Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh why is there an alien spaceship!!

The amount of transmissions being sent will spike and there will be a bunch of transmissions sent directly to her. Half of them are jokes and the other half are serious messages attempting to establish contact or ask why she's here or other messages of that nature, but almost all of them stop abruptly after around two and a half hours.

It does seem to be a world with a mature enough tech base to have good communications worldwide.

Cool! She can't actually understand the messages, of course, but she puts her AI to work on the translation project, and spins up another instance of it to work out the communication protocol they're using - she could do it herself, and may in fact do that later, if she gets bored, but the AI is faster - so by the time the messages cut off, she's already started transmitting a prime number sequence to the five most prolific message-senders.

None of the people respond because This Is Actually Serious Now.

Instead, a bunch of towers scattered all around the whole planet begin to transmit, and complete the prime number sequence. They go on until they reach the 144th prime number, and then stop for several minutes, and then transmit Fibonacci numbers.

She can do Fibbonachi numbers! And by the time they get to the 144th of that sequence, Bunny has a simple message ready for her to send.

"This is person-spaceship number 851*. I don't want danger for you. My engine is bad. I want to land and wait for help."

*1213 in base 12

Oh wow. That's...fast.

It takes several hours for a response to be forthcoming.

So. They've decided to let the very fast-learning aliens with a damaged spaceship land. But where?

There's a research outpost in a cold desert in the south of the Old World which has a very strong beacon. It sends, "Land here."

There are no other coordinated transmissions.

Meanwhile, Restem and a bunch of other people are put on express flights to Kirvir Desert Outpost.

She makes her way into the atmosphere and overflies the site at high altitude before coming in for a delicate landing.

She's smaller than they were probably expecting, being intended to house at most eight of a somewhat smaller species, and really only comfortable for four of them; her exterior is a shiny ceramic-like material with blue markings of unclear, perhaps decorative, purpose, and she doesn't have any windows, though she does have a number of greebles that are likely to be sensors of various sorts.

A few seconds after she lands, the hatch on her underside opens and a smaller machine with a viewscreen mounted at human head height trundles out; the hatch closes again once it's settled on the ground.

Restem personally prefers to get up close and personal but he thinks he should try and talk remotely first. They use the same encoding schema they've used thus far.

What is that? Presumably it's a machine? In any case they're going to continue their plan of talking remotely first. Not that that would protect them if the alien was hostile, but it's possible it might inadvertently hurt them. It hasn't been hostile thus far, at least.

"Welcome to the Imperium. This is Consul Restem Talset Meden. You may call me Restem. What is your name? What is the name of your state/country? We are interested in making diplomatic agreements. We are interested in trade. We are interested in interactions-of-mutual-gain."

"My ship name is XD-851. My personal name is Denika. My country's name is approximately America. I am not a diplomat and can't make diplomatic agreements. I can approximately trade. I am interested in interactions-of-mutual-gain." Her messages are slowly gaining tone of voice, in a fairly uncanny way if one thinks about it.

"Where is America?"

And Restem realizes that they haven't given out encoding schemas for images so he'll try to convey that now.

"I will teach you the way to transmit images over radio. This is a line. This is a circle. This is a square. This is red. This is blue. This is green..." It goes on for several minutes while he goes through image primitives while sending images corresponding to each, in the hope that Denika would be able to extrapolate the schema from the examples just as she did for language. 

The alternative would be to give a technical description of the encoding standard via voice but he thinks that's unnecessary. He's prepared for it, though!

She can work from examples! It takes maybe fifteen seconds once he's done transmitting for her to send back an image of the local night sky with one of the stars marked.

"This is Sol," she adds.

Okay. Yep. That sure is a spaceship from an alien civilization, who is claiming to have had an engine breakdown.

They've made internal prediction markets about the possibilities arising from this, running the gamut from "they're honest" and "this is a ploy to see what's valuable about us and learn about us so that they can use our stuff". They calculated what sort of benefits they might accrue from cooperating or trying to destroy the ship or some other action. They decided initially to let the ship land, though whether or not they should help, they're not sure yet.

"We would be interested to receive media and cultural products from you or from America." 

"I have media. Most of it needs language; can I have your language?"

In the meantime, she picks another radio frequency to transmit instrumental music on; she'll start with something modern that feels like it complements the prosody of the language Restem's been speaking.

"Yes." He transmits the Illustrated Standard Imperial Dictionary and the Standard Imperial Reference Grammar. The opening sections of each make it clear that Standard Imperial is a constructed language and is the lingua franca of the Imperium, and is the language used by the government.

They have drones listen to the instrumental music in case it's some sort of cognitohazard. They're tested on a standardized intelligence test battery before and after. No significant change.

Really what they're looking for is signs as to what type of culture America has, or at least the type of personality Denika has, to see whether they're friendly or capable of being negotiated with. 

Being able to speak to them properly will help a lot with that! She adds the books to the ongoing translation effort and continues the concert, playing a variety of instrumental music from all over the world and including a brief message about each piece when it finishes playing including the title, how old it is, and where it's from; she's trying to give them a representative sample, so there's not going to be enough similarities for them to draw many conclusions, besides the obvious one about how much Earth cultures vary.

On the main frequency, she thanks them for the books and explains, haltingly, that improving her translation abilities will take a little time, and then sends an image of Earth from space, a map of the world with the major countries labeled, a diagram of the Sol system, and a photo of a representative group of humans with the explanation "These are humans. I was a human but now I am a spaceship."

They're going to continue doing the "have the drones listen to the music first" thing, although the prediction markets have adjusted to say that it seems exceedingly unlikely that anything bad is going to happen if you listen to it. At some point you have to conclude the music is just music.

They are indeed surprised how varied Earth cultures are! Although they suppose they don't have a database to look through, and they've only had a few pieces relatively speaking, so they shouldn't update so much about that.

Huh. They multiple countries. Zmavliterdi also does, although the Imperium is by far the biggest state. The rest are mostly loose coalitions – not sophisticated countries at all. It does seem that the other countries which are not-America are also sophisticated countries.

"Please explain the life cycle of humans," Restem transmits, and he also sends a remna biology book which explains their life cycle.

They're eusocial, with a sterile caste and a fertile caste, called drones and Keepers respectively, and there is some dimorphism between the two, with the fertile caste being a little taller than the sterile caste. Keepers are hermaphroditic, and they are also oviparous, albeit a little weirdly, with offspring being gestated partway inside the uterus and then enclosed in an egg to finish developing outside the gestating parent.

Their forms are quite similar to humans, except they are hairless, and have shell-like plates on their head, covering what would be covered by a helmet, as well as on their shoulders. The plates exhibit a surprising amount of variety in coloration and shape. They also have six retractable tentacles emerging from their back, but they're used as sense organs, which are extended and retracted for olfaction akin to a snake's tongue, rather than manipulating appendages. Those are the most salient differences if Renika skims the book. It doesn't have a lot of detail because it seems like it's intended for children or teenagers? The language is simple, with virtually all technical words being explicated, and it richly illustrated.

Do humans become spaceships as part of their life cycle? Wow, they can't even imagine what that must feel like.

Humans reproduce similarly to Keepers, but split the reproductive roles between two types, called male and female; females are the ones who gestate the young, and give live birth to them; male humans are larger and stronger while females have better endurance and pain tolerance, and the two types are also treated somewhat differently culturally; XD-851 is female. Humans don't have anything like the sterile caste, and they're also shorter than keepers - she sends back one of the pictures of an adult keeper, edited to include labeled male and female humans of average height in the scene - and generally live about seven or eight dozen of the local years.

Most humans don't become spaceships; when a human is born too badly injured to live, they're sometimes installed in a machine to save them - she includes a picture of some of the other brains from her classes, a herd of wheeled eggs traversing the hallway between their classes - and then become a spaceship or city or space-city or factory when they become an adult.

There was a hypothesis that it was impossible for any species that suffered from senescence to attain to sapience, since intelligence is the sort of thing that takes time to pay off. It's falsified now! The biology book they sent earlier notably did not contain any information about aging or senescence.

Huh! That is so interesting. Also kind of horrifying...but they're suppressing that reaction because they're aliens. It would be surprising if there was nothing about them that was horrifying.

It takes a little while longer for them to respond.

"If you had the option to have been born without being injured and not become a spaceship, would you take that option?"

"I'm happy as a spaceship. Most humans are happy, too. I don't think one is better than the other."

Huh. They're going to lean heavily towards the option that she is indeed a person, and that trying to model her as a drone would be incorrect.

"Are you capable of communicating with Earth from here?"

"I can, yes. I haven't been able to get a diplomatic team assigned to us; that takes time, and this was unexpected. But I can get media to trade, or pass messages."

"Upon learning of our existence, what first steps do you think the governments of Earth will take?"

"They'll want to send diplomats - or have the diplomats speak to you via me, probably - and arrange trading and non-aggression agreements. But I don't expect them to be too excited; you're one of dozens of sapient species we know of."

That is very reassuring to hear!! Although they're not going to say that. At least not at this juncture. Being uninteresting is good! Having the attention of aliens with advanced technology is terrifying!

"We are very interested in trade and non-aggression agreements."

A pause for a few minutes while he talks to his advisors and people bet on prediction markets.

"What would you need to fix your broken engine."

"There's a part I need, that's being sent; it's going to take about half to two-thirds of a year for it to get here. Once that happens I'll need time to install it - maybe six or eight dozen days, or longer if I have trouble - or if I can train someone here to help me it'll go much faster."

Yes! Yes they would like to learn how spaceships work, yes!

"We are willing to help you train an engineer to install your part. What are the conditions like on Earth? What environmental conditions are necessary to sustain human life? We must know because the inside of the ship may be inhospitable to us."

She sends a summary of humans' environmental preferences; they tolerate cold and dry environments better, is the most marked difference, plus a few minor differences in what other extremes they tolerate. "But I'm equipped to simulate a variety of environments internally; I expect I'll be able to accommodate you in that way. The size difference may be a little more difficult."

"While we would be delighted to come aboard you, I do think it would be better for us to wait until diplomatic channels have been established between us and Earth. In any case I think the size difference would be much less of a problem if we are only entering to repair you." It feels...weird...to refer to her* like that but she is the ship, so.

"We are concerned about disease. You are from another world and it seems that humans and remna share many similarities. We would like to enter wearing clothing protecting against biohazards. We would not want to agree to help you only to find out that it would be harmful for us to try."

* Standard Imperial pronouns are based on the first sound or sounds of the referent's name plus a suffix and do not inflect based on gender, only on personhood. Pronouns have been translated into English for convenience. 

"I ran internal decontamination protocols before entering your atmosphere, but of course I won't object to you taking your own precautions. May I ask what you're effect you're expecting diplomatic contact to have?"

"We are most concerned with setting up treaties to forestall possible aggression between our civilizations. That is the main concern. We are also very interested in trade and research agreements but those are secondary priorities."

Some people are telling Restem that it may be good to try and befriend or make an alliance with Denika in some way such that she could be a contact or cultural interpreter, even if she says she isn't a diplomat.

"All right." She wouldn't generally bother with a formal treaty, but if they feel it's important it's likely to affect their behavior, and the smart move is not to take risks with her safety here. "I'll see if that can be expedited. Is there anything you'd be especially interested in trading for or researching?"

"We are most interested in technology, but we don't know enough about Earth to know what the people there are selling, and likewise you do not know enough about our world to know what there is to buy."

A pause.

"We have formally declared you as a state guest. We have procedures to handle remna delegates but not spaceship delegates – is there anything you think we could do to make you more comfortable? It is free and given as a gift to you and your civilization; we will tell you if what you are requesting is too costly. Do you eat? Usually there would be a parade and a dance involved, but I am not sure if you would find that entertaining."

"I don't eat in the usual sense; I would enjoy seeing a parade and dance, if that's your tradition, especially if you can bring my remote presence robot to them."

"Wonderful. Sadly we cannot organize one here and now – your arrival was a surprise, and this is a very remote location away from any military bases or cities.

Would you prefer to stay here or have your telepresence robot be brought places in the same manner as regular delegates? In either case, now that we have decided to bestow guest status upon you, I can have you be connected to the internet, if you would prefer that rather than us transmitting potentially relevant or interesting to you."

This is a risk they're taking, but if they're going to do diplomacy with Earth it's going to have to happen eventually. The prediction markets are giving good numbers, and letting them on the internet means Denika would probably trust the Imperium more, since she would able to verify information herself – there's a limit to how much you can fabricate and censor information on the fly. 

"I'd appreciate an internet connection, thank you. I think for the moment I'd prefer that my telepresence robot only be brought to specific events - it isn't really the same as being someplace myself, anyway. If you have a video streaming protocol, I can connect to your hardware anywhere you'd like to speak to me, and I can share that software if you don't have your own version yet. And of course, there's no need to rush the parade and dance."