As I sit inside a naturally formed shelter carved out by wildfire at the base of the largest living organism on Earth, Nikola by my side, my mind goes back to the first time I saw him, on February 2, 2008, when I was electrified by a primal fear that I had never in my life experienced. Now here we are one month later, relaxing in the woods next to each other like we’ve been friends for years. And it is in this moment that I am struck by the human ability to adapt to the foreign, the frightening, and the unfamiliar when the human mind endeavors to do so. When we make the conscious effort to take down the barriers put in place as a result of our culture, our upbringing, or even our natural instincts. I realize that I’d crossed the barrier of seeing him as a person a long time ago, probably within the first few hours of laying eyes on him. And by now I think of him not only as a person, but as a friend. I’ve thought of him as such for some time.

I know that I’m not unique. I know that if I have the capability to make this mental leap, anyone does. I decide that this will be the hope that I cling to; if I am able to go from pure animal terror at this alien to seeing him as a friend in such a short amount of time, then as conscious humans, as intelligent beings, we are stronger than our natures. My animal self saw Nikola as a monster, but my human self sees him as my friend.

• • • • •

We are named human, derived from the Latin humanus, which itself is derived from a proto-Indo-European word meaning “of earth,” or more specifically, “in opposition to the gods.” They are named amygdaline, derived from the Greek amygdale, meaning “almond,” for the shape of their eyes. Indeed their eyes are beautiful, awe-inspiring, like they reflect all the stars in the sky on the darkest night. But it is Pequod, the name that has been adopted for their civilization itself, that I find intriguing. Pequod is named for the ship on which Captain Ahab took his Pyrrhic voyage in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, a ship whose mission to destroy a force of nature ended in its doom. The quote that sticks in my mind with regard to Melville’s ship reminds me of Nikola himself: “A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.”