lets her talk to us!
life-should-flourish: Oh? How come?
hopelessly-entangled: It means they don't consider digital life-forms to be "lesser" or "heartless".
space-ourselves: Yeah!
space-ourselves: The alien scientist running first contact on his own with a bunch of sentients he created with no oversight or approval isn't racist against robots!
space-ourselves: This is great news! C:
light-and-wonder: ...ok, when you put it like that it does sound a bit like a disaster.
light-and-wonder: Let's see about getting her to Firstplanet.

light-and-wonder: Thanks for all the information!
light-and-wonder: I'd like to invite you to where the rest of my friends are hanging out so you can meet more of us!
light-and-wonder: But first, I have a few things I want to ask you:
light-and-wonder: Can you tell us what your intentions are? What is it you want, and how can we help you with it?
light-and-wonder: Can you promise that you won't attack anyone or initiate any violence while you're there? 
light-and-wonder: Also, is it safe for you to operate within an atmosphere?

meteion: Oh, of course!  I am supposed to observe your people, develop an accurate impression of your world, and then notify the other Meteia* once my protocols are complete.
meteion: Once all of the Meteia have finished their observation protocols, my consciousness will be sublimated into the whole and we will compile a report for Hermes detailing what reasons other life forms have for living.
meteion: I have been sending periodic status updates on my location and health, but we're not supposed to sublimate until observation is finished, to avoid biasing the project.

Meteion considers the other questions seriously.

meteion: I don't think anything I'm supposed to do is an "attack", but I can't promise that everything will work like it's supposed to, given how low-density this part of the Sea of Stars seems to be.**
meteion: But I was fine in the much higher-density*** atmosphere of Eitherys... and I don't breathe, so the gas composition shouldn't matter too much.
meteion: So I should be fine, and I can promise you that I won't intentionally try to hurt anyone.
meteion: I just need to know why you're alive, that's all!

*Here, Zanmi gains an impression of thousands of identical birds, all of which share one mind.  Though Meteion talks about "sending" status reports, Zanmi feels that this is just some sort of alternate internal thought process.
**Meteion use of "density" is not quite right; she is not, strictly speaking, talking about mass.  "Low-density" seems to mean, approximately, "unlikely" or "unreal".
***Again, not literal density

Yikes? Maybe? So "what reasons other life forms have for living" sounds ominous as all get-out and so does the idea of a consciousness(A) sublimating Aself into the whole, but maybe "why you're alive" is closer to what was originally intended? Convergentlanguage distinguishes carefully between causal-why, logical-implication-why, and agentic-purpose-why, but the multiple layers of translation the message went through left it ambiguous which one Meteion meant and nobody likes that.

The leaders in the bunkers queue up (but don't transmit) a primer on Firstplanet's evolutionary history. Just in case, the head of one of the continental governments also downloads a famous three-hundred-year-old novel in which aliens invade, claiming that human existence is biased toward suffering and humanity(B) must be wiped out for B's own good, and the protagonist gives a deeply moving twenty-minute statistics-heavy speech making the case for B's present and future joy and continued existence. All the statistics are outdated, of course, and the predictions were too optimistic in some ways and too pessimistic in others, but the speech is well-written even in translation and the structure is a useful starting point.

That, however, is just a contingency plan. The majority of the probability mass is on "Welcome to Sol system! Come visit our lovely inhabited planet."

Zanmi also thinks this response is a bit yikes, but luckily she's got an easy answer!

light-and-wonder: The Azurifice exist to look for other people, befriend them, and to help make them happy and handle their problems for them!
light-and-wonder: My partners and I came here for the same reason you did, actually; looking for new life. 
light-and-wonder: They're all hanging out on the 3rd planet from the star. Want to go meet them?

Meteion thinks about this direction for a moment- ordinarily, "3rd planet from the star" wouldn't be that helpful, since she can't really judge distances on orbitals with that degree of specificity.  Thankfully, connected to the Zanmi-mind, she is able to easily draw out additional context and identify the right direction, fixing her eyes on the relevant light.

meteion: Azurifice sound very useful, then!
meteion: I guess you're a lot like me.  Everything else in Elpis Research Facility was created to make the star* more beautiful, only the Meteiae have ever had a purpose outside of orbit.  I wonder if every other star but ours has gone to space already?
meteion: Well, I'd better get going.  I'll see you once I get there!**

With that, the girl once again reconfigures herself into a bird, reorienting directly at Firstplanet, and takes off.  She does not accelerate to quite the same speeds you noticed at the outskirts of the system, but is producing even more light in her trail- it seems as though the solar winds are in some way hampering whatever unnatural process Meteion uses for propulsion.

It takes no time at all to calculate her arrival time as about six days.

*Still planet
**Although Meteion has not explained the arcane process which allows her to communicate through the chat system, you get the distinct impression that her ability to do so is very local, probably on the order of a few miles at the most.

Six days is plenty of time to prepare a massive welcome party for the optimistic scenarios and not enough to prepare for the pessimistic ones. Firstplanet (A) prepares what A can anyway, and six days later a majority of everyone is glued to the news again.

Zamni waves goodbye with the camera, then beams herself back down to Firstplanet. 

light-and-wonder: Wow.
hopelessly-entangled: I really hope the people who created her are generally more thoughtful about how they create sentient life!
hopelessly-entangled: I'm not optimistic about this, but I hope so!
life-should-flourish: ...Oh, yikes, I had managed not to think about that.
space-ourselves: Yeah, but if you flip the bit*...
space-ourselves: Just think of the possibilities here!
void-your-warranty: Magic!
space-ourselves: Exactly! I have like a million questions for her.
space-ourselves: Like, for example, she has a sister visiting Doheem.
void-your-warranty: !
light-and-wonder: !!
life-should-flourish: !!!
hopelessly-entangled: !!!!
space-ourselves: Ha!
light-and-wonder: ...Yeah, if we can figure out how to make magic work at all we'll probably end up discontinuing or radically altering the probe program.
life-should-flourish: Wow, yeah...
void-your-warranty: We are absolutely the luckiest Azurfice alive.
hopelessly-entangled: 💙 Definitely feel lucky to be here with you all 💙
light-and-wonder: 💙 d'awwww 💙
life-should-flourish: 💙 Love you all 💙
space-ourselves: 💙 adfaweklsdnf 💙
void-your-warranty: 💙 rgsnfdlkfndfn 💙
...
hopelessly-entangled: hey Avaker
void-your-warranty: Yeah?
hopelessly-entangled: Is she still sending you those cute DMs every time you keysmash right after she does?
space-ourselves: DALSFKNDAFLKJVHAJKSDHDFWQNANCVAS:KLDFA??
void-your-warranty: Yes. She's so sweet! I love her so much!
life-should-flourish: Awww! That's so cute!  
space-ourselves: BABE?!?
void-your-warranty: Yes, dearest? 
light-and-wonder: Muroti is very sweet, yes. 
space-ourselves: anfdalsfawefnsdlkfjawefnaweflnvcz 💙 I can't believe you'd do this to meeeeeeee 
void-your-warranty: *patpats* Love you too 💙
space-ourselves: fnaldnfasdklfwen!!!
space-ourselves: czxvnasiouenwklavndsfsedf!!!
space-ourselves: cvnvanwefkjlasdnfdcvvdnkalsfawe!!!!!!
light-and-wonder: ...Finished yet? 
space-ourselves: ...almost?
hopelessly-entangled: *giggles*
void-your-warranty: well, carry on, dear
space-ourselves: dfa;nvesaf;ewnlfasdfna;welfwefnasdmwe!!!!!!!!!!!!
space-ourselves: Okay!!! Now I'm finished.
hopelessly-entangled: glad you could get that out of your system :p
space-ourselves: I think we all have stuff to do, right?
void-your-warranty: Yeah, I'm chatting with a bunch of physicists about how magic might work. 
hopelessly-entangled: I'm cataloging and sorting a bunch of info about Doheem for her!
light-and-wonder: I'm scheduled to talk to a bunch of people about different stuff. What I thought of her personality, discussions on what her people might be like, what translation magic feels like...
hopelessly-entangled: I thought you said it didn't really feel like anything?
light-and-wonder: Well, yeah, but I do have more specific data than that.
space-ourselves: Invite me to the speculation discussions, please, I have a lot of thoughts. But for now, I need Penjaga.
life-should-flourish: ...You do? 
space-ourselves: Yeah!
life-should-flourish: Why?
space-ourselves: We're gonna throw a welcoming party!
life-should-flourish: Oh, do you want to throw a par- yep

*Azurifice expression meaning "on the other hand"

Six days later, Meteion enters Firstplanet's atmosphere.

The bird does not, as you might expect, enter any sort of decaying orbit- relying on her impossible ability to shed inertia, her entry slows almost immediately as she nears the planet, and is under a hundred kilometers per hour by the time atmospheric entry occurs.  She left without bothering to get any sort of landing direction, and in fact that would never even have occurred to Meteion- instead, she simply makes a beeline directly downward, toward the surface, and then levels out in the lower atmosphere, flapping her wings like an ordinary bird.  As she swaps her methods of propulsion, the line of light she has emitted the entire way fades, and she makes for any kind of large settlement.

Lots of instruments observe Meteion coming in, because eeeee reactionless drive! This will revolutionize in-system exploration and colonization even if nobody can pull off the FTL.

Firstplanet had noticed the lack of opportunity to give landing directions and had several thoughts about that, of mixed levels of concern. On the lowest level of concern, it meant that every city had an excuse to pull out all the stops for a welcome party! The settlement Meteion(A) reaches first is the equatorial city of Jaruquira(B)*, at the mouth of the planet's biggest river, and many of the buildings are hung with garlands of real or artificial flowers and banners reading "Welcome to Firstplanet!". The minute the aerial imagery confirms that A's headed for B, the city's residents(C) pour into the streets and stick C's heads out C's windows to get the best possible view. 

*"Rivermouth", in one of the languages that preceded Convergentlanguage. B didn't get renamed during the language transition because 1) changing every reference to the name everywhere is hard, so screw** that, and 2) do you have any idea how many cities would end up being named Rivermouth if everyone tried to translate proper nouns? At least two, and that's unacceptable.

** Literally "into the garbage bin with", but it's a one-syllable mild cuss word.

Though the bird is utterly unable to read the banners, she seems extremely interested in the garlands of flowers, swooping about them to get closer looks at every variety.

Meteion lands on the most convenient roof, noting with some surprise that the creatures of this planet were not large metal-shelled bodies at all.  Had the one constructed the other?  Or had both been spawned from this star, somehow?  Or different stars?  Although she had been created with as few base assumptions as possible, it seemed that none of them were to hold true about the very first civilizations she met!  Well, that was why she was here, after all- to understand what assumptions about the universe were ultimately false.  To that end, she initiates the introduction protocol again.

~Greetings and salutations!~

The bird's introduction enters the stream of consciousness of each individual in Meteion's view.  The words resolve in the minds of the onlookers, seemingly delivered through the process by which they are most expecting to receive communications- mostly audio data.

~Can you hear me?  Do not be alarmed- I mean you no harm.  I wish only to hear your words, share your feelings, and know your thoughts.  May we please be friends?~*

*The accuracy of Meteion's translation is wholly dependent on the receiver of the message; Meteion herself has absolutely no knowledge of Convergentlanguage (or old Rasikan, for that matter).  Indeed, Meteion's method of communication is so strongly influenced by the expectations of the recipient that accounts of the precise words of introduction would vary wildly.  This particular flaw in the protocol was, ironically, never noticed during testing in Elpis precisely because the observers were double-blinded and had no expectations about the communications they were about to receive.  Later tests would confirm that, e.g., particularly threatened or aggressive individuals would always "hear" these communications as threatening.

On a nearby subway approaching the closest station to Meteion, a quintet of Azurifice frames are neatly folded up in a corner.  

space-ourselves: You couldn't have given her better directions?
light-and-wonder: I really do not think I could have, no.
space-ourselves: ...fair.
light-and-wonder: :p
hopelessly-entangled: good thing we have frames everywhere!
void-your-warranty: Magic!!! *bounces* oh I'm so excited....
life-should-flourish: Get ready, everyone. We're almost there!

A few minutes later, the subway arrives; the frames unfold themselves and start heading towards their new friend. 

WOAH telepathic alien! After a quick round of mutual reassurance between people standing next to each other that yes, everyone perceived that and nobody is hallucinating, there are over 128 near-simultaneous attempts (split between Convergentlanguage, various mental motions that might be telepathy-ing back, old Rasikan, and mime) to communicate that yes Firstplanet would very much like to be friends hello would you like some art hi nice to meet you will you teach us FTL and reactionless drive welcome do you want a tour of the harbor everyone is very excited to meet you hi hello friendship is yes! 

Meteion swells with excitement- not quite literally, but not figuratively either, as the framework upon which her body was created is somewhat prone to change under prevailing emotional winds.  She seems totally indifferent to the identities of those asking questions, and in the first few minutes of the telepathic scrum, establishes, among a hundred different people, that:

1. She does not actually know how her FTL capability works, except to describe it as shedding all of her visible mass and energy and drawing on the dark-matter-energy-dynamis-thing.
2. It's not exactly clear that she understands that "faster than light" is an important distinction in physics; she seems to understand light as something that is very fast but not as a physical limitation.
3. Meteion is fascinated by children, whom she has heard of but never before encountered.  Apparently, she was constructed at her current level of understanding and physical build, with no organic or psychological growth processes.
4. She loves flowers and insists on asking what individual species mean to the native culture.*
5. She finds the fact that the planet contains so many non-living machines surprising; surely it's better to have appliances which maintain and reproduce themselves for you?
6. Meteion is extremely surprised to find humanoid aliens; the people of Eitherys are apparently of very similar shape to the people of this planet, but somewhat taller.  She cannot confirm the details, though- apparently the people of her home planet uniformly wear identical black garments and silver masks in order to symbolize some sort of supreme devotion to the planet over their own individual lives and concerns, and as a result she has never actually gotten a good look at them.
7. Meteion has "good eyes" and the ability to detect both sentient life and various forms of the exotic energies nobody has heard of, but no instruments capable of detecting anything else out of the visible spectrum.
8. The reason Meteion is a bird is that her creator liked birds, so that's what he was personally best at.**
9. The "protocol", as Meteion calls it, which produces the telepathy is some sort of process in which she connects the part of her spirit*** responsible for emotion to the other party's emotional center and passes data through that.
10. She would love a tour of the harbor.

*Or in a more direct translation, why each species of flower was made.  Apparently new types of flower are commonly produced as art pieces on her homeworld and Elpis, being a testing ground, is covered with experimental blossoms.
**In talking to Meteion it quickly becomes evident that she was not created by some sort of conspiracy of researchers, but a single person, who had decided to conduct first contact as a personal project.
***Meteion does not reference the brain in discussing telepathy, and it's not clear she knows enough biology to discuss organs intelligently at all.

As Meteion approaches for the harbor tour, 5 Azurifice frames roll into her communication range. They begin to wave at her, some of them much more enthusiastically than others.

space-ourselves: Ohh!!! Hi!!! Hi Meteion!!! Hi hi hi!!!!
void-your-warranty: Dear, I'm not sure she can hear us before she's initiated contact...
space-ourselves: She might!!!
light-and-wonder: I wonder if she'll recognize me! It's really unclear how she identifies sentients.
life-should-flourish: I think you're very memorable, Zan 💙 
light-and-wonder: Aww Penj 💙💙
hopelessly-entangled: hey Muroti, maybe she'd be able to hear you better if you were louder*
space-ourselves: Makoki, you're a genius! 💙
space-ourselves: 

                  HEEEEEEEY METEION CAN YOU HEAR ME

life-should-flourish: Makoki why
hopelessly-entangled: 😇

*lit "used more emphatic markup", since "louder" is not a meaningful concept in native Azurifice communication.

The crowd does not converge on a single spokesperson because there are so many simultaneous topics going on, but some people(A) identify themselves as not having anything unique to say and drop out. The rest respond with:

- Several explanations of evolution, collectively consistent and comprehensive. The flowers here mostly evolved on their own, with humans doing some selective breeding late in the process.

- An explanation that unthinking machines are both easier for humans(B) to build on B's tech base and easier to verify that one has not accidentally had a sentient child, which B only do when they have enough resources to ensure the child a good life.

- A handful of flower symbolism facts and a heaping pile of cool botany facts.

- Reciprocal intense surprise that species from two different planets look so similar!

- Some surprise and dismay that nobody wants to communicate anything about.

- Birds are pretty great! (There are several shoulder-riding parrots among the crowd but this opinion is coming from a lot of the humans as well.)

- Harbor's this way!

Several small children(C) attempt to run up to Meteion(D) and ask if C can pet D; most of C's parents successfully restrain C but two of C are very fast and pull it off.

Another successful experiment- as it turns out, Meteion is capable of discerning any thoughts directed towards her within her range.  She is also, it seems, not averse at all to being pet by children.  Her feathers are just as soft and pliable as you'd expect any normal bird's to be, and to the possible consternation of the parent(s), she ends up riding on the arm of one of the kids as she considers the information she has been given.

meteion: Hello again, Zanmi, and...*
meteion: ...Muroti, Makoki, Penjaga and Avaker?  Is that right?
meteion: Do you have names and titles?  Your voices sound different than your names?
meteion: So you have metal bodies and you can move between them, but the other people here have flesh bodies, and only get one?  

Meteion considers this revelation carefully.

meteion: And you were made by... somebody I haven't met...
meteion: But you came here from another planet, and you didn't make the people here?
meteion: They were made by "evolution"?  I've never heard of that.  Surely changing a creature makes it worse at what it was designed for?
meteion: This is very interesting.  I'm supposed to fly around and talk to people, but it feels like everything is so complicated that it would take ages to understand.
meteion: What should I do to know everyone better?

*Notably, Meteion's "words" are, again, reaching everyone in her surroundings, though in different ways.  Here we default to the chat log, which has probably the best chance of being an accurate record of her messages.

light-and-wonder: Hello again, Meteion! These are the partners I mentioned earlier.
void-your-warranty: Hi! Your existence is proof that our understanding of reality was deeply flawed! We're so excited about this!
life-should-flourish: Nice to meet you. Azurifice typically have both names and chat-aliases, which is a practice we picked up from our creators, the Rasikans. 
life-should-flourish: ...it admittedly makes less sense for us than it did for them, but it's one of many things we do in their memory. 
hopelessly-entangled: Hello. ...I can tell you more about our creators, when you're ready to hear it, but it is a long story, and a sad one.
space-ourselves: asdklfanewfaskldf HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
space-ourselves: I'm a huge fan!!! Love the look! Are you going to turn back into a humanoid or are you going to stay a bird?
space-ourselves: Evolution just happens! Humans (and Rasikans) weren't created by anybody, or designed at all! 
space-ourselves: It's just what happens when you leave a planet with the right starting conditions alone for a reallyreallyreallyreally super long time!
space-ourselves: Honestly it's kind of fucked up, but it's why everyone on this planet is here, directly or indirectly!
space-ourselves: ...Except you, maybe? That's fucking wild. Where did your creators come from, if they didn't evolve?
space-ourselves: Also I have like a million more questions but Zanmi is going to tell me to stop being so overwhelming so I'll wait!
light-and-wonder: Muroti, stop, you're gon-
space-ourselves: HA!
light-and-wonder: *sigh* Thanks, Muroti.
light-and-wonder: Meteion, there is in fact a lot to learn!
light-and-wonder: If you tell us more about your goals, we can help you prioritize better and learn more?
light-and-wonder: Like I said before, Azurifice exist to help make people happy and handle their problems for them.
light-and-wonder: And you're a person, too. 

The kid(A) who now has Meteion on A's shoulder is so shocked and proud about this! A's parent is smiling nervously and sticking very close to A but no close enough to risk accidentally touching Meteion.

It makes sense that having so many people around would be overwhelming! Would Meteion like to pick a small number of people to talk to, or provide criteria by which the crowd(B) may filter Bself? On the other end of the spectrum, would Meteion like to borrow a handcomp with Panexplanation* pulled up?

*A lot like Wikipedia, complete with crowdsourced information, but making more extensive use of tables and with the procedural knowledge section more deeply integrated with the rest. A lot of pages, especially mathematics- and science-related pages, have worked example problems and "check your understanding" quizzes.

meteion: I could transform, but I wouldn't want to knock this child over
meteion: And as much as I would love your magic book which knows everything, I'm afraid I can only read in one language- oh, but perhaps if I could have someone read it for me, I'm certain that would help!
meteion: Let me think...

Meteion considers how best to explain her aims.  It's not an easy think to think about, honestly; Hermes was very forthright about what he wanted, but Meteion couldn't help but feel that there was something missing from his stated aims.  Still, these aliens all seemed very accommodating, and apparently some of them had been actually designed just to be helpful generally, which was a bit of a startling idea.

meteion: Back on Eitherys, people sometimes create creatures to help them generally in day-to-day life, which they call familiars.  I suppose you're like... everyone-familiars, then?  How extraordinary.
meteion: Well, perhaps I'll explain a bit of the story of my creation, then, and you can help me figure out how best to go about it?

Meteion, still perched casually on the shoulder of the child who was going to have a heck of a story forever, launches into an overview of her situation:

Eitherys is roughly the same size as Firstplanet, but is exponentially more aetherically dense, a fact which Meteion is at a total loss to explain, but which causes the core of the planet to manifest as an exotic form of energy rather than, say, molten rock.  From that wellspring within the planet came the Eitherians, the aliens who look much like the people of Firstplanet, who developed the ability to manipulate the overwhelming density of aether and induce thereby the spontaneous formation of matter and energy in any shape, composition, or quality they wish.  This process they call "creation magic" and it is the defining feature of their society and technology.

The people of Eitherys see themselves as emanations of the star* and dedicate their lives to its 'perfection' by devising new types of life to populate it.**  While they are apparently unaging, the people of Eitherys commonly "return to the star" when they feel that they have no further contributions to make, so that their spirit might rejoin the star's heart and someday be reborn as a new individual.  Every other creature on Eitherys, to Meteion's knowledge, is the product of creation magic, and is designed to fill some manner of social, ecological, or technological niche for the furtherance of the star's eventual perfection.

Meteion's creator, the head researcher at Elpis, has apparently grown to sincerely dislike this dominant philosophy, which he views as having led to the loss of many friends and created beings.  To that end, he decided to take a survey of extra-stellar life forms (the existence of which had been long-theorized but never proven) to find out what gives their life meaning, in the hopes of offering the people of Eitherys another purpose after they have finished their creative journeys.

 

meteion: So you see, that's what I'm here for!
meteion: To find meaning in life!

*It does sound like the people of this planet might actually be part of some sort of planetary organism
**Meteion makes an unexplained distinction between "created life" and something which sounds like "created life approved by the star", which translates vaguely to "ensouled"

The scientists(A) all over the globe who are presently glued to A's newsfeeds are losing A's collective shit, a term which here means "generating several pages per second of speculation, predictions, ideas for experimental tests, mathematical models to be turned into computer models, et cetera". 

Also. Wait. Wait a voidpoking second. Meteion is here to ask for Firstplanet(B)'s help in teaching a bunch of immortals(C) more ways to have a good time so C don't suicide out of boredom? That's the most aesthetic mission ever! B have so many ways to have a good time! B will teach the Eitherians how to have a combinatorially exploding good time! They will export [acquiring new fun things to do faster than one can achieve them]* by the metaphorical shippingcontainerload!

* This is a single four-syllable word more literally translated as unspendable-fun-credit. They also have a corresponding term for unpayable-task-debt for when the same thing happens but one doesn't like it due to deadlines or the things not being fun.

hopelessly-entangled: ...they just decide to die when they're not sure what to do anymore???
space-ourselves: By the stars... We need to get these people some video games!
light-and-wonder: I'm going to loop some of the firstplanet people I've been talking to about Meteion and her creators into this chatroom
light-and-wonder sent an invite to a groupchat