All his preparations lay in place. His camera array from the first tests stood ready to stream all incoming audio data to the translator, a new bundle of wires spiraling out of its side into other parts of other machines thanks to his added innovations overnight. This time he would use the camera itself to tweak the clarity of the window, which he hoped would eliminate some of the interlacing of their previous attempts. He’d also made a point of depleting the power to the volume dial, shuddering as he remembered that faux pas. He'd even foregone surface time to get what he would need for this experiment ready, and hadn't slept much the night before, to be as certain as he could that the device would work properly this time.

Excitement for the trove of new data Heather promised burned, but he still farmed the old text. Based on what he'd captured from the conversation, he'd managed to decode more than he expected. In places, he was able to read pieces of the book. It was surreal how few errors he made even without Heather’s input, but with it, and a few more jumps therein, he found the story quite legible, and fascinating. The descriptions that now stood more apparent made his face redden a little once he realised that asking if the girl was a dragon didn’t make a ton of sense in hindsight. Still, Halos had to admit, he agreed with her ‘I wish’ sentiment.

Understanding it was fiction made the more fantastical elements less nonsensical. But one idea in particular, a recurring element in the work, gave him an idea that bordered on the practical. Now realised in front of him, this innovation held the appearance of an intricate spiders web, though one so fine as to be invisible from a few paces away. Only in front of him and the line of the camera didn’t have the strange patterns, and in that instance, it was because the camera did on a large scale what the miniscule ones in the web did on the minute. 

The lab broke off into a few smaller spaces. One of the largest was a 'storage' room, where a large stockpile of dumped scrap and electronics rotted, along with more than a little biological waste. He wasn't sure if this was a peace offering, or this was easier than more nearby landfills to lump this in with the food delivery. Halos hated the room, but loved it too for all it offered in potential. Once components were extracted - and washed - it did offer him a bounty of useful resources. Not enough to fix the particle chamber of course, that required machined parts because of the airtight nature of the chamber, but over the years it had offered a few useful pieces. 

After scavenging for a while, he'd found what he needed: old projectors, used for notices in the capital. The damp hadn't done them wonders but they were serviceable. The bulbs would need to be a lot stronger for this though. The high wattage lights he found were going to need a lot of modification. But if his understanding of how the bots handled the 'surface' of the window was correct, they'd do the trick. These now stood a short way back from the web, and still had their coverings to disguise them in the corpses of dead equipment around the chamber in case Varsus saw them. He would have loved to test the new invention in advance, but again Varsus made this impractical.

When he’d finished assembling the monstrosity, Halos realised quite fast that there was no way he could leave the machine out like this. Even if the projectors were hidden, the web wasn’t, and all the wires running into the camera weren’t subtle. He could unplug and replug all of these, but if he needed to stop in a rush there was no way to make the former practical. With a sudden stroke of inspiration, he’d grabbed a piece of discarded sheet metal and his chalk, written a small sign, he hung the metal sheet on the side of the rig:

'Environmental Pressure Stabilizer, may cause an explosion if moved. Do not adjust the cameras/sensors.'

Even if his guard was curious, that should make him back well away. He'd put a few flashing lights and a screen on it too to add to the illusion. That way it should pass for whatever an Environmental Pressure Stabilizer was. He hoped pointing out the cameras like this would make them less suspicious. Never mind that his imaginary invention had no use for them whatsoever. Assuming it worked, this would make communication with Heather a lot easier. This was also assuming of course, that she came back like she'd said she would. It would be a little strange if she didn’t, as she didn’t appear scared off at the end of their talk. And, even as an alien being with hidden values and motivations, instinct told him she would.

****

At 18:10 Heather limped her way across the platform; her ankles screamed after hauling her own private library around. Feeling them give a few final large bursts of pain, she conceded and sat on the final step to platform 2, and braced. She didn’t shake, but she could taste the bitter nerves at the back of her throat, the images of Saturday’s explosion still hard to push out of view. As she watched, the orb emerged out of the night–time air, again to her relief with only the briefest jolt from the rails. Halos watched as Heather came into view, clutching a heavy-looking book. Behind her, he could see a satchel that looked as if it was about to burst. 

"Hello." Heather gave a small awkward wave. Halos had positioned himself a little behind the translating machine, peering around it. It looked like how a shy puppy might cower behind a chair when strangers come, not from mistrust but nerves. Something about that pose eased her own anxieties. "Are you ok?"

This time, the translator after hours of work was able to decipher her question. It was not surprising it required work to decipher ‘are you ok?’ It turned out there was a simple reason that the machine struggled so much with what was quite a simple phrase: Oriaens, don't ask each other such things. It was a cultural norm that had died out generations ago, the focus on the self taking precedence.

"Yes, I am ok." The translator replied. She was a little surprised to hear the robotic twinge was little more than an occasional hiss. The voice almost sounded human, if a little too effeminate for the being before her.

"Are you ready?" Heather asked, Holding up the dictionary.

Halos gazed at the book.

"What's this one?” The machine asked, its questioning intonation more subtle and normal this time.

"It's a Dictionary. All the words." Heather said; talking in super short sentences did not come naturally, the run on sentence a comfort blanket she’d leant on for years, but overburdening the translator didn’t seem like it would be much help.

"That's, useful." Even devoid of all tone, Heather picked up on the humour in that well timed pause. She smiled.

"So what do I do?"

The process proved simple enough. Heather needed to flip through the pages of each book a couple of times, three at most, while the large camera behind Halos captured an exposure of each page. Able to grab several thousand frames a second, the camera picked up minute details on each despite the blurring effect of the window itself, and used the three pass-throughs to correct its own assumptions. It then analysed, cross-referenced and rechecked each word and phrase. Halos explained this as Heather kept working through each, and marveled at how in real time, the voice went from halting, to coherent, to a normal speaking voice with only the barest hint a machine generated its words.

Halos would ask to review a couple of pages the camera still missed on their own, and then they would move onto the next. Once they'd been going for a while Halos would ask about the pronunciation of certain words, picking them up from the screen Heather could just make out to his side..

"This word, s–u–s–c–e–p–t–i–b–l–e?" he asked, his voice now capable of a perfect questioning intonation.

"Ser–sept–a–bul." Heather said the word as clear as she could, still keen to make the process clean, but realising fast that this miraculous device needed no such crutch when it got going. ‘Google Translate eat your heart out,’ she thought to herself, smiling as she did. She was enjoying this; the real-time feedback of his voice improving was remarkable, but, so was how relaxed she felt talking to this strange man.

"And this one, the machine finds it too illogical to figure out any pronunciation, s–a–o–i–r–s–e?"

"Oh, that's a name, ser–sha. I guess you got that from the story notes in my journal? It's Irish so it's not pronounced anything like how it's spelt. My surname's Irish, though not one that's usually a surname so, no idea what happened there. I think my Grandfather changed it? He was Irish."

"What do you mean by 'Irish'?" Halos asked, emphasis on the last word.

"Irish, from Ireland, Ireland's a country, different region?"

"Are there lots of regions on Earth?"

"Tonnes, hundreds, in this country alone it breaks down into Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales–" she broke off, a chill running down her spine as she realised she'd lost track of the time. They hadn’t stood there long but ten minutes was enough, and she could feel beneath her feet, could hear–

"Halos the train, you need to go, if they see you–"

Halos raised his hand, turned and pressed a button. In that instant, it was as if a curtain drew around the sphere out of thin air. It was still there, she could see the outline, almost like a glass hair-thin hula hoop suspended from the ground. A few steps further back though, the orb proved near enough invisible.

"How did you...?"

"Round here." Halos called. To her bewilderment, a disembodied hand appeared in the air in a small circle. It pointed to the side of where the orb had been, well, was now - she wasn't sure which was right - before vanishing again.

Heather walked around and could see a slice of the sphere that still shone to the lab, with Halos smiling back at her.

"It's a halo–gram."

"How are you doing it?" Heather spoke to what any passerby would think an empty platform, even if they sat on the benches mere feet away.

"Cameras. Come round here so we can talk easier."

Heather walked around the spectacle in wonder. Even up close it was hard to remember she was inches away from another world. Halos had moved his perspective, so now he faced the fence of Ore with his camera behind him. 

"There's a ring of little cameras pointing into the portal from each angle. These," he pointed to the glowing lights either side of him "are projectors that make a halo–gram of the video."

"Do you mean a hologram?" Heather asked, her voice weak.

"Sorry, still finding some words hard."

Heather laughed, incredulous that he would feel a trivial pronunciation mattered in the face of technology like this. His machine was already so impressive as it was, and this mode of communication with it, but he seemed to live in a perpetual state of humility.

"I prefer your word. This technology is all so advanced."

Halos seemed to shy away at this.

"I made out of scrap, it's basic, not–"

"You made that from scrap?" Heather breathed out with awe. Halos seemed to cringe at the implied admiration. Heather got the distinct impression that praise wasn’t a thing Halos expected or had much experience of. It seemed to confuse and weirded him out a little. “Sorry, but, when, when did you make it?"

"After you told me about being seen."

If she wasn't blown away as it was, this did it. She knew he wasn't lying, the humble don't make stuff like that up. Even so, he'd built an entire machine capable of projecting a realistic hologram onto thin air. From scrap. In a day. On a whim, after her blubbered warning, which he only half understood at the time. She had to wonder to herself who in their right mind was able to be humble after that. The train passed, and when the noise died away Halos re-emerged once more, looking a little sheepish.

“You’re incredible.” Heather said, knowing that it might be too much for the poor guy but, what else was there to say? Her mind blown, actually shorted out, she had little else she felt capable of saying in the moment. He seemed to flinch a little, but she liked to imagine it was a tiny bit less than the first time.

“I got idea from you...”

“You did?” Heather frowned, unsure what Halos meant by that. He responded by pointing to her feet.

“The first book, the ring.”

“The, what do you mean the - wait are you serious? You came up with an invisibility cloaking system because of the Lord of the Rings…?”

“Yes…” Halos said, sounding as if he wanted to do nothing more than curl into a tiny ball of embarrassment and shame. Heather blinked at him.

"You're amazing." She couldn’t help it, again, an automatic response because what else could she say? Now she was the one speaking in a monotone to the point voice. She almost had to laugh at how stunned she sounded, her brain frazzled. Then, she started to laugh. She wasn't even sure why but his total lack of ego felt somehow liberating. 

"What is noise you keep making, I cannot work out." Halos voice sounded a bit off, perhaps Heather wondered because he spoke less deliberately when overwhelmed, which she felt bad about. The thought helped her regain some calm.

"It's laughing? Haven't you ever heard it before?" though even as Heather said it, she did suppose that animals on earth laugh for different reasons, so why not aliens? Then she realised this was the first time in a long time she herself could remember laughing. It made her feel warm, in the cool night breeze. 

Halos nodded, no translation error issue this time. In truth, laughing wasn't alien to Halos; it was hard for him to recognise from what little exposure he'd had for so many years.  He suggested they continue, and so the pair kept going through more of the books, clearing another ten or so. The world grew ever darker around them but neither had any desire to pull away.

"So, are you grasping the language now?" Heather asked, closing the copy of Jane Eyre and trying to fit it back into the backpack; in the course of the evening all the books changed places, and all but one were now in Halos’s database. She’d held off on the final book, sitting at the back of her bag, but wasn’t sure what held her back from showing him the astronomy tome.

"Much better. It is strange but even before checking a lot of this with you it feels as if I have a bond with these words already. I guess only coincidences between our languages."

"You, really have improved since we met." She felt a little self–conscious his English was starting to get better than hers. "Are you, are you going to still come back again tomorrow?"

"Of course, I've got a lot to learn from you."

"You know you're not exactly quizzing the smartest person on Earth right..." Heather said. She wondered if what she should do is reach out to the UK space agency, or, NASA in America? There had to be scores of smart people who would be much better help to his obvious genius, but Halos tilted his head in confusion.

"How do you measure that?"

“Measure what?”

“Intelligence.” Halos clarified. Heather thought for a moment.

"Well, you know, not exactly got the highest IQ or, you know."

"IQ?"

"It's a way we measure intelligence." Heather said.

"Right but, how though?" Halos frowned as if she was speaking in gibberish, which she supposed minus the machine in the middle from his perspective she was.

"Well, you answer a bunch of logic questions and, get a score. That's it."

"That's weird." His tone, crystal clear now, sounded more than a little disquieted; he'd not said it as if dismissing her, more with genuine curiosity.

"Why?" Heather asked.

"How do you go about measuring a person's intelligence?"

"Well, I mean if you get more questions right you're smarter?"

"Seems, a little shallow." Halos shrugged.

"I guess?" Heather hadn’t thought about it all that much. She just assumed an IQ of 112 meant she was, average ish, and not given the matter too much more thought. Halos however seemed more than a little thrown by the whole idea.

"What about the other aspects of conscious intelligence? How are those measured?"

"I, well they kinda measure bits of that? Not really though I suppose."

"Then how do I know you're not the most intelligent person on Earth."

"I, well I guess you don't. Are you flirting?" she asked with a coy smile.

Halos had to check his screen for a few seconds. He flinched and reacted by waving his hands in frantic apology.

"No, not flirting, just asking, sorry bad at communicating, did not mean to..." But Heather was too busy laughing to take it in. Halos stopped for a few seconds until she died down. "Are you ok?"

"Yes Halos, I'm ok." She giggled. "I'm sorry, I'm being mean. I get what you’re trying to say, and you’re very sweet to say it."

He seemed to relax again.

"I don't want to scare you away."

"You're not going to. I should be more careful with joking around until you know the language better."

"That's ok. I get confused." Halos conceded, and gave a little shy smile of his own. He hadn’t smiled much at all early on, but Heather could see from the way he evolved while they spoke, that it wasn’t from a lack of happy feeling; he just didn’t have a whole lot of practice. Heather wondered why that would be, and wanted to ask more, but held off for now. One step at a time.

"You know I haven't even gotten through half my books yet, there's still so much to go through and I can go to the library to grab more." Heather said, eyeing the satchel; it seemed to stare back at her in horror at the more idea. 

"You should come back tomorrow and we'll do more."

Heather looked at her watch: 19:42.

"It's later than I thought. Might have to call it a day if that's ok. But I will be back, I swear."

Halos smiled.

"I know you will. I will see you tomorrow." And without another word, he closed the communication, and the two of them parted ways for the night.