Ethnographer Story

 Isa Pedersen
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
24 August 2021

Ethnographer Story


    As I completed the two year long journey to Planet Pen, I was greeted by the friendly faces of the Pencil People. These strange creators had purple skin and were 10 feet tall. In hindsight they sound very intimidating and alien, but in actuality they are nicer than humans. The Pencil People and Planet Pen was only discovered 5 years ago, and each trip takes 2 years to make, so I was only on the second trip ever to get to Planet Pen. As I stepped off the spaceship, the Pencil People walked up to me and said in a series of clicks and tones, something that I understood as a welcome. They then motioned me to follow them back to their civilization. We walked for what seemed like 10 plus hours, however when looking back you could still see the spaceship, this was just the weird gravity of Planet Pen. As we walked up and I could start to see the tops of the Pencil People’s buildings, I started to understand the size of these civilizations. The buildings were easily the tallest buildings I have ever seen. They were made out of a sandstone material that appeared to be a red- pink color. The Pencil People wanted desperately to communicate with me and tell me about their civilization, sadly their language sounded like pure noise with no way to understand it. They seemed to understand me however, I told them I couldn't understand them, so they started to act out phrases, as if it was a game of charades. They proceeded to charade the directions of their civilization and how it all works. They worked somewhat like modern day America, except for the fact that they only ate apples. It was the only thing that could grow on Planet Pen. Behind the massive buildings there were hundreds of miles of apple trees, and what seemed like millions of Pencil People picking those apples. The Pencil People who were talking to me, told me they had to go do their work, every Pencil Person has a job, every job helps the civilization function. The Pencil People who greeted me worked in housing development, they were able to build almost a third of these massive buildings in one day. While they went off to work, I followed a different Pencil Person who ended up going to the apple orchards. I attempted to communicate with this Pencil Person but sadly they weren't able to understand me at all. I still followed them and walked up to an apple tree. These apple trees were the biggest trees I have ever seen, and on top of that, those apples were almost the size of my head. It seems like everything in this community is massive. I adopted a job working in these orchards and learning how the apple production works. I found a house in one of the huge buildings, and I lived there for just over 3 years, when I would be replaced with a different ethnographer who would learn how transportation works in this civilization. I was very surprised how similar the Pencil People are to humans, they function in the same ways, except everything is bigger, they only eat apples, and their economy seems more reliable. I plan to go back and visit Planet Pen in the future, hopefully there will be more communication between Planet Pen and Earth in the future. 

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