to hope against all hope

They see electricity, the same electricity of your brain. If something is not charged they can't see anything at all, and a room of non-conductive objects would be a complete sensory deprecation chamber. They can see a little bit, but they are nearly blind and only use it to notice sudden changes. If you flash a light at them they scream. Instead they just bring a device that generates a charge everywhere they go. They claim their whole planet is charged, but you have doubts

This apparently allows them to see secrets of the universe. They knew about the big bang through out their entire history, because they can apparently just see the beginning of the universe. They find it beautiful, but not all that interesting. You are jealous

Despite being in space, they have not yet discovered steel or had the industrial revolution. It's basically still alchemists and philosophers, but the alchemy and philosophy works and got them to space. You are no longer jealous

They rely on the temperature being way below 40 degrees Fahrenheit so all the fat stays solid and frozen, and die if it's warm. They consider you burning

They get all their energy from air, like eating, to the point they cannot hold their breath at all. They get other things from food, but refuse to prepare it aside from digestion. They just plop it in basically untouched

They age in dog years, dying a few months after turning 9, and only reach adulthood at age 4. That's an absurd amount of time to spend as a child. The one you met is apparently 5 and considers himself a mature adult. The tantrums say otherwise. Yes, he also has arcane knowledge naturally. You are more surprised they live this long considering everything else about them

They have 4 genders and assigned you one, maybe randomly. Kind of rude, apparently very complex, but they have no idea how to explain it. You aren't asking

If you used binary, but substituted 1's and 0's for example. For this example hand = 1 and hook = 0, and for convenience of spaces between the words, door = space so we can properly use it

01001101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101111 01110010

This would become

hook hand hook hook hand hand hook hand door hook hand hand hook hook hook hook hand door hook hand hand hook hand hand hand hook door hook hook hand hook hook hook hook hook door hook hand hand hook hook hand hook hook door hook hand hand hook hand hand hand hand door hook hand hand hook hand hand hand hand door hook hand hand hand hook hook hand hook

This is clunky, however, and for our purposes, not very good, so I suggest alphabet number code

It's simple to understand, 1-26 are the letters, but you type numbers instead of the letters. A = 1, B= 2, so on and so forth

We don't actually have enough words to make a base ten decimal system, so we'd have to use base five

0 man, 1 door, 2 car, 3 hook, 4 hand

If we include the word "Gun" from the "Take the breadsticks and run" post we could make a base six decimal system, but for today we will stick to the base five

To count to ten in our newfound system it would now go:

Door, car, hook, hand, doorman, doordoor, doorcar, doorhook, doorhand, carman.

Now we just go up to 26, we can use numbers to indicate actual numbers

8-5 8-1-14-4 8-15-15-11

This becomes

doorhook-doorman doorhook-door-doorhand-hand doorhook-doordoorman-doordoorman-doordoor

I really like ciphers, what should I write in man car door hook hand, I will write it on paper