When the extraneous lifeforms first arrived, the planet extended every welcome. They didn’t listen. The planet conjectured that they couldn’t. They were unlike the lifeforms the planet itself had brought forth, who listened attentively to its shifts, atoms, and seasons. The new arrivals brought patterns of stops and releases that moved the planet’s air; not unlike the growling, hissing, humming, and purring of the planet’s own inhabitants. The planet hypothesized: a specific recurring pattern of sound waves brought forth by the new arrivals carried specific meaning. It listened with its deserts’ sand, its flora’s leaves, and the ears of its own inhabitants. One such recurring pattern – “Tychium” – referred to a certain element of which the planet held deposits nestled in tender veins deep underneath its surface. “Tychium” was a “word”, which was a meaning-carrying movement of the planet’s air; and “words” made up a “language”, which was a versatile system of distributing meaning amongst those new arrivals, and the new arrivals referred to themselves as “people.” After the people’s primal shout on the planet’s surface – “Tychium!” – it took less than one revolution of the planet around its sun until more people arrived. With “machines” they crushed the planet’s surface, drilled down through the planet’s strata to get to the element they so needed. They caused the planet’s own creatures to scurry from their destroyed shelters and thus, to die. Some creatures needed to cause other creatures to die, to live. There was an equilibrium. Did the people need the planet’s “Tychium” to live? Yes, the planet concluded, if they had to cause death. Soon after the first drillings, yet more people arrived. They began blasting each other out of the planet’s stratosphere. Their machines crashed on the planet’s surface. Those crashes caused burns and compacted the planet’s soil and killed more of its creatures. After each impact, much quieter, the blood of the dying people trickled into the planet’s sand. Sometimes tears, too. By making their blood and their tears a part of itself, the planet got to know people well, over some revolutions of the planet around its sun during which the people forced a modest amount of Tychium out of the planet and spread an immodest amount of each other’s blood across its surface. When awake or in groups, the people shouted, one group asserting their superiority over another. When asleep or alone, they cried. When asleep, the people produced small electric currents called dreams. Those dreams were of fear and of love and of tender things they longed for. That’s how the planet knew that they were capable of caring. So, what were those creatures? Both, the planet thought, shouting and weeping creatures. “There is enough,” the planet whispered often during the first revolutions during which the people’s machines ripped tunnels into its surface and their blood trickled into its sand and their skeletons became part of the planet itself and its equilibrium of life and death was upset. “I will give freely,” the planet hummed, in vain, “There is enough. I can make more. Give me time. Let me.” None of the people attempted to understand. “This is pain,” the planet recognized, after it had witnessed many people experiencing the feeling, dreaming about it, screaming in agony because of it. “Stop fighting,” was its final plea. Its last resort was to fall silent and to rest. It withdrew its consciousness to try dreaming.
... The planet awoke, startled by an unusual sensation. “What is different?” the planet whispered. “What changed?” An echo, the people called it, when a sound wave bounced back. Was it an echo, the planet thought, of its own vague dreams that had awakened it? The planet was not accustomed to focusing its attention on one specific change, on one specific creature. What was that unusual sensation that had caused it to awaken? It scanned its hot desert sands to locate the sensation. It enlisted its coarse grains to explore. It listened to the flat roots of its succulents and to the rumors spread amongst its creatures. There. The planet’s consciousness shivered up from the ground, assessed one of the people’s buildings, focused more intently and found the source of the unusual sensation, and people near it. “Hello?” A person had used their meaning conveyance system, moving the planet’s air. “There isn’t scarcity,” the planet whispered. “I will give freely.” “Holy shit! Sorrel! Wake up, come on, wake up, you gotta see this.” “Fucking hell, Sy…” “In the lab, come on.” The person referred to as Sorrel exchanged their dream current for their waking current. The person referred to as Sy exuded a chemical the people called adrenaline. Up from its ground, the planet noted Sy’s electrical impulses. The people had sometimes called this specific pattern of electricity and chemicals inside their organisms ‘I am so excited’. “What the fuck is that, Sy…? Did you build that thing on company money?” “I can’t hear you right now, Sorrel, my processor is in there.” “What is it?” The person named Sorrel caused themselves a small pain to see whether they were still dreaming. “Ever since we got here,” the person named Sy said, “I’ve been hearing things. I can hear electricity, that’s normal, it’s an implant-thing. But when I got here… there’s something here, on the planet. A pattern. I think we have to call someone, Sorrel. We have to invoke the Sentients Act. I can hear the planet dreaming. And with this machine I can prove it.” “Crap. Are you high?” “Say that again?” “Are you high?” “Come on, not while on a job!” The person named Sy moved the air in short, sweet bursts. Laughter. “I got these impressions. I swear. Patterns. Would venture to say language. So I built this. It’s a translator. It has my processor inside it, tweaked it a little. It puts out the patterns visually. Watch this: Hello, excuse me, are you there?” Both people – Sy and Sorrel – stayed still and silent. So did the planet. “Can you talk to me again?” the person named Sy said. “I want to learn your language.” So the planet delivered its most urgent message which it hadn’t forgotten, not even while dreaming. “Stop killing each other,” it said and Sy and Sorrel stirred. “You can fit into my equilibrium, but please don’t bring this much death. There isn’t scarcity. Stop killing each other, please. Stop killing me.” “There! That pattern repeated. Holy shit, Sy, what did you do?” “Not just a pretty chemical engineer, huh?” “Are you there?” the person named Sorrel asked. “Yes.” “Are you aware?” the person named Sy asked. The person named Sorrel and the person named Sy each quickened the rate at which they drew the planet’s air into their lungs. “Yes.” “Are you a machine?” “No.” “Are you a person?” “No.” “Are you… the planet?” “Yes.” The person named Sorrel and the person named Sy grasped each other’s appendages. Their sweat mixed and evaporated jointly into the planet’s air. “Call someone, Sorrel, do it now! Tell them I am invoking the Sentients Act. We’ve been drilling into a fucking sentient!” the person named Sy shouted, moving the air around them at a large amplitude. The person named Sorrel reacted by sending stomping shivers into the ground as they began to scurry fast. The person named Sy drew the planet’s air into their lungs, then returned a quick puff of nitrogen and oxygen and carbon dioxide. “Hello.” “Hello,” the planet repeated back in its own language, relieved and hopeful – two more of those words it had learned from the shouting and weeping creatures.