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"The Scarecrow Returns"

Developments

• The probe is now in Taelon hands.
• Sahjit suggests that the DNA of Rayna Armitraj, disassembled and replicated by the probe, may still be preserved within the probe's computer memory.
• Boone has learned the rudiments of the Taelon language, remarkably well according to Da'an.

Backstory

Ronald Sandoval

• Sandoval tried, unsuccessfully, to learn the Taelon language when he was first implanted.

Jonathan Doors

• Doors began his career as an engineer in a nuclear power plant.

Sahjit Jinnah

• The scientist met his fiancé Rayna Armitraj while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris.

The Taelons

• Ar’al is the Australian Companion.
• Da’an is to attend the opening of the Taelon Museum of Art
• Language
  
  • There is no grammar to the Taelon language; one must feel the words to see and understand what they say.
  • The written Taelon language is not read in a linear, left-to-right fashion.
  • Seek (imperative verb): [s]a[q][r]uvi
  • Study (imperative verb): laha[r]u[z]i
  • Transmit data (imperative verb with direct object): baha[r]uvi
  • Some of the text from the story of Mali and La[s]a, the first story each Taelon learns, which is similar to the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare: "Sluvra[s]a mo[r]ha[r] Mali La[s]a om[r]uvala
    La[s]a [q]ilui Mali vilui [s]ava…La[s]a vilui [s]olova [u]e-[u]e [e]ami"
  • One of Ar'al's Implants, an Australian Aborigine, attempted to learn Taelon in order to record the Companions’ history on Earth in their native language, but failed.
• Technology
  
  • CVI: The CVI seems to negate an Implant's desire to learn Taelon. The Synod does not know why.

The Liberation

• Liberation Headquarters, and apparently Boone's office as well, are located in the central part of the United States. The structure is equipped with a self-destruct mechanism and a cold fusion reactor that uses deuterium.

The Probe

• The 'metal scarecrow' discovered by Boone and Marquette in "Float Like a Butterfly," called a probe by the Liberation and the Taelons, was programmed to seek and study life forms having a minimum electrical impulse level and define their tolerances under a variety of life-threatening conditions. It was also programmed to use aggression only when threatened. It uses a neutrino pulse to store and transmit data and can change state, becoming a cloud of particles to move about more easily. The probe reveals itself capable of replicating a human in the same way it did a butterfly.
• U.S. satellites picked up the probe's transmission from Liberation Headquarters, as well as the transmission it made from the Amish town of Paradise, Pennsylvania.
• The Taelons seem to know something about the probe; Da'an recognizes the probe's transmission patterns and Quo'on calls the implications of its presence "extreme." The Taelons possess a device that, when placed over the probe's aperture, apparently renders it inert.
• The Liberation assumes the probe to be of Taelon origin. However, several factors contradict this assessment:
  
  • It is sending its data to a nebula on the other side of the galaxy from the planet Taelon.
  • Its instructions are written in Taelon script, but in a "different dialect" that feels "off" according to Boone.