Humans are Weird – Upcycling


“I am simply uneasy about the situation,” Quartermaster Husk said, his tail twitching in accompaniment, “I just need to grind the situation over with you before I approve the request.”
Commander Thresh gave an encouraging thrum from his secondary vocal chords when the quartermaster paused. Thresh knew very well exactly how soft his own scales were compared to the old Quartermaster. Husk’s scales had grown opaque long before Thresh was hatched. Moreover the old Gathering had dedicated himself to his calling of providing for the adventurous and the youthful spirited. Added to all of that Quartermaster Husk had been on one of the few ships that had encountered humans in the first days of their contact with the Galaxy at large and had been in near constant contact with them since. It would have been stone-brained for any Commander to just dismiss the Quartermaster’s concerns, let alone a Commander as new as Thresh was.
Still, it was clear that the older Gathering was by natural disposition, a disposition that had been strongly tempered by the experience of those first chaotic days of contact with the humans, far more than overly cautious. Therefore Commander Thresh listened intently to the long list of minor safety infractions that the current human population of the base had incurred over their stay.

"They are simply going to, what is the word they use, upcycle some expired equipment?" Commander Thresh glanced at the proposal. "It is considered safety equipment at that. There is nothing toxic or dangerous and every human is rated to safely dispose of pressurized containers. Added to this they proposed a slow, gradual release of pressure. They are also requesting the activation of every cleaning drone in preparation. It seems that every safety and hygienic measure is being proactively taken."

“Then there is their scent when they talk about it,” Quartermaster Husk said after a particularly slow and contemplative blink.
His tongue flicked out as if trying to recapture the memory of the smell.
“The smell is so very similar to the smell they give off when anticipating danger,” he said slowly, “not exactly the same, scent me here, but very, very close. I simply do not think that it would be safe to let this idea sprout.”
Commander Thresh hummed thoughtfully as he deliberately mulled over the arguments. It clearly wasn’t enough to forbid a moral boosting safety training exercise that everyone was so obviously willing to participate in. Clearly Quartermaster Husk understood this as well, the dejected slump of his shoulders showed that clearly enough. It also showed that he clung to his theory that the training session was going to go horribly wrong in some unscentable way.
The Commander drew in a deep breath and bobbed his head firmly.
“Authorize the session on my word and note your objections as clearly as you are able,” he said.
Quartermaster Husk flicked his tongue out in obedience. Having the decision made clearly relaxed him but he still looked uneasy.
“We will at the very least get good data on our newest allies out of it,” Commander Thresh said with a comforting wave of his tail. “Now I have to go inspect the outlying bases for predator safety. Hopefully the exercise will still be going on when I return and you can detail your concerns then with the aid of active observation.”
Quartermaster Husk gave a noncommittal grumble and Commander Thresh scrambled briskly away to his transport. The predator inspection left him as uneasy as ever. Not at the sight of any predator, but at the clearly murderous contraptions the humans insisted were basic predator defense. Granted they had not lost a single ranger to predation since they had implemented the human’s tactics but the buzzing of the electric fence alone was enough to set his scales tingling with empathetic stress for any poor creature that touched it. He arrived back at the base far later than he had expected and was pleasantly surprised to find that the indicators lights showed the exercise was indeed still in progress.
“Curious,” he muttered as he approached the main airlock.
The ground outside the airlock was dusted with a fine white powder and signs of freeze burns tinged the ground-cover that had been healthy when he left. His tongue scented that the dust was fire retardant. He grimaced in annoyance. How had the humans gotten waste product so far outside of the disposal area. He supposed the old quartermaster would be more than glad to fill him in. He ambled through the airlock and immediately noted the cacophonous noise from the far side. The airlock floor was covered in chemical fire retardant interrupted with broad swaths that looked like the cleaning drones had tried to remove it and had only marginally succeeded and the air was stale with extra carbon dioxide.
“Life support!” the commander snapped out. “Give me a carbon dioxide reading!”
The system exhausted a chemical profile for a fully safe and clear but it was overlapped with and indicator that the systems were having to overclock to maintain that state. The commander rushed through the final lock and froze as he looked out on chaos. Before he could begin to process what he was seeing a warm pair of hands scooped him up from under his forelimbs and deposited him under one of the benches the humans sat on to make putting their foot gear on easier.
“Safer under here Sir!” Assistant Quartermaster Smythe said with a sigh before sitting back down on the bench above them.
Commander Thresh was vaguely aware that Quartermaster Husk was grumbling something beside him. It was no doubt some variation of having told him so but the chaos that had taken his base was consuming the commander’s attention.
All obstructions had been moved out of the main hallway and the cargo doors had been thrown open. Someone had painted guide tracks seemingly randomly across the floor and what seemed like every disc shaped cleaning drone had been set loose in a sea of chemical fire retardant. Which might have made some level of sense he supposed. Except someone had gone to great lengths to set controlled fires alight on top of each and every drone. Dashing through this chaos, humans -more humans than he thought his base contained-perched in pairs and singly on the office chairs meant for their use and mobile benches meant for the use of the lower bodied Gathering. The humans appeared to be using the expired fire extinguishers as propulsion, explaining the sea of retardant that covered the floor. When a human managed to get near a flaming cleaning drone they would aim the extinguisher at the flame and hold it there until the propulsion of the escaping gas or chemicals pushed them away. The second human used an extinguisher in the opposite direction to counter but without apparent synchronization it seemed difficult to manage.
“Are they practicing putting fires out in zero gravity conditions?” The commander finally managed to gasp out, hoping that he sounded like a reasonable adult rather than the sun-stunned hatchling he felt like.
“I have no idea,” Quartermaster Husk grunted out as he rubbed his nose against a thigh to wipe off some retardant.
“Well,” Commander Thresh said with a tone of forced cheerfulness. “All the fires are nearly out so this should be over soon.”
“Takes them maybe two minutes to put the fires out,” Quartermaster Husk snapped.
“Then how are they still-” Commander Thresh began.
His question was interrupted as an extinguished cleaning drone rolled past them busily sucking up retardant. One of the single humans on an office chair rolled past, and with a whoop of glee sent a gout of flame pouring into the dish taped to the drone’s top. The flame seemed to come from an improvised device. The fireproof drone continued on its way dutifully with a fresh pillar of fire leaping from its dish. Delighted hoots from the paired humans followed as they tried to aim for the newly lit drone.
“What could go wrong?” Quartermaster Husk demanded in a grim tone.
“I begin to understand why my human colleagues fear that question,” Commander Thresh murmured.  

THE AMAZON
SECOND EDITION
OF THE
PAPERBACK
AND THE
FORMAL KINDLE EDITION
ARE NOW UP ON
AMAZON! 

Of course if you want a signed first edition you can email me at bettyadams@authorbettyadams.com and I can ship you a signed Author copy of the first edition for the same price as the crowdfunding campaign $35 domestic and $50 overseas. I'll do that until I run out of extra books.  

 Humans are Weird – Heads Up


No matter how well a space station was engendered, no matter how far technology advanced – at least so far as it had advanced so far – an inhabited space station was never quiet. The atmosphere had to be purified, plants rustled and filters hummed with air movement. The air had to be circulated. There was no such thing as a perfectly efficient fan. The very materials of the hull and superstructure would flex and bend minutely as the differences in temperature caused even the most stable of molecular bonds to expand and contract. Even when the frames were vented and ghosted along without air any species that had a concept of sound could hear the movement whenever their bodies, or rather space suits, made contact with the material of the station.
Most psychologists noted that this was probably for the best. They had as yet found any species that thrived in a truly silent environment. Even so called deaf species were used to the stimulation of some sort, carried on the gas or water they breathed. Even the space whales that the humans loved to observed could feel the pinging of the thinly spread atoms when they wandered out of the nebula and into the void. However if they lingered their too long they developed various neuroses that were nearly indicative of sapience they were so close to some of the common failings of more advanced brains. The various schools of psychology would occasionally note this, and for a few cycles the various Universities would be atwitter with fears of humans going mad from lack of audio stimulation and flights of Winged dispersing into the sound void. They would suggest solutions and experiments and it would usually all peter out as the various engineering departments would each in turn gently but firmly reminded the psychology departments that they were as far from developing a perfectly silent space station as their psych friends were from actually understanding Human Nature.
All of this was idly passing through the mind of Quilx’tch as he pattered along with his companion. The particular space station that had brought all of this to the base of his mental pounce as it were was a shiny new thing that the humans had built to their own specifications and tolerances and funded entirely from their own planet’s economy. The situation was hardly unexpected, with a mass three times that of the second largest species in the alliance the humans who chose to interact with the other species had needed to make accommodations that were often painful if not outright medically inadvisable.
Now Quilx’tch wondered if the Trisk bases the humans had visited felt as strange and imposing to them as this one did to him. He somehow doubted it. The mere sense of massive spaces all around him was intimidating in a way that no confinement could be. He caught the sound of his own appendages striking the spider walk echoing back at him from the distant walls and gave a shiver. His companion shivered in agreement and twitched his legs in the direction of the common room.
“Shall we find some companionship fit to fill this void?” his companion suggested in forcibly cheerful clicks.
Quilx’tch tapped his paws in agreement and they accelerated a bit in the direction of the outer hull. It was an odd design but the human insisted that all living quarters be on the exterior section of their great round structures. Their engineers said it was something about redundancy and being able to keep their calciferous inner skeletons functional with rotational momentum if the artificial gravitational generators ever went out. Given how simple and nearly indestructible even human antigrav systems were that was an odd reason to forego the protection of being in the center of a craft offered but the humans insisted.
Quilx’tch angled himself upward to glance at the indicator light and clicked in dissatisfaction to note that it was a deep amber. The humans in the common room were doing something dangerous enough to prevent the immediate entry of the smaller Trisk. That something was also producing a repeated pounding sound that was vibrating the deck plating beneath his paws. It was intimidating to be sure, but it was also the very welcome sound of live beings doing something. He and his companion passed into the safety lock and peered through the plasisteel barrier at what the humans were doing.
“Basket Ball!” his companion noted gleefully, raising his volume to be heard over the resounding noise made each time the ball stuck the floor or the wall. “I have never had a chance to see it preformed before.”
Quilx’tch clicked in agreement and crouched back on his rear motile appendages to watch the exchange. It was a very simple game in principle, he could think of pawfulls of example of similar games he had played in his youth, all of them several times more complex. The goal seemed to be to get a ball about the size of the humans’ head into a vector meet that was only two body lengths above the ground and in perfect parallel with it. A hatching game at best, if it were not for the fact that the game seemed to require another human or set of humans to actively provide challenging interference. Two humans were currently dodging about the flat surface which currently displayed comically oversized guide lines.
“Do you really think those vector and limiter lines are really necessary?” his companion asked. “Are they that vector blind?”
“Remember,” Quilx’tch said, “They only have two eyes, their vision is binocular and severely limited, and their hairs are almost useless for practical directionality.”
“And of course the mass of the ball itself is a factor,” his companion continued. “Still in proportion…”
His companion’s voiced stilled as the duo of humans began a slightly more intricate set of maneuvers that saw possession of the massive ball change several times without the humans once even brushing each other.
“Yes,” Quilx’tch continued the dropped thought, “in proportion to their mass and size it is a very simplistic game. Note however that they do not touch sensory hairs so that increases the challenge for them.”
His companion clicked in understanding as one of the humans suddenly broke away and bolted for the target vector meet. He tossed the ball and it failed, rebounding from the edge of the vector meet. The second human was right behind him and snatched the ball before tossing it up towards the vector meet.
“The human under the vector meet needs to move!” Quilx’tch suddenly clicked in horror.
“What is he doing! Human face structure is not sturdy enough to take such a blow!” His companion called out as they both darted for the emergency overide on the door.
They could only watch in horror however as the massive ball arched up and dipped perfectly down through the vector meet just as the human below lifted up his binocular eyes to watch its trajectory. The human’s slow reflexes meant that the ball slammed into his protruding nasal sensor just as it was fully extended.
The blow first turned the human’s head to the side and then twisted the entire bipedal form to the floor. Quilx’tch burst through the door clicking in distress with his companion close on his paws. However they stopped short as the sound the humans were making struck them. Both of the humans were laughing heartily as the uninjured human helped the injured one to his feet.
“Do you require medical assistance?” Quix’tch asked.
However it appeared that neither of the humans had noted their approach. To Quilx’tch’s dawning horror the injured human was beginning to leak bright read blood out of his nasal cavity, but instead of calling for the base medic he only reached up to compress the exterior of the cavity in a membrane crushing grip.
“Yo!” the uninjured human called. “Why are the indicator lights red?”
The injured human gave one of those deep grunts that could only come from mammalian lungs and swept his vision around the room before alighting on the two Trisk.
“Lil’buzzz!” the injured human slurs out as his smile caused a fresh line of red blood to streak down his lips. “Wazzuuu?”
“He said what’s up little buds!” the uninjured human said cheerfully as he strode over and held out his hands for them to jump up. “This is a dangerous game for you so I gotta get you back to the observation lock!”
“This is a dangerous game for you!” Quilx’tch insisted, so overwhelmed by the sight of the compressed membrane and the flowing internal fluids that he forgot his manners. “We need to get the injured human to the medical ward!”
“For a stupidity induced nosebleed?” the uninjured human scoffed. “We have gravity here. It’ll stop in a bit and we can limit the spread of biohazard fluids by staying here.”
The injured human nodded in agreement, causing the blood to smear further over his hands.
Quilx’tch stared at them both in horror and it apparently showed in his stance and the humans preformed that odd form of communication that only binocular species could.
“You’re puffed out like a kitten in a room full of rocking chairs lil’ guy,” the uninjured human finally observed.
“Ake oo haap I oe ediiii?” The injured human tried to speak.
“Would it calm you down if I took my friend here to the medical ward?” the uninjured human translated.
“Yes, yes it would,” Quilx’tch said firmly.
The uninjured human lifted them up to the spider walk and the injured human waved at them as the pair left the room. He used the hand he had been compressing his external sinus with however and this resulted in a fresh flow of blood from his nose that spattered on the floor triggering the biohazard alarms and gave them a good view of the internal fluids spread all over his hand.
Quilx’tch shuddered as the AI began to insist that they leave the contaminated common room until the automated cleaning systems had sanitized it.


THE AMAZON
SECOND EDITION
OF THE
PAPERBACK
AND THE
FORMAL KINDLE EDITION
ARE NOW UP ON
AMAZON! 

Of course if you want a signed first edition you can email me at bettyadams@authorbettyadams.com and I can ship you a signed Author copy of the first edition for the same price as the crowdfunding campaign $35 domestic and $50 overseas. I'll do that until I run out of extra books.