Yet We Keep Trying and the Tapes Rolling (Part One)

 "Hey Thomas, I had an idea. Since, we've set a pattern of never quite finishing a line of inquiry, lets try a new technique."
"Have you ask the questions?"
"Yeah - NO! Neither you nor anything else is going to get me closer than six meters from one of those things - sixty if I'm unarmed."
"For shame Diego. This kind of racism is why we can't get along."
"And the EMP, and the orbital bombardment, and the reanimates..."
"You're Not making me more receptive to your new approach."
"Haven't made it yet. Lets go question and answer, tit for tat. Let it... Her - have a chance to inquire about us and human society. Observe what they want to know, questions can be as revealing as answers."
Hobbes paused a moment. "My god Diego, that's brilliant! You have any specific questions you want to use?"
"Some"

***

"So what do citizens eat?"

"Not EE-nuf. In my opin-ion. Supp-osed to be mostly in-sects, some plant matter and small-er animals. Farms contain plants well EE-nuf. But insects might EE-scape - leaders don't want that. So main course is only small port-ion brought from ships. "

"Can you eat terrestrial food?"

"Not supposed to, but can. Tastes fun-ny, often get a little sick - but not bad. Potato chips are very good."

"I don't think Diego wants to share his, sorry. Now what question do you have for us?"

"What can you tell me about your selves? How did you start a radio sta-tion?"

"I was born January 28, 1997, making me just over 58 years old. I'm the youngest of three children - my older sisters are Tabitha and Terry. I studied medicine in Chicago, though my internship was at the ABERHAM research facility down south because my father had family there. I originally worked with nano-treatments, but moved on to neonatal care and obstetrics since I felt that was real medicine rather than telling machines what to do while watching a screen. My in demand specialty granted me the funds for numerous hobbies and classic analog radio happened to be one of them. Luck or fate, I stumbled across this place by chance, and felt it was a more direct way to help people. I could work with one mother at a time, or give advice and solace to everyone in a few hundred miles. As mixed up as lives are now, people still know they can wake up to classical music. Diego?"
"I was born in Southern Mexico, April 26 2006. I have held numerous jobs from from waiting tables, working a motor taxi, serving in the national guard, and doing voice acting for cartoons - the last being why I know so much about recording equipment."
"Can you demonstrate any voices?"
"I am quite positive you did not watch Spanish Saturday morning cartoons, and reasonably sure the alien didn't either. You wouldn't recognize anything. So, no."

"Are you all ways so un-helpful?"

"I don't need aliens getting on my case. I did not get along with my father or the company he kept. He was a criminal, and I walked away from an illegally amassed fortune because of my beliefs. My life is mine, and I don't like talking about the past."

"I under stand, I am sorry. What would you prefer to speak of?"

"What did I want to ask, um, alien families - no, not right now, what you eat, how do you pilot that thing, who programs that vocorder, whats inside those ships... ehh, the vocorder question is probably the easiest, and probably keep this record of twenty minutes without a loud screech going. So who programs them and how do you learn - the quality has gotten a lot better since our first interview."

"They're programed by a bunch of lazy basterds - that is correct english word? 

"Depending on what you want to say - yes."

"We have five years to commun-icate with humans, and they only adjust the thing now? We can listen to some trans-missions, have some friends like you, have tried to decipher computer EE-ntries. Prob-ably the way you would try to learn about us."

"Who else is helping you?" asked hobbes.

"I don't know - we still communicate with each other and exchange some information - mostly. So we get this from citizens across the world. A few don't help - those near spring-field are quite anti-human."

"You have no idea how many "Springfields" we have could you be more specfic?"

"Near the big north-south river"

"That could be a problem - between Chicago and the Lincoln Towers megastructure complex. Not much we can do from this far west though."

"So what do you plan for the future"

"For now", began Diego, "take a break and continue this session. Honestly, I don't have too much more planned than that."