Humans are Weird - Crow
Commander Eighth Click saw the shadow that fell across the entrance to his office and finally glanced up with what he mostly hoped was not a threatening glare on his face. It had been a long day. The newly arrived humans had done far more damage since their arrival than even the most pessimistic engineers had predicted. It was almost as if you imported a giant bipedal species and set them loose in Winged architecture they would put stress on foundations and platforms not built for them and only hastily remodeled. Having to deal with the fourth report of a buckling undergirder this week had not put the commander in the best mood to deal with whatever was making Private Twenty-fourth Click’s footsteps drag so slowly.
As Commander Eighth Click suspected the private’s ears were drooping, his eyes were wide with some hurt, and his fur lay slack against his body. The faint hope that the private was just popping in for a moral boosting glance at his wing commander puffed out of existence.
“What is it Private Twenty-fourth Click?” Commander Eighth Click tried not to demand harshly.
The private cowered a little but started talking fast enough to show that his tongue was working fine at least, even if his wings were drooping.
“I think one of the humans is offended at me,” Private Twenty-fourth Click burst out. “I just showed him the math. I even used human calculation methods in base ten! I don’t know why that made hims so angry but now he won’t even look at me and-”
“What math?” Commander Eighth Click cut swiftly across the current of conversation, not that he expected that to be the relevant thermal, but math at least an engineering wing understood.
“He was wrong!” Private Twenty-fourth Click burst out puffing up. “It came up on the non-feedback stress tolerances discussion. It was a simple linear equation on the load-bearing side. A hornless, flightless knows that, but the human was so confident that I checked the math. I wrote it out and everything-”
The private waved the paper on his winghook vigorously.
“In base ten, yes, yes,” Commander Eighth Click redirected the drift of the conversation now that he felt he had a decent lead under his wings. “So you wrote out in detail how the human was wrong and showed him-”
“And he didn’t even make a pretense of thanking me!” Private Twenty-fourth Click sputtered out.
His nose, frilless enough to mark his genes as coming from the far north or south, positively rippled with indignation.
Commander Eighth Click heaved a massive sigh as he stared at the seething bundle of offended propriety. He found himself wondering if a human engineer would understand why that interaction might have been a touch offensive without having his horns guided into it.
As Commander Eighth Click suspected the private’s ears were drooping, his eyes were wide with some hurt, and his fur lay slack against his body. The faint hope that the private was just popping in for a moral boosting glance at his wing commander puffed out of existence.
“What is it Private Twenty-fourth Click?” Commander Eighth Click tried not to demand harshly.
The private cowered a little but started talking fast enough to show that his tongue was working fine at least, even if his wings were drooping.
“I think one of the humans is offended at me,” Private Twenty-fourth Click burst out. “I just showed him the math. I even used human calculation methods in base ten! I don’t know why that made hims so angry but now he won’t even look at me and-”
“What math?” Commander Eighth Click cut swiftly across the current of conversation, not that he expected that to be the relevant thermal, but math at least an engineering wing understood.
“He was wrong!” Private Twenty-fourth Click burst out puffing up. “It came up on the non-feedback stress tolerances discussion. It was a simple linear equation on the load-bearing side. A hornless, flightless knows that, but the human was so confident that I checked the math. I wrote it out and everything-”
The private waved the paper on his winghook vigorously.
“In base ten, yes, yes,” Commander Eighth Click redirected the drift of the conversation now that he felt he had a decent lead under his wings. “So you wrote out in detail how the human was wrong and showed him-”
“And he didn’t even make a pretense of thanking me!” Private Twenty-fourth Click sputtered out.
His nose, frilless enough to mark his genes as coming from the far north or south, positively rippled with indignation.
Commander Eighth Click heaved a massive sigh as he stared at the seething bundle of offended propriety. He found himself wondering if a human engineer would understand why that interaction might have been a touch offensive without having his horns guided into it.
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