This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Maxton1811 on 2026-02-20 15:18:29+00:00.
Dr. Claire Bouchard, Canadian Astrobiologist
January 15th, 2149
After what must have been ten minutes of deliberation, it was eventually agreed that Yue Chen, a Chinese biophysicist, would get the first look. Watching as she peered into the microscope and began adjusting settings, I felt a wave of simultaneous relief and jealousy overwhelm me. Being the first human to look upon alien ‘cells’ up close would be an incredible honor, sure, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for that kind of spotlight. Instead, I was more than happy to settle for fifth.
It was agreed upon that we’d each take five minutes to observe the crystocytes and take notes. Then, once all thirteen of us had gotten a turn, we’d compare our notes. In a way, it reminded me of high school—like this was a project we were all participating in. Meanwhile, Ebsu remained at the ready to answer any questions we had, though even through the species barrier of body language, I could tell they were itching to observe the cells we’d given them.
One by one, big name biologists from around the world took turns observing the Gifrid cells. With each person who stepped up to look at the cells, my excitement and anxiety mutually climbed until, as I approached the box and leaned in, my hands were trembling.
Peering into the electron microscope, at first I found myself confused as to what I was looking at. The crystocyte didn’t look like any unit of life I’d ever seen. Cells on Earth had a certain liquidity to them—like tiny chemical sacks. The first thing it noticed was its shape: polyhedral and rigid like one of those dice used in tabletop games. Small holes permeated the surface of each face, leading into a massive network of solid channels that branched like plumbing throughout the crystocyte, suspended in a gel-like substance.
Zooming in closer to the crystocytes internal mechanisms, I searched within for anything even vaguely reminiscent of Earth life. The chemical processes were totally alien, yet carried an almost eerie resemblance to things I’ve seen before—like a familiar story told in a language I only understood bits and pieces of. Lithium channels carried electrical charge throughout the cell, coordinating processes with uncanny precision.
The real show-stopper, however, was the crystocyte’s nucleus analogue. It looked like what would happen if evolution had been tasked with designing a circuit board. Microscopic etchings created pathways that likely served the same purpose as our DNA did—instructions for how their bodies were supposed to work.
My notes had never been known to be pretty, but with how frantically I was jotting these ones down, they were downright illegible even to myself. If I hadn’t known what I was writing where, I wouldn’t have been able to read it back again.
My time ended much faster than I thought it would, which I suppose makes sense given how enthralled I was by this first look at an alternative biochemistry. Stepping aside for the next person, I approached Ebsu and spoke up in a cautious, respectfully excited tone. “Your cells are amazing…” I breathed before realizing how strange it was to complement someone on something like that.
“Crystocytes? Hardly,” Ebsu chittered in reply, watching as the next human scientist approached the box and peered into the microscope. “They’re rather standard among life in our galaxy. I am terribly curious how the biology of this planet differs due to its carbon base.”
Standing beside the alien, I couldn’t help but find my thoughts drifting momentarily away from scientific awe and more toward personal curiosity. Very few humans had had the pleasure of speaking one-on-one to an alien being. I’d read about the Gifrid from the dossiers, but this was an opportunity to understand not only their biology, but who they were as a people. “I hope you don’t mind me asking some personal questions: just out of curiosity.” I began.
“What’s there really to know about me?” Ebsu asked rhetorically. “I’m just a xenobiologist. I assure you I’m not that interesting.”
“You’re an alien!” I replied. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve spoken to all year at least. Come on: tell me about yourself.”
For a moment, the Gifrid remained stone still, perhaps hesitating—or maybe just thinking about what to say. “Alright. If you must know. I am three hundred and eighty six years old. I matured at a shardling growth center on the Gifrid capital planet, Yroc.”
“A ‘growth center’?” I inquired, unsure of the term.
“We Gifrid reproduce asexually,” Ebsu explained, reiterating a fact I had previously read from the Gifrid dossier. “Every hundred years or so, our bodies grow small crystal cysts that fall off and over the course of another year develop into Gifrid shardlings. Raising shardlings is considered a community endeavor, with dedicated caretakers working at growth centers to raise and educate them. At around thirty, once they’ve received baseline education, Gifrid take an aptitude test to determine what job they’d be good at. They then pick from the top six options and enter an apprenticeship that usually lasts another twenty to fifty years.”
I nodded along to Ebsu’s explanation, thoroughly enthralled by the sheer alienness of it. My mind raced with notions of how this structure could have come to be evolutionarily speaking. “Does the Gifrid ‘parent’ play any role beyond just producing the shardling?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” Ebsu continued unemotionally. “We don’t view biological heritage as quite so important. Some eccentric colony lords take a more active role, but it’s not common.”
“Fascinating…” I murmured. From a human perspective, it ironically seemed rather cold: no parents, just state-assigned caretakers. Then again, if reproduction wasn’t a choice for the Gifrid, it made some amount of sense that they would nationalize childcare as they did.
Returning to the other scientists to compare our notes, a few things had stuck out to just about everyone. “The membrane, if you could call it that, isn’t semi-permeable like ours,” began Chen, drawing up a shockingly-accurate diagram. “They have holes that nutrients can get in through.”
We spent the next half-hour comparing notes and speculating as Ebsu looked on, occasionally chiming in to offer an explanation as to how the Gifrid believed something in their biology had come to be. The biggest sticking point for us was their DNA equivalent relying on ion channels like a biological circuit board—it seemed dramatically more stable than DNA, but also likely mutated more slowly. This explained the Gifrid’s long lifespans and apparent immunity to cancers, but also brought to mind questions regarding how they’d managed to evolve in any reasonable amount of time. It was something I wanted to ask Ebsu about later, but unfortunately he returned to their ship before I got the opportunity.
Once our initial observations of the crystocyte concluded, the container was spirited away by UN staff to be safely transported to a joint lab for further analysis.