What we choose to explain to the heptapods is how the bicycle-sharing system works. It is a commonly used means of transportation in our daily life, which the heptapods may never experience. Generally speaking, it’s a shared transport service where bicycles are available for shared use by individuals for a short-term at low or zero cost. It’s getting popular in the human world mainly because it provides a sustainable alternative for short-distance trips and a solution to “last mile problem”. This is somehow difficult for heptapods to understand as they may have their unique means of transportation.
So above we collect a few images to make it clearer for heptapods so that they can get a basic understanding of our bicycle-sharing system. From the reading “Story of Your Life”, Ted Chiang mentions that in heptapods’ language system, a noun is identified as subject or object based on the orientation of its logogram relative to that of the verb(13) and sentences are not in fixed pattern but actually seemed to be whatever number of semagrams a heptapod wanted to join together(16). In our image, we communicate this by creating the verb “start” in one orientation and nouns such as “here” and “destination” in another orientation. In the bottom of the image where the stick figure speaks, the sentences are written with no spaces between the words and opposite orientations. On the right side of the image, we expressed our understanding of the intent of bike sharing, which is the “last mile problem”. By making a comparison between walking and riding an easily accessible shared bike, we are trying to show that bikes help us move faster in short distances. Meanwhile, we try to imitate the heptapods’ writing system so we write continuous characters in different orientations to show the movement in a sensible way. In the middle image, by contrast, we have different bicycle spots on the whole earth. The first image introduces the use of bikes and when it comes to the middle image, we try to show the special point of sharing by exhibiting the bike symbol in different parts of the earth. An image of earth may be easier for them to understand as they come to earth from somewhere in outer space so they should have a glimpse of the whole earth before landing. These different spots on earth show the common application of the bike sharing system in different countries of earth. On the left corner we have another image to explain how we can access a shared bike. It’s clear to see that someone is using a phone, which would be possibly considered as a man made tool by heptapods, to scan the QR code on that bike. This action differs from using our own bikes so it can be better for heptapods to understand the concept of bike sharing. In general, we want to exhibit the great invention of this bicycle-sharing system to heptapods and give them a general idea of how we humans travel between different spots, through which they can understand more about our daily life.
