"Boomer."
"Yeah?"
He shifted in his position to look over at me. It was early afternoon, just after lunch. We were still on door duty, with myself also playing E-Lizabeth minder.
"What's a lizabeth?"
His brow scrunched up.
"A lizabeth?"
"Yes. Is it like mail?"
"What? I don't understand Corporal. Where did you hear 'Lizabeth'?"
"Her name," I said, pointed at E-Lizabeth. "E-lizabeth, just like E-mail."
They still had paper messages here (or the part that isn't where the those that are still human live). I was both impressed at its resiliency and puzzled why they'd hung on to it so long after the electronic mail came around. Like everything they encountered in their host culture, it had been embraced rather than discarded by the monsters.
"Oh!" Boomer said. "No, nothing like that at all. E-"
"What is he saying?" E-Lizabeth said.
I looked up. She was glaring at me from where she was scrubbing one of the pots from supper. When there was nothing but water splashing in the sink I looked back at Boomer, who was staring at her like a 'deer'(apparently a really tasty, large animal with an affinity for traffic) in the 'headlights'(the directional lights of a seed truck, maybe other land vehicles too). The others seemed to be politely ignoring us with the exception of Sven, who was quietly settling into his chair with the afternoon's book. His smile and eyes that no longer panned back and forth told me his attention was on his ears, not the paper in front of him.
"Well?" she said.
Boomer looked at me.
"Um, err..."
"You were translating just fine, earlier. Don't play dumb."
"Uh-"
"Fine, what are you saying about me, fuzzbritches? Don't play dumb, I know my name, even when one of you says it."
"I want to know what a Lizabeth is," I said.
She glared.
"You need to learn how to speak english."
"You need to learn how to understand Ernrinu."
She growled.
"I-"
"You can tell her Boomer," I said. "Teasing her like this won't help anything."
"He wants to know what a Lizabeth is," Boomer said. "He was asking if it was like mail because of e-mail and E-lizabeth."
"Oh ha ha. Really funn-"
"Seriously!" Boomer said. "I swear half the time we're talking around you people it's me explaining to them what words mean and what is going on and why humans doing this or that, and so on!"
She rolled her eyes.
"Riiiiight."
"They still think Samantha's name is Dammit, E-lizabeth."
Whoa, her name is what?!
"Her name is not Dammit?!" I said.
"No," Boomer said, "It's not."
"Why the hell have you let us call her Dammit this long? What's wrong with you?"
He broke into a grin.
"It was too funny to stop! There are so many times I thought I was going to crack up when you were talking about her!"
He started laughing. John, Sidney, Irene, and Francine were all smiling or fighting a loosing battle against laughing themselves. Oh man. It only got worse when I put Dammit together with damn it. I'm never going to live this down, I already know it. They're going to give me spoiled sausage about this until I'm dead and gone.
"Wait," E-Lizabeth said. "You're serious?"
"Do you think he'd be laughing if he wasn't?" I said, frowning.
If I was this embarrassed then Crunch was going to be livid. Not my problem though. I'd bring it up later, when the three of us were on patrol alone. She wouldn't have to hold back on him then. E-Lizabeth looked at Boomer.
"What did he-"
Boomer waved her off, getting his laughing under control.
"I'm serious, I'm serious. He's embarrassed by it, that's all."
"Samantha," I said.
He nodded.
"Right," E-Lizabeth said. "Samantha. Not damn it."
I sighed.
"Ok then, so what is your real name?"
"He wants to know what your name is," Boomer repeated.
"E-Lizabeth." She said. "It's one word, not two. Not a letter and word. Just one word: Elizabeth."
"Thank you."
"He says 'thank you,' " Boomer said.
She paused, having turned back to the dishes, and looked at me.
"You're welcome," she said. "Thank you for asking me."
Streetcars 5: E-Liz
An E-lizabeth is a lot like an E-mail, right? Why is everybody laughing....
7 years ago
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I thought they were at a WWI tech level? What's this about e-mail?
B) What I do know greatly limits what they'd understand about alien technology. Keep in mind that industrial fertilizer had just been invented, and chemistry was becoming a serious field of research (our modern periodic table of elements wasn't even close to what it looks like now). Science fiction was at it's infancy still, meaning the imagination wasn't really cutting loose yet (thought it was about to).
It would have been really cool to keep going with the theme, but I would either need to do a lot more research or change the humans trying to understand alien weaponry without knowing more than very basic chemistry. I need them to at least have a foothold, not wondering what this stuff called "plastic" is. So I've made a bit of a compromise, meaning the world is close to modern day, but the area where the free humans live is at a WWI tech level, if the area was bombed out, that is. I probably should clarified that sooner...
There was a really cool sounding essay I read about years ago. From what I recall it was written in the 1940's and speculated about a rocket from that time period being launched back to the 1920's. The greatest minds of the previous era couldn't overcome even twenty years difference in technology. I remember specifically something about electronic components that seemed to be made out of a pure material, but all efforts to replicate them failed. It was actually the minute impurities in the material that made them function, impurities that 1920's chemistry wasn't sophisticated enough to pick up on.
And this is without any species barrier.