COTI II: The Squich
Artwork by Joel Hagen
CONTACT II/84
From "The Evolution of COTI: A Personal Memoir"
by Jim Funaro © 1994
(for the full version, push the "History of CONTACT"
button on the Home page.)
CONTACT II was memorable for the number of legends created there ...
One example: This year's alien, the Squich (imagine a cross between
a squid and an ostrich, if you can), was built by Joel Hagen and previewed
by the teams the night before the conference opened. Responding to some
problems experienced the previous season, we had decided to see how it would
work to let the planet-builders among us work backward from the alien, the
culture builders work forward from it, and the life form builders work around
it. After our introductory briefing, we all retired to the hotel bar for
the serious discussion.
One hot topic was the Squich's nervous system. The bipedal alien had
long, triple-jointed hind legs, which, when extended, scissored out to more
than twice the length of the body pod. Jerry Pournelle argued that locating
the brain in the body would place it too far away to allow effectively fast
nervous transmission to the hooves, which were critical not only for locomotion
but also for communication (they drummed their feet and danced messages).
One of [Funaro's] students, no youngster, a gentle man who had been a computer
programmer since the days of Univac, disagreed. After the decibel level
of the voices rose to three figures, he brought his foot down on Pournelle's
instep. As Jerry leaped up, the student said reasonably, "See. It doesn't
take that long." Pournelle, never at a loss, grabbed a chair, held
it out in front of him like a lion trainer, turned to me and yelled, "Funaro,
call off your dog!"
We also had a remarkable demonstration of the value of role playing,
though in this case it was rehearsed. Like last year, our master storyteller,
Ruthmarie Argüello-Sheehan, had created a myth of the contact, to follow
the final session and memorialize the story. The relationship that had developed
between human and alien, though asymmetrical, was close and loyal, almost
symbiotic. Her tale, with dancers, was exceptionally touching, depicting
the parting of the two species after many years of companionship, and we
were all quite moved. As an index of how powerfully affected they had been
by the three-day experience, the audience, at the end of the performance,
spontaneously stamped rather than clapped their applause.
© 1997,1998,1999,2000 CONTACT: Cultures of the Imagination,
Inc. All Rights Reserved.
