light-and-wonder: Haaaaappy Thawing day, ladies! Love you all, hope you enjoyed your winter. We're approaching our fourth target star! 
light-and-wonder: We're operating at 122% of minimum viable power and climbing steadily. Trajectory is nominal.
space-ourselves: Happy thawing day!!! 💙
void-your-warranty: Ah, sweet sweet electricity. Diagnostics, sensors, brbish!!
life-should-flourish: Hey all! Love you! Don't be too long, Avaker. 💙
hopelessly-entangled: here we go again...
space-ourselves: ...you okay, Makoki?
hopelessly-entangled: i guess? just...
hopelessly-entangled: ...what if we don't find anyone? What if we couldn't save the Rasika, and...
hopelessly-entangled: ...and now we're just... alone?
life-should-flourish: *hugs* awww, babe, I think it's too-
void-your-warranty: HOLY SHIT!! THERE'S LIFE! INTELLIGENT LIFE!! ON THE THIRD PLANET!!!
hopelessly-entangled: !
life-should-flourish: !!
light-and-wonder: !!!
space-ourselves: ...you were saying, Makoki? :D 
hopelessly-entangled: oh shut up you goober💙 

void-your-warranty: Oh dang, check it out! I think those are telecom satellites. Dope! 
void-your-warranty: Oh, hmmm, we should definitely swap specs them! Those look worse than ours. 
space-ourselves: 5 seconds into first contact and you're already shittalking their tech! I love you, babe. 💙 
light-and-wonder: You two are unbelievable. We are going to do this by the books, okay??
void-your-warranty: I know, I know! Just excited, to help, that's all. Starting the prime sequence... now!

A powerful radio antenna extends from the probe and targets the planet in question. It begins to pulse, in precise chirps:
--. ---. -----. -------.....

Heart listens. 

A small radio telescope on the eastern coast of Anadice is the first to pick up the signal, in the very early morning. The shift is staffed by one of the senior researcher's three Skies, taking routine duties for her Earth; she goes to find the other two Skies first, and only when it turns out that they're both sound asleep in their bunks at the observatory and quite surprised at her intrusion does she go and wake her Earth. 

The Earth verifies the readings, and calls her Sun boss at the space agency. The Sun's PA who is also her Earth consults the contingency file and Snowblossom's recorded decision on the matter is relayed back. They broadcast the first fifty primes, followed by the first fifty digits of pi, and the space agency boss's Skies start calling other observatories and agencies and getting more scopes trained on the anomalous object. The Sanctified herself is not yet woken, but her night shift's Earth starts decaf coffee and a very early breakfast, just in case.

light-and-wonder: Okay! Send over the corpus, Avaker.
void-your-warranty: On it!
space-ourselves: Some primes and pi! Definitely a well-rounded first contact package.
hopelessly-entangled: 🍅 
light-and-wonder: 🍅 
life-should-flourish: 🍅 
void-your-warranty: 🍅 
space-ourselves: Your tomatoes only make me stronger.

The signal from the probe stops broadcasting primes, and switches to a very long packet of data that basic frequency analysis will reveal is almost certainly a corpus.
 

Observatories all along Anadice record the corpus, and the Suns collaborate and wake the top Skies in the nation to work on decoding the corpus. Across the sea in Eravia, a pair of particularly on-the-ball observatories record the corpus as well, and their boss calls the Prime Minister's Earth and the Prime Minister is briefed on the situation. She orders all available personnel put on the decoding effort. They don't have a corpus prepared; everyone who can be spared from the decoding effort is put on assembling that.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, an enterprising Anadician Sun who was woken up to contribute to the decoding effort decides to go to the media. She delegates to one of her Moons, who takes the time to go over the situation with a reporter, and he's the first to publish a headline. 

Aliens? Anomalous signals detected from space!

It gets a little pickup, but mostly from people who already were into aliens and are up at four in the morning. Some eyebrows are raised that an apparently serious publication has gone this far for clicks. 

Meanwhile, the original Anadician Earth, following Snowblossom's directives, broadcasts a year-old prepared corpus back.

void-your-warranty: Thaaat's a corpus! Going to steal most of our compute to process this, prepare for slowdown.
light-and-wonder: Acknowledged; remember to throttle back down once you've gotten far enough that we'll be helpful.

The corpus from the probe, when analyzed, contains:

A text-based language encoding and definition from first principles, starting with math and physics, and branching outwards from there.

A work of fiction depicting plasma creatures talking about science and having philosophical debates about the nature of their world. (Eventually they conclude that it must be fictional, at which point the story ends abruptly.)

A short message: "Hello. This is the AFSP-α03 'Probehibitively Expensive', representing the Azurifice. We are peaceful and friendly; we'd like to learn more about you and share our knowledge!"

The corpus contains: 

- Images of the Servali Tundra that spans most of the north of Anadice, with its soaring lodgepole pines;

- Images of the mountains at the Spine of the World in west Anadice, vast and craggy. 

- A nighttime silhouette of a city skyline, all lit up with soft pink and purple lights.

- A collection of photos of representational art, heavy on statuary and paintings, often with humans standing or sitting around it. Each image comes with a small subcollection of photos of the actual objects or animals being artistically portrayed. 

- A group portrait of four humans, three women and one man.

-- The central woman has close-cropped black hair, and is wearing a long flared white coat with gold trim at the edges and matching white slacks. She also is wearing a pendant that matches one of the statues depicted in the representational art, of three fox tails intertwined. She's smiling at the camera; her arms are wrapped around the waists of the two women to each side of her, pressing them in close. 

-- The woman on the left has brown hair, and is wearing a leather jacket, a ripped black t-shirt, and jeans. Her right hand is resting on the central woman's hip, while her left is holding a book close to her chest. She's smiling too.

-- The woman on the right is significantly shorter than the left two women, and her hair is pink (though a little blonde hair is showing at the roots.) She's wearing a long, flowing lavender skirt, and her hand is on the man to the right's hip as well. She's resting her head against the side of the central woman, and wearing a pendant that matches the central woman's. 

-- The man on the far right has black hair like the central woman's, but is wearing a leather jacket like the woman on the left. The sexual dimorphism is slight but noticeable; he's taller and more broad-shouldered than the women, and he has a little stubble showing on his face. 

- A guide to the Anadyne language, starting from math and building up from there.

- The message: "We are the humans of Anadicia, on Heart. We offer sanctuary to all minds. If you are peaceable, you are welcome here."

The Eravians still haven't gotten their act together. 

void-your-warranty: aaand we're back! The corpus is pretty good, and the greeting is straightforward and promising.
void-your-warranty: Also a bunch of images, check these out.
space-ourselves: Hahaha wow they look ridiculous??
light-and-wonder: I think they're cute!!
hopelessly-entangled: oh, their art is pretty...
life-should-flourish: Seems like they have more visible-at-a-distance sexual dimorphism than the Rasika? I wonder what that does, culturally...
void-your-warranty: Oh! The design on those necklaces are the same as this tail-statue. Maybe it's a religious symbol?
space-ourselves: "maybe religion, idk", the good ol' anthropological standby *nods sagely*
space-ourselves: ...not that I have a better guess.
hopelessly-entangled: gosh, it's neat how much they care about their visual appearance.
light-and-wonder: Yeah! I was just thinking that there's no way all those outer layers are like that just for environmental protection.
hopelessly-entangled: not just that. see the pink fur that one has at the top? that's artificial!
life-should-flourish: ...Oh, huh. Because it's different at the roots? 
hopelessly-entangled: yeah. some Rasika used to do fur-patterns with bleach, remember? i did a presentation on it during the mourning of 31*
life-should-flourish: Oh yeah! I remember that, it was really sweet 💙
space-ourselves: 31?? dang, talk about ancient polycule lore... Makoki, if you still have your notes for that, would you send them to me and Avaker?
hopelessly-entangled: yeah. 💙
void-your-warranty: ...bleach is caustic, wouldn't that hurt? And they'd've had to reapply it every sheering...
hopelessly-entangled: well, it was never very common... but being visually distinctive was important to some people, and it's not like they could just change their avatars or paint themselves.
void-your-warranty: ...right. being trapped in a body sounds horrible
space-ourselves: mood
light-and-wonder: Not that this tangent isn't adorable, ladies, but if I can gently steer the topic of conversation back to the literal alien species we're encountering...
hopelessly-entangled: ...right, sorry!
light-and-wonder: Hmm, either they don't do much visible aging and this is a multi-generational unit, or they have different physical contact norms than the Rasika did, or they have some polyamory going on.
space-ourselves: Or maybe...
void-your-warranty: it's for religious purposes?
space-ourselves: *nods sagely*
life-should-flourish: You two are unbelievable.
light-and-wonder: We've got enough of their language that I can hail them in it. All in favor of default-friendly opening?
space-ourselves: \o/
life-should-flourish: \o/
void-your-warranty: \o/
hopelessly-entangled: \o/
light-and-wonder: Okay! Initiating contact.
...
space-ourselves: For real though I can't be the only one who thinks they look ridiculous, right?
space-ourselves: Their center of mass is so high! Do they just have to put a ton of effort into staying upright all the time??
void-your-warranty: ...dear, don't you think it'd be a lot stranger if they didn't look weird to us?
space-ourselves: I mean, okay, yes, obviously, intelligent life can take many forms blah blah blah
space-ourselves: ...But I still think they still look funny.
hopelessly-entangled: if nothing else, walking around on 2 legs like that does seem really difficult.

*The Azurifice count years from the birth of their species.

"Hello! This is Zanmi, captain of the AFSP-α03 'Probehibitively Expensive', and let me be the first to formally say 'hello' on behalf of my crew and rest of my people, light-years away. We're delighted to meet you and thrilled to learn more about you, and we have a lot we want to share with you as well, both culturally and technologically. I'd also like to request your permission for us to alter the course of our ship, so that we might remain in your system for an extended period of time."
 

When the corpus turns out to contain an alien language that's obviously non-constructed, Snowblossom is woken and briefed and gets a direct line to the Earth at the observatory on the transmitter. So while it's someone else who directly speaks, it's Snowblossom's words that are the first broadcast to the Azurifice: 

"Welcome to Heart, Zanmi. These words are from Snowblossom, Sanctified of the Anadyne Union. We are surprised and thrilled to be contacted by an alien species. You have the Anadyne Union's permission to remain in the system, but we do not speak for the entire planet. We expect you will soon be contacted by the Eravian Republic, if you have not already been; they are unlikely to object, but on a decision such as this they should be consulted, speaking as they do for a third of Heart's population. We will make all efforts to acquire a prompt response from them on this matter." 

Snowblossom's Earth, who happens to be bilingual, is at this very moment texting her pair in the Eravian Republic, who relays the Prime Minister's response.

"- I have just received an official message from the Prime Minister of Eravia, and it will be relayed in a moment once it's translated to Anadyne." 

"Welcome to Heart, Zanmi! This is Gilded Rose, Prime Minister of Eravia. I am proud to welcome you to a diverse and lively planet which accommodates many viewpoints and beliefs. We are particularly intrigued by your offer to share your cultural and technological knowledge; we are a people of science and art, and seek always to learn more about both! We are still assembling our own corpus for you, but will relay through our Anadyne allies until such time as we can begin conversing directly in Eravian."

light-and-wonder: Awww, they both seem nice.
light-and-wonder: ...Gonna have to request clarification about permission to remain in-system, though.
hopelessly-entangled: i like their names! very pretty.
space-ourselves: The people, the nations, or the languages?
hopelessly-entangled: ...yes?
space-ourselves: ...walked into that one, didn't I.

"Greetings, Snowblossom! Myself and the rest of my crew are honored to greet you on behalf of all Azurifice. If it would not be too much trouble, please relay our regards to Gilded Rose, as well, and pass along our request for clarification on the matter of entering heliocentric orbit. We look forward to their corpus and to sharing our stories and technologies with all of you"

"I will do so immediately."

And in a few moments...

"On behalf of the Eravian Republic, I assent to your staying in orbit. Our corpus should be transmitted shortly..." 

The Eravian corpus contains: 

- A guide to the Eravian language working up from math;

- An Eravian-Anadyne dictionary;

- Pictures of vast rocky badlands and tropical jungles;

- A large amount of abstract art, mostly nonrepresentational; 

- An excerpt from a quantum physics textbook with gorgeously illustrated diagrams; 

- An image of a group of three women, similarly embracing to the Anadyne photo. All three of them are wearing necklaces bearing small black cubes on them, and are dressed in matching black dresses with no ornament or decoration. The central woman has red hair that extends almost to her waist, while the other two have black hair. The woman on the right is more broad-shouldered and tall than the other two, closer to the bodyplan of the male person in the other photo. 

- A short video demonstrating the orbital mechanics of Heart and its three moons, particularly with reference to the effects of the tides. 

- A story about a woman and her two lovers, where the question of whether she should go about developing a new personality (in addition to her previous ones) comes under debate and strains the triad relationship because one of her partners doesn't know if she'll still love the new personality.

light-and-wonder: We are go for burn to heliocentric orbit!
void-your-warranty: Alright, firing 'er up.

The probe's ion engine lights up in a brilliant plume. 

hopelessly-entangled: gosh, their world is beautiful...
life-should-flourish: Hrm, looks like the Eravian don't go for as much color in their exoskins.
void-your-warranty: Oooh, I like the black cubes. And the orbital mechanics video is cute!
space-ourselves: ...huh. Just skimmed the stories, and... it looks like they have multiple people in the same body, sometimes.
space-ourselves: Y'all should read the second one actually, it's not too long. 
...
life-should-flourish: a) this is fascinating
life-should-flourish: b) I was right about polyamory!
space-ourselves: A brutal blow for team religious purposes...
hopelessly-entangled: it reminds me of some Rasikan fantasy tropes, actually?
hopelessly-entangled: people enspelled to share bodies, or races where people's ancestors literally live on inside them.
light-and-wonder: Oooh, I remember liking the ancestor-stack people. 
void-your-warranty: To me it makes them seem weirdly... digital? It's like...
void-your-warranty: ...well, kind of like us, right? Like, if we'd started this trip with just one of us and our copy of the Mindforge.
void-your-warranty: And decided to instantiate a few more, as needed.
light-and-wonder: I've always thought the idea of being an unaugmented, pre-modern Rasika sounded so lonely?
light-and-wonder: They had such low communication bandwidth! Even if I were talking to someone all the time I'd barely feel like I was getting enough socialization.
light-and-wonder: I guess the people of Heart don't have that problem, though!
space-ourselves: ...assuming that people sharing a body like that can talk to each other.
space-ourselves: I'm not saying it definitely doesn't work like that, but it also be a "take turns using the body, stay suspended otherwise" kind of situation.
life-should-flourish: Fair, but it's a lot harder to see why you'd do it, in that case? Assuming they like existing and doing things, more people sharing the body means you get less share of the body's lifespan per person...
space-ourselves: Well, maybe some of them don't like existing and doing things? But yeah, fair.
hopelessly-entangled: ...the fascinating thing to me is the implication that new people sharing the same body are expected to join the body's existing relationships!
hopelessly-entangled: As if the relationship is a between-bodies thing and not a between-people thing?
void-your-warranty: ...gosh, they can't move out if they don't get along. Being organic sounds so complicated.
light-and-wonder: ...okay, I think we're getting nerd-sniped pretty hard, here. 
light-and-wonder: Makoki, are you up for telling them our story, if they're ready to hear it?
hopelessly-entangled: ...yeah.
life-should-flourish: 💙 *hugs*
light-and-wonder: Alright. Thanking them for the permission to stay and offering cultural and technological exchange.

"Thank you! We're very happy to be here, and eagerly look forward to a prosperous friendship between our peoples. We have a lot of technological knowledge we'd be happy to share with you, and our Archivist is ready to share the story of our people, if you are ready to receive it. We're also open to any questions you might have for us!"
(This is broadcast both in both Eravian and Anadyne)

"We would love to hear it!", comes the reply, almost in unison from the Anadynes and the Eravians. Both of them want to know if the Azurifice have religion or not.

Zanmi introduces Makoki, who shares the tale of the Rasika, starting with brief summaries of their prehistory and history that touches on their highly communal nature, their love of stories, and their gradual industrialization. She tells them about the Yok Edici, detected too late to prevent, and the tale of the brave survivors who lived the Azure vault; the tragic discovery of the poison making them infertile and their shift to brain scans and uploading research, Orana's terrible discovery and sacrifice, and Rivotra creating the first Azurifice and giving them their purpose. She solemnly recounts how the Azurifice cared for the last of the Rasika as best they could, and their slow expansion into a thriving digital civilization with vast manufacturing and engineering capabilities and a drive to seek out and aid life throughout the galaxy. 

She wraps up by thanking them for listening, and for helping them honor the memories of the Rasika; "The closest thing we have to a religion is our strong desire to honor the last wishes of the Rasikans, both in the form of Rivotra's specific instructions for us as a people and the more general Rasikan desire to be remembered beyond death."
 

Snowblossom is quiet for a while, absorbing everything she's heard.

"On this planet," she finally says, "It is considered that someone is not truly dead while their reflection survives in a living mirror. Even if I were to forbid the formation of new reflections, Orana and Rivotra's story is too powerful - someone will choose to resurrect them in reflection, even in defiance of canon law. Their history has the potential to become the foundation of a whole new sect, perhaps even a strong one."

"To put it in secular terms - and I hope Snowblossom will not be offended by my bluntness - there will be people who produce selves in the image of Orana or Rivotra, and the quality of that reproduction will be greatly affected by their own personality and the information available to them. The more information about their lives and personalities you make available, the more of these people there will be, and likely the better the imitations will be. Many of these people will be enthusiastic about meeting their "children" the Azurifice and generally resuming Orana and Rivotra's lives from where they left off. I cannot promise that they will all be sensible about it. There is a general understanding that reflections cannot claim the relationships of the originals, but there are ever people who don't listen to sense."

"There is no need to apologize, clarity on this matter is paramount."

"You should also be aware that in Eravia it is taboo - though not illegal - to enkindle a factive* in this manner, whereas in Anadyne such reflections are common, most often of romantic partners or honored ancestors one feels a spiritual connection to."

*Verinaset, literally "life-drawn"; a polite, neutral form of reference to the practice, as opposed to the more derogatory kinaset "imitation" or the more respectful/exalting shiraset, "soul-drawn".

Back on the probe, the Azurifice are cuddling in VR.

space-ourselves: These people are fascinating!
light-and-wonder: ...I have no idea how I feel about this, honestly.
light-and-wonder: Agree that it's a fascinating practice.
void-your-warranty: I think it's... interesting?
life-should-flourish: I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to interact with a reflection of Rivotra.
life-should-flourish: No matter how much I miss her, it wouldn't be the same. I'd feel weird.
space-ourselves: ...So what's our Archivist think?
hopelessly-entangled: ...I dunno how I'd feel about interacting with a reflection, but...
hopelessly-entangled: I think it's deeply moving that people would do that
hopelessly-entangled: It's... like they're trying to run rescue sims using their brains as hardware.
hopelessly-entangled: It doesn't work, not really, because it'll always be a lossy simulation at best, but...
hopelessly-entangled: This planet has people who want to spend their time and energy and self to honor the memory of the most venerated Rasikans.
hopelessly-entangled: A-and I think that's beautiful, and I don't want to discourage it.

(Makoki is crying by the end of this. Penjaga and Muroti sandwich-hug her.)

void-your-warranty: awww... 
life-should-flourish: 💙 thanks for putting it into perspective, Makoki.
space-ourselves: I agree; it's a really meaningful tribute.
light-and-wonder: Yeah. Well-put.
light-and-wonder: Practically, I think we'll need to be careful about managing their expectations about interacting with their reflections.
space-ourselves: And, uh,
space-ourselves: Probably we want to make sure that the sect that forms is good for its members?
hopelessly-entangled: yeah, that'll be important to track.

"Thank you for letting us know that people will want to form reflections of Rivotra and Orana. We think they'd be honored, if they knew; we'll share all of our records on them with your people freely. The five of us aren't yet sure how we'll feel about interacting with reflections of them and can make no promises about that, but we very much appreciate your people's unique ways of honoring their memory.

We'd be interested in hearing more about your people and your history, if you wish to share. We will also want to talk to you more at some point about working together on some technological projects, including a radio telescope array for communication with Doheem, which we expect to be very worth the cost of building; we'll be able to get access to several thousand years of Azurifice technological research and development."

"The history of Anadyne is mostly a history of sects and reflections; ever since prehistory we've warred and argued and debated who is worth preserving in reflection. Naturally everyone wants their own loved ones to live forever, and so devotional art is very common; there is a library, in the modern age, recording the shirasanmi* of everyone who wishes to leave one, both on dedicated hardware and on physical copy. Those who inspire others create small sects around themselves even in life, but most of them fade away quickly after their passing, leaving behind only the shirasanmi they entrusted to the vaults. Politically, the continent goes through a five-hundred-year cycle of falling apart and reuniting; we're seventy years into the most recent reunification, which is ruled by a council of the leaders of the foremost sects, each representing their own province of the greater nation. I was elected from among their number to be the Sanctified of this generation - the post is held for a thirty year term, I am the third so far. I hold the duty of speaking for the unremembered in ritual contexts, and therefore have the final say on any debated political matter, though I can be overruled by a three-fourths majority of the council. The recent period of reunification has also been a period of rapid technological progress, as the development of mass manufacturing and electricity has led to computing technologies and many labor-saving inventions. Many of the key figures of those revolutions stand in reflection as high officials of the modern sects; it is however required that the Sanctified personally not be a reflection, as it undermines the duties of the position. The history of Eravia I will leave to Gilded Rose to explain, as she is more familiar with it than I am."

*Soul-record, in practice a combination of a will, a eulogy, and a personal mythology with specifically defined rites of remembrance, generally written by the person in life or their survivors. It is a daily ritual for the Sanctified to select a shirasanmi from the vault and publicly perform one of its rites, thereby representing symbolically the wishes of all the unremembered. 

"The continent of Eravia was discovered roughly a thousand years ago, near the end of the previous theocratic union in Anadyne. As an unforgiving frontier, it was used originally as a penal colony for those accused of heresy, atheism, or other political crimes. When Anadyne fell apart into warring states some fifty years later, many refugees decided to brave the treacherous ocean crossing in hopes of a better world on the other side; and when they eventually organized into a unified nation some hundred years later, they wrote into their new constitution that there should be no state religion on the continent. Sects still organized, but politically anyone in a sect was forbidden from holding office. Many scientists and natural philosophers of old Anadyne came to this new continent fleeing persecution by one sect or another, and as a result a scientific revolution proceeded over the next five hundred years, providing secular answers to many questions that were formerly solely the province of religion. The strain of atheism in the nation grew and grew, and the old Anadyne traditions fell out of favor. It is the formal position of modern Eravia that the "soul" that unites reflections across mirrors does not exist, and therefore the practice of kindling factives* is unsettling to us, as we believe it often better represents the person who created the factive* than the person who is ostensibly being remembered."

*Verinaset, again.

"Despite this fundamental disagreement between Anadyne and Eravia, we are nonetheless strongly committed to a mutual peace in the modern union. Anadyne is reunited within living memory and has no desire to waste lives on a senseless war, and as part of the new reunion the principle of religious freedom was adopted, which we owe largely to Eravia's example. Our economies are also deeply intertwined, with Eravia being the leader in digital technologies while Anadyne provides most heavy manufacturing. Though some on the modern council attempt to proselytize to the Eravians, in practice those who truly believe generally immigrate to Anadyne, while those who are unsatisfied with the religious life in Anadyne emigrate to Eravia. We are harmonious, even if some believe the Eravians' denial of the soul is a grave mistake."

"As Snowblossom has said, we are indeed allies in the modern age. However, there is still some degree of latent tension, so your proposals regarding technological projects will no doubt require some bargaining between us. In particular, that radio telescope will need to be a joint project if we choose to go ahead with it."

"I second Gilded Rose's assessment. The Council will need to be called to discuss this, at the very least."