The un-packaging of our returned present took time. Everything was carefully inspected and categorized, scans made, notes taken. Within a few days everything had been broken down into small packets and moved indoors. Studies continued on desks, tables, nothing harmful had been found.
“So far so good as far as the Oaxions on Freedom having cloaking technology,” I said to Ted Johnson.
“Figures,” he said without looking up from the row of small packets he was studying on his desk top. “If they had planned to use the technology to sneak bombs onto Jasper’s World or Earth they would not have returned this,” he replied waving at the items in front of him.
“So what did they send us?”
Well, Trenton, it looks like they sent us back everything we sent them, plus this,” he held up a thin stick of black plastic about a foot long, “everything else has been looked at, touched, and put back into the place it was in when we sent it.”
“Nothing gone?”
“Nothing.”
“This is new?” I started to reach for the thin, black, plastic strip.
“That stinks, by the way.”
I pulled back my hand and then reconsidered and picked up the plastic strip. I sniffed it, “Not so bad.”
“Try the other end.”
I sniffed the other end of the strip. My eyes watered, “smells like something rotten.” I sniffed the end I had smelled the first time, “this end, still not so bad.”
“That is all we have found that is not exactly what we sent them.”
“Weird.”
“Yes,” Ted turned his attention back to his work and I walked around the room looking at each person’s endeavors. A lot of computer clicking, a lot of “Humms” and “Ahs” being said but I’m a farmer not a scientist so I was pretty much out of place in the room. I smiled and nodded at the people who looked up at my passing but added little to their research. I stopped at a long table covered with thousands of samples of living and non-living items found on Earth and Jasper’s World. No one was working at this table so I started poking around. Bits of flowers of every kind, samples of vegetables like peas and corn and even common rocks and gem stones all still contained in the glass vials they were sent in. I picked up a vial that was labeled “uncut diamond,” It looked like a glob of melted glass to me but it felt good to hold it. Something about it drew me to it and I had never been one to be impressed by precious stones. I set it down and the feeling passed. I picked up a vial labeled rose petals and caught a whiff of the smell of flowers. I brought the vial close to my nose and smelled it. A definite flower smell but not the smell of a rose. The smell was non-specific but definitely the smell of a flower. I picked up a vial labeled “dandelion flower” and sniffed the container. It had the same general flower smell. I started smelling each vial with some sort of flower in it, they all smelled the same. I picked up a vial labeled “wheat grass”. I knew what wheat grass smelled like; I had worked in and around it most of my life. The glass vial smelled in a general way like a grass but not like wheat grass. I started sniffing vials and rearranging them according to smell. I must has gone a little crazy with my sniffing because a group started to form around the long table covered with vials.
I pointed to a group of fifteen vials I had arranged, “this smell means flower,” I told the group. I pointed to another group of about fifteen vials I had arranged, “this smell means grass.” People started picking up vials and sniffing them. The smell did not decrease or become less specific after being handled by several people. Others around the table started to arrange vials.
First vails were arranged in general groups like rocks and dirt but then people in the group with more sensitive noses found subtile difference and added sub groups for metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary and sub groups of clays, sands, silts and peats. Before we stopped our frenzied search we had discovered over two hundred words of the Oaxion language. They spoke with smells. They had labeled each item we had sent them with a smell. The foot long thin black plastic stick was a message and we needed to identify every item they had labeled for us in order to read that message.
david blankenship 