(For the record; mental log recording restarted after eighteen local ten-days).

I have taken the unusual step of allowing a local inhabitant (actually two of them) to enter my ship. We have carried a light wooden ladder out to the landing site, and now we are inside. These people would have had great difficulty clambering into the craft without it. This human, a bright young individual fairly high up in the tribal hierarchy, is called N’avid; for some reason he has brought along one of the young unattached women from the village, despite the fact that he has recently been consorting with a quite different, and supposedly married, female. His current companion is called Salima; he calls her Sali. Now that I have learnt their language reasonably well, I have come to realise that as well as being something of a ladies man, N’avid has a sharp and sarcastic sense of humour.

Certainly he has engaged me in a number of jesting debates about where I came from - he says I am from a particularly detested tribe (the Mawe) on the far side of the continent, and not an ape at all. I have even arm-wrestled with him on several occasions, to demonstrate my greater upper-body strength. He pretends to entirely disbelieve the fact that I come from a far-away star, and from a planet orbiting that star not-too different from this one. So I have decided to give him just a glimpse of the inside of the ship, to see if he is capable of apprehending the true situation, and to try to find out if he has any preconceived notions about galactic society.

“It is dark; where are the lamps? Or do you feel your way around in the dark, Mawe?”

I will the cabin lights on, using direct neural interfacing. Sali squeals. N’avid laughs. He is taking this remarkably well, I think. He takes off his short cape.

“There is not very much to see, N’avid; the best things are hidden in the walls. This is my bed; in my language it is called an acceleration couch. Apart from that there are just a few tools over here ready for use. I don’t have names for them in your language; in my language this is a Microscope, this a Theodolite. this a Stereocam. You might like to see how that works.”

Using my neural link I switch the cam on, and N’avid is instantly fascinated by the tiny moving images it displays of himself and his woman friend. She is a little frightened of the camera, but I can see that N’avid is quite prepared to reassure her. He seems to be using this little outing to impress her with his bravery; a very human behaviour pattern.

I switch the cam off remotely, and after examining it closely to no avail N’avid gives it back to me. He can’t make it work without a neural interface, and it loses some of its appeal to him instantly. The whole ship is controlled by neural interfacing; it has no control panels or buttons for this innocent citizen of the Utopia Sphere to accidentally activate.

“This is the thing I brought you here to see; it can show you my world. Just a short look is all I can give you.”

I extract the Encyclopaedia Everythingana from its slot in the back wall; it is a book-sized database, opening like a lo-tech laptop to display the simple screen and adaptable keyboard. These tools have to be simple- they are used to reboot entire societies after a technological collapse, so the keyboard starts off with only a few functions then gradually increases in complexity as the user becomes more skilful. All the information necessary to develop a medium tech society is encapsulated in this tiny device - plus the routines necessary to educate the user or users enough to understand that technology. These devices have saved several lost or abandoned colonies from barbarism - a rebooting process which takes decades.

I am going to use the Encyclopaedia to show N’avid a few scenes from my home world, an exposure which will last a couple of moments. As he doesn’t have a neural interface, I can’t think of a better way to show him images of my homeworld, apart from routing them through the tiny viewfinder of the Stereocam.

“Here is my star; it is so far away that even the light takes four hundred years to get here. We call that star Ao Lai; it is actually two suns, each a little dimmer than your own. My world is this one, we call it Grace.” I use a word meaning innocent gracefulness in his language. N’avid watches as the small screen displays images of the cities on my home world so far away; civilised orang-utans like myself driving vehicles, building structures, meeting the citizens of the other ape worlds and even a few humans. Suddenly the image disappears.

“Is it gone?” N’avid said, disappointedly.

“No, you just switched it off with your thumb. But I think you have seen enough - “

The image flickers back to life; N’avid has managed to switch it back on again. He laughs, and proceeds to repeatedly switch it on and off, making the image flash; the young woman laughs in her turn. I gently take it away from him and distract him by showing him the microscope.

As we are leaving, Sali slips, making it necessary for me to help her down the ladder. N’avid is left in the craft alone for a little while, and he seems a little uneasy when he finally emerges. N’avid hurries me along as we walk back to the village, a couple of kilometres away; the woman lags behind carrying his cape. Is she carrying something else as well? I can’t quite make it out.