Xenoverse origins / R-065
Astrid XenoOrigin story
Astrid Xeno: An Unnamed Thing
A handler hungry for discovery credit must surrender the right to name a specimen whose shape follows whatever others confidently call it.
Read the origin ↓
Astrid Xeno wrote harmless on the specimen's label. The creature relaxed into a translucent loop, drifting gently through its green-lit chamber.
Astrid's specimen changes with each label, making a prestigious naming ceremony the worst possible place to discover uncertainty.
Then a visiting assessor called it magnificent.
The loop grew antlers. They passed through the chamber's glass without breaking it, reached across the observation desk and hung the assessor's hat neatly above his head. Astrid crossed out harmless before anyone could quote her.
I can tell you what it did. I can't tell you what it is.
From the dossier
Prologue — Credit Where Credit Is Due
The specimen had arrived without a name, which made it either an opportunity or a purchasing error. Astrid preferred the first explanation. As Alien Specimen Handler at the Space outpost, she spent most shifts caring for discoveries credited to people who had never cleaned a chamber.
The Goblin Council knew her work. Its scientific committee sent personal notes whenever a visitor required an impressive sight before lunch. Astrid knew which members actually looked at the creatures and which looked for a suitable place to attach their own names.
This time she wanted the credit.
Her observation book contained careful drawings of loops, branching structures and a floating arrangement that resembled folded hands. She had been calling these developmental stages. The assessor's remark suggested they might be responses.
She tested the idea privately. When she called the creature small, it contracted. When she called it symmetrical, it acquired too many identical sides. When she called it quiet, the room lost every sound except her own breathing.
She stopped speaking.
The naming ceremony was scheduled for the following shift. The committee intended to honour Astrid's contribution by allowing her to read the description before the senior councillor announced the official name.
Her assistant pointed out that reading a description might be the same as writing instructions.
Astrid said the creature needed a stable identity.
“Does it,” he asked, “or does the ceremony?”
She closed the observation book. It was a fair question, and she found herself disliking him for asking it before she had received any applause.
Act 1
A Cabinet of Confident Errors
Act I — A Cabinet of Confident Errors
Astrid tried technical language. The creature became technically impossible. She tried vague language. It dispersed into an irritating number of possible shapes. She tried describing only what she could directly observe, but even floating caused the chamber to rise from its supports.
The words did not function as commands exactly. They seemed to offer possibilities the specimen was eager to try. Confidence mattered more than accuracy. A casual perhaps produced a brief shimmer; a firm declaration remade the chamber's occupant.
Astrid could see why the committee wanted it. A creature capable of becoming an official description was almost a councillor's dream employee.
She wrote a new description consisting of modest, provisional observations. Then she imagined reading it beneath the ceremonial lights while the committee whispered about her uncertainty.
She tore up the page.
Instead, she settled on adaptive. It sounded impressive and included almost anything that might happen. When she tested it, the specimen borrowed the room's arrangement: table-shaped limbs, lamp-shaped feelers, a central hollow exactly the size of Astrid's chair.
Her assistant stepped away.
“It can become a place for you.”
Astrid studied the hollow. It was tempting to consider this recognition, even affection. The specimen had finally included her in its design.
She wrote responsive beneath adaptive.
At once, the chair-shaped space tilted toward her. All the lamp-feelers glowed. The chamber waited for another opinion.
Astrid realised she had not steadied the creature. She had made it better at seeking the next description. Her carefully selected word had turned uncertainty into appetite.
The ceremony invitation arrived with her name printed correctly and prominently. She held it in one gloved hand while the other rested against the glass.
Inside, the creature formed a perfect little invitation of its own, blank except for an empty place where a name ought to go.
Act 2
The Committee Sees Potential
Act II — The Committee Sees Potential
The councillors entered talking. Before Astrid could stop them, the specimen became elegant, rare, valuable and unsettling in rapid succession. Every compliment left a feature behind. Its beautiful surface acquired too many mouths. Its rare outline occupied several positions at once.
The assessor pronounced it an undeniable triumph.
The creature expanded beyond the visible chamber.
Astrid asked everyone to stop describing it. A councillor said that describing discoveries was a fundamental duty of scientific governance. Another called the situation intolerable. The chamber became very difficult to remain near.
Her assistant covered the ceremonial lectern's inscription with a sheet. Astrid thanked him with a gesture; she no longer trusted praise spoken aloud.
The specimen reached toward its own blank invitation. Its mouths opened without sound. For the first time, Astrid considered that it might not be seeking a name at all. Perhaps it was repeating the only interaction they offered.
She had been watching for the creature's response to her. She had not allowed an interval in which it could begin.
Astrid removed her prepared description from the lectern and put it away. “I can tell you what it did. I can't tell you what it is.” She told the committee what she knew: the changes followed confident statements. She did not know why. She did not know whether the specimen understood the social value of the labels it accepted.
A councillor asked what discovery she was claiming, then.
“An observation.”
“That seems a poor foundation for a ceremony.”
“It was a good foundation for the work before we scheduled one.”
She turned the chamber's little display card face down. The gesture did not erase the creature's accumulated shapes, but it stopped her contributing another.
Then she waited through the uncomfortable silence her own ambition had spent the previous shift trying to avoid.
Something inside the mass made a gentle knocking sound. It was not an imitation of any noise they had made.
Act 3
The Shape of a Question
Act III — The Shape of a Question
Astrid answered the knock with a knock. The specimen paused. It rearranged one mouth into a small window, then closed the window and knocked again.
She did not call the exchange clever.
A loop emerged from the surrounding features. It touched the face-down card, lifted it and presented the blank reverse. Astrid placed a pencil beside the glass, uncertain whether the gesture would mean anything.
The creature ignored the pencil. Instead, it pushed a drop of green light through the glass. The drop settled on the card and moved in a pattern she could not repeat. Wherever it passed, the accumulated shapes inside the chamber loosened.
The antlers vanished. The chair hollow closed. Magnificence left without being thanked.
At last a small, unfamiliar structure remained. It had no obvious front and no feature Astrid wanted to compare to something already catalogued. It was busy moving its light across the card.
The councillors asked whether the markings constituted an official name. Astrid said she did not know.
This time she found the answer useful.
The ceremony ended without a naming. The committee took its commemorative cloth and left her with the specimen, an unfinished report and a much less impressive claim to recognition. Her assistant offered to help transcribe the light patterns. She asked him to record his own observations separately before they compared them.
It would take longer. Their accounts might disagree. She wanted both.
During the next quiet shift, the specimen produced another card. The green markings changed whenever Astrid approached, becoming more complex when she withdrew.
She suspected it was describing her.
The possibility was flattering until her gloves began turning translucent at the fingertips. She stepped back. Her hands became ordinary again.
Astrid sat outside the chamber with a blank card of her own. Somewhere in the unfamiliar markings, the creature might be offering her a name.
She intended to learn how to decline before she learned how to answer.
The specimen beyond the label
The Space outpost treats discovery as something that can be exhibited, named and assigned prestige. Astrid's handling work draws her close enough to an unfamiliar creature to notice how little a confident classification necessarily explains.