Incandescence

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“Are you a child of DNA?”

Rakesh was affronted; if he’d considered this to be information that any stranger wandering by had a right to know, it would have been included in his précis. After a moment’s reflection, though, his indignation gave way to curiosity. The stranger was either being deliberately offensive, or had a very good reason for asking. Either way, this was the most interesting thing that had happened to him all day.

“Why do you wish to know?” he replied. The stranger’s own précis contained extensive details of its ancestry and sensory modalities, but Rakesh wasn’t in the mood to acquire the necessary skills to apprehend it on its own terms. By default, he was already perceiving it as human-shaped, and hearing it speak in his own native tongue. Now, in place of its declared chemosensory label, he assigned it a simple phonetic name chosen at random: Lahl.

Before Lahl could reply, Viya had risen to her feet beside Rakesh and gestured toward an empty spot on the annular bench that surrounded their table. “Please join us,” she said.

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