Waiting for the Riddlers

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Humans and Riddlers may have misunderstood each other from the first moment of contact. That is one conclusion of this report. It is also, if I may be allowed to interpolate a personal statement as the official head of Earth’s delegation, our probable best hope.

The problem was partly one of expectations. Mile-long spaceships; vast flotillas, girdling Earth in their thousands and bristling with weapons; subtle ethereal messages, drifting in as radio signals from the stars and requiring painstaking decoding after their detection.

Sorry; none of the above. No one, in all the millions of words written about first contact, had told us to be ready for a single, stubby vessel. No one had told us to look for four fronded purple plants sitting in garbage cans of dark soil.

Even after the first shock, we didn’t do well. How was our delegation to know that the plants were no more than a habitation, and the Riddlers themselves comprised a commensal intelligent multi-cell mold that lived among the roots?

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