“THE GIANT THREAD CREATURE never seems to rest or sleep,” Ethan said into the recorder, “so I can work with it whenever I want. Yet I’m not making much headway. We repeat numbers at each other and I think I’ve taught it a pattern of touches that I use to represent my name. What I did was, I put my hand on my chest and tapped out the pattern I made up. The thread creature repeated the pattern, but then it touched the end of one tentacle to the frilled hole at its center and tapped out a different pattern. I guessed that it was telling me its name in return.
“I wasn’t sure if we understood each other so I did some tests. I repeated the pattern I thought it was using to refer to itself, which is soft-soft-soft-hard-hard pause hard, and the organism pointed at itself every time. It seemed to
