Humans are Weird – Last Resort
The air was positively saturated with the savory taste of baked beans. Quilx’tch reached for his datapad to check the ambient temperature again, not because there was any question of the simple dish being spoiled by a moderate change, so much as to keep his paws busy so he didn’t take another sip from the rich broth that bubbled around the solid legumes in the mass.
“No wonder this is such a delicacy among the humans,” Ssss’ttt observed as she fiddled with her thermal mittens, presumably for the same reason.
Quilx’tch was about to reply when the main door opened, dropping the temperature in the room, and a sanitary technician in a standard bio-hazard suit rushed in. He glanced around with a strange mix of stress in his stiff, extended hairs and depressed resignation in the set of his joints. After the polite six seconds passed he approached Quilx’tch.
“May we borrow the antimicrobial cleaning agents from your department?” the sanitary technician asked.
Quilx’tch paused in surprise. The anthropological gastronomy department fully relied on the sanitary department to source all of their cleaning supplies on this base. In the normal weave of the day they would be asking them for such things. Still, politeness and basic common sense allowed for only one answer.
“Of course you may,” Quilx’tch said. “You will find them in that net.”
He gestured at the relevant storage compartment and without pausing to reply the sanitary technician tramped over to the net and quickly pulled out all of their anti-micorbials and, seemingly upon considerations, all of their anti-fungals as well. Then without a word he walked out of the room. Ssss’ttt angled her body at Quilx’tch and he tapped the floor thoughtfully with one claw.
“That was strange,” he acknowledged.
However there was very little more to be said on the matter. Quilx’tch made a point of filling out a request for more cleaning supplies, if sanitary was borrowing theirs there was no hope of getting more before the next resupply run, and they finished the ‘experimental’ batch of baked beans. The experiment being an informal taste test. A quite shameful misuse of University equipment, but it was a slow day and the slurry around the beans was so delicious that Quilx’tch was fairly sure it could be used to bribe any administrators to be numb to their trespass. After they had had their fill Quilx’tch and Ssss’tch loaded the remaining solid beans into a large thermal vat and placed it, and themselves on a scooter. The flat, wheeled transports they used to transport heavy equipment around a base built with much larger species in mind. The scooter hummed to life and swiftly carried them along the extra-wide spider-walk towards the human recreation area. The whole point of using the University kitchen equipment was to make enough to be worth sharing with their human friends after all.
However they arrived to find far more than the expected two or three humans that were usually there at this time of day. Ssss’ttt patted her manipulating paws together nervously.
“There won’t be nearly enough for them all,” she observed. “Oh, I knew we should have made a second vat.”
“I don’t think that is the most pressing concern at the moment,” Quilx’tch observed slowly as the scooter rolled around the perimeter of the room. The humans were gathered around a trio of the massive mammals at one table and from the way their massive bodies hunched, from the low rumbles of their voices, from the way the standing human was gently pulling back the impossibly long hairs of another…
“Something is very wrong,” Quilx’tch said and Ssss’ttt fell silent and observed. As they got closer to the cluster of humans they saw a similar cluster of Trisk whose body language was much more readable. They were grooming each other despite all of them having that stiff, crisp look of having just come out of high level hazmat suits. Worryingly they were at the far end of the table from the humans and Ssss’ttt gave an uneasy little shuffle on her ambulatory paws. Quilx’tch stopped the scooter and they scampered down from the spider-walk to the table.
Fts’stf turned from where he was grooming a very clean subordinate and his mandibles twitched in a pained grimace.
“It is without doubt a nasty situation,” he greeted them.
Quilx’tch hesitated for longer than the required six seconds as he wondered what he and Ssss’ttt had missed, being in their lab all morning. Seeming to sense their confusion Fts’stf setteled himself down on his paws and gestured towards the Trisk at the center of their grooming huddle and the human hunched over what was now clearly a large bowl.
“These were the crew first assigned to the clean up,” he said. “Their hazard materials suits were not breached but given the situation we are offering moral support grooming. The humans warned us that as there was a high likelihood of them spraying digestive acid-” at this point the human hunched over the bowl began making very uncomfortable noised as her body began contracting, “they suggested we keep a safe distance.” Fts’stf finished.
Quilx’tch waited six agonizing seconds before finally asking.
“What could have possibly caused this?”
Fts’stf flipped his paw over and gestured to one of the Trisk at the center of the grooming huddle, who stood on stiff legs and came over. Quilx’tch recognized him as a fairly important member of the sanitation team.
“There’s a leak under the waste bins,” he said. “Not bad. Not much, but it’s been leaking a good long time.” A shudder ran through his body. “It was the bin we put the waste meat in before it got decomped for the general org-matter mix. We finally had to pull them all for some general maintenance and Gst’k who was working the heavy lift got all splashed.”
A general tremor of horror ran through the grooming group at the memory.
“There is so much,” someone clicked softly, and no one seemed offended by the interruption, perhaps it was the horror in the tones.
“Tried to handle it ourselves,” the sanitation tech went on, “but all that volume meant we had to call in the humans, and we did try to warn them about the smell, but-”
“There are no words in any language to describe that smell,” one of the humans interjected from their end of the table.
There was a general murmur of agreement.
Quilx’tch was processing this when he saw Ssss’ttt angle her body up in a gesture of somewhat forced cheerfulness and address the humans. He thought he knew what she was planing, and it would normally be a good idea, but he had had some experience with humans already deep in a disgust reaction.
However there was no possible way to correct her without violating many layers of politeness.
“Perhaps a few of you might benefit from sharing our food?” Ssss’ttt suggested. “We don’t have much but I have heard that it is called ‘comfort food’ in human culture, so perhaps those most affected might find it comforting?”
“What do you have?” one of the humans asked, his body straightening with interest. However Quilx’tch noted that the human primarily focused on comforting the worst affected frowned in unease.
“Baked beans!” Ssss’ttt announced proudly.
“Beans?” croaked out the human hunched over the bowl. “No-they looked like beans-”
Her sentence was interrupted by some truly horrific wet, gasping sounds before her mouth opened and a stream of yellowish liquid full of chunks spilled into the bowl she was over. The rest of the humans scrambled away from her, save for the one holding her hair, and the wave of gasps and coughs suggested that she might not be the only human regurgitating her last meal. However the mammals managed to ‘keep it together’ as they were so fond of saying and Quilx’tch gently patted Ssss’ttt on her thorax.
“I will explain this particular rule about sharing food later, privately,” he promised her in tones too high for humans to hear.
“There was so much,” the human over the bowl gurgled. “Who is going to clean it up?”
The humans glanced at each other uneasily for several moments. Someone suggested placing the really big laser on a drone platform and vaporizing it remotely. That earned a few laughs. Finally the human who was still calmly holding the other’s hair spoke up.
“This seems like a job for Mountain Mike,” he said.
And uneasy ripple of energy went through all of the senior staff, human and Trisk alike.
“The trade budget is already strained,” Fts’stf commented, idly running his claws through the tines of his grooming brush.
“We need to get that stuff cleaned up fast,” the senior human, Jones Quilx’tch believed he was called. “We won’t be able to use the meat disposal bin till it is.”
A murmur of agreement, cut with a stray cough, ran through the gathered humans.
“Last Resort Mike, is what I heard him called,” another human commented.
“Yes,” Fts’stf agreed. “His prices are high and he does not enjoy communicating with any other sapient species, but his skills and...I am sorry what do you call the set of abilities that allows a human to endure tremendous discomfort?”
“Grit,” one human offered.
“Guts,” another suggested.
“Crazy,” a third muttered.
“Grit,” Fts’stf decided on firmly, “his grit and skills make him the only human, certainly no Trisk could, I would not ask them to, clean the spill up without experiencing unconscionable levels of distress.”
“He sounds like a very useful type of human to have on the fringes of our community,” Qilx’tch offered into the following strained silence.
“So who’s gonna’ call Last Resort Mike?” one of the sanitation techs asked.
The room fell into silence, broken only by the human over the bowl gagging softly. Finally the human holding her hair sighed and indicated another human to take his place.
“I’ll get him on the horn,” he said, “Fts’stf, I’ll need you and the rest of the authorized staff to grant me approval for the bargaining.”
“I do not think we are in any place to barter,” Fts’stf said with a rueful set to his mandibles. “That lake of … organic matter-”
“With bean things living in it,” the human over the bowl muttered.
At which point the rest of the human began gagging again, one of them snatched the bowl out of her hands to use it and the clusters of Trisk and humans moved away from each other with a strange unspoken but mutually expressed apology.
“No,” Jones agreed with a sigh, rubbing his eyes in that way that pushed them into his skull with a disgusting squish, “I don’t think we are in any position to barter. Last Resort Mike it is.”
Jones wove his way through the mass of humans and Ssss’ttt gently nudged Quilx’tch.
“Do you think this Last Resort Mike would want some baked beans?” she asked, a hopeful tilt to her abdomen. “It would be a shame for them to go to waste.
“No wonder this is such a delicacy among the humans,” Ssss’ttt observed as she fiddled with her thermal mittens, presumably for the same reason.
Quilx’tch was about to reply when the main door opened, dropping the temperature in the room, and a sanitary technician in a standard bio-hazard suit rushed in. He glanced around with a strange mix of stress in his stiff, extended hairs and depressed resignation in the set of his joints. After the polite six seconds passed he approached Quilx’tch.
“May we borrow the antimicrobial cleaning agents from your department?” the sanitary technician asked.
Quilx’tch paused in surprise. The anthropological gastronomy department fully relied on the sanitary department to source all of their cleaning supplies on this base. In the normal weave of the day they would be asking them for such things. Still, politeness and basic common sense allowed for only one answer.
“Of course you may,” Quilx’tch said. “You will find them in that net.”
He gestured at the relevant storage compartment and without pausing to reply the sanitary technician tramped over to the net and quickly pulled out all of their anti-micorbials and, seemingly upon considerations, all of their anti-fungals as well. Then without a word he walked out of the room. Ssss’ttt angled her body at Quilx’tch and he tapped the floor thoughtfully with one claw.
“That was strange,” he acknowledged.
However there was very little more to be said on the matter. Quilx’tch made a point of filling out a request for more cleaning supplies, if sanitary was borrowing theirs there was no hope of getting more before the next resupply run, and they finished the ‘experimental’ batch of baked beans. The experiment being an informal taste test. A quite shameful misuse of University equipment, but it was a slow day and the slurry around the beans was so delicious that Quilx’tch was fairly sure it could be used to bribe any administrators to be numb to their trespass. After they had had their fill Quilx’tch and Ssss’tch loaded the remaining solid beans into a large thermal vat and placed it, and themselves on a scooter. The flat, wheeled transports they used to transport heavy equipment around a base built with much larger species in mind. The scooter hummed to life and swiftly carried them along the extra-wide spider-walk towards the human recreation area. The whole point of using the University kitchen equipment was to make enough to be worth sharing with their human friends after all.
However they arrived to find far more than the expected two or three humans that were usually there at this time of day. Ssss’ttt patted her manipulating paws together nervously.
“There won’t be nearly enough for them all,” she observed. “Oh, I knew we should have made a second vat.”
“I don’t think that is the most pressing concern at the moment,” Quilx’tch observed slowly as the scooter rolled around the perimeter of the room. The humans were gathered around a trio of the massive mammals at one table and from the way their massive bodies hunched, from the low rumbles of their voices, from the way the standing human was gently pulling back the impossibly long hairs of another…
“Something is very wrong,” Quilx’tch said and Ssss’ttt fell silent and observed. As they got closer to the cluster of humans they saw a similar cluster of Trisk whose body language was much more readable. They were grooming each other despite all of them having that stiff, crisp look of having just come out of high level hazmat suits. Worryingly they were at the far end of the table from the humans and Ssss’ttt gave an uneasy little shuffle on her ambulatory paws. Quilx’tch stopped the scooter and they scampered down from the spider-walk to the table.
Fts’stf turned from where he was grooming a very clean subordinate and his mandibles twitched in a pained grimace.
“It is without doubt a nasty situation,” he greeted them.
Quilx’tch hesitated for longer than the required six seconds as he wondered what he and Ssss’ttt had missed, being in their lab all morning. Seeming to sense their confusion Fts’stf setteled himself down on his paws and gestured towards the Trisk at the center of their grooming huddle and the human hunched over what was now clearly a large bowl.
“These were the crew first assigned to the clean up,” he said. “Their hazard materials suits were not breached but given the situation we are offering moral support grooming. The humans warned us that as there was a high likelihood of them spraying digestive acid-” at this point the human hunched over the bowl began making very uncomfortable noised as her body began contracting, “they suggested we keep a safe distance.” Fts’stf finished.
Quilx’tch waited six agonizing seconds before finally asking.
“What could have possibly caused this?”
Fts’stf flipped his paw over and gestured to one of the Trisk at the center of the grooming huddle, who stood on stiff legs and came over. Quilx’tch recognized him as a fairly important member of the sanitation team.
“There’s a leak under the waste bins,” he said. “Not bad. Not much, but it’s been leaking a good long time.” A shudder ran through his body. “It was the bin we put the waste meat in before it got decomped for the general org-matter mix. We finally had to pull them all for some general maintenance and Gst’k who was working the heavy lift got all splashed.”
A general tremor of horror ran through the grooming group at the memory.
“There is so much,” someone clicked softly, and no one seemed offended by the interruption, perhaps it was the horror in the tones.
“Tried to handle it ourselves,” the sanitation tech went on, “but all that volume meant we had to call in the humans, and we did try to warn them about the smell, but-”
“There are no words in any language to describe that smell,” one of the humans interjected from their end of the table.
There was a general murmur of agreement.
Quilx’tch was processing this when he saw Ssss’ttt angle her body up in a gesture of somewhat forced cheerfulness and address the humans. He thought he knew what she was planing, and it would normally be a good idea, but he had had some experience with humans already deep in a disgust reaction.
However there was no possible way to correct her without violating many layers of politeness.
“Perhaps a few of you might benefit from sharing our food?” Ssss’ttt suggested. “We don’t have much but I have heard that it is called ‘comfort food’ in human culture, so perhaps those most affected might find it comforting?”
“What do you have?” one of the humans asked, his body straightening with interest. However Quilx’tch noted that the human primarily focused on comforting the worst affected frowned in unease.
“Baked beans!” Ssss’ttt announced proudly.
“Beans?” croaked out the human hunched over the bowl. “No-they looked like beans-”
Her sentence was interrupted by some truly horrific wet, gasping sounds before her mouth opened and a stream of yellowish liquid full of chunks spilled into the bowl she was over. The rest of the humans scrambled away from her, save for the one holding her hair, and the wave of gasps and coughs suggested that she might not be the only human regurgitating her last meal. However the mammals managed to ‘keep it together’ as they were so fond of saying and Quilx’tch gently patted Ssss’ttt on her thorax.
“I will explain this particular rule about sharing food later, privately,” he promised her in tones too high for humans to hear.
“There was so much,” the human over the bowl gurgled. “Who is going to clean it up?”
The humans glanced at each other uneasily for several moments. Someone suggested placing the really big laser on a drone platform and vaporizing it remotely. That earned a few laughs. Finally the human who was still calmly holding the other’s hair spoke up.
“This seems like a job for Mountain Mike,” he said.
And uneasy ripple of energy went through all of the senior staff, human and Trisk alike.
“The trade budget is already strained,” Fts’stf commented, idly running his claws through the tines of his grooming brush.
“We need to get that stuff cleaned up fast,” the senior human, Jones Quilx’tch believed he was called. “We won’t be able to use the meat disposal bin till it is.”
A murmur of agreement, cut with a stray cough, ran through the gathered humans.
“Last Resort Mike, is what I heard him called,” another human commented.
“Yes,” Fts’stf agreed. “His prices are high and he does not enjoy communicating with any other sapient species, but his skills and...I am sorry what do you call the set of abilities that allows a human to endure tremendous discomfort?”
“Grit,” one human offered.
“Guts,” another suggested.
“Crazy,” a third muttered.
“Grit,” Fts’stf decided on firmly, “his grit and skills make him the only human, certainly no Trisk could, I would not ask them to, clean the spill up without experiencing unconscionable levels of distress.”
“He sounds like a very useful type of human to have on the fringes of our community,” Qilx’tch offered into the following strained silence.
“So who’s gonna’ call Last Resort Mike?” one of the sanitation techs asked.
The room fell into silence, broken only by the human over the bowl gagging softly. Finally the human holding her hair sighed and indicated another human to take his place.
“I’ll get him on the horn,” he said, “Fts’stf, I’ll need you and the rest of the authorized staff to grant me approval for the bargaining.”
“I do not think we are in any place to barter,” Fts’stf said with a rueful set to his mandibles. “That lake of … organic matter-”
“With bean things living in it,” the human over the bowl muttered.
At which point the rest of the human began gagging again, one of them snatched the bowl out of her hands to use it and the clusters of Trisk and humans moved away from each other with a strange unspoken but mutually expressed apology.
“No,” Jones agreed with a sigh, rubbing his eyes in that way that pushed them into his skull with a disgusting squish, “I don’t think we are in any position to barter. Last Resort Mike it is.”
Jones wove his way through the mass of humans and Ssss’ttt gently nudged Quilx’tch.
“Do you think this Last Resort Mike would want some baked beans?” she asked, a hopeful tilt to her abdomen. “It would be a shame for them to go to waste.
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